Tell LinkedIn about your 80 hour weeks, or frequent all-nighter work sessions? "Sometimes that's the cost of doing business." Open a bottle of wine, or light up a good old fashioned cigarette, people will crawl a mile through broken glass to be the last in line to articulate your psychologic problem. I'm not advocating substance abuse here, but if the expectation is "Your leaves must touch heaven" then expect that roots will descend all the way to hell. Observe nature. All charge seeks grounding. CHARGE. WILL. FIND. GROUND. Healthy way, or toxic way, there is no avoiding this axiomatic reality. Unnaturally deep focus on unnatural corporate patterns DEMANDS a cost.
A popular podcaster recently said drinking a few glasses of wine “ruined the next three days of his life.” He said it messed up his sleep score and “dopamine system,” and he podcasted worse as a result. Y’all—this optimization stuff can make you super fragile. To be clear: if you have a substance use disorder, of course, a few glasses of wine will mess up your week (or worse). And yes, getting drunk can derail a day or two. But if going out to dinner and having a glass or two of wine throws you for such a loop, perhaps you’ve actually just become fragile. It’s the latest example of internet optimization culture: Eat this way, sleep that way, wake at this time, do that single exercise, follow this guru, take that supplement... This content is more about the performance of being great than the actual pursuit of greatness itself. It can even lead to anxiety. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people who are the best at what they do. Olympians, authors, entrepreneurs. When I ask: How often do you feel perfect? No one has ever responded with 100%. Not once. When you need to control everything always, you lose the ability to perform well when you can’t. Here’s what’s at the root of optimization culture: Life is uncertain, scary, and hard. There’s always a chance of illness, injury, or failure. It’s normal to have some level of anxiety, but trying to control every little thing doesn’t help. If anything it gets in the way. When you obsess over readiness scores and other data, you risk creating a fragility mindset. You start to believe that you must be and feel 100% to do great work. But this is nonsense. It’s not how life (or elite performance) works. The best performers keep the main things the main things. But they aren’t optimizers. That shit burns you out. You need to know when to lock in and when to let go.
I've never even considered this, what a great concept! Perhaps resilience instead of optimization?