What to Make of a Life

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What to make of a life?

It is a question we all wrestle with more than once: How do we find our way in the world? How do we make it past the cliffs we will inevitably encounter? How do we keep the inner fire burning bright, long and late? Inspired by relentless curiosity, Jim Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and to minutely analyzing those moments when life flips from clarity to confusion and casts us into a befuddling fog.

His exploration follows various lives at key turning points – moments when certainty turned to uncertainty, when new challenges presented themselves – and analyzes the different choices made and divergent paths taken. Two rock musicians confronting a future without the group that had brought them success. Two public figures tainted by scandal having to make decisions about how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieving their epic goal and so left with the puzzle of what to do next. Two figure skaters seeking new purpose when their Olympic careers come to an end. What emerges from Collins’s paired studies – of writers, actors, scientists, leaders and many others – is a framework for understanding how individual lives can be built, sustained and constantly renewed.

By examining these remarkable lives side by side, Collins tackles life’s questions with profound and practical insight. What does it take to:

• Discover a deeply fulfilling role in life – one that you are naturally ‘encoded’ for – and then to find a second one, if the first one ends?
• Overcome a ‘cliff’ event – a moment when life as you’ve known it has radically changed?
• Make your personal economics work so that you can focus on one big thing that feeds your inner fire?
• Navigate the fog of uncertainty and build confidence step by step?
• Minimize the impact of bad luck and ensure the maximum return on good luck?
• Build personal momentum decade upon decade, so that your most creative and energetic years are spread across an entire lifetime?

And for the first time, Collins movingly chronicles his own story to reveal how undertaking this project transformed him, changing his thinking and reshaping his emotions in fundamental ways. Surprising, story-driven, deeply researched, and uplifting, What to Make of a Life is a book like no other, convincingly showing how a richly fulfilled life is within reach of us all.

© Jim Collins 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026