Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck

Change is inevitable, particularly in today's economy. Jobs for life are becoming a thing of the past. We need to be prepared to switch roles, seek out new opportunities, and grab the offers that come our way with both hands. We need to know how to use everything we've learned, and the contacts we've made, to further our careers and we need to be able to find a way out when we feel we've hit a brick wall. This book is packed with advice on how to do these things.

"Do Over" is a practical manual designed to help readers build great careers. The author reminds us of all the skills, tools and resources we have at our disposal to reinvent our work, and shows us how to develop them and put them to good use, whatever our age or stage in life. It helps us become unstuck, work towards our dream job, and turn Mondays into a day to look forward to.

So who's this book for? "Do Over" is for anyone with an ambition to change. It's especially useful for people who are stuck in their careers and want to shake things up so they feel fulfilled and engaged again. It'll also help people who've just been laid off, or may be soon, and are scouting around for opportunities. If you're going for promotion or want a new role within your company or industry, this book's for you too. And, if you have a dream or an idea that you want to make happen – in your career or your personal life – the tools in this book will help you do just that.

One word of warning: be prepared to do some work. The author wants you to read this book with a notebook and pen in hand, and do his exercises, not just read about them with your feet up. You'll get the most out of this book if you take his advice.

"Do Over" is Jon Acuff's fifth book. He also wrote "Quitter" and the New York Times bestseller "Start." For 18 years, he's helped companies like Home Depot, Bose, Staples, and the Dave Ramsey Team tell their stories. He's a well-known public speaker, he's appeared on CNN and Fox News, and more than four million people have read his blog.

So keep listening to hear how to invest in a "Career Savings Account," how to develop your character strengths and address your flaws, and how to complete the tasks you hate the most.

Acuff isn't your stereotypical role model, and some readers will question the wisdom of taking career advice from someone who's been hired and fired several times and who's walked away from a dream job. He freely admits he's made mistakes, but he's also successfully reinvented himself. He's taken risks and leaps of faith that have paid off, and he's now earning a living doing what he loves: writing books and speaking.

He believes we're all capable of more than we think we are, and he wants us to achieve our potential, rather than settle for a mediocre work life or stay stuck in a rut. This doesn't mean we have to pack in our jobs, switch continents, or try to make money from something we've never done before. It can be as simple as finding a way to re-engage with our work, taking on a new role, or acquiring a new skill – anything that'll help us spring out of bed in the morning rather than crawl back under the duvet.

Acuff is a cheerleader and his tone is chatty and colloquial. He peppers the book with jokes, stories and anecdotes, which make for a lively read. But he's also prone to ramble, repeat himself, and go off on tangents. Some readers will love his style, others will find it too informal. We think it's engaging, but we also think his editor could have been more ruthless. "Do Over" doesn't need to be as long as it is, especially as some of Acuff's advice is basic common sense, albeit packaged in an original or eye-catching way.

So let's take a look at some of this advice, starting with the idea that forms the backbone of this book: the Career Savings Account.

It's pretty much guaranteed that we'll all face a career transition in our lives, whether it be voluntary or forced upon us. So we all need a Career Savings Account we can draw on in crunch times, like a rainy day fund you may have to pay for emergency household repairs.

The Career Savings Account is both a buffer and a springboard that can take us to the next level in our careers, or get us a new job if we've been laid off.

So how do we pay into this "account?" Acuff says there are four elements that make up a Career Savings Account. They are: relationships, or who we know, skills, or what we know, character, or who we are deep down, and hustle, or how we work. Add the first three together and then multiply them by hustle or hard work and you have a healthy account.

The good news is we already have all of these elements, to varying degrees. We just need to take stock of them, develop them, and then make them work for us. That's what the rest of the book is about.

The author's formula is a bit gimmicky, but we like it because it's easy to understand and remember, and it encourages us to think carefully about what we have to offer.

We don't have time to look at all four elements in detail, so we'll summarize the first two then focus on character and hustle.

Relationships can open doors, but sometimes we don't realize how good our contacts are or how much they can help us until we set time aside to think about it. Acuff suggests writing down the names of people we've met, worked with and connected to, and he advises us to build a board of advocates or mentors who'll guide and challenge us as we transition. He lists the qualities we should look for in career advocates and suggests a few questions we can ask them.

