At the risk of meta-posting: A "Life's Work" is kind of a misnomer. Certainly, people are known for those things, but reducing your entire life to a narrow proj

At the risk of meta-posting: A "Life's Work" is kind of a misnomer. Certainly, people are known for those things, but reducing your entire life to a narrow project or field is only going to misalign your expectations. Of course it's great to have a focus! I've definitely focused on high performance optics for most of my career (haha). But life is a vastly complicated and messy thing, and I've gotten the most satisfaction out of taking a step back from projects that were demanding all my time. It's all about balance.