Mark: The biggest lie we're told is 'work hard, be successful, and you'll be happy.' What if the very success you're chasing is a trap? Today, we explore why hitting all your goals can leave you feeling empty, and how to escape the 'successful' life you might secretly hate. Michelle: That is a terrifyingly relatable thought. It’s the paradox of the high-achiever: you climb the ladder only to realize it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Mark: And that’s the provocative question at the heart of Designing Your Future by Dominick Quartuccio. Michelle: And this isn't just theory for him, right? I read that Quartuccio was a high-flying sales VP at a Fortune 100 company before he took a radical sabbatical and completely redesigned his own life. He was the 'human guinea pig' for these ideas. Mark: Exactly. He lived the problem before he wrote the solution. Which brings us to the core issue he identifies, a state he calls 'drifting.'

Michelle: Okay, but 'drifting' sounds a bit dramatic. Isn't this just... being an adult with a busy job? We all feel a bit on autopilot sometimes. Mark: That’s what we tell ourselves, but Quartuccio argues it’s much more insidious. He shares his own story from 2009. He's a top sales VP, living in a luxury apartment in Greenwich Village, just finished his MBA at NYU. By every external metric, he's crushing it. Michelle: The dream life, basically. Mark: On paper. But internally? He describes feeling emotionally numb. He uses this incredible line: "I felt myself hurtling 120 MPH down the SHOULD do this... road, only to find myself at the end of the year lost, with my drive stalled and my mojo meter on empty." He had success, but no fulfillment. That’s drifting. It’s not just being busy; it’s being busy on a path you didn’t consciously choose. Michelle: Huh. It’s living out a script someone else wrote for you—society, your parents, your boss. You’re the main character in a movie you never agreed to be in. Mark: Precisely. And the science backs this up. The book references Daniel Kahneman's work on our two brain systems. System 2 is our conscious, rational mind—the one we think is in charge. But System 1 is the fast, automatic, unconscious part. And research suggests up to 95% of our daily behavior is run by System 1. Michelle: Ninety-five percent! So we're basically just sophisticated robots running on old programming. Mark: We are. Our habits, our reactions, our deep-seated beliefs—they all live in that unconscious 95%. And that’s where drifting comes from. You’re not making decisions; your habits are deciding your future for you. Michelle: That makes me think of the story of Walter White from Breaking Bad, which the book actually uses as an example. For 50 years, he was the ultimate drifter—a brilliant chemist living a beige life as a high school teacher, full of resentment and fear. Mark: A perfect example. He was completely unconscious of his own internal operating system. Michelle: Right! And then his cancer diagnosis acts as this violent 'awakening.' It shatters his old patterns. But because he never consciously designed a new way of being, his unconscious beliefs—that he was a powerless victim who deserved more—took over and turned him into a monster. It’s like his internal operating system was running a dangerous program he never wrote. Mark: That’s a fantastic way to put it. His transformation was radical but not intentional. He broke free from one drift only to be swept away by a much more destructive one. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you awaken without design. Michelle: Wow. So it’s not enough to just wake up. You have to wake up and then immediately grab the steering wheel. Mark: You have to become the architect. The book quotes F.M. Alexander: "People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures." Drifting is letting your old habits decide. Designing is choosing new ones. Michelle: I’m also thinking about the author’s own journey. He didn’t have a cancer diagnosis. His 'awakening' was quieter. He mentions in the preface that he held this deep-rooted belief that asking for help meant he had failed. Overcoming that was his turning point. Mark: Yes, and that’s a crucial point. We don't need a life-shattering crisis. He talks about his own awakening happening during Hurricane Sandy. He was stuck in his powerless Manhattan apartment for days, and with nothing else to do, he read Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil. Michelle: A fitting title for the situation. Mark: Right? And he reads this line, spoken by 'the Devil,' that says, "I gain control of people’s minds... I do this through their habits. I get in on the mind of a person and I set up a habit... The mind is nothing more than the sum total of one’s habits!" And for Quartuccio, that was the lightning bolt. He realized how much of his life he had handed over to unconscious drift. Michelle: Wow, so it took a literal natural disaster to force a pattern interrupt. That's intense. It shows how powerful our routines are; sometimes it takes an act of God to shake us out of them. Mark: It really does. And it highlights the central problem: we are often oblivious to the most important realities of our lives. The book opens with that famous David Foster Wallace story about the two young fish. An older fish swims by and says, "Morning, boys, how’s the water?" And after he leaves, one young fish turns to the other and asks, "What the hell is water?" Michelle: Oh, I love that. Our habits, our beliefs, our cultural 'shoulds'—that’s our water. We’re so immersed in it, we don’t even see it. Mark: And that’s the state of drifting. You’re swimming in water you don’t even know exists, wondering why you feel like you’re not getting anywhere.

