Popular blogger Jeff Goins has broken out with his fourth book, The Art of Work: A Proven Path for Discovering What You Were Meant to Do (Thomas Nelson). Released on March 28, the book peaked at #7 on PW's trade paperback besteller list in its second week and has sold just shy of 18,000 print copies to date, according to Nielsen BookScan.

A lot of people tell aspiring writers, “Don’t quit your day job,” but you did exactly that. Why?

A mentor of mine named Paul asked me, “What’s your dream?” To me that was a risky question, because I knew guys who had quit their jobs to follow their dreams, only to be working at Starbucks six months later. Paul said he thought my dream was writing, and something hit me. The next day, I got up at 5 a.m. and wrote about 1,000 words. I did the same the next day and the next. Then I started a blog, and people started reading it, and a publisher offered me a contract. The last day I worked at my day job was two years ago, my thirtieth birthday.

What was the genesis of The Art of Work?

I initially wrote it as a self-help guide: Do these seven things and you’ll have a meaningful life. But I didn’t like it very much. It was missing all the complexity, nuance, and uncertainty you feel when you’re trying to figure out what to do with your life. So I started interviewing people, hundreds of people, about what it means to do work that matters.

One thing I learned is that your life’s work will surprise you. It’s not something you can plan, but it is something you can prepare for. A calling is what emerges when all the plans you have for your life don’t work out the way you expect.

What does a calling have to do with religious faith?

As a person of faith, I wanted to bridge that gap between the Christian idea that “calling” is what God is going to do with your life, and the wider context where people are thinking about work not just as a job, but also as having meaning in the world.

Most Christians I know are just waiting for God to call them to something dramatic, but that’s not how it happens. Even people like Mother Teresa don’t usually have some moment of epiphany. When Abraham goes out into the Promised Land, he doesn’t know at first where it is--he just starts moving. When you start moving, the direction becomes clear.