So for today's deep dive, the topic I want to tackle is the following provocative question, is ambition worth it? Now let me give a disclaimer before I set up this discussion. The disclaimer is this is not a topic for which I have polished evolved thoughts that I am now going to convey to you.

It's instead a topic that I have found interesting off and on and particularly recently I've been thinking about. So this morning, I just jotted down some thoughts. So what this is what you're going to hear today is me thinking out loud, not delivering well thought through conclusions. So this this should be fun, you know, buckle up for that.

So what made me start thinking about ambition recently, there has been recently, as there happens off and on, it feels like over the last couple of years, a big collection of various essays and articles that have come out that are all taking a negative stance against the idea of ambition.

People often send these to me and so I encounter them quite often. I'm cited in some of these. What's interesting is sometimes I'm cited as the villain and sometimes I'm cited as the non villain depending on how you think about me or what part of my writing you're actually citing.

So these come to me because they often they often cite me but it got me thinking recently about this topic of ambition. So if you look at these what I call anti-ambition essays, there's really two pieces to them. There's the piece which is personal and interesting and compelling, which is often people talking about their own struggles with ambition, and the difficulty they have with it.

And the attempts they're making to perhaps disentangle their life from this ambition. And then there's a maybe the explanatory part that's saying why is ambition something that is so popular? Why was I as the person writing this essay so entangled in ambition? And in some sense, that's less interesting to me because you just see whatever frame that person's cultural context lies within will just give them that answer.

So if you read anti-ambition essays coming from let's say a substack writer who lives in Brooklyn, they're going to look around their cultural world and say, well, ambition is, it's from capitalism. Let's have like an economic materialist approach to this where we say if we can just get rid of capitalism, we can get rid of these sort of disordered affectations, these disordered compulsions towards accomplishment.

Whereas if you read an anti-ambition essay, let's say from someone who lives in Montana, and is really in to bow hunting or Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the frame there might be a much more Thoreauian type frame about simplicity and focusing on things that really matter and getting clutter out of your life.

So it really just depends. So I don't care about the explanation, but I care about the phenomenon of these essays, once again, becoming something that we read quite a bit about. So I want to jump into this and try to actually tackle this. So let's define ambition, number one, the drive to do things of increasing impact.

So it's that drive to do things that are notable that have impact that are rewarded or remunerative, depending on what your metrics are, but generally that drive, and it's often insatiable. So if you hit one level, then that next level begins to be appealing. And what I want to try to do here is go over the pros and cons of ambition.

So let's get into that. Let's start with the cons. What's what's the issue with ambition? Number one, it leads or it can lead to burnout. We talk about burnout often on this show. And if we're talking in particular about professional burnout for people who do computer screen and email type jobs, there's really two big sources of burnout that people suffer from one is chronic overload.

I talked about this, for example, in my writing and my core ideas video on slow productivity. But if you have more on your plate consistently than you can even imagine accomplishing just too much on your plate, that can be quite distressing, it can short circuit the planning parts of your circuits, it can lead to an overhead spiral where you spend more time tending to all of these pending tasks than actually executing them recipe for burnout.

The other main source of burnout among this particular context is when you spend too much time in a high arousal emotional state, so high stress state, high anxiety state. So so you know, your work is such that there's crises happening that keeps you at a at a high level of alertness, you can basically just burn out those systems as too much cortisol in your system, your mind gives gives up on it, burnout can happen as well.

Ambition can amplify both those issues. Because if you're ambitious, you are putting more and more stuff on your plate probably. Because you see these opportunities, you want to keep moving, you want to get after it. So chronic overload is a real hazard. Also, if you're ambitious, that means you're taking on responsibility and making moves that are more likely to expose yourself to those high arousal states.

So I'm going to start my own business, we're going to build this thing big, that's going to set you up for a lot of situations where there's a crisis with your business, you can't get the funding together, you're not going to make payroll, it's going to set you up for a lot of situations where you might have that consistent stress.

So ambition can make it more likely that you burn out. It amplifies our human instinct to compare, compare to other people. Now we all do this. I mean, regardless of your ambition or not, you look on Instagram, you see this, you get a little bit jealous. But when you are ambitious, it can become close to intolerable when you see the success you want that you're not getting.

And I want to say I'm speaking from some experience here. I am, I have ambition. It is a an odd mistress of mine that has both given and taken away. But I felt this amplification of comparison issue, it's almost weird how it works. It's like your brain is being taken over by someone else.

