Is Ambition Worth It? | DEEP DIVE

00:00:00.000 | [intro music]

00:00:04.680 | So for today's deep dive, the topic I want to tackle is the

00:00:10.440 | following provocative question, is ambition worth it? Now let me

00:00:17.520 | give a disclaimer before I set up this discussion. The

00:00:20.160 | disclaimer is this is not a topic for which I have polished

00:00:24.440 | evolved thoughts that I am now going to convey to you. It's

00:00:27.680 | instead a topic that I have found interesting off and on and

00:00:31.360 | particularly recently I've been thinking about. So this morning,

00:00:34.040 | I just jotted down some thoughts. So what this is what

00:00:36.320 | you're going to hear today is me thinking out loud, not

00:00:40.480 | delivering well thought through conclusions. So this this should

00:00:43.260 | be fun, you know, buckle up for that. So what made me start

00:00:47.320 | thinking about ambition recently, there has been

00:00:49.600 | recently, as there happens off and on, it feels like over the

00:00:53.440 | last couple of years, a big collection of various essays and

00:00:57.680 | articles that have come out that are all taking a negative stance

00:01:02.520 | against the idea of ambition. People often send these to me

00:01:07.080 | and so I encounter them quite often. I'm cited in some of

00:01:10.360 | these. What's interesting is sometimes I'm cited as the

00:01:13.240 | villain and sometimes I'm cited as the non villain depending on

00:01:17.760 | how you think about me or what part of my writing you're

00:01:20.720 | actually citing. So these come to me because they often they

00:01:23.360 | often cite me but it got me thinking recently about this

00:01:27.000 | topic of ambition. So if you look at these what I call

00:01:32.640 | anti-ambition essays, there's really two pieces to them.

00:01:37.520 | There's the piece which is personal and interesting and

00:01:42.240 | compelling, which is often people talking about their own

00:01:45.960 | struggles with ambition, and the difficulty they have with it.

00:01:51.360 | And the attempts they're making to perhaps disentangle their

00:01:55.080 | life from this ambition. And then there's a maybe the

00:01:58.920 | explanatory part that's saying why is ambition something that

00:02:03.560 | is so popular? Why was I as the person writing this essay so

00:02:07.040 | entangled in ambition? And in some sense, that's less

00:02:08.920 | interesting to me because you just see whatever frame that

00:02:12.640 | person's cultural context lies within will just give them that

00:02:15.720 | answer. So if you read anti-ambition essays coming from

00:02:18.540 | let's say a substack writer who lives in Brooklyn, they're going

00:02:22.340 | to look around their cultural world and say, well, ambition

00:02:24.580 | is, it's from capitalism. Let's have like an economic

00:02:28.100 | materialist approach to this where we say if we can just get

00:02:31.540 | rid of capitalism, we can get rid of these sort of disordered

00:02:36.740 | affectations, these disordered compulsions towards

00:02:40.020 | accomplishment. Whereas if you read an anti-ambition essay,

00:02:42.900 | let's say from someone who lives in Montana, and is really in

00:02:48.500 | to bow hunting or Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the frame there

00:02:51.660 | might be a much more Thoreauian type frame about simplicity and

00:02:55.300 | focusing on things that really matter and getting clutter out

00:02:59.820 | of your life. So it really just depends. So I don't care about

00:03:02.740 | the explanation, but I care about the phenomenon of these

00:03:07.220 | essays, once again, becoming something that we read quite a

00:03:10.980 | bit about. So I want to jump into this and try to actually

00:03:15.660 | tackle this. So let's define ambition, number one, the drive

00:03:18.940 | to do things of increasing impact. So it's that drive to do

00:03:25.060 | things that are notable that have impact that are rewarded or

00:03:28.580 | remunerative, depending on what your metrics are, but generally

00:03:30.980 | that drive, and it's often insatiable. So if you hit one

00:03:35.020 | level, then that next level begins to be appealing. And what

00:03:40.540 | I want to try to do here is go over the pros and cons of

00:03:45.700 | ambition. So let's get into that. Let's start with the cons.

