Sep 15, 2026 · 52 min · 12 segments
What if your career wasn’t a ladder but grew more like a net, with different roles, skills, relationships, and interests strengthening one another over time? That’s the goal of the fluid careerist…
Melissa WongHost
Paige PolkGuest
Yeah, if you look at my bookshelf, you could see a lot of nonfiction titles that might be in the same category as you might find the Fluid Career book.
No, that's a little extreme, but just someone who's always thinking about what are different books that can kind of help me grow as a person, but also in my career.
And I've noticed that many nonfiction books take a really central thesis, and that's what the book hinges on.
And I think it's a tried and true format because it works, because as we know, humans really like and latch onto and remember stories.
But there is this part of me, another value of mine is around like innovation and uniqueness, which is why I like helping other people figure out, you know, what their unique thing is.
And sometimes it haunts me a little bit as a value because it's like, how do I do things differently, right? So as I'm reading through this sort of like very common format, My goal in writing this book was, yes, I do include case studies.
I do include real examples from past clients or even a conglomerate of a client that we follow throughout the book.
But I didn't want it to just feel like another book that you just pick up and it was like, Paige started her career, and it just was so kind of formulaic to me.
And I also didn't want it to feel fluffy, like someone could read the book and be like, oh, this should have just been a blog post.
What drew me to coaching was the ability to tell people and give them homework, essentially.
What are you going to do about it? How do we actually take the ideas and the concepts and map them onto action? Because that's how actual change happens.
It is not a surprise to me at all that I have included several exercises per chapter because I really wanted it to be actionable.
And so, yes, that does mean that it takes time because in some ways I think of this as like almost a handbook.
And if you actually try to do it all in like one weekend, for example, you might fail.
get overwhelmed, it might feel like too much, and you're just not going to give yourself enough time to sort of process and digest throughout.
So actually, since the copy that you have read, I have added an explicit section at the beginning of the book, how to read this book.
And I've tried to really make it clear to people that this should take a while.
Yeah, if you look at my bookshelf, you could see a lot of nonfiction titles that might be in the same category as you might find the Fluid Career book.
No, that's a little extreme, but just someone who's always thinking about what are different books that can kind of help me grow as a person, but also in my career.
And I've noticed that many nonfiction books take a really central thesis, and that's what the book hinges on.
And I think it's a tried and true format because it works, because as we know, humans really like and latch onto and remember stories.
But there is this part of me, another value of mine is around like innovation and uniqueness, which is why I like helping other people figure out, you know, what their unique thing is.
And sometimes it haunts me a little bit as a value because it's like, how do I do things differently, right? So as I'm reading through this sort of like very common format, My goal in writing this book was, yes, I do include case studies.
I do include real examples from past clients or even a conglomerate of a client that we follow throughout the book.
But I didn't want it to just feel like another book that you just pick up and it was like, Paige started her career, and it just was so kind of formulaic to me.
And I also didn't want it to feel fluffy, like someone could read the book and be like, oh, this should have just been a blog post.
What drew me to coaching was the ability to tell people and give them homework, essentially.
What are you going to do about it? How do we actually take the ideas and the concepts and map them onto action? Because that's how actual change happens.
It is not a surprise to me at all that I have included several exercises per chapter because I really wanted it to be actionable.
And so, yes, that does mean that it takes time because in some ways I think of this as like almost a handbook.
And if you actually try to do it all in like one weekend, for example, you might fail.
get overwhelmed, it might feel like too much, and you're just not going to give yourself enough time to sort of process and digest throughout.
So actually, since the copy that you have read, I have added an explicit section at the beginning of the book, how to read this book.
And I've tried to really make it clear to people that this should take a while.
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