“When my body is moving, my mind is moving”
— Jason Feifer
Jason is Editor in Chief at Entrepreneur Magazine, a keynote speaker, and someone who "helps people navigate change with clarity." That last part felt so close to what we care about that we knew we had to sit down with him. But ask Jason Feifer what he's really working toward, and the answer is a feeling, not a number — and we caught him explaining it from an Amtrak, voice low, kids beside him.
Jason answered our questions softly. Not because he had anything quiet to say, but because he was on an Amtrak somewhere south of New York, his wife and two kids beside him, on the way to Washington D.C. for the long weekend. The voice memos arrived between stops. “I don't know exactly where we are,” he said early on. “Probably New Jersey.”
It's a fitting place to begin a conversation about movement. He is also the host of Help Wanted, a podcast downloaded more than a million times a month.
He has written a bestselling book on navigating change, given keynotes from Mississippi to Dubai, and built one of America's more recognizable editorial careers — starting, decades ago, as a small-town newspaper reporter who cold-pitched the country's biggest publications from his apartment until they said yes.
But the most useful framing for this conversation It's in the newsletter he sent us mid-interview — a piece called What You're Really Working Toward, from his weekly One Thing Better. In it, he names something most of us feel but rarely define. He calls it state of being.
The State of Being
A state of being, in Jason's framing, It's a feeling you want to maintain — the brightest part of your regular, normal day. Goals are what we think will get us what we want. State of being is the thing itself.
Jason knows his. “I am happiest when I am physically moving and intellectually stimulated.” That sentence is the closest thing to a thesis statement he has, and it explains nearly everything about how he works. He hates sameness. He loves new ideas. He's restless and curious by temperament, and he has built a career — and a daily life — to keep him in that combination as often as possible.
We don't usually quote a guest's own writing back at them in these conversations. But it felt important here. Because what Jason calls state of being is very close to what we call Human Flow at SOTIYO. The phrase is different. The intuition is the same: the life you actually want isn't waiting at the end of a milestone. It is available in the way you move through your day, if you'll design for it.
Three Kinds of Days
So how does that intuition translate to a workweek? “There are three kinds of days I have,” Jason said.
The first is a desk day — meetings, writing, the screen. He has plenty of those, and he doesn't pretend otherwise. The second is what he calls moving around the city: into Manhattan from his apartment in Brooklyn, several appointments stacked back to back, the day improvised in the spaces between them. The third is a travel day, often for a keynote: a flight to Mississippi one week, Dubai the next, somewhere else after that.
There's no template, and that is the whole design. “I don't really like routine,” he said. “I don't want a routine in my day. I want every day to feel different.”
Most of what he carries between those days is conversational. He prefers walks to coffee shops — he tried working in cafés once and discovered he hated it. Too unpredictable, too loud. The phone calls he takes are more often than not taken on foot. He'll loop the neighborhood with someone on the other end of the line, walking through a problem rather than sitting still in front of it.
The Transition That Changed Everything
Ask Jason what transition has shaped him most, and the answer takes a beat. Then it lands cleanly. “When I became editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine,” he said, “it started a real transition process — me thinking of myself as a media person to thinking like an entrepreneur.”
That shift — joining the community he was covering, building inside it rather than alongside it — opened nearly everything that followed. The podcast. The newsletter. The coaching work with consumer brands. The book. “I wouldn't have anything that I have now if it wasn't for that particular transition,” he said.
It came partly from spotting an opportunity, but more honestly from boredom with the old one. “I tend to lose interest in something after I've been doing it for some time,” he admitted. “After I've become good at it.” The transition wasn't strategic in the cold sense. It was emotional. He was ripe for it. One presented itself. He took it.
That kind of honesty — about the role of restlessness in a career — is rare from people at his level. It's also a useful reminder that the most consequential transitions often look, from the inside, like nothing more than a willingness to follow a new kind of attention.
Pockets, Backpacks, and Listerine Strips
For someone who moves this much, Jason carries very little. The detail is in the specifics.
Right pocket: an iPhone and a hemp-infused lip balm from a small American brand called Ned. He is quick to clarify that the hemp isn't the point. “It's just really good lip balm.” Left pocket: wallet, wireless earbuds, and a pack of Listerine breath strips. “I don't have a sense of taste or smell,” he explained — which means he is always a little paranoid about his breath, especially before a meeting. So in goes a strip.
Clipped to the back of his phone is a thin magnetic battery — a charge card — that he treats as non-negotiable. And when he flies for a keynote, whether to Mississippi or Dubai, he travels with a backpack and nothing else. Toiletries, a change of clothes, his laptop. “I don't need anything more than a backpack,” he said. “I always travel really light.”
What makes an object well-designed, in his view? It is the moment of recognition. When you pick something up and only then realize that it was shaped, precisely, for that exact way of being held. Not designed in the abstract. Designed for the human in front of it. That, he said, is what gets his attention.
Refusing Autopilot
“The answer is clear,” he said. “I don't have similar days. I pursued a life where every day feels kind of different.” He's wary of autopilot the way some people are wary of debt. “If you're on autopilot, too much of your life goes by without you appreciating it. I don't want to look back and feel like I blinked and part of my life disappeared.”
Across all the roles — Entrepreneur, the newsletter, the podcast, the coaching, the talks — he has quietly trained everyone around him to expect the same thing. He'll reply at random times. He'll be moving when you reach him. The structure is the absence of structure.
This sounds close to what we keep noticing in the people we interview for Roam Lines. The way Sinéad Khan does her best thinking above the clouds. The way Jason simply refuses to let a calendar harden into a pattern. Different methods. Same instinct.
What Comes Next
Washington D.C., as the train arrives. Then Seattle for a run of speaking engagements. Then Park City, Utah for an event hosted by Oshkosh. Boulder, Colorado, with the family in the summer. And later — this is the one he is most looking forward to — Portugal, with his wife.
It will be the first time in nearly eleven years that the two of them will travel somewhere alone, with both kids briefly away at sleepaway camp. They've always wanted to go. It is a good list. But what we'll remember is the texture of how he talked about it. Some of those trips are work. Some are family. One is just for the two of them. None of it sounds rushed. It sounds chosen.
A State of Being, in Practice
Talking with Jason, we kept coming back to the gap — and the bridge — between state of being and Human Flow. He has a framework. We have a brand. But the underlying observation is the same. The life you actually want isn't waiting at the end of a goal. It is available in the way you move through your day, if you'll design for it.
At SOTIYO, we design for that movement. Comfort, as we read it, isn't a feature. It is a precondition. The thing that quietly clears space for the day Jason describes — the one where the body keeps moving, the mind stays engaged, and very few hours go by unnoticed.
Jason Feifer doesn't think about comfort much, as he'll be the first to tell you. We think that is the highest compliment a brand like ours can earn.
Connect with Jason on LinkedIn, follow him on Instagram, and explore his work at jasonfeifer.com. We highly recommend subscribing to his weekly newsletter One Thing Better — it's where pieces like What You're Really Working Toward appear, and it is a generous, useful read.
If this conversation stayed with you, you might also enjoy A Conversation with Sinéad Khan: The Travel Habits That Shape a Life in Motion — another perspective on doing your best thinking in transit. Or subscribe to Roam Lines for more conversations with people who move through the world with intention.
