Overview of How To Start (Even When You Don't Know Where You're Going)
This episode is a live conversation hosted by Esther Perel, with Jodi Kantor and Priya Parker, centered on Jodi’s book How to Start and the bigger question of how young people — and people at any age — can begin, pivot, and find meaningful work in a chaotic, uncertain world. The discussion blends career advice, personal origin stories, and audience participation to argue that starting is less about having a perfect plan and more about building craft, identifying need, and moving forward with curiosity and support.
Main Themes
Starting is a universal question
- The conversation frames career uncertainty as something shared across generations:
- New graduates entering the workforce
- Parents paying for college
- Mid-career adults in transition
- The speakers emphasize that work anxiety is not just a young person’s issue; it is a collective concern.
The modern job search feels isolating
- Jodi Kantor describes how students increasingly feel:
- Disillusioned by the workplace
- Alienated by AI-driven hiring systems
- Desperate for guidance but often receiving bad advice or none at all
- She notes that job applications now often happen through sterile, digital systems with little human contact, leaving applicants lonely and discouraged.
The book argues against cynicism
- Kantor explains that she wrote How to Start as a response to the hopelessness she heard from students.
- Her goal was not to offer generic motivational advice, but to provide something practical and real:
- A way to resist giving up before even beginning
- A framework for building a meaningful career in difficult times
Core Ideas from the Conversation
1. Focus on craft
- Craft is described as the special skill or expertise that makes you useful and distinctive.
- It is something developed slowly through repetition, practice, mentorship, and experience.
- Esther Perel and Priya Parker both stress that craft:
- Gives people agency
- Cannot be taken away the way a job can
- Protects against feeling disposable or interchangeable
2. Pair craft with need
- Jodi’s second major idea is to ask: What does the world need?
- A fulfilling career is not only about what you are good at, but about where your skills meet a real need.
- This can be driven by:
- Social need
- Economic need
- A personal injustice or experience that creates purpose
- The speakers push back against the idea that there is one “right” field to study or one golden-ticket career path.
3. Reject the myth of linear careers
- The group repeatedly emphasizes that most careers are not straight lines.
- People often:
- Begin in one field and end up in another
- Learn skills that only later become valuable
- Discover their path through chance, necessity, or failure
- The message: it is normal not to know where you’re going at the start.
4. Risk is part of growth, not just danger
- Esther Perel reframes risk as tied to:
- Exploration
- Curiosity
- Spontaneity
- Improvisation
- Rather than treating risk only as failure or danger, she argues it can be a source of development and freedom.
- She also draws a parallel to relationships: work, like love, often requires balancing security and freedom.
Personal Origin Stories
Esther Perel
- Started in her parents’ clothing store, learning intimacy through selling clothes.
- Studied theater and puppetry in Jerusalem.
- Used puppetry as a way into family therapy work.
- Built her early career by combining language skills, improvisation, and whatever openings she could find.
Priya Parker
- As a biracial student at the University of Virginia, she experienced race as a defining question.
- She helped launch a sustained dialogue initiative after being trained by Hal Saunders.
- Her path shows how curiosity, facilitation, and responding to social tension became the basis of her work.
Jodi Kantor
- Originally disliked journalism after being fired from a campus paper.
- Considered law school and worked in DOJ-related work before realizing she truly wanted journalism.
- She emphasizes that sometimes the “wrong” path reveals the right one.
Audience Interaction and Practical Insights
What the audience revealed
The live audience participation highlighted common themes:
- Parents often give outdated or wrong career advice
- Many people are in jobs that didn’t exist when they were children
- AI interviews are cold and impersonal
- Many people are taking career risks, starting businesses, or working in startup environments
- People frequently feel they are “supposed to fix” broken things in the world
The role of mentorship and community
- The speakers stress that people should not have to navigate careers alone.
- Mentorship can happen across generations and even among peers.
- Priya Parker highlights that mentorship includes:
- Sharing names and contacts
- Passing on experience
- Connecting people to resources
- Jodi points to a group of women writers who formed a support collective, the “Invisible Institute,” as an example of how collaboration can create momentum.
Key Takeaways
- Do not wait for perfect clarity before starting.
- Build a craft that is yours.
- Look for where your skills meet a real need.
- Expect your path to be nonlinear.
- Seek out teachers, mentors, and peer communities.
- Treat risk as part of learning and growth, not proof you are failing.
- You do not need to do this alone.
Closing Message
The conversation ends with Jodi Kantor’s practical advice from How to Start:
- Exit the library
- Do not let your parents decide your career
- Look to your friends instead
- Observe the obvious
- Consult your demons
- Relax about coherence
- Find alternate doors
- Make your pursuit a group exercise
The overall message is encouraging and humane: career beginnings are messy, but with craft, need, and community, people can create meaningful work even in uncertain times.