Greg McKeown:
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Welcome back, everybody. I’m your host, Greg McKeown, and on this podcast, we are interested always in figuring out what’s essential, eliminating what is nonessential, and figuring out how to live a life that really matters. In fact, at the time of this recording, we just hit the ten-year anniversary of essentialism. And it’s, and there’s a special edition of Essentialism that has just been released. It has a new introduction, it has a new tool, 21-day challenge for putting these ideas into practice.
And so it’s perfectly relevant to be able to have a conversation with Jodie Wellman, who is the author of You Only Die Once. It’s a combination of quite a poignant subject and approach but in a kind of darkly humorous way. Jodi is a founder, positive psychologist, and executive coach who spent 25 years doing leadership work and speaking, doing keynotes, workshops, and coaching programs you can imagine with the world’s top researchers on happiness and what makes life worth living.
Jodi, welcome to the podcast.
Jodi Wellman:
Oh, I’m so excited to chat with you, Greg. Thank you.
Greg McKeown:
Well, if you were going to die right now, what would you regret?
Jodi Wellman:
By the way, can I just thank you for cutting right to the chase? It’s almost like this is your specialty. Why would we warm up when you could just ask a zinger of a question? Ten points for you. Okay, my regrets. I would regret not being bolder.
So, I love your question because most people, when you think about regrets, well, people will think about it as things they did, which, based on the research I’ve done and the research of others, that doesn’t tend to faze us much on the deathbed. It’s more about the stuff we didn’t do.
And then it could be the actions like, yeah, I would regret not getting to the Croatian coast. Okay, I’ll put that one on there. But that’s not as much as in terms of a way of being. And so the whole category of being bold, taking more risks, putting myself out there, not caring as much what people think, that would be my thing. I would say, “Oh, honey, look at you here lying back on the grave. You could have done more.”
Greg McKeown:
That reminds me of two things. One, Steve Jobs. His famous keynote address at Stanford University, where he says, “Look, when you face your death, you’re already naked. You don’t have to worry, because what’s all the worry about? Your death is liberating. It doesn’t have to be nihilistic. It can be the opposite.”
That’s, I think, the essence of what you’re saying, isn’t it?
Jodi Wellman:
Totally, yeah. And his lines about it being one of the greatest inventions. He calls it life’s change agent. I mean, I fell deeper in love with Apple products after that commencement speech.
Greg McKeown:
You ask something at the beginning of the book that I think get us into the subject matter in a slightly different way. For people listening to this, you said, “Do any of these ring true to you? You have that niggling sense that you’re playing it a little too small, a little too safe, and you believe that there’s more you can wring out of your life.”
That seems to be what you were just saying in your own answer to the question.
“You want more agency in your life, but you don’t know where to find it, because who is ever taught to do that? You feel like you’ve been sleepwalking through your days and that sleepiness is boring you to tears.”
I mean, these are all interesting questions, and I think a lot of people can say yes to them. I don’t know if I feel. I’ve got to think about that.
Jodi Wellman:
Yeah.
Greg McKeown:
Or even the playing too small thing. I can relate to that.
Jodi Wellman:
Can I probe and ask, like, of a small example or in what way?
Greg McKeown:
Well, I think the answer to the question, the most immediate example of this happened, having just got back from England and where I was very death aware because my best friend of 35 years has terminal cancer. And it really has impacted me many, many times over the last few years. He’s already lived much longer than he was expected to, but it really impacted me a lot over this past summer. And that’s not the only thing that I was navigating through the summer.
When I got back to the US, Anna, my good and wise wife, just in passing, said something. I don’t think it was really in reaction to this. Somehow it was the right idea at the right time. But she just said, “You know, there’s so much power in taking responsibility for your life.”
And I went to sleep, and those words seemed to operate like a seed. They grew up in my heart through that night. And I woke up the next morning like a new version of myself.
And I felt a much higher sense of agency to just act upon my life and to be, in a way, what I might describe as being on brand, like, not out of center, but on brand. My brand, myself, my true self. And so I think that might be the way I would answer your question.
Jodi Wellman:
It’s such a cool example of so many things. Number two, it’s amazing, the power of a really well-timed, especially by someone you love. Okay, so obviously your wife, what she says might seed deeper than some random stranger, but sometimes it is something you read in a book, right, where it’s, “Wait a minute.” You’re taking responsibility for your life that maybe, for whatever reason, that resonated.
