The reason the author's viewpoint is compelling is because it is somewhat unique. Your viewpoint is the standard one. Most people share it and that's why most people do exactly what most people do: work their tails off to try and accumulate power and money, often without thinking about why they're doing so and what they are truly working towards.
A few weeks ago I saw a startup founder speak and one of the things he talked about was work/life balance, which for him had been skewed towards work, extraordinarily so, for many years. "I've now realized," he said, "that I need to rebalance things, because the reason I'm working so hard is to be able to enjoy life and spend time with my family."
I laughed to myself, because this is someone who has built a company with $100MM in annual revenues. He could sell today and fulfill his stated ambition immediately. The reality, I suspect, is either that he's still in love with building something (a positive motivation that resonates with me) or is still trying to accumulate even more power and money (a less positive motivation that also, quite honestly, resonates with me too).
Someone like that is someone I understand. Based on your comment, you're also someone I understand. But I have met, and believe I also understand, people who are not wired like us. They truly have no power but do have a great deal of freedom. Either choice is valid, but if you look at someone who is free and insist that they are just as power-hungry as you are, that's sad - because if you can't see the choice they made, then it probably means you haven't made a choice either. And you should! Not making a conscious choice about your priorities is a great way to create a mid-life crisis. ;)
Choice is a weird thing, it can be oddly paralyzing. My favorite example is that when I was just starting out, a good computer was very expensive (like $3,000 for a desktop, or probably closer to $7000 in today's dollars), and so when I bought one, I had researched all of the options that might fit in my budget and pruned the list down to the one or two "best" components given what I could spend on them. Flash forward 10 years and between salary growth and the cost of computers plummeting, I found I could walk into Fry's and literally put together any computer I wanted. Even the "monster" configurations that PC Gamer used to have I could buy. It was really hard for me to figure out what to buy then.
"Success" is one of those things that in my experience is always in the future, because to have achieved it for me would mean I was "done" and I'm certainly not done. As a result, as I've gone through life I've become more deliberative about how I spend my remaining time, and trying to remind myself that it is the only resource that must be spent every day, you don't get it back.
A few weeks ago I saw a startup founder speak and one of the things he talked about was work/life balance, which for him had been skewed towards work, extraordinarily so, for many years. "I've now realized," he said, "that I need to rebalance things, because the reason I'm working so hard is to be able to enjoy life and spend time with my family."
I laughed to myself, because this is someone who has built a company with $100MM in annual revenues. He could sell today and fulfill his stated ambition immediately. The reality, I suspect, is either that he's still in love with building something (a positive motivation that resonates with me) or is still trying to accumulate even more power and money (a less positive motivation that also, quite honestly, resonates with me too).
Someone like that is someone I understand. Based on your comment, you're also someone I understand. But I have met, and believe I also understand, people who are not wired like us. They truly have no power but do have a great deal of freedom. Either choice is valid, but if you look at someone who is free and insist that they are just as power-hungry as you are, that's sad - because if you can't see the choice they made, then it probably means you haven't made a choice either. And you should! Not making a conscious choice about your priorities is a great way to create a mid-life crisis. ;)