You have a choice: you can accept the scripts you grew up with that tell you what a successful work life looks like, or you can author new ones. Life isn’t a single movie script that everyone should perform identically, it’s something we must improvise.

How much great work is never started because of people’s dedication to the standard workweek?

So many professionals accept this type of work arrangement as the best they can hope for, convincing themselves that work is not meant to be enjoyed. In fields like consulting, finance, and law, this situation is even normalized and many people enter these careers expecting to make sacrifices in their lives before they start.

our obsession with getting “good” jobs undermines our ability to notice the kinds of work that may not fill a bank account, but will nourish our souls. For far too long, this blind spot kept me from waking up to the reality that “good” jobs do not always contain good work. As I searched for a “dream job” in my twenties, my job-shaped assumptions

“Good work and good education are achieved by visitation and then absence, appearance and disappearance. Most people who exhibit a mastery in a work or a subject have often left it completely for a long period in their lives only to return for another look. Constant busyness has no absence in it, no openness to the arrival of any new season, no

the idea that success results from suffering misses the obvious fact that most of the people that actually face extreme suffering “do not achieve great success.” The real lesson, she argues, is that “successful people are the ones who manage to find wisdom and perspective from their struggles.” They turn their challenges into a positive story.

remarkable outcomes rarely result from suffering alone. Instead, Gena proposes that, “greatness results from the joyful exercise of agency.”

Now, with writing, I happily embrace the challenge of getting stuck and feeling frustrated about how to move forward and I don’t seem to tire of it. This is because there is no “should” in my relationship to writing. I care about it. If writing required extreme effort and constant mental contortions, it wouldn't be my good work.

Now, with writing, I happily embrace the challenge of getting stuck and feeling frustrated about how to move forward and I don’t seem to tire of it. This is because there is no “should” in my relationship to writing. I care about it. If writing required extreme effort and constant mental contortions, it wouldn't be my good work.