One of the risks with setting a vision is not having sufficient balance. And usually with overachievers, if they over-index anywhere it’s on their jobs.

The best way I’ve found for avoiding this is thinking about my life in 4 buckets - job, vocation, work, and life.

Your job is what you are paid to do.

Your vocation is what you do that brings you the most joy.

Your work is the sum of lasting good you bring into the world.

Your life is the person you are becoming.

Each of these are important. But much of our difficulty comes when we conflate them.

Your job can be your vocation, but it doesn’t have to be. Often it shouldn’t be.

I love to cook. It’s the closest thing I have to a meditative practice. I love having people over, making elaborate meals, giving that gift.

But if I opened a restaurant it would ruin it. Making the same thing over and over again. Worrying about yield and margin and customer satisfaction. I’d be miserable.

Your work is not just your job. Your job is ideally a part of your work, but your work is bigger.

The average person changes jobs every 3 years. But your work is a lifelong endeavor. You are capable of adding to your body of work in whatever job you have.

Your work is anything you do with intention, consistent with your values. Raising your kids. Being a loving partner. Bringing people together. Serving your community.

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Your life is ultimately just the person you are, the person you’re becoming.