{"id":4001,"date":"2026-05-10T06:04:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T14:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/?p=4001"},"modified":"2026-05-10T06:04:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T14:04:44","slug":"what-to-make-of-a-life-by-jim-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/10\/what-to-make-of-a-life-by-jim-collins\/","title":{"rendered":"What to Make of a Life, by Jim Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon link<\/A><\/p>\n

I liked Jim Collins’s management books like Built to Last<\/a> and Good to Great<\/a>, so I was interested in his latest book after hearing him talk about it on the Tim Ferriss show<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In his business books, his research methodology was to look for pairs of companies that looked similar up to a point and then traced their differing paths afterwards. In this book, he applied the same research methodology, looking for pairs of people with similar career arcs up to a certain point, and tracing the differing paths they took afterwards. This methodology introduced an unfortunate bias into his selection process, as the people had to be famous enough that he could trace their life stories before and after, but he still came to several conclusions that feel generally applicable.<\/p>\n

The key idea of the book is what Collins calls encodings, which he describes as “durable capacities of a person\u2019s intrinsic construction that lie within, awaiting discovery through the experiences of life”. It’s a vague concept, and not one that can be supported by scientific evidence, but it makes intuitive sense. He describes Jimmy Page picking up a guitar for the first time, or John Glenn piloting a plane when he was 16 years old, or Barbara McClintock taking her first genetics class, where they just felt a click and knew this was something they were meant to do. Collins calls this finding your “personal hedgehog”, where you commit “to organize your life and channel a huge chunk of your energy toward the pursuit of this One Big Thing”. <\/p>\n

Just because you haven’t found your One Big Thing early in life doesn’t mean you need to give up hope. What I found empowering was that some people he studied didn’t discover their “encodings” until later in life: Toni Morrison discovered her passion for writing in her late 30s when she found herself writing in every spare moment around raising two kids and her full time job as a book editor. Others found more than one “hedgehog” in their lives, exploring different encodings within themselves over the course of their lives: John Glenn went from being a pilot and astronaut to becoming a senator and politician (but notably did not “click” as a businessman in between). Alan Page went from being an NFL superstar to serving as a Minnesota Supreme Court Justice for three decades. <\/p>\n

So how do you go about finding your encodings? “Discovering encodings requires trial and error, experimentation, missteps, happy accidents, and disappointment. … It\u2019s not about finding what you can do better than others, but about finding what you can do exceptionally well relative to other ways you could expend yourself.” It requires paying attention to when you feel aligned with and inspired by your work to the point where you choose it over other things in life (as Morrison did with writing), where you are “in love with the actual doing of the daily tasks” of that work. Once you have that awareness, translate your passion into operating habits and routines that reinforce that passion: “When you find something you are deeply encoded for and that ignites a raging fire within, the greatest reward for doing your work is the opportunity to continue doing it.”<\/p>\n

You might wonder “But shouldn’t I want to make the world a better place? Is pursuing my passion self-indulgent?” Collins responds “the research leads me to conclude that the path to being useful is more of an inside-out approach of discovering and deploying your encodings”. You will have disproportionately more impact when you are doing what you are built to do, so find ways to use those innate talents to serve the causes you choose: “It\u2019s like a personal flywheel within: If you discover something you\u2019re encoded for and you love doing it, then you can\u2019t help but want to do more of it, which means you can\u2019t help but get better at it, which means you can\u2019t help but move toward the intrinsic satisfaction of excellence in what you do, which further reinforces doing what you are encoded for and love to do.”<\/p>\n

On that point, there’s an element of luck involved in finding one’s encodings like that. Collins says that “Not All Time In Life Is Equal” (NATILIE) – when you get an opportunity to capitalize on your encodings, lean in hard. As he puts it, “The question is not whether you will get NATILIE moments in life, but whether you meet those unequal moments with unequal intensity, summoning the best you have to give when the moment comes.” If you can get that personal flywheel spinning up faster, you’re going to accelerate past others who don’t have your encoding and seize the opportunity to have outsized impact. <\/p>\n

