Six Impediments to Happiness

A recent Forbes piece, The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness), succinctly sets out --  with Venn diagrams and graphs hand drawn and labeled by Jessica Hagy (her hallmark -- as you can see in her book, Indexed) -- six major mistakes people often make, whereby in the short term they exchange pursuit of immediate goals, objects of desire, enjoyments of pleasures, or even escapes for the longer term prospects of genuine happiness.  Hagy places each type of mistake under a laconic rubric, a name for an "enemy" of greatness, then appends a brief description or discussion to the title of that type.

For the most part, looked at through a Virtue Ethics perspective on practical reasoning -- rationally determining what one ought to do, how one should act, whether one's typical outlooks and assumptions, actions and desires are actually good for one, as well as how to rightly order the variety of goods we experience and desire -- these "enemies" she identifies are in fact real impediments to happiness.  They're just as much hindrances to greatness -- whether the latter be understood as excellence in its full sense, or as activity both productive and fulfilling, or even just as externally apparent and measured success.  For the most part, those she identifies are tendencies we've developed or temptations attracting us, but also including a condition which robs us of the capacity to settle upon the better choices.  So, she's right, dead on even -- but what else can or ought to be added to her so-brief, almost bullet-point advice?

Forbes: Happiest vs. Most Hated Jobs: Is Bureaucracy a Bad Thing?

Teach an Ethics class, and ask students early on what they consider to be major goods in their present or anticipated future life — what will make them happy, what they deeply desire and value —and in addition to family and friends, money, and occasionally education, they will often tell you: career, work, the job for which they are training.  And yet, what makes for the likelihood that one’s profession will realistically render one happy? Jobs are incredibly diverse, and in our present environment, culture, and economy, subject to change.

Steve Denning, author of The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management, recently published and discussed lists — emerging from a recent surveys by CarreerBliss and the National Oganization for Research — of the Ten Happiest Jobs and the Ten Most Hated Jobs, pointing out important features common in each list.  First, the jobs perceived as worst: