DEV Community

Discussion on: What does a successful career look like?

Collapse
 
tiguchi profile image
Thomas Werner

Health and some kind of fulfilling private life right here and now and in the near future is really important.

My father lived for his work and was pretty consumed by it. When he finally retired he came up with all those new dreams and goals. He bought a fancy car, a huge flat screen TV that was quite pricey at that time, and he wanted to keep working as a consultant and bought a laptop as well. A year later he was diagnosed with cancer, and about 6 months later he died.

That was a huge wake-up call for me. Projecting all goals of a fulfilling life into some distant and unknown future is actually very unfair towards your current self, because you are basically forbidding yourself from achieving some of that life balance and happiness right here and now. And it's also unfair towards your future self, because that's a huge burden not everyone has the ability or time on Earth to carry.

And to be honest, I still didn't find my own work-life balance, even though I should know better. It's difficult, because the world we live in expects us to just live for work and nothing much else.