As it turns out, many intelligent, ambitious people have perfectly legitimate reasons to have trouble answering this question. One reason is that in our society we are punished for good behavior (saying no) and rewarded for bad behavior (saying yes). The former is often awkward in the moment, and the latter is often celebrated in the moment. It leads to what I call “the paradox of success,” which can be summed up in four predictable phases:
- When we really have clarity of purpose, it enables us to succeed at our endeavor.
- When we have success, we gain a reputation as a “go to” person. We become “good old [insert name],” who is always there when you need him, and we are presented with increased options and opportunities.
- When we have increased options and opportunities, which is actually code for demands upon our time and energies, it leads to diffused efforts. We get spread thinner and thinner.
- We become distracted from what would otherwise be our highest level of contribution. The effect of our success has been to undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place. Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure.
Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.
— Essentialism (Greg Mckeown), Loc. 176–88