00:03:49.380 | What's what's the issue with ambition? Number one, it leads

00:03:54.540 | or it can lead to burnout. We talk about burnout often on this

00:03:58.860 | show. And if we're talking in particular about professional

00:04:02.300 | burnout for people who do computer screen and email type

00:04:05.060 | jobs, there's really two big sources of burnout that people

00:04:08.860 | suffer from one is chronic overload. I talked about this,

00:04:12.460 | for example, in my writing and my core ideas video on slow

00:04:15.700 | productivity. But if you have more on your plate consistently

00:04:18.340 | than you can even imagine accomplishing just too much on

00:04:20.860 | your plate, that can be quite distressing, it can short

00:04:25.140 | circuit the planning parts of your circuits, it can lead to an

00:04:28.220 | overhead spiral where you spend more time tending to all of

00:04:31.580 | these pending tasks than actually executing them recipe

00:04:34.780 | for burnout. The other main source of burnout among this

00:04:38.820 | particular context is when you spend too much time in a high

00:04:45.100 | arousal emotional state, so high stress state, high anxiety

00:04:48.660 | state. So so you know, your work is such that there's crises

00:04:53.260 | happening that keeps you at a at a high level of alertness, you

00:04:56.620 | can basically just burn out those systems as too much

00:04:59.380 | cortisol in your system, your mind gives gives up on it,

00:05:02.780 | burnout can happen as well. Ambition can amplify both those

00:05:06.940 | issues. Because if you're ambitious, you are putting more

00:05:10.780 | and more stuff on your plate probably. Because you see these

00:05:14.100 | opportunities, you want to keep moving, you want to get after

00:05:16.460 | it. So chronic overload is a real hazard. Also, if you're

00:05:20.940 | ambitious, that means you're taking on responsibility and

00:05:23.260 | making moves that are more likely to expose yourself to

00:05:26.020 | those high arousal states. So I'm going to start my own

00:05:28.740 | business, we're going to build this thing big, that's going to

00:05:32.940 | set you up for a lot of situations where there's a

00:05:34.900 | crisis with your business, you can't get the funding together,

00:05:37.220 | you're not going to make payroll, it's going to set you

00:05:38.900 | up for a lot of situations where you might have that consistent

00:05:41.140 | stress. So ambition can make it more likely that you burn out.

00:05:44.980 | It amplifies our human instinct to compare, compare to other

00:05:51.700 | people. Now we all do this. I mean, regardless of your

00:05:55.620 | ambition or not, you look on Instagram, you see this, you get

00:05:57.820 | a little bit jealous. But when you are ambitious, it can become

00:06:02.820 | close to intolerable when you see the success you want that

00:06:06.940 | you're not getting. And I want to say I'm speaking from some

00:06:10.460 | experience here. I am, I have ambition. It is a an odd

00:06:17.460 | mistress of mine that has both given and taken away. But I

00:06:20.900 | felt this amplification of comparison issue, it's almost

00:06:23.700 | weird how it works. It's like your brain is being taken over

00:06:26.460 | by someone else. Like here's something that I have periodic

00:06:29.660 | just to make this personal, I have periodic bouts of this,

00:06:32.340 | where I'll go through a period where I will feel bad about my

00:06:36.540 | status as a writer. Like, man, I just I didn't, I didn't hit

00:06:43.820 | where I want to get. Now by some standards, that's

00:06:45.900 | preposterous. Like I'm a successful writer, I have

00:06:48.380 | multiple books, I think four books at this point that are

00:06:51.020 | healthily into the six figures with sales, so I can

00:06:53.220 | consistently sell six figure books. I have a seven figure or

00:06:56.620 | a seven figure sale number book, relatively well known, done

00:07:01.100 | well financially with the books, I've made impact on

00:07:03.460 | culture, I've introduced new ideas into the vernacular. Like

00:07:06.540 | I am a successful writer by most standards, but then I'll

00:07:09.700 | say, but here's what I'm not. I've never had a book where

00:07:12.140 | right out of the gate, it is on the New York Times bestseller

00:07:15.300 | list for a while. Notice how I'm subtly shifting the goal

00:07:19.900 | post, my last two books have been New York Times

00:07:21.660 | bestseller, so my mind shifts it. You've never had a book

00:07:24.180 | that stays on the list. I've never had one of those books

00:07:27.700 | where it's just on that Amazon chart top 10 for six months

00:07:31.180 | when it comes out. Now we're talking about in my space,

00:07:33.580 | there's like five people who do that. But my mind will say,

00:07:37.940 | why aren't you one of those five? And then I'll come back

00:07:41.660 | to earth and be like, Oh, that's crazy. I feel great

00:07:43.220 | about what I'm doing, but I'll have those bouts. And I point

00:07:45.980 | out that personal example, just to talk about the way that

00:07:48.260 | ambition can rewire your mind in these ways that are

00:07:51.700 | malformed. As far as the outside world is concerned, that

00:07:54.220 | is crazy talk. But it'll hit you hard. Another issue with

00:08:00.060 | ambition is that it can keep you from other things that

00:08:02.460 | are important in your life if you're not careful. This is

00:08:04.940 | often one of the big points that's hit when you read the

00:08:07.220 | modern anti-ambition essays is that, you know, if you're

00:08:10.140 | all in on I am going to start the next Uber, you're not

00:08:13.940 | spending time with your kids, you're not spending time

00:08:16.380 | out in nature, your mind is probably always moving,

00:08:19.100 | you're probably not very involved in your community and

00:08:21.220 | becoming a leader and sacrificing time and energy on

00:08:23.700 | behalf of people you care about, you're doing this one

00:08:26.060 | thing. So this is a real danger of ambition, it's easy

00:08:30.180 | to fall there to get very out of balance in your life.

00:08:32.740 | This is why when I talk about the deep life and my bucket

00:08:35.780 | system for the deep life, we have these various aspects,

00:08:39.940 | you should focus on to try to keep that balance. And the

00:08:42.300 | final thing about ambition, the piece we don't talk about

00:08:45.700 | even when we encourage people to follow their dreams or do

00:08:49.860 | whatever they want to do is that you probably won't

00:08:52.180 | succeed. So the things that we are ambitious about are

00:08:55.540 | very hard. That's what makes them a target of ambition.

00:08:57.980 | Most people won't succeed. So you go to a really good

00:09:03.540 | school, you worked really hard to get there. You take an

00:09:06.940 | an elite job, like I'm going to be a writer, going to move

00:09:10.260 | to New York, I'm going to be a writer, maybe I'll be the

00:09:12.620 | next Joan Didion, and most people won't be. And so 10

00:09:18.620 | years later, you're writing essays about, well, ambition

00:09:23.260 | is stupid anyways. Right? So it's hard, man. It's hard.

00:09:26.700 | Most people don't get anywhere close to where they're

00:09:29.460 | going. There are also pros of ambition. So let's lay out

00:09:33.140 | the other side of this. So first of all, the pursuit of

00:09:37.380 | big goals is life affirming. I mean, this is the one thing

00:09:41.420 | I don't think the anti-ambition people acknowledge

00:09:44.100 | enough is that there are few results that are better

00:09:47.180 | understood in human psychology than if you take away

00:09:49.620 | people's sense of efficacy, take away their sense of

00:09:52.860 | here's something you're in charge of that's important

00:09:54.860 | that you're working on. They will just wither. There's

00:09:58.580 | almost nothing worth you can do to a human than put them

00:10:00.980 | in a situation where they can't do anything. There's

00:10:03.900 | nothing I'm working towards, there's nothing I'm taking

00:10:05.980 | care of, there's no challenges I'm facing. That makes

00:10:10.260 | humans miserable. They need that and they need

00:10:12.940 | sociality. You take away either of those two things,

00:10:14.900 | and it's a problem. So there is something life

00:10:16.780 | affirming going after something that's important or

00:10:20.660 | ambitious, it gives a focus your energy, the human

00:10:23.780 | brain does not want to do nothing. For very brief

00:10:27.820 | periods, it gets uncomfortable with doing nothing.

00:10:30.780 | Also, accomplishment does make people feel good.

00:10:34.140 | Again, the anti-ambition essays tend to downplay this,

00:10:36.980 | but actually, it feels good to accomplish something.

00:10:40.220 | There's like the burst of chemicals in the moment.

00:10:42.100 | Yes, that goes away, you're not going to have that,

00:10:44.380 | that opioid style high permanently. But there is a

00:10:47.180 | background hum of confidence and satisfaction that

00:10:49.460 | does come from accomplishment. And I think that

00:10:51.820 | is worth acknowledging. If you're doing something at

00:10:54.900 | a high level, and you're recognized for it, you get

00:10:57.100 | a steady state sense of pride, of self worth, you

00:11:02.580 | have more confidence, it feels good. So it's not all

00:11:07.420 | invented, right? So it's not all just constructed as

00:11:10.180 | part of a conspiracy to help certain groups exploit

00:11:12.460 | others, there are real benefits that you get there.