And I think that that’s the opportunity for so many of us, right? Like these little moments for wake-up calls, because the little lines you were reading kind of from the beginning of the book, these are like secret sentiments, right? That many of us don’t say out loud. We don’t even want to say it out loud to ourselves, that we’re, deep down, maybe a little bit disappointed in some of the ways we’ve shown up or that we are delaying our dreams, or that we are hoping for more and not sure how to do it, or that are we wasting. Are we going with the flow? Are we letting our lives happen to us? I mean, these are things I guess we might tell a therapist, but even then, sometimes we avoid it. Just like how we avoid the topic of death, right?
Greg McKeown:
You’re describing the human phenomenon to lean into self-deception, to not want to speak the truth to ourselves or others.
Jodi Wellman:
Thanks for noting that. Because part of then the intention that I have is to create awareness first. And that’s this whole premortem as the first step about, you kind of gotta look in the mirror and actually, like, deeper than the mirror. You gotta go, like, excavate a little bit in order to figure out what is already working. And, like, the positive psychology practitioner in me would be ostracized from the positive psychology community if I didn’t also say, do more of what’s working.
But that’s just not as edgy for most of us. We need the, like. We need the poke in the ribs to take action, which is the, let’s look at where things are feeling empty or flat or dead, and let’s use that as the opportunity to say, okay, now I’ve diagnosed the dead zone. Now what do I want to do about it? How, do I want to take responsibility for my life? Back to Anna’s fabulous sentiment.
Greg McKeown:
Walk us through this premortem. Of course, we know the idea of it, a premortem versus postmortem, not after the fact. Thinking about your life when it’s been done, you want to do it now, looking forward. But then there’s also quadrants that go with this, and why don’t you walk us through that?
Jodi Wellman:
So this is the self-awareness 101. And, you know, based on so much research, we think we know ourselves. Oh, we’re just duping ourselves about ourselves. So this is the gentle easing in sort of fun and irreverent way to say, okay, how are you doing? And it’s across multiple domains of life. So, you know how in life, like, we’re so complicated, we’ve got our career, and then we. Oh, yeah, right. But we’ve got, like, family, and then we have friends. Remember those people? And then maybe there’s the fund and recreation category, and then there’s our health and spirituality. What’s that again? And then our growth and then our finances and, oh, my gosh, we can’t be doing it all.
You talk very succinctly and helpfully about boiling it down to what matters. My encouragement in the premortem is, like, let’s just take the pulse. How’s it going? So I have probably no less than 17,012 questions to get you looking at your life, including, I call it the astonishingly alive assessment. So, like, 68 questions just to slice and dice and figure out where are things okay?
And for many of us, you know how you can have that sense in life? Like something’s missing or. I just. I’m not sure what it is. Sometimes the power of seeing it on a page or. Okay, fine. In an audio version of the book can help you to go, wait a minute. My recreation might, whatever that is, my leisure time has fallen flat, and that might be now my chance and choice.
So this is, the premortem is about awareness, and you asked about, like, the dimensions. You know, so many of us are talking about living longer, and I’m not offended by that, as long as the quality of our life is good. But I like to look at it not just about the length, but I look at it like, the width and the depth. So the width I equate to the vitality that’s in our life. The fun and the pleasure, the fizzy drinks, all the fun. And then the depth is about meaning and a sense of purpose. And maybe it’s, like, connection to other people. It’s more of the substantive stuff of well-being. And we can use that as a diagnosis tool, too. To say, my instinct is that I need more vitality. I need more fun.
Or maybe it’s the reverse. It’s like no fun is being had, but I need to have a little more. I want to come home at night and not feel so empty inside. And so those could give us good starting points to figure out how we want to fit more life into our lives before we do, in fact, kick the bucket.
Greg McKeown:
And then you name each of those quadrants in a particular way. Do you wanna just walk us through the four?
Jodi Wellman:
Well, most people fall into what’s called meaningfully bored. Okay, so this is when you are okay on meaning. You may have a job that feels like you’re doing good for people out there, or you’re raising kids. Apparently, that feels pretty meaningful. You might vouch for that. So, okay, meaning’s okay, but you’re lacking in the vitality. So that might be just like, I just need more joie de vivre in life. Like, I need more oomph in life for fun.
That is where actually, like, anywhere between 39 and 41% of people fall in the research I do. So that feels like, well, there’s an opportunity. The opposite of that would be the zone called vitally empty. And this is where they’re like, “Yeah, I’m having some fun. I’m going to having the tasting menu as I’m doing the roller coasters, but I do feel like I don’t really have a lot of purpose or direction.” And so that one is probably around 15% of people.
