Solid post and there's a lot to agree with. However, one statement was difficult to digest.
If factors like "health", "happiness", or "family" rank below professional goals, your long-term priorities are not stable.
The second factor, happiness, is probably the most difficult of the three to qualify. Professional goals and happiness may be intimately related for many people, and activities that bring more immediate happiness may be ones that detract from long-term satisfaction. Maybe a more accurate way to put this would be to avoid pursuing professional goals if it involves sacrificing life goals.
Happiness seemed appropriate there to me. It's an emotion, which necessarily makes it hard to define. Happiness usually seems like some static combination of relationships, hobbies and work. This balance can change, though. It's mostly a slow and gradual process, so we don't notice.
Monitoring "happiness" means keeping a long term barometer on your mood, looking for trends. It's the first sign of unaligned goals and actions, before you can be aware of which particular one is not to your liking.
That's my own take that I've adapted from something Steve Jobs described in a Stanford commencement speech:
"I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."
Agreed. I loved the methodical, organized view of the issue, but that sentence bugged me too.
Specifically: I think it completely reasonable (possibly, recommended) to decide "I'm going to prioritize work over having a family until age (30, 35, 40)".
The article completely misses the dimension of calendar time.
If factors like "health", "happiness", or "family" rank below professional goals, your long-term priorities are not stable.
The second factor, happiness, is probably the most difficult of the three to qualify. Professional goals and happiness may be intimately related for many people, and activities that bring more immediate happiness may be ones that detract from long-term satisfaction. Maybe a more accurate way to put this would be to avoid pursuing professional goals if it involves sacrificing life goals.