Are you making the most out of life? Here's how you can.

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By The Week Staff

last updated 10 January 2015

When does "more" finally become "enough"?

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The relationships you have with family and close friends are going to be the most important sources of happiness in your life. But you have to be careful. When it seems like everything at home is going well, you will be lulled into believing that you can put your investments in these relationships onto the back burner. That would be an enormous mistake. By the time serious problems arise in those relationships, it often is too late to repair them. This means, almost paradoxically, that the time when it is most important to invest in building strong families and close friendships is when it appears, at the surface, as if it's not necessary. [How Will You Measure Your Life?]

One of the most common versions of this mistake that high-potential young professionals make is believing that investments in life can be sequenced. The logic is, for example, "I can invest in my career during the early years when our children are small and parenting isn't as critical. When our children are a bit older and begin to be interested in things that adults are interested in, then I can lift my foot off my career accelerator. That's when I'll focus on my family." Guess what. By that time the game is already over. An investment in a child needs to have been made long before then, to provide him with the tools he needs to survive life's challenges — even earlier than you might realize. [How Will You Measure Your Life?]

We learned this lesson most clearly from some of our interviewees who had experienced retirement. Those who'd saved up all their life for this moment of pleasure by never experiencing happiness had no idea what to do with themselves. They only had achievement skills. They had no community, and few social skills beyond those that could be bought with a corporate title. They often drove their spouses crazy. On the other hand, those who tried to keep up their former pace and make one more grand killing in the marketplace often found themselves not quite so satisfied about going to work, taking on the next problem. They feared that they may have lost their fast ball. Those who seemed most balanced in retirement had invested healthy doses of activity in all four categories over their lifetime. [Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life]

If you think, like many people today, that success is about delaying happiness while you achieve, and that the final point of success should be to put aside all effort and lead a happy life, you are unlikely to achieve real success or happiness. All scientific research shows that happiness has a fading quality: The first taste of the hot fudge sundae is terrific, but if you ate four of them, you would find little pleasure. You have to renew happiness on a regular basis, not look for some state of unending pleasure. [Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life]

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