There is the unfortunate dead zone, which is where about twelve ish percent of people will identify and say, “Yeah, I’m lacking in both the width of vitality and the depth of meaning.” And some people will dabble there, but rebound out.
Where we’re all hoping to get to is what I call that astonishingly alive quadrant. And that’s just anywhere positive on the vitality scale, in the meaning scale. And I just want to qualify this, too, Greg, because I feel like a lot of people will get immediately overwhelmed. Like, I chose a big freaking word that sounds like it needs to be this glitzy life that impresses people, and oh, no, no. Like, my version of an amazingly, astonishingly alive life looks so dull compared to what most people would like, but it’s all relative, right? So, like, whatever makes you feel alive and like you’re, you know, sucking the marrow out of the proverbial bone of life, whatever that is for you, but are you doing it? That’s the thing. If you really ask yourself, do I feel like I’m doing my life justice? Am I showing up?
Do I have enough width right now? Do I have enough depth? It’s never gonna be perfect, but, like, do I feel okay with it? That’s what we’re looking for. Is that honest sense that, as if you were gonna go tonight, that you could confidently say, “You know what, I killed it. Or it came pretty close to killing it.”
Greg McKeown:
I killed it. When you’re about to be killed, did you kill it?
Jodi Wellman:
Well said.
Greg McKeown:
So when you say that, you know the percentages in those different four buckets, what population is that? Is that when you’re working with corporate teams and that’s the main group, or is it just online, whoever happens to be filling it out?
Jodi Wellman:
Yeah. So it’s wide demographics, so it is corporate teams, for sure, but it is also normal people who are not leaders, who are just, for example, coming to my website, filling it out. So it’s just an open invitation.
Greg McKeown:
And how many people have taken that survey now?
Jodi Wellman:
As of now, I think there are about 14,000.
Greg McKeown:
So it’s a broad enough pool that even if it isn’t, you know, somehow a perfect population, it gives you a pretty good approximation of the Western world. US, mostly, I would think.
Jodi Wellman:
Yeah, the US and Canada for the most part, and then a nice chunk in the UK, and then it does just sort of disperse from there. And it does align with a lot of well-being research, to be honest.
Greg McKeown:
And so just to summarize that, again, you have about 10% is a little more than that, that are just really not feeling meaning or energy and vibrancy in their life. You’ve got about 40% that they feel like they have meaningful things in their life, but they’re, you said, meaningfully bored.
Jodi Wellman:
Yep. So they’re lacking in the vitality.
Greg McKeown:
And then on the other side, you have high vitality, low meaning. And that’s what percentage?
Jodi Wellman:
Yeah, vitally empty would be in. And around 14%.
Greg McKeown:
14%. So I’m just doing the math of this now. So is that right? There’s like 35% up in that top quadrant?
Jodi Wellman:
I like where you’re going with this. You’re a quick math. Or here’s why. There is actually a mid-zone category, which is a catch-all. So people will fall into the middle, which is an indication that, of course, they have different experiences on different days. Most of us do, but they don’t confidently identify in astonishingly alive. So that astonishingly alive zone where one would hope that we could say, without question, yes, I live there. I’m not always in the top right part of the quadrant, but that’s where I’m camped.
That is only around 10%. So more people will identify as in the dead zone than they do in astonishingly alive.
Greg McKeown:
And so there’s a 25%. A quarter of people are just like, I’m kind of in the center here. You know, I’m none of these categories.
Jodi Wellman:
Yeah, I’m bobbing around.
Greg McKeown:
I suppose astonishingly alive, as you already said. It’s such a strong word, and I get it because you want to capture a certain aspiration, but then if you’re trying to self-diagnose, it’s hard to go, “Oh, yes, I am astonishingly alive.”
Jodi Wellman:
Well, funny you say that. That question doesn’t. I’m not even leading the witness.
Greg McKeown:
I can imagine. Yeah. So it’s just their answer to these other questions. Now, these are the 68 questions that you’ve mentioned lead to this.
Jodi Wellman:
It’s a different series of questions.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. What are the questions that somebody can ask from your website that will help them determine which category they’re in?
Jodi Wellman:
Well, they would take a quiz. So it’s a series of about a dozen questions, twelve to 15 questions, and it’s getting at topics around, you know, how…
Greg McKeown:
Would you have the actual questions?
Jodi Wellman:
I can flip to them in my book.
