But Are You Alive?: How to Design a Life Worth Living

Anyone's who's been back into a huge supermarket after a year of lockdown and found themselves momentarily paralyzed by the scale of the shop and the impossibility of choosing between so many things, or who sits scrolling through Netflix unable to find anything they're prepared to commit to watching, will recognize the truth that choice can be overwhelming. In times of uncertainty and fatigue, making a decision can be really hard. It's even harder when the stakes are higher. How do we work out just what exactly we want to do with our lives?

This feeling of indecision has become a prominent feature of contemporary life. Today, the average job tenure has fallen to 4.5 years, and it's estimated that workers will have around 10-15 jobs in their lifetime. And our personal lives are more diverse, too. We're encouraged to define the life we want to live
to choose our hobbies and 'side-hustles'
to pick careers aligned with our values. In some respects, we're freer than ever to become the authors of our own existence.

All this choice, paradoxically, often leaves us unsettled. With so many things to do and tasks to achieve and options to pick, we can end up feeling unanchored. What are we supposed to do with our lives? What if we pick the wrong path? And will the work we do eat up every moment of our time?

In this book Eloise Skinner shows that it's possible for each of us to take all the scattered elements of our existence, each so crucial for our sense of who we are, and blend them together to create a life that's integrated, completely unique, and filled with meaning. In short - a life that's lived fully.