About eight years ago I found myself living a cliché. A tenured philosophy professor at a respected university, I had the career of my dreams. I had made it through graduate school, the arduous climb of publish or perish, and the stress of seeking tenure and promotion. I had a wife, a child, and a mortgage. I was doing what I loved, and yet the prospect of doing more of it, week after week, year after year, began to feel oppressive. I would finish the paper I was writing; I would get it published; I would write another. I would teach this crop of students; they would graduate and move on; more would come along. My career stretched before me like a tunnel. I was having a midlife crisis.
A version of this article appeared in the March–April 2019 issue (pp.135–139) of Harvard Business Review.
