What does success look like to me? I read an interesting article about success a period of time ago. The author, Geoffrey James, stated his definition of success. While a lot of people think that success should be defined as the left chart, he think a much more sensible definition of success is as the middle chart.
However, for many more people, I think success is the right chart. So the following question is what makes people rich and happy?  After thinking about this question, I found the following success metrics from Harvard Business Review.
For fun and curiosity, I tried to use regression to explain the relationship between the four categories and success. I used sixty-two business leaders’ answers online and my four roommate’s answers as the sample to run a regression model. People think these business leaders are successful, so 1 represents success and 0 represents not success. ABCD represent four categories and each item in each category represents one point.
After several tests, I got a function: Success = -0.052 + 0.156*A + 0.070*B + 0.023*C + 0.074*D and R^2=0.797. The career objective, which can represent rich, is still the most important index of success. It is really true in today’s society. In my opinion, the other three categories can represent the “happy” section in the middle chart above. Success involves both riches and happiness.
This is what success looks like to me.