00:11:15.100 | And of course, society needs at least some people to

00:11:17.500 | be ambitious. That's what moves forward whole

00:11:22.420 | technologies and industries. I mean, you take

00:11:24.420 | someone like Elon Musk. And when he is discussed in

00:11:27.900 | sort of elite cultural circles, everyone's just

00:11:29.740 | focusing on, does he believe the right things? Does

00:11:32.660 | he talk about things properly? Is he on our team?

00:11:35.060 | Is he on the other people's team? And I say, I don't

00:11:37.500 | know, I don't really care about that. He's kind of

00:11:39.100 | a weird guy. Yeah, I think we all kind of

00:11:40.820 | acknowledge that. But he single handedly made

00:11:43.220 | basically every automaker in the country have a

00:11:46.300 | serious electric car strategy. He single handedly

00:11:50.060 | reduced the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 10.

00:11:53.700 | That's crazy ambition. I don't want to live Elon

00:11:57.420 | Musk life. It's brutal. But I'm glad there's people

00:12:01.140 | living Elon Musk's life because we have a cool

00:12:05.340 | electric cars now. And you can do this again and

00:12:07.700 | again with medicine and science with the

00:12:10.900 | practitioners there. We wouldn't have relativity

00:12:13.340 | if it's not for the fierce ambition of Einstein.

00:12:16.180 | His whole family broke apart about this. His hair

00:12:18.580 | went white. Einstein's hair went white at a younger

00:12:21.740 | age than mine from the stress of trying to make

00:12:24.900 | these theories come together. His family life got

00:12:28.980 | terrible because of this. His health faltered

00:12:32.020 | because of this. I wouldn't want to do it. But

00:12:35.220 | relativity was absolutely foundational for

00:12:37.180 | understanding the modern world. So we also need

00:12:39.940 | ambition in the world, even if not everyone is

00:12:42.780 | doing it. All right. So we have pros and cons. So

00:12:44.140 | we get to the conclusion that all right. So who

00:12:46.260 | wins? If the question is, is ambition worth it? We

00:12:49.260 | have two possible answers here. A, no, it's just

00:12:53.180 | an invention. It's a cultural construct that is

00:12:57.500 | exploitative of you. Stop it. Focus on just being

00:13:02.980 | present. Do less. And we'll just get rid of

00:13:07.340 | capitalism or whatever, or move to Montana and

00:13:09.540 | we'll be okay. The other answer is no, no, it's

00:13:12.900 | critical to feeling good. It's critical to self

00:13:15.700 | affirmation. It's critical to the society growing.

00:13:17.380 | So what answer is right? I'm going to say neither.

00:13:21.340 | And I'm going to say both. Because this is where

00:13:25.900 | I'm beginning to fall on this issue. And beginning

00:13:29.460 | is the key word here. I do not have a

00:13:31.140 | comprehensive take on this yet. But where I'm

00:13:33.060 | beginning to fall on this issue is that ambition

00:13:36.140 | is novelistic. It's novelistic in its scope and

00:13:41.740 | impact. When I say novelistic, I mean, messy and

00:13:44.820 | human and tragic and inspiring all at the same

00:13:48.980 | time. I think ambition gets to core

00:13:52.820 | contradictions in the human experience. We're

00:13:55.500 | miserable when it's removed from our life. But as

00:13:57.980 | we pursue it, it takes out of our life other

00:14:00.140 | things that we need to not be miserable. And

00:14:02.860 | there's tragedy in that. But there's also great

00:14:06.060 | inspiration in that. That's why I say it's

00:14:07.620 | novelistic. It's not something that we look at

00:14:09.940 | through an economic lens. It's not something that

00:14:12.300 | we necessarily look through a philosophic lens.

00:14:15.060 | It is messy. And it's very human. And just like

00:14:20.220 | when you read a deep novel, a deep, good piece of

00:14:24.340 | literature, you're able to actually revel in the

00:14:26.900 | complexity because that's part of what you try to

00:14:29.060 | get out of a good novel. We need that mindset, I

00:14:31.260 | believe, when we're thinking about ambition. Now,

00:14:35.180 | I think there's probably an evolutionary

00:14:37.300 | explanation we could put behind this messiness. I

00:14:41.420 | never hesitate to throw in some ill-conceived,

00:14:44.260 | ill-thought-through pop evolutionary psychology.

