Ready to begin or deepen your meditation practice? Join Dan Harris and world-class meditation teachers on the 10% with Dan Harris app here: https://app.danharris.com/membership Work takes up most of your waking adult life, which is a dark fact if you don’t actually like what you do (and even if you mostly do). Today’s guest — part of our recurring Sanely Ambitious series — spent 15 years inside brutally fast-growing tech companies, hit a wall, and then spent five “very dark” years reinventing what she wanted work to look like. The result is a practical set of principles for building a career you actually like, without having to be born lucky. Molly Graham is the host of TED’s WorkLife podcast (which she took over from Adam Grant), the author of a Substack called Lessons, and a longtime executive coach. She’s held senior roles at Facebook, Google, and Quip, among others, and now builds communities for leaders. In this episode: – “Career Emergence” — the concept Molly got from a YouTube star about navigating your career the way starlings navigate a murmuration – How bees build a beehive without a blueprint, and why that applies to your job – Sheryl Sandberg’s “two-year plan and twenty-year plan” advice (and why Molly could never pull off the 20) – What career emergence actually FEELS like day-to-day (short answer: dark tunnel) – Why “joy” became Molly’s compass word for the last five years – The classic “joy is a luxury good” objection — and Molly’s answer – The “energy audit” — rating each hour of your workday 1 to 10, and what the pattern tells you – Why Molly keeps turning down OpenAI (and the other C-suite jobs she keeps being offered) – The confusing fact that you can be great at things that drain you – The 5 universal principles that increase your “surface area for magic”: – 1. Be the person everybody wants to work with again – 2. Work with brilliant people, not brilliant companies – 3. Take risks (“cliff jumps”) – 4. Learn to distinguish ego from energy — including the “LinkedIn crush” phenomenon – 5. Saying no is as important as saying yes (Dan: “my calendar is a war zone of unfortunate yeses”) – The problem with the dominant AI narrative — and why “find the thing that makes your team sob every day” is a better starting point – Why the beginner-to-expert gap in AI is actually small – What’s Good — Molly on Kristin Hannah, Dan on Kevin Morby’s Little Wide Open Subscribe to watch more 10% Happier videos: https://www.youtube.com/tenpercenthappier Follow Dan Harris on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/danharris/ https://www.tiktok.com/@danbharris https://www.facebook.com/DanHarrisABC https://twitter.com/danbharris https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-harris-91ba5716b/ #10PercentHappier #MollyGraham #WorkLife This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. There are plenty of reasons we put off getting support, and for a lot of people, cost is one of them. BetterHelp now works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don’t have insurance or don’t live in the US? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit https://www.betterhelp.com/happier to explore your payment options. This episode features a promo for Planet Visionaries. Emily Titesworth, executive director of the Honnold Foundation, works to expand access to solar energy in communities around the world. On Planet Visionaries, professional climber Alex Honnold goes beyond the headlines with Emily to explore practical solutions for a more equitable future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative — listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.