Michelle: Okay, if we're all just sleepwalking through life, driven by these unconscious habits, how do we wake up without a terminal diagnosis like Walter White or a hurricane hitting our city? Mark: This is where the book moves from problem to solution. Quartuccio offers a simple, powerful framework called the ADD Cycle: Awakening, Disrupting, and Designing. It’s the practical toolkit for taking back command. Michelle: This 'Awakening, Disrupting, Designing' sounds great, but what does it actually look like? Give me a real story. This can all feel very abstract. Mark: Absolutely. Let's look at the case study of a client named Chris. Chris was a successful medical device sales manager, but he was working 12-hour days, six days a week. He felt completely suffocated and disempowered, but was terrified of rocking the boat with his bosses. He was deep in the drift. Michelle: I know that feeling. Trapped by success. The golden handcuffs. Mark: Exactly. So the first step is Awakening. Chris knew he was unhappy, but he hadn't truly connected with the long-term consequences. So his coach—the author—had him do a 'time travel' exercise. He had Chris close his eyes and vividly imagine his life one, three, and then five years in the future if nothing changed. Michelle: Oh, that’s brutal. Forcing him to look at the slow-motion car crash. Mark: It was. Chris saw his confidence eroding, his health failing, his personal life nonexistent. He felt the future pain of his inaction in the present moment. That was his awakening. The book talks about the 'pain-of-change equation.' We only change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. This exercise flipped the equation for him. Michelle: That's brilliant. It's weaponizing our fear of future regret against our present-day laziness. The book mentions that Harvard research, right? How our brains see our future selves as strangers. This exercise forces an introduction. It makes the 'pain of same' feel real now. Mark: You got it. So once Chris was 'Awake,' the next step was Disrupting. This is about intentionally breaking the patterns. The coach gave Chris small experiments, like setting a boundary with his boss or leaving work on time. And at first, he 'failed.' He'd cave in, or his boss would push back. Michelle: Which is what happens in real life. You try to change, and the system pushes back. Mark: But the 'failures' were the disruption. They made him even more aware of how much power he had given away. The disruption generated deeper insight. It wasn't about winning the battle with his boss; it was about realizing he was in a war for his own life. Michelle: So the disruption isn't always a clean break. Sometimes it's a messy, failed attempt that just illuminates the cage you're in even more clearly. Mark: Exactly. And that led to the final step: Designing. Fueled by the pain of his future self and the clarity from his failed disruptions, Chris took command. He walked into his boss's office and said he was taking a five-month sabbatical. Michelle: Whoa. That’s a bold move. I’m guessing he got fired. Mark: That's what he was prepared for. But the company valued him so much they panicked. They not only gave him the five-month paid sabbatical, but they also offered him his dream job upon his return—a new role they created just for him, with better hours and more autonomy. Michelle: No way. That’s incredible. By being willing to lose everything, he got everything. Mark: He redesigned his reality because he first went through the process of Awakening and Disrupting. He stopped drifting and started steering. That’s the ADD cycle in action. It’s not just a nice idea; it’s a sequence that creates real-world leverage.

Michelle: So, when you strip it all down, this isn't just another productivity book. It's about reclaiming your own authority over your life. It’s about realizing you’re the one holding the pen. Mark: Exactly. The book's ultimate point is that your external world is a 100% product of the internal world you’ve curated. Most people try to redecorate the house when the foundations are cracked. Quartuccio says you have to fix the foundation—your beliefs, your stories, your habits—first. Michelle: And the most powerful tool for that seems to be that 'eulogy exercise' from the 'Designing' chapter. That one really hit me. Mark: It’s a game-changer. Confronting your own mortality forces you to define what truly matters. David Brooks calls it the difference between 'resume virtues'—what you put on your LinkedIn—and 'eulogy virtues'—what people will say about your character when you're gone. Michelle: Right, asking yourself what you want people to say at your funeral. It’s a gut punch because it cuts through all the noise of the 'shoulds' and the 'mores' and gets right to the heart of your legacy. No one’s eulogy says, "He answered emails with impressive speed." Mark: And that clarity gives you an unwavering compass for your design. It becomes the 'why' that fuels you through the hard work of sustaining change. The book has a great quote from Winston Churchill: "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." That's the mindset. Michelle: That’s it. You’re not a passive observer of your life story; you are its author. Mark: So the one action for our listeners is simple, but not easy: Take 15 minutes this week and write a single paragraph of your own eulogy. What do you truly want to be remembered for? Michelle: And we'd love to hear what you discover. Share one 'eulogy virtue' you want to live by with the Aibrary community on our socials. Let's get this conversation started. It's a powerful one to have. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.