Greg McKeown:
Let’s do it. I’d like you to flip to them.
Jodi Wellman:
How alive do you feel today? So it could range from bursting with aliveness to mostly alive a lot of the time or living with but with a lot of definite deadness going on or kind of like a corpse. So you’re identifying in one of the four zones there. I ask about, what is your leisure time like. I ask about describe this is you at work. So I’m so totally and utterly engaged, ranging all the way down to I wish I was anywhere but here. So obviously there’s a nonapplicable category.
I have what slogan would most likely be engraved on your tombstone? And that could range from Carpe Diem or all work and no play, or all play and no purpose, et cetera. How would the people in your life describe you? And that can range from examples like overflowing with vitality and zest or zapped of life, possibly without blood.
Greg McKeown:
That’s a pretty high test right there. I mean, Greg is overflowing with vitality and zest.
Jodi Wellman:
Almost dangerous.Yeah. Well, on the flip end, the other side, to counterbalance that is zapped of life, possibly without blood. And so, you know, and then a couple in the middle alive kind of lackluster.
Greg McKeown:
This is because it’s all part of this sort of, as we said at the beginning, sort of a dark, humorous way at these subjects. But this is part of what makes the book fun, too.
Jodi Wellman:
Thank you. And I recognize that in addition to these questions and then any of the others in the postmortem, premortem, any of the mortems, it is a difficult topic for so many people, and the best way in is to use the irreverence. And quite frankly, doodling the Grim Reaper helps a heck of a lot to help people feel like, okay, if we’re gonna have a chuckle at this lot that we all share in life, this shared, unfortunate end in existence, then it does make it way more palatable for people.
So we do need to grease the skids to get into this tough topic of death.
Greg McKeown:
Whenever I’m watching a movie or reading a book, those two particularly, I often sort of spare a prayer for the person that, you know, that created that thing, because they didn’t think about it. The number of times that I do as someone watching the movie or reading the book, you know, they thought about it in many, many layers and many, many versions. And so sometimes I’ll watch a movie that I think, in fact, it just happened that as a family, we watched a movie, and the heart of the message was so appalling.
It was a kind of romantic comedy, but the actual message was so dark. We all afterward were like, “What did we just watch?”
So the point is that I sort of thought, well, my goodness, this person, they had to write this script. They had to sell this script. They had to put together the director, the producer, everything. Then they had to create it and market it. They had to think about these subjects so many times.
One of my thoughts was like, “Well, how did they not think not to do this?”
That was part of my thinking. But with you right here you are, you only live once, but you’ve thought now a lot about this. Have you separated the data in any way between people who believe that there is a life after this versus those who don’t? Because, you know, everybody dies. That is true. But that. But you can go to different places with that mantra. I think, depending on the degree to which you believe, you’re accountable for that life. It’s kind of diametrically opposed at the extremes.
Jodi Wellman:
Yeah, I had a chuckle. So when working with the publisher, deciding on you only die once as the topic, of course, it was like, “Well, a lot of people believe you die more than once.”
I’m aware roughly a quarter of our human population believes in reincarnation, for example. And to that it’s like, “Great, come on back. But you only live this life once.”
And so how do you want this life to be? Right? And so with always an emphasis, I mean, I talk about death with more vitality than one would think, but it’s all in service of living, right? And so whether or not, you know, research is pretty clear that more people believe in an afterlife than not, whether it’s tied to, you know, reincarnation or not.
And that gives them that sense of symbolic immortality, which is really important in the subject of death denial. Right. That idea that, okay, well, I’m going to try my darndest on this life here, but don’t worry, I’m not really going to go forever. The essence of me will still live beyond. And so that just is a separate category of amusing conversation that does provide comfort for a lot of people and can assuage their death anxiety.
But no, I’m saying you only die once in this particular lifetime. I could put an asterisk there and just say, hey, don’t we all want to make the most of it until we go? Whether you come back again, hope to see you around. But even if we don’t, back to agency and back to responsibility. What do we want now for your 4000 Mondays this time?
Greg McKeown:
So just in answer to the specific question, you haven’t separated the data in any way along those lines, right? You know, what you’ve gathered and what you’ve thought about is just regardless of what somebody.
Jodi Wellman:
Correct.
Greg McKeown:
And this will sound very philosophical, worth it. But you have like an axiom premise that says living a meaningful life matters. Now, if you take nihilism to its ultimate conclusion, it doesn’t matter. But you’re not really playing with any of that. You’re just going, look, life is better when you have meaning and vitality. That’s the structure I’m working on. Let’s go forward.
