Blowing Up Your Life

In high school, psychologist Anthony Klotz worked at a lumber yard with a friend. One summer, both needed time off and their boss accused them of plotting together. Klotz and his friend responded by taking off their hard hats, unclipping their measuring tapes, handing them to the boss, and walking out. It had a “little bit of a Hollywood quality to it,” Klotz recalls. Years later, working as an inbound planner at General Mills, he ran the flour inventory too tight at a cereal plant. A rail car was delayed, and the entire plant shut down — tens of thousands of dollars in losses because of his mistake. That failure triggered a period of deep questioning: Is logistics what I want to do with my career? He switched to operations, which diverted both his professional course and his personal life.

These two moments — one a small confrontation, one a significant failure — are examples of what Klotz calls jolts: unexpected events that knock us out of autopilot and force us to see our lives with sudden clarity. On a recent episode of Hidden Brain, host Shankar Vedantam spoke with Klotz, author of Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters, about how these moments work, why they are so powerful, and how to respond to them wisely rather than impulsively.

What Jolts Reveal