chapter threeA Blueprint for Reinvention

The Secret of Reinventive Work

After the White House,what is there to do but drink?—Franklin Pierce, 14th Presidentof the United States

Before I set out to write this book, had friends or colleagues tried to persuade me that the ultimate reward for years of hard work, the true key to everlasting happiness was … well, more work, I would have thought they were deranged.

After years of office politics, deadlines, budgets, and clients, after sacrificing, saving, investing, obsessing, and delaying gratifications, what possible sense could it make—if retirement was feasible—to go find, let alone invent, something new to work at?

Yet as I met and studied reinventive people like Shep Nuland—men and women who were ...

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