Balance

Focusing on one goal at the expense of all other factors can distort a corporate mission or an individual life, says Christopher Kayes, an associate professor of management at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Prof. Kayes, who has studied the "overpursuit" of goals, recalls a conversation with one executive who "told me his goal had been to become a millionaire by the age of 40 … and he'd done it. [But] he was also divorced, and had health problems, and his kids didn't talk to him anymore." 

Oliver Burkeman