Once upon a time, many kids in the American middle class were told the same story: Go to the best college possible. Study hard, then do what you love. That is your (linear) path to a good job, and from there to meaning and success. But that path seems ill-equipped to survive our current reality of burnout, inflation, and layoffs. So what do we do now? The idea that it's time to divorce pay from meaning is going mainstream. More of us are less willing to sacrifice everything to the grind....

This week marks the start of June, and with it, Pride month in the US. To celebrate, we're sharing a very special episode featuring Hello Monday’s own Jessi Hempel as the guest. In this episode, guest host Leah Smart interviews Jessi about her memoir, The Family Outing. From the guest chair, Jessi shares what she’s learned about identity, the bonds of family, and what gifts await on the other side of the courage to live out loud. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir...

Whether or not we are individually religious, a lot of our lives are governed by our relationships to what the Christian church calls the Seven Deadly Sins - pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. As Elise Loehnen explores in her new book, On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good, that leads us to uphold patriarchy, and sometimes to hurt ourselves and each other. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In a candid conversation driven by...

Happy Thursday! Here's a new podcast to check out. It's called POSSIBLE, and it's hosted by two friends of Hello Monday - Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger. This episode takes on the future of work and features a cameo from our own Jessi Hempel. If you like it, we hope you'll subscribe! You can find and follow Possible wherever you listen.

Parenthood can change a work trajectory like little else. So when and how do you decide to have kids, especially if you’re going to be the person carrying that pregnancy? On today’s episode, Jessi talks to several parents about their journeys, shares some thoughts about her own, and finally gets advice on what to consider from expert Daisy Dowling, author of Workparent: The complete guide to succeeding on the job, staying true to yourself, and raising happy kids. Daisy has lots to think about...

Are you a creative person? According to Sheena Iyengar, the answer is YES - everyone is. Sheena’s work is devoted to showing that creativity is not magic. It’s a process, and it can benefit from a solid framework. But Sheena doesn’t turn to brainstorming or design thinking for this. She believes those processes need revising. And so she’s created an alternative framework for innovation. In this conversation with Jessi, she shares that framework and her inspiration for her new book, THINK...

These days a lot of people seem to be pursuing a second career right alongside the first. They’re side hustling. To learn more about how successful side hustlers are making it work, this week, we hear from Nicaila Matthews Okome. Nicaila is a social media strategist and the host of the popular entrepreneurship podcast, Side Hustle Pro. Her show features tips, advice and interviews with Black women entrepreneurs who’ve transformed their own side hustles into impressive gigs. In this...

A few months ago, we spun up a Hello Monday community group on LinkedIn. (You can join it here.) When we asked people to introduce themselves by sharing five things not on their LinkedIn profiles, a LOT of community members - more than half - self-identified as introverts. And that made us want to take a closer look at introversion. Enter Susan Cain, author of the longtime best-seller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking and the more recent bestseller,...

Do you notice the impact of your senses on your life, or does it feel like you function on autopilot a lot? Author Gretchen Rubin has a new book out right now - Life In Five Senses - that helps us use our senses to keep us present and intentional. In this conversation with Jessi, Gretchen shares her experiences exploring and researching the senses as she worked on writing this book, and gives us a peek into how Gretchen became the author she is today.   Follow Gretchen Rubin on LinkedIn, and...

Timing is everything. This week on Hello Monday, we’re listening back to our conversation with Daniel Pink, the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. When we first spoke to Dan in 2019, we talked all about making the most of your mornings, but what if you and mornings just don’t mix? Have no fear, today we’re focusing on what it takes to find your personal perfect timing to make the most of your day. After our convo with Dan, Scott Olster joins us in his new book segment...

We’re independent! We make our own choices and do our own thing, and march to the beat of our own drum. Right? Turns out, not nearly as much as we thought. In today’s conversation, Jessi visits with Brian Lowery. He’s a social psychologist who runs the Leadership for Society program at the Stanford Business School. His new book is SELFLESS: The Social Construction of “You.” And he’s here to explain that we are all influenced by others, just as we are influencing them, too. Brian shares his...

We've got another bonus episode recorded in honor of the fourth anniversary of Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel. This episode features Jessi sharing the emotional experience of writing, releasing, and receiving reviews of her debut memoir and how she was helped through this by reflecting on her early Hello Monday conversation with celebrated actress Laura Linney. Jessi shares excerpts of their award-winning conversation on criticism and the tension between art and brand. Follow Jessi Hempel on...

Are your career ambitions tied to landing one specific role or working on one specific company? Or are they guided by your core values? Jessi’s guest for this episode, NPR’s Ari Shapiro, learned the value of the latter approach early on, and this has served him throughout a career that is both wildly successful and eclectic. He’s co-hosted All Things Considered since 2015. He’s a singer with the "little orchestra" Pink Martini* and made his performance debut with them at the Hollywood Bowl....

