Play to Potential book offers fresh ideas for midlife career pivots

If you're in your 40s or 50s and wondering if this is all life has to offer, pick up Play to Potential-it's bound to give you fresh ideas to reinvent and reinvigorate your life

Play to Potential: Lead a Full Life, Become the Best You

Author: Deepak Jayaraman

Publisher:  Penguin

Pages: 276

Price: Rs 499

  My coachee was taking me through the journey of his career and ended by saying that he was planning to get himself certified as an independent director so that when he retires he can look for ID positions in engineering companies (his domain of expertise). I stopped him in his tracks to tell him he is just about 52 years of age, so should he be thinking of retiring or should he take fresh guard to keep him charged up for the next ten-plus years.

 

 

I told him about how Sunil Gavaskar was famous for taking fresh guard after he completed his century. In his illustrious career, he scored 34 centuries and on 11 occasions he scored over 150 runs. My coachee did some thinking, and when I met him next, he told me he was ready for his next innings. He didn't say he would “play to his potential,” but that’s what he meant. He had a lot more game left in him and wasn’t about to walk away.

 

Play to Potential – Lead a Full Life, Become the Best You by Deepak Jayaraman is a great read for anyone who is looking for a fresh perspective. Mr Jayaraman should know. He has been there and done that. An IITM, IIMA and London Business School graduate, he had a stellar career with KPMG, McKinsey and Egon Zehnder before deciding to take fresh guard. In 2016, he pivoted to become an independent executive coach working with entrepreneurs, managers and leaders who are looking for guidance.

 

As a passion project, he started his podcast series “Play to Potential”. Full disclosure: I appeared on his podcast a few years ago. The podcast is not just a conversation around life and career but it also delves into other dimensions that make each of us unique individuals. To help listeners delve into specific areas, Mr Jayaraman and his band of editors have created bite-sized segments that answer specific questions. The book Play to Potential is not just a book version of the podcast. It is a lot more. Mr Jayaraman has managed to mine the treasure trove of information available in the podcasts but has rearranged it for easy reading and assimilation.

 

The book has three sections. The first section, “The Long and Messy Midlife”, is about how many of us wonder where we are going when we reach the ages of 40 or 50. Is this treadmill going to consume us? How much more money do we need to accumulate before we can stop worrying about money? Are we spending enough time with our family? Ikigai, a life philosophy rooted in Japanese culture, is often touted as the magic wand to these issues. But Mr Jayaraman cautions us that it is not easy to implement Ikigai in our lives. And a few elements may be missing in the Ikigai formula too.

 

The second section is about “Getting in Touch With Ourselves”. This is really about stopping and finding out where we are and what people who we care about are saying about us. Mr Jayaraman, a certified CEO coach, speaks about the importance of 360-degree feedback. He asks readers to tune into their values and principles. Taking pages from his own life, he tells us how he discovered his sweet spot: Helping others reach their potential.

 

The third and the most important section is about “An Approach to a Fuller Life”. It is here that Mr Jayaraman  tells us about the FLAVOUR formula for a fuller life. What is FLAVOUR? F — discern and influence family context; L —Make space for what you love; A — Tune into aspirations and make consistent choices; VO — strive to be of value by seeking / creating opportunity; U — invest in yourself; and R — cultivate healthy relationships.

 

Mr Jayaraman tells us what he has done to balance the various FLAVOUR elements in his own life. The book is full of quotes from the diverse set of Indian and international experts with whom he has spoken. In the last section, he presents the life journey of Ravishankar Iyer (a story-telling coach), Sangeeta Shahaney (entrepreneur / traveller), Soma Biswas (creative art therapist), Sucharita Mukherjee (finTech for financial inclusion), Sumeet Mehta (educator) and Vineet Panchhi (hotelier turned crusader). You may have heard of them before but probably did not know how they decided to pivot their life at the midpoint, discovered their purpose and found joy and satisfaction in a new domain.

 

The book is written in an engaging style, without pontification or sermonising. The book is also multimedia in a sense: There are several QR codes that a reader can use to listen to experts sharing their views on the various topics covered in the book. Mr Jayaraman often goes back to his own career to demonstrate the tipping points he encountered.

 

If you are in your 40s or 50s and wonde­ring if this is all life has to offer, pick up Play to Potential. As Deepak Jayaraman says, you should not just “work” to your potential, you should “play”, the emphasis being on the word “play”. You are playing when you enjoy what you are doing. The book is bound to give you fresh ideas to reinvent and reinvigorate your life. 

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The reviewer is an independent brand and executive coach and bestselling author  of 11 books