The second part of the book explores what happens when unexpected life events happen, what he calls cliffs. This could be an unexpected death (his research set includes two pairs of wives, whose husbands were CEOs and congressmen, and he shares how those wives reacted to being thrust into those roles), retirement (as inevitably happens to athletes), getting fired (Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter losing their presidential elections is a pair from the book), etc. Collins originally had assumed that these famous people went from success to success, so he was almost relieved to realize that they all had cliffs in their lives where they got lost in a fog, unsure what to do next after losing their “hedgehog” path.<\/p>\n

So how does one recover after a cliff? “When lost in the fog, simply take what looks like the next best step. Not a big step, but a small step. Then reassess and take another small step. Then reassess, and step again. Then reassess, step again, reassess, step again, reassess, step again. Keep moving in steps. And one day, the fog will begin to lift and the cumulative effect of all those steps will become clear.”<\/p>\n

The last part of the book is about continuing to live life fully in the later parts of life. By continuing to experiment and extend themselves, they discovered new encodings while still drawing on their cumulative experience and credibility from previous life stages: “Total capability increased over the decades for the people in our study. Late in life, they still had their encodings (and most kept discovering new ones). Their extensive cumulative experience continued to grow. They\u2019d built credibility equity that they could draw upon as an exponential multiplier. By this logic, our most creative and productive years can happen long after the midpoint of our lives. … All the people in our study were lucky enough to live decades beyond 50, more than three decades beyond 50 on average, with some clocking into their 90s and even over 100. For the most part, their lives remained on a decidedly upward arc full of fire, even if that arc became less visible in the world. Indeed, they generally continued to accelerate after 50, long after.” (As somebody in my early 50s, I found this part particularly inspiring.)<\/p>\n

Part of what allowed many of these people to keep fueling their inner fire was choosing to use their increasing capabilities to support causes meaningful to them. He quotes Toni Morrison: “the point is that freedom is choosing your responsibility. It\u2019s not having no responsibilities; it\u2019s choosing the ones you want.” Choosing responsibilities is “choosing to give of your encodings, fire, and resources toward something you believe must be done and holding yourself to personal account for it”. It is freely choosing to serve a purpose greater than yourself.<\/p>\n

That led Collins to connect this book back to his management books through the lens of leadership, which he defines as “the art of getting people to want to do what must be done. … True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow. Leadership effectiveness flows not from following the leadership recipes of others, or in having something we might call a \u201cleadership personality.\u201d There cannot possibly be a universal recipe for leadership, for the simple reason that we are all encoded differently. The key is to trust your own leadership encodings, not to follow someone else\u2019s.” This ties back to his discovery of “Level 5 Leaders” in Good to Great<\/a>, who were quiet and reserved leaders that one rarely sees in the media, but were fiercely dedicated to the organization and its purpose. They often didn’t discover their own leadership until after “significant life experiences that might have sparked or furthered their maturation” (aka navigating through the fog after a cliff). <\/p>\n

In summary, I liked that Collins’s matched-pair research methodology confirmed what I already believed and advocated for e.g. my book, You Have A Choice<\/A>, has chapters on “Experiment and Iterate” (Collins’s advice when lost in the fog), “Pay Attention” (to invest in your own mastery (aka encodings), and hold yourself accountable) and “Aspire” (choose a purpose that energizes you). I’m a little skeptical of “encodings”, but there have definitely been times in my life where things just clicked for me (as a Chief of Staff<\/a> or when I discovered coaching<\/a>), and times when I was doing things I was clearly not built for (e.g. when I burned myself out<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Regardless, Collins’s advice resonates with me: Keep trying things. Invest more in what works for you. Choose a purpose that motivates you. That’s how you make the most of this one precious life (or, if you believe my spiritual teachers, do what your soul came to Earth to do with this life). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon link I liked Jim Collins’s management books like Built to Last and Good to Great, so I was interested in his latest book after hearing him talk about it on the Tim Ferriss show. In his business books, his research methodology was to look for pairs of companies that looked similar up to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,47,3,9,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-careers","category-coaching","category-nonfiction","category-people","category-selfdesign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4001"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4004,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001\/revisions\/4004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}