Welcome to Friday,
This week I’ve been pondering the ideas around success and contemplating what it is we really mean when we call someone “successful.” It usually boils down to more people knowing their name and a salary increase, or some combination thereof. It is one of my principles here to encourage people to contemplate and pursue their own definition of success. Then, I stumbled upon this survey, in which about 40% of Americans state they want “success” more than any other quality, including happiness. We’ve really missed the point if we’re still valuing arbitrary terms of success over family, fulfillment, self-respect, and, yes, even happiness. The survey goes on to reveal that nearly half of Americans consider themselves the best person they know.
Putting aside for a moment the questions of self-selecting surveys and representative samples, this is a concerning sentiment. What sort of future does that foreshadow? How can anyone grow if they believe themselves to already be the best? The answer is they can’t – we can’t if we believe this about ourselves. Instead of believing our own hype, we must remain intellectually curious and humble. That’s the only way we improve objectively, as well as achieving our personal definitions of success.
What does success mean to you and what are you willing to trade to get there?
My definition includes happiness, and certainly involves being in rooms with people much smarter and better than myself. And so the work continues.
Let’s look at some great thoughts from around the internet:
C.S. Lewis on ideal circumstances, emphasis mine: “We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
One of my favorite stories from Theodore Roosevelt is his recounting of pursuing and arresting three boats thieves in the wintery wilderness of the Dakotas. My favorite part is that he brought along a copy of Anna Karenina for the down time of pursuit.
Anne Helen Peterson’s (no relation) recent newsletter on all things organizing work; from boundaries and saying “No” to the very real mine-field that is managing rest, work, and responsibility. Her comments about being specific about the responses needed or expect from a communication are excellent. Sabbaticals and paid time away are great starts, but the way we think about work in relation to life does need to change fundamentally.
The always enjoyable Petrarch on living through a decades-long pandemic. I find it inspiring how determined he was to write his way through the difficulties he faced. Also, Petrarch lived during the late 1300’s, but the attitudes of the people around him so closely mirror the loudest voices we hear around our current pandemic. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
“Meet Gordon Hempton, sound recordist, aka “the sound tracker”. For the past 30 years, he’s travelled the world with a microphone in search of pristine sounds from nature. His unparalleled sound archive includes some of the richest and most complex sounds on the planet. You’ve probably heard some of them in TV series, films and museums.”
Currently reading: The Sixth Man: A Memoir by Andre Iguodala
Have a lovely weekend.
