Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project exploring big questions around what really matters to people. Over the last 5 years, I have interviewed over 300 people around this question.
This week, I am reflecting on my conversation with Bill Yost. Bill leads talent data products at Netflix and spent nearly eight years in people analytics at Google. He’s a dad of two, and a growing audience follows him on LinkedIn for his deadpan work humour. In this conversation, he explains how he uses a data analyst’s mindset to decide where his time goes, he talks about how a thyroid cancer diagnosis at 28 reshaped his priorities, and why he’s now more focused on being a great dad than on climbing the corporate ladder. If you’ve ever wondered how to find work-life balance and to decide what matters most, this conversation is for you.
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
This weekend, my daughter and wife were with my in-laws in Hamburg. My dog and I stayed here in Berlin.
We went for a long walk first thing on Saturday morning. I could really take my time with her, more time to throw the ball, we could meander our way back home with little pressure.
She accompanied me almost everywhere I went, whether to see friends or at a café. She became my partner-in-crime for the whole weekend once more, just like it was before my daughter was born.
As we made our way home that evening there was a momentary pang of guilt as I considered the care I used to give her. I am not the same dog owner I was before. My priorities have changed and this is a different season of life.
This brought to mind a moment from this week’s interview with Bill.
Bill was in elementary school when he asked his mum who her best friend was. She told him it was Lisa and though he knew who she was he responded with, “But mom, you never see Lisa. You never talk to Lisa.”
She suggested that’s just how it goes as you get older: you don’t see your friends all the time the way he saw John back then.
It left a vivid impression upon him. That this wouldn’t last forever, and that he should really focus on the moment and appreciate it while it lasted.
It is a common theme throughout Bill’s life, an awareness of whatever the current phase is, what the trade-offs are for making the choice you make, and accepting that.
It doesn’t seem to lead to a sense of scarcity or clinging with him, more a clarity around what you value and appreciating things while they last.
I wonder how much more we are willing to let go of and accept what is no longer here if we fully lived it while it was here?
After he recovered from cancer a second time and started his family, it was clear this was the most important thing to him. And how it changed his approach to work:
“I don’t need VP at company on my tombstone. I need like good dad on my tombstone. Great dad, hopefully, but we’ll see.”
This interview reminded me a lot of my interview with Patrick Boland (EP 101).
Patrick, who had a young baby at the time, described appreciating the difficulty of the crying at nights. An appreciation of the struggle of it, that it won’t be like this forever. It was the season of life he was in.
He remarked how he believes you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once.
Sometimes we will need to work a lot, sometimes kids will be prioritised, sometimes we’ll be living with our friends in our twenties, sometimes we’ll pursue dreams and other times security.
I take a lot of peace from the idea that wherever I am is just a season I am in. It is the same with difficulties and things I am grateful for, it is a period in time I am navigating.
It was hard not to notice this in the world around me today. There was a duvet of golden leaves on the street as I made my way to the office. Or with the shivers and aches my body is feeling while typing now.
There is a danger at play when we are presenting or suggesting we are doing it all, or having it all, at once. We have a finite amount of attention and time.
Wherever we are presently giving our attention, somewhere else is not getting it.
This is nothing to beat ourselves up for, it is simply as it is. Spinning stories or telling people that we are doing it all when they themselves feel the absence of our attention doesn’t fool anyone. It doesn’t make anyone feel particularly good either.
While life doesn’t always provide easy choices, distorting how we spend that time and what we are prioritising only makes it more challenging.
Across several interviews, it has become apparent to me that a clear-eyedness of both the seasonality of life and our choices, is an important part of a good life.
2. This Week’s Questions
What are you giving most attention to in your life and is that giving you a sense of a good life?
What are you sacrificing in order to focus on what you are prioritising?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - The Levers To Pull For A Good Life with Bill Yost - What is a Good Life? #197
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Bill Yost below.
About Me
I am a coach, writer, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people around this question. What is a Good Life? is a podcast and newsletter that invites us to question what we’ve been told makes for a good life, and to pay more attention to what really matters: our relationships, the moments that make us feel more human, and the experiences that connect us to one another. After hundreds of conversations, I’m increasingly convinced that the good life we are sold and how people actually experience it are very wide apart. These conversations and reflections offer another way of seeing the world, and an invitation to live a little differently.