In the same way, we can be blind to our own skills. We forget that some of the things we take for granted and do every day – like writing, leading, managing, meeting deadlines, making cold calls, or building teams – are valuable skills that not everyone has. If we do an inventory of our skills and commit to developing them or learning new ones, we'll make deposits into our Career Savings Account.

Character takes much longer to build and is much more difficult to change. But Acuff suggests ways to develop our strengths and work on our weaknesses, so let's take a look at some of these.

Character holds all the other elements of the Career Savings Account together – it's the reason people will want to hire us again, or give us a second chance if we fail. It's particularly important when we move to a new, more challenging role, or chase a difficult dream.

Character is an orchard, with trees and weeds. The trees are the traits we want to grow and develop, and they need to be planted, watered, nurtured, and tended. The weeds are all the things that can destroy our orchard – the things that need to be pulled out. Unfortunately, weeds sprout up a lot faster than trees.

The author suggests we become intentional about our character, picking out traits we want to grow stronger. Start with one, not three or four, he says, and choose something you're not so good at. Maybe you need to develop your patience or perhaps you need to work on the trait of acceptance. Alternatively, you may want to grow your ability to trust or to take responsibility for your mistakes.

Once you've identified what you want to work on, find small ways to improve. Practice waiting without becoming impatient, try accepting that your team's work is good enough, start trusting others more, and make sure you own up when things go wrong.

We can also identify our patterns by exploring our career histories and weeding out any unhelpful character traits we find there. We can look back at all the jobs we've had, write down in a notebook how well we performed, note how we left the job, and describe the strength of the relationships we left behind. Is there any repeat behavior? Are there any weeds that need pulling up? Acuff says there are four common workplace weeds we need to watch out for: narcissism, dishonesty, pessimism, and apathy.

We particularly like the author's honesty and humility in this section. He admits he's let those four workplace weeds grow in his own orchard in the past. He also makes some insightful points about character. For example, he notes that the weeds we can't stand in others are often the ones we've been ignoring in our own orchards.

Let's now look at hustle or hard work, the fourth element of our Career Savings Account, and the one that multiplies the other three. We have relationships, skills and character, but without hustle all we have is wasted potential.

Hustle is about knuckling down to get extraordinary results. It's about trying, failing and trying again. It's about confronting our fears head on and ignoring the voices in our heads that tell us we can't reinvent ourselves. Sometimes, hustle involves working extremely long hours, but Acuff is realistic about the dangers of over-work. We need to practice balance. We need to know when to push and when to slow down, so we don't alienate our families or damage our health.

Sometimes, when you're hustling, you have to do things you really don't want to do. Even if you land the perfect role, there'll always be elements of it you're not so keen on that are vital to your career.

To make sure you do them, Acuff suggests you write a "Grit List" – a list of activities, projects and tasks you hate doing but have to get done. Don't pretend to like them, accept you hate them, see the value of them, and commit to doing them no matter how you feel, he says.

Responding to email is one of the things on the author's Grit List. He hates email and has tried all manner of apps, systems and methods to try to make it easier, none of which have made him like it any more. But he accepts it's a vital part of his job as a writer, and he knows that how he responds to people reflects on his character. So email is there on his Grit List, along with the value of it to him – for example, building new leads and stronger relationships – and he commits to doing it.

So what do you need to write on your Grit List? Maybe it's finding new clients, filming a video of your product or service, printing flyers, or balancing the books. And if you find the activity hard, work on it early in the day, before you run out of energy and willpower.

We like this concept of the Grit List. It's a really helpful way to get those painful but essential, career-enhancing tasks done quickly, instead of procrastinating over them for weeks or sidestepping them entirely. Acuff's admission of his own struggle gives us permission to wrestle with the things we hate doing, and his success also inspires us to get on with them. As with many of the concepts in this book, Acuff has tried and tested the Grit List for us and it works.

The author writes as though he's speaking to a friend. His chatty tone can be a little grating at times and some of his jokes could have been edited out, but we like his energy, his positivity and his humility. He also gives plenty of wise advice based on years of switching careers, leaping into the unknown, making mistakes, and getting things right.

As you heard earlier, many of the ideas in this book are common sense but they've been cleverly packaged, making them interesting, memorable and easily applicable, no matter what your situation is. So if you're facing a career transition, need to prepare for one, or want to reinvent yourself in your current role or elsewhere, we think you'll get a lot from this book.

"Do Over," by Jon Acuff, is published by Portfolio, a Penguin imprint.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.