Resume virtues and eulogy virtues pull in different directions

Brooks opens with a distinction that structures the whole book: resume virtues are the skills and accomplishments you bring to the job market — credentials, achievements, talents — while eulogy virtues are the qualities people praise at your funeral — whether you were honest, brave, faithful, capable of deep love. Modern culture, he argues, spends far more energy cultivating the first than the second.

He points out this isn't a hypothetical trade-off: building resume virtues often actively works against eulogy virtues, since ambition and self-promotion pull toward self-focus while the eulogy virtues (humility, sacrifice, service) require self-forgetting. A life optimized entirely for achievement can leave the deeper character underdeveloped by simple neglect.

Brooks isn't arguing resume virtues are worthless, only that they've crowded out attention to the virtues that actually determine whether a life was good, not merely successful. Ask periodically which list you're actually investing your limited time and energy into.