00:14:46.420 | So let's do that real quick. Probably if you

00:14:48.660 | really were going to pull back the covers here,

00:14:50.300 | here's what you're going to find. In the

00:14:52.180 | Paleolithic, you have humans living tribally. We

00:14:54.980 | evolved a strong drive to be a respected member of

00:14:59.540 | our tribe that is critical to survival and passing

00:15:02.100 | on your genes. We know this is true in part

00:15:03.900 | because nothing makes us feel more immediate,

00:15:08.100 | uncontrolled, positive feelings than when we

00:15:13.700 | encounter a story of someone sacrificing on

00:15:16.620 | behalf of their tribe. It just hits us at a core,

00:15:19.860 | like, "Yes, that is right. Look at this person who

00:15:23.220 | stood up and took the arrows on behalf of his or

00:15:26.900 | her people." That instinctively feels well, and

00:15:29.620 | nothing makes us feel more uncomfortable and

00:15:31.700 | squirrely and weasely than hearing a story of

00:15:33.580 | someone who betrays their tribe or is weak or

00:15:39.260 | cowardly. Those are deep instincts. Deep

00:15:41.500 | instincts mean deep evolutionary paths. This

00:15:44.660 | thing has evolved. The issue, of course, is the

00:15:46.940 | Paleolithic gave way to the Neolithic, and

00:15:49.380 | suddenly we had cities and city-states.

00:15:53.180 | And eventually nations. And so now we have this

00:15:55.940 | drive to be respected and be a leader, except for

00:15:58.020 | the people in our immediate surroundings are no

00:16:00.620 | longer 15 people that we have lived with

00:16:02.740 | intergenerationally for 15 generations. It's 15,000

00:16:05.820 | people in a city-state. And that gave rise to this

00:16:08.460 | new type of Neolithic ambition, which we weren't

00:16:12.060 | evolved for. It is the evolved instinct to be a

00:16:15.580 | leader in the tribe applied to a much bigger

00:16:17.980 | context, and that's what gives you suddenly

00:16:20.380 | political ambitions. You have the pharaohs. It's

00:16:24.500 | what gives us intellectual ambition. You get

00:16:26.420 | Aristotle, you get Socrates, and what gives us

00:16:28.860 | these theological ambitions. You get Siddhartha,

00:16:32.460 | you get Jesus Christ, you get people who are

00:16:35.180 | trying to think through religious thoughts that

00:16:38.940 | are going to impact the entire world. This is a

00:16:41.580 | parochial instinct applied on a scale that was

00:16:46.460 | never evolved for. And so I don't know if this is

00:16:48.260 | true, but I would wager it is that tension between

00:16:51.540 | an instinct that was evolved to make sense among

00:16:53.620 | 20 people, applied to a world of 6 billion that we

00:16:57.860 | now can communicate with and see and have an

00:17:00.180 | audience amongst, that creates this weird tension

00:17:05.140 | that we feel in our life, where this ambition to

00:17:07.260 | keep going farther, and yet that ambition is

00:17:09.100 | taking us away from the things that are important

00:17:10.900 | to us, like being with our family and with our

00:17:12.460 | community. And that's because there was a time

00:17:14.260 | when that was all the same thing. That time was

00:17:16.860 | 100,000 years ago. I don't know if that's true,

00:17:19.060 | but I think that's one way of trying to get at

00:17:21.100 | this fundamental, novelistic, tragic,

00:17:24.700 | inspirational tug-of-war that is at the core of

00:17:28.740 | so many people's life, which is the fight over

00:17:30.500 | ambition. So I don't have a nice, clean story to

00:17:34.020 | give you. I don't have a nice, clean answer. This

00:17:36.660 | is what you should do. Do these three steps, put

00:17:39.140 | this card on your Trello board, and use a

00:17:41.700 | time-block planner. Boom, you're good with

00:17:43.220 | ambition. I don't know the answer here yet, but

00:17:45.100 | I'm increasingly feeling that the answer is going

00:17:47.660 | to evolve, cutting each other some slack, and

00:17:51.220 | seeing ambition as this complicated, wonderful,

00:17:54.020 | terrible, interesting piece of the human

00:17:56.740 | condition, and not just a simple football we can

00:18:01.660 | kick back and forth. It's good, it's bad, that

00:18:03.820 | team likes it, this team doesn't. Something

00:18:05.980 | interesting going on here, and we should be okay

00:18:08.940 | with that nuance. So that is my, those are my

00:18:14.260 | thoughts on ambition.

00:18:17.500 | [Music]

Is Ambition Worth It? | DEEP DIVE | Episode 177

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