Like here's something that I have periodic just to make this personal, I have periodic bouts of this, where I'll go through a period where I will feel bad about my status as a writer. Like, man, I just I didn't, I didn't hit where I want to get. Now by some standards, that's preposterous.

Like I'm a successful writer, I have multiple books, I think four books at this point that are healthily into the six figures with sales, so I can consistently sell six figure books. I have a seven figure or a seven figure sale number book, relatively well known, done well financially with the books, I've made impact on culture, I've introduced new ideas into the vernacular.

Like I am a successful writer by most standards, but then I'll say, but here's what I'm not. I've never had a book where right out of the gate, it is on the New York Times bestseller list for a while. Notice how I'm subtly shifting the goal post, my last two books have been New York Times bestseller, so my mind shifts it.

You've never had a book that stays on the list. I've never had one of those books where it's just on that Amazon chart top 10 for six months when it comes out. Now we're talking about in my space, there's like five people who do that. But my mind will say, why aren't you one of those five?

And then I'll come back to earth and be like, Oh, that's crazy. I feel great about what I'm doing, but I'll have those bouts. And I point out that personal example, just to talk about the way that ambition can rewire your mind in these ways that are malformed. As far as the outside world is concerned, that is crazy talk.

But it'll hit you hard. Another issue with ambition is that it can keep you from other things that are important in your life if you're not careful. This is often one of the big points that's hit when you read the modern anti-ambition essays is that, you know, if you're all in on I am going to start the next Uber, you're not spending time with your kids, you're not spending time out in nature, your mind is probably always moving, you're probably not very involved in your community and becoming a leader and sacrificing time and energy on behalf of people you care about, you're doing this one thing.

So this is a real danger of ambition, it's easy to fall there to get very out of balance in your life. This is why when I talk about the deep life and my bucket system for the deep life, we have these various aspects, you should focus on to try to keep that balance.

And the final thing about ambition, the piece we don't talk about even when we encourage people to follow their dreams or do whatever they want to do is that you probably won't succeed. So the things that we are ambitious about are very hard. That's what makes them a target of ambition.

Most people won't succeed. So you go to a really good school, you worked really hard to get there. You take an an elite job, like I'm going to be a writer, going to move to New York, I'm going to be a writer, maybe I'll be the next Joan Didion, and most people won't be.

And so 10 years later, you're writing essays about, well, ambition is stupid anyways. Right? So it's hard, man. It's hard. Most people don't get anywhere close to where they're going. There are also pros of ambition. So let's lay out the other side of this. So first of all, the pursuit of big goals is life affirming.

I mean, this is the one thing I don't think the anti-ambition people acknowledge enough is that there are few results that are better understood in human psychology than if you take away people's sense of efficacy, take away their sense of here's something you're in charge of that's important that you're working on.

They will just wither. There's almost nothing worth you can do to a human than put them in a situation where they can't do anything. There's nothing I'm working towards, there's nothing I'm taking care of, there's no challenges I'm facing. That makes humans miserable. They need that and they need sociality.

You take away either of those two things, and it's a problem. So there is something life affirming going after something that's important or ambitious, it gives a focus your energy, the human brain does not want to do nothing. For very brief periods, it gets uncomfortable with doing nothing. Also, accomplishment does make people feel good.

Again, the anti-ambition essays tend to downplay this, but actually, it feels good to accomplish something. There's like the burst of chemicals in the moment. Yes, that goes away, you're not going to have that, that opioid style high permanently. But there is a background hum of confidence and satisfaction that does come from accomplishment.

And I think that is worth acknowledging. If you're doing something at a high level, and you're recognized for it, you get a steady state sense of pride, of self worth, you have more confidence, it feels good. So it's not all invented, right? So it's not all just constructed as part of a conspiracy to help certain groups exploit others, there are real benefits that you get there.

And of course, society needs at least some people to be ambitious. That's what moves forward whole technologies and industries. I mean, you take someone like Elon Musk. And when he is discussed in sort of elite cultural circles, everyone's just focusing on, does he believe the right things? Does he talk about things properly?

Is he on our team? Is he on the other people's team? And I say, I don't know, I don't really care about that. He's kind of a weird guy. Yeah, I think we all kind of acknowledge that. But he single handedly made basically every automaker in the country have a serious electric car strategy.

He single handedly reduced the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 10. That's crazy ambition. I don't want to live Elon Musk life. It's brutal. But I'm glad there's people living Elon Musk's life because we have a cool electric cars now. And you can do this again and again with medicine and science with the practitioners there.

