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my time running, and growing, the business.
    What I realized—my big
aha—
was that I could have it all. If I consulted in a certain way, I could combine what attracted me about being an actor, doctor, rabbi, and investment manager into one. I could be a playful, expressive, experimental, useful, hands-on, meaningful, deep, inspiring consultant (who made good money). And it would be the perfect job for me since I would be leveraging my strengths, embracing my weaknesses, asserting my differences, and pursuing my passions.
    That, I discovered, was my way back down to earth. Notjust to financial or career success, but to happiness and fulfillment, because it would allow me—force me, actually—to bring my whole self into my work and my life. To spend my time on the things that are important to me. The things that make me different, that make me matter.
    Still, as I began to practice consulting in my own, new way, it wasn’t always easy. I made mistakes. I failed repeatedly. Sometimes, when one part of my plan wasn’t working, I questioned the whole plan. Other times, I became so focused on doing things a certain way that I missed great opportunities around me. And periodically, when I didn’t know what to do, I froze and didn’t do anything.
    Those are pitfalls that you may or may not avoid, but knowing about them ahead of time will help you move through them as you find your focus.
    So often we scramble to get a lot accomplished in a day, and succeed—only to realize, in retrospect, that those things we accomplished won’t get us where we want to go. It’s not a lack of effort. It’s a lack of direction and focus.
    In order to reclaim your life, first you need to focus on what your life is all about. Otherwise, no matter how hard you work, you’ll just be frittering your time away. As you design a plan for where you want to spend your time over the next year, the chapters in this next section will help you find that focus. They’ll help you take a broader, more open, thoughtful perspective in your work and in your life. They’ll help you create a plan that reflects your full potential. And they’ll nudge you, gently coaxing that potential out of you and into the world.
    We’ll look at the four elements—your strengths, weaknesses, differences, and passions—that form the foundation of your success and happiness. It’s at the intersection of those four elements that your time will be best spent. Along the way, we’ll explore some of the pitfalls to avoid—possible left or right turns that might send you off in the wrong direction. Finally, in the last chapter, you’ll define the annual focus that will serve as the basis for all your daily plans. So that you spend your time where it matters most.

Choosing Your Next Move at the Intersection of the Four Elements
    I was on my way to Princeton University, where I was a student more than twenty years ago, to give a speech about life after college. As I traveled to the campus, I remembered a single question that haunted my last few months of schooling:
Now what?
    I had no good answer. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a plan.
    Which, as it turns out, might have been a pretty good plan after all.
    Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates were computer science students without any real plan. They started Facebook because it was fun, used their talents, and was a novel way for Harvard students and alumni to stay in touch. Zuckerberg never anticipated it would host more than four hundred million members. And he had no clear idea where the money would come from. But he kept at ituntil, in 2007, Facebook let outside developers create applications for it, and game developers started buying ads on Facebook to keep attracting players. Hardly Zuckerberg’s strategy in 2004.
    Similarly, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, started writing code in 1996, they had no clear plan or idea how they would make money. But that didn’t stop them from