What Should I Do with My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

By: Po Bronson

Narrated by: Po Bronson

Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

What should I do with my life?

It's a question many of us have pondered with frequency. Author Po Bronson was asking himself that very question when he decided to write this book - an inspiring exploration of how people transform their lives and a template for how we can answer this question for ourselves.

Bronson traveled the country in search of individuals who have struggled to find their calling, their true nature - people who made mistakes before getting it right. He encountered people of all ages and all professions - a total of 55 fascinating individuals trying to answer questions such as: Is a career supposed to feel like a destiny? How do I tell the difference between a curiosity and a passion? Should I make money first, to fund my dream? If I have a child, will my frustration over my work go away? Should I accept my lot, make peace with my ambition, and stop stressing out? Why do I feel guilty for thinking about this?

This audiobook is like listening in on an intimate conversation among people you care about and admire. Even if you know what you should do with your life, you will find wisdom and guidance in these stories of people who found meaningful answers by daring to be honest with themselves.

"We all have passions if we choose to see them," Bronson writes. "Most of us don't get epiphanies. We don't get clarity. Our purpose doesn't arrive neatly packaged as destiny. We only get a whisper. A blank, nonspecific urge. That's how it starts."

With humor, empathy, and insight, Po Bronson probes the depths of people who learned how to hear the whisper, who overcame fear and confusion to find a larger truth about their lives. A meditation, a journey, and a triumph of storytelling, What Should I Do with My Life? is a life-changing audiobook.

©2003 Po Bronson, All Rights Reserved (P)2003 Simon & Schuster Inc., All Rights Reserved

Critic reviews

"Brimming with stories of sacrifice, courage, commitment and, sometimes, failure, the book will support anyone pondering a major life choice or risk without force-feeding them pat solutions." (Publishers Weekly)

Horribly dissappointed by Po

I am horribly dissappointed by this book from Po. He says the characters are very interesting, but I disagree.

read instead _Mountains Beyond Mountains_

I disliked this book thoroughly, but to be fair, I was reading Tracy Kidder's _Mountains Beyond Mountains_ at the same time -- the inspirational story of Paul Farmer and Jim Kim by comparison, made Bronson look more self-absorbed and vacuous than he might otherwise have seemed.

Does not go with story

While I was listening and reading along the narrator was reading something different from what I was reading in the text.

Extremely Insightful

Pulls together philosophy, humor, dignity, and reality.

Extremely narrow

This book was a disappointment. May be I shouldn't have had expectations about it but I thought that, even for what it is, a collection of stories about peole in flux, it was pretty limited.
It's title should have been reserved for other books about the
practical aspects of finding a calling or dealing with not finding it. But there are no rules about titles and the author was succesful coining an alluring one. Some common wisdom is distilled from the stories -mostly of well-to-do over-educated people with ennui:
don't pospone change, don't lock your dreams up, do what feels right
and persevere, money is of little importance, change might be a symptom of something else. A two page leaflet and a couple of examples could have accomplished the same or more.