On the Value of Not Reaching Your Goals

I’m reminded of two seemingly contradictory insights I came across in my research. The first was from a study of NIH grant applicants, which concluded that scientists who nearly missed out on grants early in their careers systematically outperformed their peers who received the grants over the long term. “Overall, these findings are consistent with

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While doing the reporting for my book, I read a postmortem from a successful startup founder. They said something along the lines of: “One of the best things that can happen to you is to achieve professional success when you’re young. That way you can learn that it does little to change your happiness.” For better or worse, achieving your goals sho

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The second was a point from David Foster Wallace’s iconic This Is Water speech: Whatever you worship will eventually eat you alive. “If you worship money and things…then you will never feel you have enough,” he writes. “Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will di

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