James' World 2

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A growing number of companies are seeking out employees whose passion for their work is the driving force behind their performance, and they’re investing in strategies to encourage and nurture this motivation. The research on this topic is clear — more passionate employees are more productive, innovative, and collaborative, and they demonstrate higher levels of commitment to their organizations. Fostering passion is a winning strategy for organizations that aspire to achieve sustained growth, innovation, and success.

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The past few years have drastically changed how we think about our relationship to work, perhaps permanently. However, they haven’t changed the fact that billions of people on this planet spend about half their waking hours exchanging labor for money in order to secure food and shelter. As such, work has remained an inescapable part of one’s identity. “What do you do?” is still a small-talk question not because the answer is usually interesting, but because the answer tells you something about the skills and knowledge that person has amassed. And when the answer is interesting, it’s hard not to feel some measure of admiration for someone whose experience falls so outside your own.

I’ve always been fascinated by those whose daily occupations carry meaning, promise adventure, or are in any way out of the ordinary. Of course, everybody’s dream job is different, but imagine swapping sitting at a computer or working on a production line for clearing landmines, dodging tornadoes, or braving the icy waters of the Bering Sea. Not for everyone, of course—but what astonishing ways to earn a living. 

The examples you’ll encounter below range from the inspirational to the unfathomable. Who would want to toil 18-hour days, or climb to dizzying heights with little to no protection? For some, that sort of life holds a deep appeal, and herein lies the hook that draws you into these stories: In attempting to understand the motivations of others, we are by reflex attempting to understand ourselves. Each of these pieces moved me in some way, and I hope that they move you also.

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Original photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

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These pancakes are bananas. No, I mean they are literally made from bananas. And eggs. Eggs and bananas, and that’s it. I can see that look you’re giving me right now, but you just have to These two ingredients, whisked together and given a little skillet love, are truly something magical.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at our step-by-step recipe and decide for yourself. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here with the rest of these pancakes, licking my plate clean.

How Do These Only Have Two Ingredients?

These two-ingredient banana pancakes have been floating around the internet for several years now, first on fitness sites (protein! low fat!) and then on parenting sites (toddler-friendly!). Sightings finally reached critical mass, and I had to try them for myself. Needless to say, I’m hooked.

These pancakes are gluten-free and dairy-free — they really are made with just bananas and eggs, no tricks. It seems like you’d just end up with scrambled banana-eggs (yuck), but the final product truly resembles a pancake. Piping hot and golden brown, with crispy edges.

Do They Really Taste Like Pancakes?

These are pancakes in the sense that they’re cooked on a stovetop and are lovely drenched with syrup, but they are definitely not a replacement for your favorite Saturday morning recipe. But don’t be disappointed — they’re something.

Sara Wells of Our Best Bites describes them as being like “the middle of a piece of French toast,” and I will second that description. They are very custard-like with a soft, yielding texture and a creamy melt-in-your-mouth quality. I would also describe them as being like thick crêpes.

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Photos by Emma Christensen

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Whether in cinemas or on streaming, movies have give us a lot to thrill and think over in 2023.

Menace has been found in mothers, shadows, and a pretty little doll called M3GAN. Adventure has been charted around the globe in speeding cars, across the multi-verse by feuding Spider-Folk, and into a rousing world of knights and shapeshifters. Romance has blossomed in colorful settings and nightmarish sex scenes. And coming-of-age stories have taken us back in time, into butt-kicking fantasies, and under the sea.

Whether you’re seeking to laugh, cry, marvel, or lose your mind, we’ve got a movie that’s sure to please.

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Credit: Composite: Mashable / Image: Sony Pictures / Focus Features / Universal Pictures / Focus Features / Searchlight Pictures

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From the Louvre museum to the sculpted façade of Notre Dame to the quintessential six-story apartment buildings with their grey-beige blush, Paris is built of local limestone, extracted from quarries that thread beneath the capital like the holes of a Swiss cheese. But these tunnels have a culinary legacy, too. Within these catacombs, in dark, cavernous chambers, farmers once cultivated a button mushroom variety that bears the name of the French capital: the Paris mushroom.

The stone upon (and from) which Paris is built is known as Lutetian limestone, after the Roman name for Paris: Lutetia. While locals have used these natural resources since Gallo-Roman times, it wasn’t until the massive medieval churches (such as Notre Dame) were built that Parisians quarried underground—a tradition that continued for centuries as they expanded and beautified the city. Over time, they created another, cavernous city below the streets.

