A Living or a Life?

"The trouble with the rat race," the great management guru Lily Tomlin once observed, "is that even if you win, you're still a rat."

For years, Mark Albion ran at the head of the rat pack. Every step of the way, he built his career on a succession of triumphs. He earned three degrees at Harvard University: a bachelor's in economics, an MBA, and a PhD in business economics. In 1982, at the age of 31, he won an appointment at Harvard Business School, the West Point of capitalism, where he taught marketing. His success at Harvard attracted attention: He appeared several times on "Nightline" and was profiled on "60 Minutes" as part of a new breed of marketing wunderkind. He was called upon to help the best and the brightest: Blue-chip companies such as Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola flew him in for advice on how to fine-tune their brands. He had brilliant colleagues, unlimited resources, few bosses, a flexible work schedule, and personal wealth.

Oh, and one other thing: He was miserable.

Without realizing it, Albion -- a go-go guy with rapid-fire speech and the ability to function on four hours' sleep -- had allowed himself to get trapped in the rat race. He had always believed that he was on this planet not just to make a living but to find a way to enrich other people's lives. But in his quest to get ahead, he had left his core values behind. Albion was making a great living; he was failing to make a life.

If there is a promise at the heart of the new economy, it is this: We should all do work that matters. Today, we all put in too many hours, and accumulate too much stress, to work at something that isn't personally engaging and rewarding.

That said, far too many of us are willing to accept the notion that the new economy's promise simply doesn't apply to us. We still trudge off to work in the morning, tacitly accepting that we're stuck with whatever life deals us -- or, alternatively, that while our work may be unsatisfying, at least it provides the material definition of success. As a result, we feel that we're forced into making a fateful, either-or decision: Either make a living or make a life. Mark Albion has taken on an audacious challenge -- to replace the "either-or" with a "both-and." His mission is to demonstrate that you can make both a living and a life.

In 1988, Albion chucked the prepackaged definition of success that had buoyed him at Harvard. But what was he going to replace it with? He wasn't sure. But he knew one essential thing: He had to do work that mattered.

Albion never did find the right "job" -- but after much struggle, he invented one: He launched an electronic newsletter. He started a business. And he wrote a book, "Making a Life, Making a Living: Reclaiming Your Purpose and Passion in Business and in Life" (to be published in mid-January by Warner Books), which profiles 11 high achievers (plus one dubious achiever, Fast Company founding editor Alan Webber), who found their way into work that mattered to them.

Recently, we turned the tables on the author and asked him to recall his own search for work that matters. "It's a difficult journey," Albion cautions. "There's no road map." But there are fellow travelers. Albion's trip report shows you how to connect with those travelers -- and how to navigate your escape from the rat race.

Face It: You're Lost

In a recent column for Career Central for MBAs (www.careercentral.com/mba), Albion wrote about the day that his father, as a 19-year-old radar navigator in the air force, flew his first mission over Germany during World War II. Before he boarded his plane, Donald Albion made an utterly courageous decision: to wear the Star of David (a symbol of his Jewish faith) when he went on his missions.

"He knew that if his plane were shot down, his chances of survival would plummet because of that star," writes Albion. And yet, he couldn't afford not to wear it. "Wearing the star was a declaration to himself of who he was -- and of who he wanted to be.

"I come from a different era," Albion continues. "We had no popular war, no common enemy. Yet I do know that in small ways, I too have this challenge daily." That challenge, says Albion, is to take a cold, hard look at those unvarnished questions that often get lost in the day-to-day grind of work: What do I believe in? What are my values? Am I doing work that matters?

One semester, Albion surveyed his retailing students to find out what they wanted most out of Harvard. Their answer was unanimous: to learn how to make more money.

He didn't begrudge their desire to "make it" -- not when he was already making a lucrative living himself. In fact, he'd often quipped that his big goal in life was "to find a way to be a Marxist and still have a Jacuzzi." But he was stunned to learn that many of his students had the sole goal of increasing their net worth.

"It all started to feel wrong," he recalls. "While my high-paying, high-prestige job made me the envy of my neighbors, I could feel the life being sucked out of me." Albion had to face facts: Something vital was missing from his work -- and, for that matter, from his life.