Jodi Wellman:
You know, I’m glad you mentioned this. Because I’ve been doing more research lately on the meaning side, you know, because according to a lot of my research, vitality is the area where people are lacking. And so that is an area to go first. The more I look at meaning, the more I’ve become even aware that in honesty, I don’t really have an opinion like a prescription. And, you know, a lot of the thinkers in well-being do advocate for whether it’s a balance or whether it’s consideration of the hedonic aspect of well-being, which is my version of widening with vitality or the eudaemonic dimension of well-being, which is the deepening with meaning.
And back to the idea about how your version’s different than mine. Like my Friday night would be a lot sleepier than someone else’s version of living life worth living. I am truly indifferent to whether or not your version of an astonishingly alive life is all about champagne and yachts, and you could care less about meaning. If that’s your version of I’m not here to judge. I mean, you know, it’s always fun to snicker at one another, but I would truly, I say go if that’s your version.
Are you honestly living? Because my goal is that the questions you asked in the beginning are ones we can confidently feel okay with and feel like when we’re on our deathbed. Is there anything I wish that I had done that I didn’t? And if for you, it was buying the 9th yacht and you got around to doing it and you were so proud, and you got your yachting certificate, the highest level, and that felt good for you, and that was the life you wanted to live, who am I to say that that was a life that wasn’t worth living versus someone else who would say, “Oh, I am not here for pleasure. I do not eat the sugar cookies. All I do is volunteer all day.”
And I say, “Well, then, hey, that floats your boat.” I guess. Literally floats your yacht for the other guy, then so be it. So it is not a prescription. I present all the information. I present research that makes a case for how vitality and meaning in their own camps do add to well-being in an empirically based way. But you do you. You know, because I think some people will have their own preferences. And that’s okay.
Greg McKeown:
Well, sure. I mean, in a simple sense, you’re just saying. I’m not trying to advocate where someone’s meaning or vitality should come from. I’m just trying to ask questions that help people assess where they are based on their own view of their own lives because that’s better than not reflecting on this.
Jodi Wellman:
Thank you. Right. And then when you do come to this revelation. And so I’ll think about a workshop I did recently with the team. They were a group of leaders, and they, you know, of course, they were chiding each other appropriately. So half of them were roughly in the, “Hey, I just want more fun. I want to pick up the guitar again.”
And the other half were, “Well, I want to go and volunteer at the library.”
And of course, jokes were made on both expenses, but at the end of the day, it was whatever you come up with that will make you feel at this time in your life, which could be different next quarter, that you are living like you mean it.
Then that’s the thing. Back to accountability. Well, then what action do you want to take? And we can only really do one thing at a time. So at the risk of overwhelming us, because I run the risk, and I get this a lot from really, you know, busy, successful, productive people, I get everybody to count how many Mondays they have left. It’s the game I play. You know, I have 1812 this week. And sometimes that does. I mean, most of the time it elicits the look of, “Oh, no,” a little bit of panic, and it’s intentional. It’s appropriate.
It’s not an existential crisis typically. It’s about, oh, it’s that sense of urgency, which is temporal scarcity, which is where all this is rooted, right? Oh, yeah, we all know we’re dying, but if we quantify it and we can see it and size it, that can help us to realize I need to savor and take action in light of the fact that this is a limited time only situation. So some people will look at that number, whatever their number is, and feel that sense of, “Wait a minute, I have way more goals than I will ever hope to stuff into my remaining Mondays.” And that does not feel good, right?
Greg McKeown:
Mm hmm.
Jodi Wellman:
Yeah. And then that usually take a couple of breaths, you know, take a couple of sips of whatever your fancy is, and then let’s come back and say, “Okay, well, then, now we just prioritize.”
It’s back to essentialism. Right. It’s actually like defining, well, what are those values you have? What are the things that matter?
And so I look at it in some ways, like, I’m the step before you where it’s like using death as the, quite frankly, the, you know, the unfortunate but true poke in the ribs that gets us to say, “Oh, okay, I can’t keep delaying this and saying, I’ll do it later. I can’t keep procrastinating my life. And then I want to pare it down to what really matters and then start doing it.”
Greg McKeown:
For everybody listening, what is one thing that stood out to you? What’s the news of this episode? And now what can you do about it immediately, within the next few minutes, a tiny action to be able to as much just make things in your life a little bit better? Thank you for listening.