Parisians found uses for the quarries long after miners winched the last block of stone up through the deep wells. In the late 1700s, after several cave-ins at the Holy Innocents Cemetery, city officials disinterred what was left of the remains and transferred the bones to these underground tunnels. This set the stage for the ossuaries of the Catacombs of Paris, which now hold the remains of more than six million people, including prominent French revolutionaries. Two centuries later, the French Resistance used the abandoned quarries to organize the Liberation of Paris far from Nazi eyes. One lesser-known use? The cultivation of a unique species of mushroom.

Since the 17th century, gardeners grew what would become known as Paris mushrooms in the gardens at Versailles. King Louis XIV is said to have been a particular fan of what was then known as the “rosé des près” or “pink of the fields.” The name came from the mushroom’s color, which is oddly similar to that of Lutetian limestone. But in the 19th century, this culture moved underground.

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Parisians built apartment with limestone from quarries below and around the city. Photo from  Daxis/CC BY-ND 2.0.

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Christopher Benjamin was imprisoned in Ancient Egypt, alone, barefoot, and cold. The stone wall he leaned against felt frigid and bone dry. Through a small cutout in the high ceiling of his cell, a single beam of sunlight taunted him. Gazing up at the peephole, he sensed that the world on the opposite side was far warmer — but certainly not more welcoming.

“I felt like I had really screwed up because I told these people in charge what they were doing wrong,” Benjamin says. “I kind of shot my mouth off. … They did not like what I told them, and so they put me in this dungeon.”

Not a single soul was around to save him. “I’m screwed,” Benjamin thought to himself. “There’s no way out.”

Fortunately, in a version of reality more adherent to its traditional definition, there was an exit: his therapist’s office door.

The unsettling visions and sensations Benjamin experienced while imprisoned thousands of years ago were part of what he thinks may have been a past life. His mind traveled to that time and place during a session of past-life regression, a practice in which a person, under hypnosis or in a meditative state, experiences a memory that they believe is from a time when their soul inhabited another body.

Some who engage in past-life regression do so simply out of curiosity about their former selves, perhaps discovering they were a knight in shining armor — or the town wench who waited on one. But others hope to treat a range of mental health issues, including phobias, addictions, anxiety, and depression, which they believe could have sprung from a past-life trauma. By reliving their trauma’s origin story, they hope to better understand, and possibly ameliorate, the emotional damage lingering in their current life.

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[Photo: FG Trade/Getty Images]

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That insight comes from Gallup’s chairman Jim Clifton and chief scientist, workplace Jim Harter in their new book Culture Shock. “This approach fails to improve performance,” the write. “Just 19 percent of employees strongly agree that how they are managed motivates them to do outstanding work.”

Blame the wiring of the human brain, they write, which tends to focus on the negative. That tendency influences the way most leaders give feedback, targeting “opportunities for improvement.” While they may acknowledge strengths or performance improvements along the way, traditional management practices “rate and rank” employees, focusing on helping them improve in areas where they are weak. 

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“I was intimidated for many years in the early part of my board career because I didn’t have a business degree and felt underprepared,” a female board director once told me. Another director, explaining that she “grew up in the shadows of a plantation” reflected, “It’s still very much a white male show, so the fact that I was the first African American female on the board was astounding to me.”

As U.S. practice leader of CEO and board services at Boyden, an executive search firm, I interact with hundreds of aspiring and existing directors. Questions about their qualifications for board service remain a concern for many of the people I talk to, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds.

My experience aligns with research that shows that high achievers from underrepresented backgrounds often find themselves confronting imposter syndrome, or doubting their skills and achievements, or fearing being exposed as a fraud. Women and people of color may be more likely to feel they don’t fit in, they’re not welcome, and they don’t belong.

Imposter syndrome can be crippling mentally and emotionally, drain your energy and attention, and cause you to fall short of the performance you are capable of, thus, feeding the cycle of self-doubt. If you experience imposter syndrome, you may explain away your successes by thinking anyone could have done what you did, or thinking you just got lucky, or fearing that others are mistaken in believing that you’re talented. As if that isn’t bad enough, when you stumble or face challenges, your self-perceived incompetence looms larger than life — increasing your chance of failure and perpetuating the syndrome.

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HBR Staff; Simone Wave/Stocksy; Vladimir18/Getty Images

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