(Originally published in July 2012)

We're surrounded by the inspirational success stories and the succinct, poetic life narrative we've come to expect from biography writers.

As a result, we're spending far too much effort thinking about what we'd like our biography to say, and not enough actually living our lives.

It's not your responsibility to create a narrative or a coherent plot to your life's work. Once it becomes clear that you live a meaningful, impactful life, people much more qualified to extract the essence of your life and craft the story will come along.

For now, just focus on producing the data points. Live in the present tense.