The Art of Reinvention
If you scanned a code and ended up here, this is the place that has all of it. Every exercise in the book, in the order you meet them, with the online ones linked.
You do not need any of these to read the book. They are here for when you want to do the work rather than read about it.
Eighteen exercises, in the order you meet them. Nine of them have something online. The rest need a pen, a page, and an hour.
Ten questions, under five minutes. Which of the four types you are looking at, and, more usefully, what probably does not need to change at all.
Score eight categories of your life from one to ten and see the chart it draws. Five minutes, and the result comes by email. The first exercise of the method.
Take the low scores from the Life Report and find out what they are actually about. The label on a category almost never names the real problem.
Say the thing out loud to one other person, and commit to what happens next. The shortest exercise in the book and the one people put off longest.
Ask the people who knew you before you learned to perform. What they say about you without thinking is usually closer than anything on your CV.
Two minutes about who you are, with no job title, no employer and no industry allowed. Harder than it sounds, and the difficulty is the point.
Finds the pattern you were born with by asking who you were as a child, not who you have become. Gives you a primary and a secondary archetype, and the gap between who you are and what your life is asking you to be.
The long read on each one: childhood patterns, how it shows up at work, the shadow side, and how to tell whether it is really you.
Your core values, found through what annoys you. List the things that irritate you about other people, then turn each one over. The value is usually on the other side.
The four circles, online. Braindump, then send one link and ask your friends what you are great at. Polish it into a one-pager with your values and your archetype in the corners. Do it by hand first if you can.
A page in your journal headed 50 Lunches. The obvious people first, then broader, then unreasonable. Twenty to thirty names, and leave room for the ones you have not thought of yet.
A practice round with people you already know, then batches of five. Includes the wording, the warm introductions, and the cold approach to the ones nobody will introduce you to.
One hour, four parts. Intro, interview, brainstorm, ending. Say plainly that you are not asking for a job, then walk them through your Ikigai in five minutes.
Five sets of notes on one table, read three times. What repeats, where you got excited, and everything you explained away. That last pass is usually a belief rather than an obstacle.
All four exercises in one post, for when you would rather have it on a screen than flick between chapters.
Run a small, real, time-boxed version of the option you are considering, then judge it. Four possible verdicts at the end: Continue, Adapt, Move on, Redirect.
For when the analysis has stopped helping. A way of finding the answer you have already arrived at without noticing.
Your reinvention as a three-act story. Who you were and why that life no longer fit, what you tried and learned, and who you are now, present tense. Then read it to camera in one take.
Put the belief on trial. Prosecution, defence, evidence on both sides, and a verdict you have to write down.
Worst case, best case, base case, written out in that order with a plan under each. No percentages. The question is whether the downside is survivable yet.
The dark night of the soul, told by the person who went through it. Episode 1 of The Art of Reinvention.
Fifty conversations with people who changed something. The reason the Get Inspired section exists.
What I wrote in 2017, the year I got fired and drew four circles in a notebook.
She and her family moved to the South of France having never been there. Why moving across the world does not on its own make you someone else. Episode 5 of The Art of Reinvention.
The first version of that chapter went much deeper into money and job hunting. It turned the last stage of the book into a small business course, so it moved here, where it stays current.
→Runway, the arithmetic behind it, and how to work out what you can actually afford before you jump.
What the application pile looks like from the other side, and what to do instead of throwing a CV into it.
Finding the first customer, pricing the problem rather than your insecurity, and the economics nobody warns you about.
The newsletter, the podcast, and how to reach me. If the book was useful, I would like to know which part.
I write about reinvention most weeks, and the podcast lands in the same place. New episodes, chapters from the book as they are finished, and what I am learning from the people I talk to.
Free. One email a week at most, and you can leave whenever you want.
Every link in the book runs through kenhellem.com, so if something moves, the code still finds it. If one ever sends you somewhere odd, this page is the backup, and you can tell me at [email protected].