Beyond Success

There's a difference between wanting more time to live your life and needing more time to live your life.

You can want another twenty years because you love being alive. Or you can need them because you still haven't built the relationship, started the family, or spent enough time with the friends you kept meaning to see.

The reasons for postponing those things ...

What if your life disappeared so completely that no one remembered you?

No family stories. No company. No reputation. No influence. No trace that you were ever here.

Would that make your life meaningless?

There's an award-winning episode of Star Trek that gets at this question better than most philosophy books.

It also exposes a bargain many of us ...

A life can look respectable, successful, even enviable, and still be badly chosen.

The frightening part is that this usually doesn't happen because of one reckless decision.

It happens through years of reasonable choices.

Another demanding stage at the company. Another opportunity worth taking. Another reason to wait before making room for a serious relat...

Success can reward a bad trade for years before the costs become obvious.

The decisions usually look reasonable at the time. One more demanding year. One more important opportunity. One more stretch of travel. Marriage can wait. The children will understand. Friends will still be there.

And professionally, it may keep paying off.

But that's what makes the...

You've spent years getting better at managing your time. But what if time management has been helping you avoid the harder problem?

Productivity works beautifully when the goal is getting more done. But some of the most important things in life can't be accelerated.

If you're single today, you cannot have a twenty-year marriage next year. To have a twenty-year m...