When work stops working.
You’re successful and it isn’t enough. Stories on meaning, identity, and ambition without all the hustle guru nonsense. Join 3K+ readers:
“A gift for conveying deep, thought-provoking ideas.”
— Ellen Kelsay, CEO, Business Group on Health
Start with one of the series:
SERIES 07
How to Become Irrelevant
A guide to not being a big deal
Essays that explore creativity, ambition, and identity after the hunger to be impressive wears off. This is not a guide to success. It’s a guide to not being a big deal—and finally doing the things that don’t need permission.
Most Popular Essays:
SERIES 06
Alter Egos
Stories of people pushing work past its limits.
Guest essays and interviews with people experimenting at the edges of work. Honest accounts of what happens when “What do I do?” stops working and people start asking “Who am I allowed to be?”
Most Popular Essays:
A Diversified Portfolio of Work (with Iwana Johannsen)
SERIES 05
Existential Explorer
Ideas from the edge of the map
After nearly 2 years outside the working world, this series is about the uncharted frontier of meaning, exploring the edges of purpose, identity, and who we become when we try to matter.
Most Popular Essays:
SERIES 04
Not Obvious
Why work advice fails us. And what to do about it.
The world wants you to believe the answers are obvious. That success follows a playbook. If you just follow the right framework, guru, mindset — you’ll figure it out. But it never works that way. Instead, the only forward is through the mess.
Most Popular Essays:
SERIES 03
The Other Side of Enough
What happens when you have “enough?”
We all chase enough, But what does having enough actually feel like? Does life really change when you cross that finish line? Is it worth the sacrifice? Is “enough” really enough?
Most Popular Essays:
SERIES 02
Don’t Work
What happens when you don’t work?
When your primary identity, centered around work, disappears? What remains? And what is rediscovered in its place?
Most Popular Essays:
SERIES 01
Work in Progress
Building a career from startup to public company
Reflections on 12 years of evolution from an early startup employee, turned public company executive.
Most Popular Essays:
“So well written. Sophisticated ideas in refreshingly clear prose.”
— Christopher Morris, PhD, Associate Professor, George Mason
About The Way of Work
Work is woven into the fabric of modern life. It defines us, rewards us, and consumes us. For a while, it feels like the answer…
Until it doesn’t.
The Way of Work is for mid-career professionals who are successful on paper, but suspect work can’t deliver what it promised—essays on meaning, identity, and ambition without the hustle-guru nonsense.
No productivity hacks. No passion porn. No cliché career advice.
Here, we explore the paradoxes of work: the promises it makes, the disappointments it delivers, and what happens when those promises stop delivering.
About the Author
“His explorations about life remain terrifically interesting.” — Sara Pendergast, Artist
Rick Foerster is a recovering startup executive who walked away from a successful career to write about meaning, identity, and the terrifying risk of feeling anything at all. His novel, An End to Remember, blends propulsive action with psychological and philosophical depth. He writes essays on work, reinvention, and modern ambition at The Way of Work.
“Rick walks the walk.
A lot of hard fought knowledge.”
— Kristopher Abdelmessih, Founder, Moontower
FAQs
What is The Way of Work?
1
The Way of Work is a newsletter by Rick Foerster about work, ambition, and identity (really, about meaning) written for people who are successful on paper but suspect work can't deliver what it promised. It's a series of essays, not advice columns. Just an honest attempt to figure out what work is for, from someone who won the conventional game and then walked away from it.
Who is The Way of Work for?
2
The Way of Work is for mid-career professionals who've checked the boxes (money, title, the résumé that impresses), but wonder “what’s the point?” Some common buckets include:
The Successful+Stuck. achieved most conventional measures, but you suspect work can’t deliver what it promised.
The Recently Unmoored. You stepped off the treadmill (by choice or by circumstance), and the freedom you expected to feel, well, didn’t show up.
The Deep Thinkers. You’re tired of the same shallow answers the rest of work culture keeps recycling.
But NOT for… readers who are looking for productivity hacks, “follow your passion” porn, or anything looking like tidy, cliché career advice.
Who writes The Way of Work?
3
The Way of Work is written by Rick Foerster, a former startup executive who helped build a healthcare company to a ~$2 billion IPO and then left at 38 to write full-time. A recovering workaholic and self-described former “Very Important Person,” he now writes as a professionally unemployed nobody. He's also at work on a novel, Forget This To Survive,.
Is The Way of Work free? Is Rick selling something?
4
The Way of Work is a free newsletter. There's no paywall and no premium tier. Rick has been open that this is a passion project funded by having done the money part first. As he's put it: the easiest way to be a rich writer is to get rich, then become a writer.
There’s no course, coaching, or any other digitals products behind this newsletter (someday, you should buy one of his books).
How is The Way of Work different from other career and productivity newsletters?
5
The Way of Work is anti-guru: it refuses tidy answers, templates, and the promise that the right system will fix your life. Rick is openly suspicious of advice that pretends to be universal, including his own, and his core position is that there is no one way of work — only the slow, confusing business of stumbling into your own. If you're here for another clean lesson, you're in the wrong place.
Join 3,000+ readers who follow Rick’s essays, book updates, and have life all figured out ever since they subscribed.