We wouldn't have relativity if it's not for the fierce ambition of Einstein. His whole family broke apart about this. His hair went white. Einstein's hair went white at a younger age than mine from the stress of trying to make these theories come together. His family life got terrible because of this.

His health faltered because of this. I wouldn't want to do it. But relativity was absolutely foundational for understanding the modern world. So we also need ambition in the world, even if not everyone is doing it. All right. So we have pros and cons. So we get to the conclusion that all right.

So who wins? If the question is, is ambition worth it? We have two possible answers here. A, no, it's just an invention. It's a cultural construct that is exploitative of you. Stop it. Focus on just being present. Do less. And we'll just get rid of capitalism or whatever, or move to Montana and we'll be okay.

The other answer is no, no, it's critical to feeling good. It's critical to self affirmation. It's critical to the society growing. So what answer is right? I'm going to say neither. And I'm going to say both. Because this is where I'm beginning to fall on this issue. And beginning is the key word here.

I do not have a comprehensive take on this yet. But where I'm beginning to fall on this issue is that ambition is novelistic. It's novelistic in its scope and impact. When I say novelistic, I mean, messy and human and tragic and inspiring all at the same time. I think ambition gets to core contradictions in the human experience.

We're miserable when it's removed from our life. But as we pursue it, it takes out of our life other things that we need to not be miserable. And there's tragedy in that. But there's also great inspiration in that. That's why I say it's novelistic. It's not something that we look at through an economic lens.

It's not something that we necessarily look through a philosophic lens. It is messy. And it's very human. And just like when you read a deep novel, a deep, good piece of literature, you're able to actually revel in the complexity because that's part of what you try to get out of a good novel.

We need that mindset, I believe, when we're thinking about ambition. Now, I think there's probably an evolutionary explanation we could put behind this messiness. I never hesitate to throw in some ill-conceived, ill-thought-through pop evolutionary psychology. So let's do that real quick. Probably if you really were going to pull back the covers here, here's what you're going to find.

In the Paleolithic, you have humans living tribally. We evolved a strong drive to be a respected member of our tribe that is critical to survival and passing on your genes. We know this is true in part because nothing makes us feel more immediate, uncontrolled, positive feelings than when we encounter a story of someone sacrificing on behalf of their tribe.

It just hits us at a core, like, "Yes, that is right. Look at this person who stood up and took the arrows on behalf of his or her people." That instinctively feels well, and nothing makes us feel more uncomfortable and squirrely and weasely than hearing a story of someone who betrays their tribe or is weak or cowardly.

Those are deep instincts. Deep instincts mean deep evolutionary paths. This thing has evolved. The issue, of course, is the Paleolithic gave way to the Neolithic, and suddenly we had cities and city-states. And eventually nations. And so now we have this drive to be respected and be a leader, except for the people in our immediate surroundings are no longer 15 people that we have lived with intergenerationally for 15 generations.

It's 15,000 people in a city-state. And that gave rise to this new type of Neolithic ambition, which we weren't evolved for. It is the evolved instinct to be a leader in the tribe applied to a much bigger context, and that's what gives you suddenly political ambitions. You have the pharaohs.

It's what gives us intellectual ambition. You get Aristotle, you get Socrates, and what gives us these theological ambitions. You get Siddhartha, you get Jesus Christ, you get people who are trying to think through religious thoughts that are going to impact the entire world. This is a parochial instinct applied on a scale that was never evolved for.

And so I don't know if this is true, but I would wager it is that tension between an instinct that was evolved to make sense among 20 people, applied to a world of 6 billion that we now can communicate with and see and have an audience amongst, that creates this weird tension that we feel in our life, where this ambition to keep going farther, and yet that ambition is taking us away from the things that are important to us, like being with our family and with our community.

And that's because there was a time when that was all the same thing. That time was 100,000 years ago. I don't know if that's true, but I think that's one way of trying to get at this fundamental, novelistic, tragic, inspirational tug-of-war that is at the core of so many people's life, which is the fight over ambition.

So I don't have a nice, clean story to give you. I don't have a nice, clean answer. This is what you should do. Do these three steps, put this card on your Trello board, and use a time-block planner. Boom, you're good with ambition. I don't know the answer here yet, but I'm increasingly feeling that the answer is going to evolve, cutting each other some slack, and seeing ambition as this complicated, wonderful, terrible, interesting piece of the human condition, and not just a simple football we can kick back and forth.

It's good, it's bad, that team likes it, this team doesn't. Something interesting going on here, and we should be okay with that nuance. So that is my, those are my thoughts on ambition.