Jim Collins is best known for Good to Great, the book about why some companies become great and others don't. This year he published a book about individual people. It's called What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative, and he spent ten years on it.
It isn't about knitting. Still, I recognised a lot of what he writes about.
34 lives, side by side
Collins followed 34 people: musicians, athletes, politicians, scientists and writers. He put them in pairs who had been through something similar, and looked at how different choices led to completely different lives. Some lost a spouse. Some saw their sporting careers come to an end. Some reached a goal they had worked towards for years, and had to figure out what came next.
The cliff and the fog
Collins uses two words that run through the whole book.
A cliff is an event that ends life as you knew it. Afterwards you have to ask yourself again what to make of your life. Everyone meets cliffs like that, and most people meet more than one.
The fog is the time afterwards, when you don't know where you're going. Collins says the fog doesn't mean something has gone wrong. What goes wrong is when you can't bear it and jump just to get out. Then you can end up going over another cliff.
What he recommends instead is small steps. You don't need to see the whole way, and you don't need to take a big leap. One step, see where you are, then another.
We know this one
This is exactly how a new design comes about. I rarely know how the garment will turn out when I cast on. I knit a few centimetres, lay it flat and look. If it isn't right, I rip it back and try again. Nobody can knit a whole sweater in one leap. It comes together one round at a time.
The same goes for you if you're stuck on a project. You don't need to know how the sleeve will go before you get there. All you need is the next round.
What you are built for
Collins writes about traits that are built into us, and that we discover as life goes on. The question isn't just what you're good at, but what you are more built for than anything else you could spend your time on. He also points out that a cliff can bring out abilities you didn't know you had.
For the first time, he writes about himself. In his twenties, a mentor asked him to study himself without judging. What he found was that he is built to take something complicated and make it clear enough for others to learn.
That sentence stayed with me. That's what a knitting pattern is. A garment is a construction of stitch counts, decreases and measurements that have to add up. The pattern is the work of making it so clear that you can knit it at home, step by step. I trained at Esmod and I'm a special needs teacher, and it was only in the patterns that the two came together.
The fire needs fuel
The book also has a practical side that's easy to miss. Collins asks how you make the finances work, so you can put your energy into the one thing that keeps the fire going. Passion alone isn't enough. It needs something to stand on if it's going to last.
What you should know
Collins calls this a book about self-knowledge. It doesn't tell you how to live. It gives you a language for looking at your own life.
He's also honest about its weakness. The people in the book aren't chosen at random. They're well-known names, picked because there's enough source material about them. So the patterns he finds don't necessarily apply to everyone.
Who it's for
If you're at a turning point, a job that ended or a role that's over, this is a book to keep on your bedside table. It won't give you the answer. It gives you words for what's happening, and permission to take the next small step without seeing the whole way.
If you'd like something in your hands while you think, you'll find projects you can finish in an evening or two under Quick projects.
Did you know …
During the French Revolution, women sat with their knitting in the galleries of the Jacobin Club in Paris. They were called tricoteuses, the knitting women. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens has them sit on chairs in front of the guillotine and knit. After Robespierre fell in 1794, they disappeared.
Source: Stanford University: Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, glossary
Sources: Collins, J. (2026): What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative, Harper Edge · Interview with Jim Collins in Chief Executive (2026) and Thrive Global (2026) · Stanford University: Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, glossary.
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