Just the Good Stuff
by Jim VandeHei
Added:
2025 Feb 1
Description
Jim VandeHei’s high school guidance counselor laid it out clearly: VandeHei wasn’t cut out for college. In 1990, you could find him proving the counselor’s case emphatically, preferring beer to books and delivering pizzas to mapping out career plans. He attended a two-year school before smuggling himself into the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where after a year he had racked up a 1.4 GPA and was on the verge of getting the boot.
Everything changed when he discovered his passions: politics and journalism.
VandeHei went on to cover the presidency and cofound two of the biggest modern news outlets, Politico and Axios, the media companies that upended and revolutionized journalism. He took notes every step of the way. And in Just the Good Stuff, his debut as a solo author, VandeHei writes the book he wishes someone had handed him when he was floundering - not a compendium of conventional wisdom but a real-world guide to achieving that other “good stuff,” health, wealth, happiness, all the blessings and exquisite pleasures we loosely group under that oft used but still under-appreciated rubric - success.
Delivered in his hallmark no-word-wasted style, VandeHei offers essential, no-BS guidance on how to handle everything from finding a calling to building a team to navigating the realities of a changing workplace, showing us that no matter how inauspicious our beginnings, no matter how far down the ladder we begin, no matter what kind of challenges we face, a fulfilling life is within our reach.
Notes & Highlights
Chapter 3: Your Story
Write down:
Who do you want to be?
Your big moments. Life will smack you upside the head with illness or heartbreaks. So cherish—and document—the memories you don’t want to fade. Over time, you will draw so many patterns and so much wisdom from these moments when they are stitched together.
What you wish you knew. Since I blew off most of school, I started jotting down fancy words that befuddled me—lachrymose, verisimilitude, etc. It helped me fake that I wasn’t a dope in D.C., then grow my vocabulary with words that you should slap me if I ever use. Later, this extended to memorable sayings or complex concepts. The mere act of writing things down helps sharpen your thinking.
Thank-you notes. Take time to take note of people helping you. Be specific about what they did and how it made a difference. Keep one copy yourself. Send one to them. It will make their day.
Chapter 13: Perpetual Pursuit of Happiness
Quit until you hit. This one will elicit groans. But setting artificial obligations to stay in soul-sucking jobs or majors is silly. You will have bad days. Suck it up. But if you have bad months, mix it up.
Fight back. You should never settle unless you have no choice. We get one lap around life. So perpetually pursue jobs, bosses, colleagues, and work that bring maximum growth, fulfillment, and happiness.
Chapter 19: Master Mentee
To mentees: Never underestimate the power of learning things you struggle with—or aspire to one day master.
Chapter 35: Weed Whacking
Qian Gao, our chief people officer, has three questions she puts to staff to help focus them on working smarter:
- What are the things in your job that you least like to do?
- What would you do if you had one more hour in the week?
- What do you do that you don’t think you need to do?
These questions are designed to get people to focus and trim busywork and “then plan more time on what matters most.
You might take it one step deeper and think about your typical week—at work and home—and how you allocate your time to work and live optimally.
- Are you allocating time outside of work for exercising or other activities that help you think clearer and more confidently at work?
- At work, are you allocating most of your energy to things you are authentically very good or great at? This is what drives the most fulfillment for most people. Figure out how to whittle down or lop off the rest.
Chapter 62: Meditate, Man
The David Lynch Foundation raises funds to provide meditation training to students, homeless people, veterans, and others for free.
Chapter 70: The Good Stuff
Finish strong. We will all die. That will be our judgment day, in both a religious and a secular sense. We will sit there in those final hours and reflect. A worthy coda would be to say with supreme and sublime confidence: I learned a little every day, tried to do the next right thing, and got the Big Things right.
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