This book came into my life at the right time: stress at work leading to burnout is prompting me to carefully look at what I want out of work and how to dig out of the hole a bit. At the same time, I’ve taken courses and had conversations recently that relate to the concepts being discussed. Specifically, both a recent course and this book talk about fixed vs. growth mindsets: being curious and interested and seeing failures as opportunities to learn, instead of considering talents as immutable and failure as a sign of loserdom. And at work we were talking about the CliftonStrengths Assessment, then lo and behold it was mentioned in this very book right after that conversation. So a timely book for me and an interesting one.

This is the sequel to Designing Your Life, but I don’t think you need to have read the first one; there is some overlap, but it’s not as though there are spoilers :) The authors are a little more on the upbeat side than grumpy catastrophizing pessimist here, but they do take pains to state the limitations of the advice given here. It’s useful for overwhelm, but for burnout you need to get more specialized help. And although they present a strategy for quitting gradually (so that you can exit gracefully), they recognize that if a workplace is toxic or downright harmful, you need to get out of there ASAP. I appreciated the honesty and the examples from the authors’ own lives; they seem to do their best to practise what they preach.

There are a lot of useful exercises and worksheets available on the authors’ website to complete and put the book’s ideas into practice, and I think I’ll look into those and get my own copy of this book for future reference. Recommended if you’re stuck in a job and not sure where to go next. ( )