Measuring All The Wrong Things In All The Wrong Ways
In his book Consolations II—the second volume of essays exploring the deeper meanings of everyday, overused words to uncover their “hidden and beckoning” roots—David Whyte examines the causes and cures of “burnout.” “Burnout,” Whyte writes, “is diagnosed by exhaustion, often caused by…assuming goals that actually belong to other people and which I have stolen to my detriment.” Hidden in the realization that we are burned out “is always the realization that we have been measuring all the wrong things in all the wrong ways,” that we had been focusing too much on “the shallow rewards of false goals or false people.” The path out of burnout, Whyte writes, “is through the very things I laid aside on the way to exhaustion. The very path I took to arrive at this hollowed-out, burned out state, is the path I will take out of my imprisonment, back to what is precious to me…what I have loved and have always loved since I was a child.”
Measuring all the wrong things all the way to a hollowed-out state, where one realizes that the path out of burnout is through the very things laid aside on the way to exhaustion—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
A Fundamental Trait Of Those Who Succeed At The Highest Level
Josh Waitzkin, a chess prodigy, quit playing chess around the age of 18. “I was a naturally creative, aggressive chess player,” Waitzkin explained. “My style was to create chaos on the chessboard, and my strength lay in finding hidden harmonies.” With this style, Waitzkin won the U.S. Junior Chess Championship at the age of 11 and became an International Master at age 16. Then, Waitzkin got a coach who forced him to play like the world champions, Anatoly Karpov and Tigran Petrosian—“the most positional, conservative chess players.” When he was forced to play a style that didn’t align with his natural proclivities, Waitzkin said, “I lost my love for the game.” So Waitzkin quit playing chess, and shortly after, he took up martial arts. He trained for just two years before he won his first national championship in martial arts. Asked if he took anything from chess into the martial arts, Waitzkin said he leaned into his unique physical and mental traits, those he was forced to lay aside on the way to getting burned out on chess. “And in my observation of competitors in any discipline, this is a really fundamental idea,” he said. “Those who succeed at the highest level, I think, basically manifest their unique character through their discipline.”
The Trick Is To Always Peel Back And Ask, Why Am I Doing This In The First Place?
Rodney Mullen started skateboarding in 1974, invented most of the sport’s tricks, started the first-ever skateboarder-owned company (which eventually sold for $46 million), and, at the age of 14, won his first freestyle world skateboard championship. “Winning a contest felt good the first time,” he said. “After that, you are protecting. There is no gratification in winning—there is only upholding something so that you don’t lose it. And it is staggering. It usurps the joy of it.” He won 34 of his next 35 contests, but on what is still the most successful competitive run in the history of the sport, Rodney burned out and quit competing. He said what happened to him was like that scene in the movie The Firm where Tom Cruise’s character, Mitch McDeere, an ambitious lawyer, is meeting with an FBI agent at a greyhound racetrack. Eight dogs are chasing an oversized dog bone attached to a mechanical arm that keeps the bone just out of reach, motivating them to run as fast as they can. “Doesn’t a dog ever get the bone?” McDeere asks. “It happens once in a while,” the FBI agent replies. “And it’s a disaster. They can’t ever get that dog to run again.” Like that dog, Rodney continues, “getting the things you thought you wanted often quenches the fire that got you them…You can have a stadium of people screaming your name—it’s actually happened a couple of times to me. And there is a viscerally exhilaration to it—there is. But at the same time, it’s hollow. It’s hollow. That’s not the thing that can drive you, at least not for long.” After he quit competing in freestyle, Rodney shifted to street skating, a skateboarding discipline which focuses on flat-ground tricks and maneuvers using urban features like stairs, handrails, ledges, and curbs. In his 50s now, Rodney still street skates everyday. Asked how he’s been able to sustain his interest in this kind of skating for so long, Mullen said, “It’s such a gift to be able to [do] something and to love it for the sake of it…I have that. I’ve nurtured it in my life…Success, trophies, a Nobel Prize, an Academy Award—eventually, that stuff fades to just static. So if you decide that stuff is what you love, that that’s what you’re doing it for—then your days are numbered. The trick is to always peel back and ask, ‘why am I doing this in the first place?’ Oh yeah…I’m still just not that kid who just loves skateboarding, you know? And I cling to that. And I think that’s been a key for me of why I’ve been able to sustain this fire that’s so seemingly easily quenched.”
Miserable, Lonely, Sad, Angry, And Bitter
Following her wildly successful second album 21, for 2 years, Adele struggled to make music. She eventually considered quitting music altogether, she said, because “I was like, ‘I’m never going to be able to follow up 21.” But then, “I realized that I actually didn’t want to live up to 21. I didn’t want to live in the state of mind that I was when I wrote 21. Because it was a miserable one…It was horrible. I was miserable, I was lonely, I was sad, I was angry, and I was bitter.” It was a hollowed-out, burned out feeling, and “I didn’t want to feel that again.” It was a breakthrough realization, Adele said, “because I was able to let go of the pressure to follow up the success of 21. And instead, I was like, ‘I’m just going to write music for fun.’ Then the process felt a lot like when I was making my first album [19]—I was just doing it because I wanted to, rather than because, ‘Oh, I have to follow up the success of 21.” After she gave up on trying to follow up the success of 21 and walked the path back to what she had always loved—making music for its own sake—Adele recorded her third album, 25, which won 6 Grammys (including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album) and became the fourth-best-selling album of the 21st century. “[The success of 25] was like madder than 21,” Adele said. “And I was not expecting it. I was just making music for fun and feeling like I was feeling when I first started making music.”
Put Aside What You Think Others Are Expecting Of You
Days after a quarterfinals loss in the 2010 French Open, Novak Djokovic told his coach, Marián Vajda, that he had decided to quit playing tennis. He was No. 3 in the world, a grand slam winner, and a favorite to win Wimbledon. After Djokovic said he was quitting, Vajda asked, “Why did you start playing this sport?” Vajda immediately sensed what the problem was: Djokovic was focusing too much on rankings, records, titles, and external expectations. As a result, Djokovic said, “I was mentally at one very messed up place.” As Djokovic thought about Vajda’s question, he thought about how many of his earliest childhood memories include his “most beloved toy”—a mini tennis racket and a soft foam ball. He started playing tennis, answering Vajda’s question, “because I just really loved holding that racket in my hand.” “Do you still love holding a racket in your hand?” Vajda asked. Djokovic thought about it for a few seconds, got excited, and said: “I do. I still love holding a racket in my hand. Whether it’s a grand slam final on center court or just playing around on a public court, I like playing for the sake of playing.” Vajda nodded, “Well that’s your source. That’s what you need to tap into. Put aside rankings and what you want to achieve and what you think others are expecting of you.” Vajda then suggested that Djokovic take a few weeks off. Djokovic agreed that he would. But when he woke up the next morning, Djokovic was dying to hit tennis balls. He went to the courts to play for the sake of playing. “And I never looked back ever since that moment.” The following season, Djokovic enjoyed one of the greatest seasons in sports history. He won 43 straight matches. He won three Grand Slams, including his first Wimbledon title. And he finished the year as the number one player in the world. “I started to play freely,” he says of that season. “I became the kid that I was when I started playing.” Years later, he’d say, “I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball.”
Do You Fear That You’ll Burn Out?
The actor Jeremy Strong approaches his work the way Edward Norton described in the newsletter a few weeks ago. Known for this intense and immersive approach to acting, preparing exhaustively for roles, Strong was asked, “Do you fear that you’ll burn out?” “I don’t think so,” Strong replied, “because I find a tremendous amount of joy in doing this work.”