On Success

[tesla]

Usually when I talk about the common definition of success I offset the word in quotes, thus: His "success" as a businessman was undimmed by the qualms he had about working in his particular industry. The quotes represent skepticism, and an agreement to temporarily stipulate the prevalent definition for the sake of a particular argument or anecdote.

However, the definition of success that I live by is different. It's entirely personal. It is prioritized. It says this:

• I will have enough money to meet all of my needs and some of my wants
• I will not put myself in a position where I have to worry about my debts
• I will be able to live alone in a comfortable but not extravagant home
• I will have a job that I can leave at the office
• I will routinely have 3-day weekends

There's more, of course, but those are the key work/life pieces.

I realize that right now the blended work/play lifestyle is all the rage, but currently I don't want one.

Maybe this is because I haven't found my calling, that thing I want to do all the time. Maybe it's because my to-do list has never, ever been done, and I'm not content to just leave things sitting undone while I can consider myself to be "working." Maybe it's a side-effect of feeling like I need to please everybody all the time (which itself is a classic side effect of being an alcoholic's child) - a compulsion which I'm getting over, but which requires constant vigilance not to skip back into. Maybe it's just that I like having large chunks of time wherein I don't need to deal with the input of other people.

Honestly, I'm having a hard time imagining that thing which, if it came with any kind of obligation, I wouldn't want to escape from sometimes. It wouldn't even matter if it was something that I currently do purely for pleasure; introduce the obligation and you diminish the joy that I would take in it. And I don't believe that I'm alone in feeling that way.

Comments

This comment is about me

[guppiecat]

This is an interesting post.

As you know, I am one of the blended people, and pretty much have been for my entire life (long before it was trendy). However, I've never really thought about "success" and "work/life balance" as being connected in any way. For me, success has traditionally been based on some fairly common metrics. When life was equivalent to school, I measured success by the grades I received (anything less than an A was unacceptable). When I started working, I measured success by how much I could accomplish (and accomplish well) on each shift. In college, I still measured success by grades, but my standards were lowered to include Bs, largely due the incredible difficulty of getting As in Grinnell and the fact that I had a secondary priority of improving my social skills. After I joined the business world, I measured success in dollars (which I believe is the most common method).

However, in recent years, my definition of "success" has been changing. As much as I've struggled with the culture where I am, the concept of "team" that comes with the athletic background of the majority of my coworkers has made me question my "compare myself to my peers" metrics for success. We share the top three on your list, but I wouldn't really place the latter two on my list for "success". The penultimate item wouldn't even appear on any of my lists, as it's such a foreign idea to me.

Instead, I would add:

* I enjoy my time at work as much as my time at home.
* The work that I do, both at work and at home, has a personal meaning to me.

In the interests of honesty, I would also have to add:

* My compensation is above the average of my peers.
* My work is appreciated by others (boss, customers, other specific individuals based on the work).

I dislike that they are on my list, but I've not been able to shake the "measure myself against others" pattern that I learned in school. I will say that they're much further down the list than they used to be, but they are still there.

There is also the element of:

* I am able to complete the tasks and improvements that I set in front of myself.

This one is tricky, because as I get better at various things, I tend to choose increasingly difficult tasks, which often makes me feel like I'm less successful than I'd like. I'm aware that this is entirely self-driven, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept the failure.

I suspect that my definitions of "success" and "work/life balance" will continue to change as the priorities in my life change. In the past, when I've been in a relationship, I certainly had work set as a lower priority. (It was still screwed up a bit, because I habitually prioritize my own desires below that of work, which is something I have to work on). I anticipate that, when I have a family, I will prioritize something like: children, spouse, work, personal relaxation, personal art. That would, in turn, alter my definition of success, as the composition of work/life will have changed.