We're continuing to celebrate the fourth (!) anniversary of Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel by sharing another bonus episode featuring advice that Jessi has implemented into her own life. On today's bonus episode, Jessi shares the power of the Ten-Year Plan, featuring her conversation with Debbie Millman. Debbie is a writer, designer, educator, artist, brand consultant and host of the podcast Design Matters. Debbie walks us through the history and power of her Ten-Year Plan exercise and Jessi...

Sometimes, we just feel… stuck. Jessi’s having a moment like that with her writing right now. She shares her struggle and the conversation she had in hopes of addressing it, with Joanne Lipman, veteran journalist and the author of NEXT: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. They dig into Joanne’s framework for navigating big change, and talk through some of the real life reinventions Joanne covers in her book.   Follow Joanne Lipman on LinkedIn and get her new book, NEXT.  Follow Jessi...

To celebrate the fourth (!) anniversary of Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel, we're sharing a series of bonus episodes featuring some of the advice that Jessi has implemented into her own life. On today's bonus episode, Jessi shares some of her favorite advice from her conversation with Tiago Forte. Tiago is the author and creator of online course Building a Second Brain, which focuses on capturing, organizing, and sharing knowledge using digital note-taking. Tiago tells Jessi how the simple...

Every life is, at some point, touched by grief and sorrow. But some people seem to be handed an unthinkable amount of loss. Bozoma Saint John, best known as a marketing expert with stints at several top companies, is in that group. She’s channeled her experiences into a beautiful meditation on perseverance through love and loss called The Urgent Life. In this episode, Boz joins Jessi to share the events that led her to write her life story, and the wisdom she’s gained on her journey. Follow...

In this episode, Jessi sits down with friendship expert Kat Vellos to learn all about how friendship works in adulthood. Spend 27 minutes with our show and learn: what we owe our friends, how reciprocity works, and how social media can complicate the whole process. Also, we’ll get some fresh approaches to cultivating new friends - especially when there’s a screen between us. Follow Kat Vellos on LinkedIn, work with her on making your friendships more fulfilling, and learn how to make new...

Systemic issues can feel impossible to change, but there’s hope. Today’s episode is focused on making changes from within large systems. Our guest is Judge Victoria Pratt, Executive Director of Odyssey Impact, and a former Chief Judge of Newark Municipal Court. She shares the story of how she used a four-part approach to procedural justice to transform her courtroom into a place that could both punish and heal, and offers the tenets of her leadership framework to everyone hoping to spur...

It’s a holiday here in the US and we’re taking the day to recharge. Enjoy this episode from the Hello Monday archives, featuring workplace psychologist Adam Grant. He explains the secrets behind his wildly productive work life, shares how he manages his time and talks through how much of his time he gives away to help others. Later in the episode, Caroline Fairchild explores listeners' tips on how to say “no.” Follow Adam Grant on LinkedIn and check out his podcast, Work Life with Adam...

Sure, we’re a show about work. But we’re all more than our jobs, and it benefits our personal and communal experiences to practice mindfulness and connection. Who better to teach us than Dr. Deepak Chopra? Today, Jessi sits down with Dr. Chopra to learn more about Royal Yoga - the subject of his new (93rd!) book, Living in the Light: Yoga for Self-realization.  Follow Deepak Chopra on LinkedIn. Explore his work here, and learn more about his suicide prevention initiative here. Follow Jessi...

We know that voices convey power. There is a direct relationship between the sound that comes out of our mouths and the way we get treated. Today’s guest is Samara Bay, the author of Permission to Speak: How to change what power sounds like, starting with you. On today’s episode, we’ll learn how our voice stories are formed, why it’s important to check our own voice biases, and how to embrace the sounds that work best for us today. Follow Samara Bay on LinkedIn and order Permission to Speak...

The news is often bleak, especially recently, and that could complicate our plans for a pragmatically optimistic year. Thankfully, we have psychology professor and researcher Jamil Zaki in the virtual studio this week to share some invigorating findings from his work running Stanford’s Social Neuroscience Lab. In this episode, he and Jessi talk about trust and how it’s changing. We learn more about the nature of the stories we tell ourselves. And Jamil will push us to embrace curiosity as...

What if conventional wisdom on perfectionism - that it’s something to be fixed or overcome - were wrong? That’s the thesis behind Katherine Morgan Schafler’s new book, The Perfectionists Guide to Losing Control. She sits down with Jessi to walk us through a different way to manage perfectionism. Learn how to accept who you are and how to manage life’s biggest challenges. Follow Katherine Morgan Schafler on LinkedIn and order her book here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut...