One of the biggest struggles with high achievement comes from having to choose which activities to be an achiever. Sometimes you have to explicitly decide which activities to exclude. You have to learn how to be okay with not being the best at everything. You have to be tactical. Otherwise, you end up chasing your tail and get easily lost in details.
It should be noted that a lot more people think of themselves as "high achievers" - or, more often, anticipate becoming one "eventually" - when it doesn't really apply to them.
I think that nails it. There is an urge to demonstrate your success in everything you do, and some activities just aren't good mediums for showcasing how awesome you are.
I'd argue that if you don't focus your efforts on the things that really matter to you you're going to have a tough time transcending mediocrity for entirely different reasons.
If you avoid all activities and requirements that you don't enjoy then yes, you're going to have a very hard time becoming good at anything. But if you take on every challenge that you can just because it's there, you're going to fail at most of them and have a much harder time with those you really do care about.
I think it's more like "a majority of high achieving people have these sorts of issues". You don't make it to interesting places without some form of overactive mental processes; it's those of us who can deal with it and harness it who can achieve great things (or, er, above-mediocre things.)
As a side note, don't make the mistake of assuming that you have to choose between being really good at one thing or being acceptable at many things. It's possible to be really good at many things.
I think it comes down to discovering your role... I'm not the best at any one thing I've ever done. I'm generally very good, and tend to have a greater combination of depth and breadth of knowledge than my peers... but any one thing, not nearly the best.
That's a hard lesson to learn, and accept... I think my goal in life is to accept my circumstance with contentment, whatever that is at any given time.
You need to get rid of the expectation of being exceptional. You can lead a good life without being in the top 1% of accomplishments and abilities, just need to rearrange your priorities.
Some of the other comments touch on the routine building that leads to "high-performance". A buddy of mine says that the ingredients to greatness in anything are consistency, determination and a little bit of anger.
-consistency: devoting time routinely to the thing you want to achieve, i.e. eveyday
-determination: being able to stay focused on your goal when your original motivation is not longer relevant and being able to find new motivation
-a little bit of anger: the key here is "a little bit". You can't be angry all the time, that's not healthy. But when push comes to shove and you need a little extra it helps to become competitive and use that to push through.
Maybe high achievers can never get enough...whatever...to be content, and will always seek to define themselves not by looking at what they have, but by looking at what they don't have (yet).
Here's a thing I've noticed about achievement, in sports and e-sports more so than in business, but I believe the same applies.
What separates the high achievers, apart from any basic talent and training, is a personality that doesn't experience the relevant kind of pain or discomfort that would discourage them from the task.
For a lot of sports, that means overcompetitive asshole. For a lot of businesses, the same. That personality gets a lot of leeway to optimize towards linear goals. But then you go looking at certain niches and there is nuance. Sometimes it's endurance - masochism. Someone who runs ultramarathons, or repeatedly starts over a speedrun of a classic video game. Sometimes it's a poker player or day trader who can't feel the weight of moving around big stakes. There are many roles where the successful personality isn't the competitive narcissist. But in the specific case of small companies that get very big very quickly, they are prolific.
And that's a point which helps me personally, since I know some things about my comfort zone by now and where the standard advice is going to fail. Only some people are numbed enough to simply "hustle" and succeed. For the rest it's more like a quest to find the right kinds of challenges, the ones that they are most likely to engage with at a high level. When they can do that, people call them a genius. But from their own perspective, it's ordinary, or only somewhat more painful than doing nothing. And this quality of personality matching a high level skillset runs throughout our fictional characters, despite Western society nominally engaging with beliefs of anyone being equally able to learn to do anything. I think we know this and turn our back on it because it uproots several of our major founding myths about society and its potential and whom we should support and how.
We can't all be in the top 1% of achievers, but that doesn't mean we all shouldn't try. Far more than 1% of people are capable of being above the threshold for "top 1% of achievers" as judged by today.
Similarly, striving to be the best doesn't mean you're trying to put others down, it means you're trying to improve yourself. That unless others do likewise you'll improve on a relative basis is not the important thing, rather that you'll improve compared to your old self.
Try being a top tier professional in an obscure sport: racquetball for example. You need a large amount of dedication and effort and you will not get high rewards no matter how good you are.
Best not to compare yourself to others, as hard as that may be. Many people's achievements seem to be at odds with what they say they want to accomplish, like travel or hobbies. Have goals true to yourself and ignore what others think.
Great is the enemy of good-enough. Just getting to good enough (proficient) is an accomplishment. The world's most interesting person has many interesting proficiencies. :)
I think it can help to reframe it as “be my best”. Being the best in the world is impossible for over 99% of the population.
Also look up T shaped experience and so on. Maybe you can carve out something where you are the best much more easily than say chess, basketball, violin etc.
The best at building code for robots that help city workers keep streets clean, for example.
Or even the best neighbour for the old couple across the street.
Family pressure can be crazy though and can really mess people up.
The author actually agrees with you to a certain extent: "Well, it is a big deal. And in spite of how effortless these accomplishments may appear, people work harder than you likely realize to make these things happen." He or she isn't denying that there's an element of self-discipline and pain in achieving your goals, actually the opposite.
I think the author is asking us to take a step back and really consider why we have these aspirations. Is it only for status? If so, we're already at a disadvantage because there are people out there who enjoy the grind for that goal more than us.
For me, the trick is finding the goal that has the highest ROI and the least grind/friction. There is always going to be a certain amount of pain and discomfort in pursuing any goal, but it doesn't hurt to try to minimize it.
reply