You'll Spend 90,000 Hours Working. How Do You Make It Worthwhile? with Nayla Bahri

It's an Inside Job

Nayla Bahri, my guest this week, said something that I can’t get out of my head… She said, “Most adults will spend 90,000 hours of their lives working which is more time than we’re going to spend doing anything else… How do we make it worth it?”. 

Nayla is a leadership development expert who specializes in looking at how people experience work.  This week we are talking about resilience in the face of career challenges.  This conversation is timely as many people are having to dig deep in this crazy year we call 2020.

Nayla was dean of students at the Columbia Business School for 15 years and spent many years researching layoffs.  Through her research she developed a growing curiosity about what makes some people resilient in the face of having been laid off.  Her research led her to question her own path in the world of academia inspiring her to leave her comfort zone at Columbia to spend some time in the corporate world. 

From there, she made the leap to open her own business where she helps individuals and organizations develop their leadership capability in a way that’s grounded in research and led with heart.  She is the co-host of the Inside Job podcast, and teaches and coaches at the graduate level at Columbia University.

Our conversation ranged far and wide and we left laughing!

Learn more about Nayla Bahri and some of the other things we talked about in this episode below:

Movies, Books and Poetry recommendations:

Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird 

Parker Palmer – Center for Courage & Renewal

Pam Slim’s books – Escape from Cubicle Nation and Body of Work

Tosha Silver 

Wendell Berry  – The Peace of Wild Things 

Michael Stipe – So Many T-Shirts!