Being extreme might be a prerequisite for extreme success, but why would you want that anyway?
A short post on extreme personalities, and on the benefit of not being one.
Steve Jobs at one point ate nothing but apples for weeks, another time carrots. Nikola Tesla slept only two hours a night and worked tirelessly for 20 hours straight. He later became deeply attached to pigeons, feeding and even rescuing injured ones in New York City. He once confessed to being in love with a particular white pigeon. David Goggins is an ex-Navy Seal and Ultra runner, and self-proclaims as the ‘world’s hardest man’. Before joining the SEALs he was an overweight bug exterminator, eating milkshakes and fastfood every day! He then lost 48kg in 3 months.
It was when I read Goggins’ book when it hit me: I just don’t relate to this guy at all. While I enjoyed reading his story I also wonder how long he’s going to keep this up, and what will happen to him if he’s ever forced to stop doing ultra running. His accounts on how far you can push your body are definitely inspiring. It made me run a bit faster for sure. But I can’t imagine being like him at all. With everything I’ve ever tried or gotten an interest in, I have never gotten more and more into it the more I do it.
While I am naturally in some kind of balance, those extreme folks are not. When they get tipped in a certain direction they accelerate in that direction and swing to the extreme, getting fat and depressed on one extreme, and then drastically swinging in the other direction, whereas I am more like one of those dolls that always jump back upright. I start braking almost immediately. For a long time I thought that was a bit boring. I have friends who would climb construction sites when they were drunk, or who would fall asleep on the street. People who got out of control in one way or another. I never had the funniest stories. But I’ve finally come to see it as a superpower instead, and I’m now happy that this is the case.
Almost everyone will be familiar with this chart, although my attempts at sustainably memorizing the percentages have all failed. To be in the top 0.1% on something, or even the top 2.1% means in all likelihood that almost everything else must be sacrificed to do only that. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the top performers in almost any field tend to have terrible relationships with their kids, divorces in their lives. I’ve been inspired by this quote from Netflix Co-Founder Mark Randolph:
I resolved a long time ago to not be one of those entrepreneurs on their 7th startup and their 7th wife. In fact, the thing I’m most proud of in my life is not the companies I started, it’s the fact that I was able to start them while staying married to the same woman; having my kids grow up knowing me and (best as I can tell) liking me, and being able to spend time pursuing the other passions in my life.
