It's early morning, and the city is just waking up. As a managing partner at a bustling accounting firm, you're already deep into your first cup of coffee, mentally scrolling through the day's packed agenda.

It’s easy to feel like our adulthood consists of one event after another, without a clear sense of direction or progress. When we’re young, it’s easy to see a series of milestones that will keep us moving along the path we call life. We graduate high school, then college, and start working. Once our careers get going, though, it’s easy to feel we’ve plateaued. The signposts marking our lives start to grow more erratic, making us more likely to fall into a rut. But this sense of stagnancy isn’t a matter of course.