Greg McKeown wrote Essentialism, one of my favorite books. I recently came across a 2012 article that he published in the Harvard Business Review titled The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In it, Greg describes what he calls “the clarity paradox,” which he sums up in the following four phases:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

I think Greg is onto something when he suggests that we should purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminate the non-essentials from our personal and professional lives. Of course this advice doesn’t address the foundational question of how to define success, but that’s a topic for another time.