Joanne Lipman: Navigating the Reinvention that Comes with Career and Life Transitions and How Aha Moments Aren’t as Random as They Seem

Lisa Schwartz

Joanne Lipman
Navigating the Reinvention that Comes with Career and Life Transitions and How Aha Moments Aren’t as Random as They Seem

Joanne Lipman has authored a pioneering journalism career. She was the first female Deputy Managing Editor at the Wall Street Journal, where she created the Weekend Journal and Personal Journal sections and oversaw the creation of the paper’s Saturday edition. She was founding editor-in-chief of Conde Nast Portfolio magazine. And she served as Editor-in-Chief at USA Today and Chief Content Officer at Gannet. Under her editorship, she led these organizations to numerous awards, including six Pulitzer Prizes. Dubbed “star editor” by CNN, she is author of the No. 1 national bestseller That’s What She Said, about closing the gender gap, and coauthor of the music memoir Strings Attached. She is a lecturer at Yale University and a Fellow at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study. Lipman is a contributor to CNBC.

Transitions in work and life are part of being a modern human. Joanne sets us up with very actionable thoughts and advice on how to think about and navigate these massive changes, and really helps us understand how to reinvent ourselves in meaningful ways.

For more information on Joanne, check out her website, Substack and definitely pick up her book Next!

Points of interest in the episode: 

06:00  Joanne’s newest book Next! is such a timing work post-pandemic
07:40  Job dissatisfaction
08:20  Job transitions are much more common now than in the past
10:55  Juliet’s career has taken lots of zags
13:00  Change and reinvention are very difficult for most people
14:40  The Reinvention Roadmap: Search, Struggle, Stop, Solution
17:45  Aha moments aren’t random or from above
19:49  The origin story of “Yesterday” by Paul McCartney
20:45  Todd Rudgren
21:59  Aha moments require executive functioning to be turned off
23:05  Jonathan Schooler study – “When the Muses Strike: Creative Ideas of Physicists and Writers Routinely Occur During Mind Wandering”
24:21  The 90 minute rule
25:57  K. Anders Ericsson study – “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”
27:53  The ‘Search’ phase of the Reinvention Roadmap is often stopped by fear
29:05  Chris Donovan Footwear
31:38  Expert companion
40:50  Possible selves
41:32  Weak and dormant ties
42:23  Len Elmore career and reinvention after basketball
44:30  The Cinderella Myth
46:25  Change is a feature, not a bug
47:00  Joanne was at the WSJ for 22 years, then offered a job to create and run a magazine at Conde Nast
48:37  While change is good, there needs to be a through-line, you can’t just be a dilettante; From JP Morgan economist to cattle farmer
52:25  Range, by David Epstein
53:36  The Acceleration Project
56:10  Most women have to reinvent themselves at some point in their career
58:25  Necessity entrepreneurs
61:50  Actionable advice on change and reinvention
65:30  Lessons from vacation
66:32  Joanne’s socials

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