Elliott Jaques had linked the midlife crisis with transformation and creative rebirth.

Think twice before you wreck your home. Is it the space inside you hate, or the fact that it has walls?

If only projects give us reason to live, as Williams suggests, what I have described as a midlife crisis is simply the human condition.

Psychological egoism is a conspiracy theory of human motivation, and about as credible.

Hence the second rule: in your job, your relationships, your spare time, you must make room for activities with existential value.

It is a way to develop your capacity to be in the moment, so as to appreciate the atelic counterparts of the telic activities that matter to you.

The key to happiness, then, is managing one’s expectations. (This seems like the right time to warn you that you are reading a very mediocre book.)

How should we think about the lost opportunities, the regrets and failures, the finitude of life and the rush of activities that drive us through it?

What is the value of having options you do not exercise, paths you do not walk?