HBR: How Will You Measure Your Life?

[RJN]

http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-mea ... -life/ar/1

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[owlice]

Good article; here's a somewhat different take:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/opini ... ef=general

[Christensen] emphasizes finding the right metrics, efficiently allocating resources and thinking about marginal costs.

When he is done, life comes to appear as a well-designed project, carefully conceived in the beginning, reviewed and adjusted along the way and brought toward a well-rounded fruition.

The second way of thinking about your life might be called the Summoned Life. This mode of thinking starts from an entirely different perspective. Life isn’t a project to be completed; it is an unknowable landscape to be explored.

The person leading the Well-Planned Life emphasizes individual agency, and asks, “What should I do?” The person leading the Summoned Life emphasizes the context, and asks, “What are my circumstances asking me to do?”

[neufer]

Life is like a box of SNO BALLS: you never know what you're going to get.

[BMAONE23]

http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-mea ... -life/ar/1

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?
(SNIP)

In short, you can't.
In slightly longer, Nothing that is truely worthwile will come to you easy. You must be willing to both fight for and sacrifice for every lasting relationship weather it be Work, Home, or avoiding Punishment. Career can become easy, when your job is also your passion. Family and personal relationships can also become easier with personal sacrifice. As far as Jail goes...Easiest of all (not Don't get caught...Don't do the crime)