The learning of man has its limitations. And sometimes, as in our circumstance in rural Mexico, the combined learning of many experts cannot be applied when we need it most. We have to place trust in the Lord.

A chosen occupation is only a means to an end; it is not an end in itself.

The end for which each of you should strive is to be the person that you can become — the person that God wants you to be. The day will come when your professional career will end. . . . The career that you will have labored so hard to achieve — the work that will have supported you and your family — will one day be behind you.

Then you will have learned this great lesson: Much more important than what you have done for a living, is what kind of a person you have become.

Keep learning and preparing for your ultimate graduation day. From time to time ask yourself these questions: 'Am I ready to meet my Maker?' 'Am I worthy of all the blessings He has in store for His faithful children?' 'Have I received my endowment and sealing ordinances of the temple?' 'Have I remained faithful to my covenants?' 'Have I qualified for the greatest of all God's blessings — the blessing of eternal life?'

There’s a fine line between being indifferent with the state of things and using Reddit to express your every displeasure with all facets of life. In between is the discontentment you can use to light a fire under your productivity.

The key is to focus on the discontent with things that you can actually change. Get riled up about your programming environment and submit a patch. Become annoyed with how the text flows on your company homepage and rewrite it. Feel guilty about the UI of a common action in your application and redesign it.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
— Reinhold Niebuhr

When you find people who embrace this idea, you’ll usually find people with exactly the pointed drive that gives them the power to Get Things Done. Hire them.

"The cares of the world" (D&C 40:12), said the Lord, have taken many away from the real path, the real work, for the cares of the world quickly become our sole concern. Brigham's favorite word for Satan's trick was "decoy"---the work ethic decoys us away from the work we should be doing. Mammon is a jealous god and will not tolerate a competitor. But we get the idea that the only virtues are business virtues.

The three basic purposes of the Church should consume our efforts until the end of our mortal lives. There's not much place in the Lord's kingdom for "retirement." In fact, the idea of retirement is, in my opinion, a sick, secular notion. We may retire from an occupation, but we retire to serve missions on both sides of the veil. If we study the literature in the field of stress, we find that the key to staying healthy and vibrant is to stay involved in meaningful projects that continually excite and energize us. Such projects actually retard the degenerative forces in the body and strengthen the immune system; they can literally give us ten or more years of life. I think that's one reason why many of the General Authorities are so active at an advanced age. Since life is not a career but a mission, there's no better retirement concept than the gospel: the work goes on, we're in a constant learning mode, and we continue to grow to the very end of our lives. Every person has enormouse capacity, and we must not lose our opportunity to contribute as we get older.

Can we have it all?

But, my dear granddaughters, you cannot do everything well at the same time. You cannot be a 100 percent wife, a 100 percent mother, a 100 percent church worker, a 100 percent career person, and a 100 percent public-service person at the same time. How can all of these roles be coordinated? Says Sarah Davidson: “The only answer I come up with is that you can have it sequentially. At one stage you may emphasize career, and at another marriage and nurturing young children, and at any point you will be aware of what is missing. If you are lucky, you will be able to fit everything in.” Doing things sequentially—filling roles one at a time at different times—is not always possible, as we know, but it gives a woman the opportunity to do each thing well in its time and to fill a variety of roles in her life. A woman does not necessarily have to track a career like a man does. She may fit more than one career into the various seasons of life. She need not try to sing all of the verses of her song at the same time.

Can we have it all?

Women today are being encouraged by some to have it all—generally, all simultaneously: money, travel, marriage, motherhood, and separate careers in the world. Sarah Davidson, in an article entitled “Having It All,” comments about forging an identity, building a career, developing a craft, and having a family. “I do not yet understand how a woman can successfully split herself between home and the market place. Fifteen years of feminist theory and action have taught us that sacrificing one for the other does not satisfy, but having both together simultaneously is so difficult that no one I know has found anything but the most quirky and incomplete solution.” (Professional Esquire, June 1984, p. 54.) Her article does not deal with the heartaches and frustrations of single parents or others thrust into very difficult circumstances due to divorce, death of spouse, or hardship. Rather, the article focuses on the issue of the woman who is intent on having it all, trying to simultaneously coordinate the roles of professional life, marriage, and motherhood. Some will no doubt disagree with her conclusion, and there may be many exceptions, but she goes on to tell of three women who are partners in a New York law firm and observes that their personal lives are frustrated and unhappy. “The problem, of course, is that family happiness is less clearly definable and more often elusive than career success.”