The Success Pothole: Why Are We So Focused on Arrival?

I’ve spent a lot of my life looking forward to what comes next.

The next goal. The next opportunity. The next achievement. The next version of myself that will somehow have more time, fewer worries and a better handle on everything.

I don’t think I’m alone.

Ambitious people are particularly good at living this way. We know how to set a goal, make a plan and get shit done. Give us a finish line and we’ll find a way to reach it.

The problem is that we can become so focused on arriving that we forget to pay attention to the life happening on the way there.

And that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot as my own definition of success has started to change. I still want to achieve. But I also want to be Life Rich. I want a successful life that I actually have the time and capacity to enjoy.

The Promise We Keep Making Ourselves

Think about how often happiness gets attached to a future condition.

I’ll relax when this project is finished.

I’ll take some time off after this quarter.

I’ll focus on my health when work settles down.

I’ll spend more time with my family when the business is more established.

There is always a perfectly reasonable explanation for why now isn’t quite the right time.

So we make a deal with ourselves. Push hard now. Enjoy life later.

The trouble is that later has a habit of becoming another version of now.

The project finishes, but another begins. We get the promotion, along with more responsibility. The business grows, bringing new opportunities and new demands. We reach the number we were chasing and almost immediately establish a bigger one.

We arrive, celebrate for a moment, and move the finish line.

The Success Pothole

I call this the Success Pothole.

It happens when our ability to achieve starts working against our ability to enjoy what we’ve achieved.

I think this is particularly easy for ambitious people to fall into because achievement itself is rewarded. The more capable we become, the more we take on. Success brings opportunities, but it also brings more decisions, responsibility and complexity.

We see exactly the same thing in business.

We chase the next quarter, growth target, promotion or transformation believing things will settle down when we get there. But a growing business rarely becomes less demanding simply because it has reached its target. More often, growth creates another layer of work.

Without intentionally creating capacity, success can actually make us busier.

Time Poverty Changes the Choices We Make

This is one of the reasons I’ve spent so much time studying Time Poverty.

When there is too much to do and too little time, something has to give.

And when we don’t have enough capacity, the urgent has a habit of deciding what that something will be.

At work, strategic thinking, creativity or meaningful conversations with our teams get pushed aside.

Outside work, it might be exercise, friendships, family, sleep or simply having enough energy left to enjoy an evening.

Over time, we can become incredibly productive while feeling increasingly disconnected from the reasons we wanted to succeed in the first place.

That’s not the version of high performance I’m interested in.

Creating Capacity for What Matters

For years, we’ve been taught to think about productivity.

How can I do more? How can I work faster? How can I optimize my day?

I’m not against productivity. Being productive matters. But I don’t think doing more, faster, solves the problem if our lives and businesses are already operating at capacity.

The question I’m increasingly interested in is:

How do we create enough capacity for the things that matter?

Capacity gives us choices.

It gives us room to think, to do meaningful work, to respond rather than constantly react, and to be present with people we care about.

That’s what I mean by Time Wealth.

It doesn’t mean doing nothing or abandoning ambition. It means having enough capacity to make intentional choices about where our time, attention and energy go.

Success Should Include the Life You’re Living

I still believe in goals.

I still love the feeling of accomplishing something difficult. And there will always be another mountain I want to climb.

I just don’t want to spend my entire life looking toward the summit and miss everything happening around me on the way up.

That’s where Life Rich comes in for me.

I’m starting to think about success less as something we eventually arrive at and more as the life we’re creating while we pursue it.

Can I achieve at a high level and still have time for my health, relationships and the people I love? Can I grow a business without allowing that growth to consume every bit of available capacity? Can I enjoy some of what I’ve worked so hard for now, rather than continually promising myself I’ll enjoy it later?

And maybe the goal isn’t simply to arrive.

Maybe it’s to build a life that’s worth being present for along the way.