Ambition and drive

[Jimski]

After thinking about what it takes to be a modern olympic champion, I started to wonder about people who can drive themselves to such extremes.

I know I am personally quite turned off by this kind of drive in somebody. I'm not talking here about people who have to work very hard just to survive, I'm talking about people who would be quite comfortable just cruising through life, but for some reason drive themselves onwards in a specific activity in ways which surely can't be pleasurable. And it's not like all of them are ultra-successful as a result (by which I mean the olympic medalists are the exception).

Somehow I just can't relate to such drive at all. Isn't it more fun to vary ones activities, try to glean more general pleasures from life?

Obviously there's a question of degree here, and I haven't really thought about this enough to have any idea of where I might draw the line. I am just musing in the hope of starting a good discussion.

What do others here think?

[ursus arctos]

Ambition and drive

I think that the sentiment you describe is near to universal; there are very few people who view truly single-minded obsession towards any goal as a positive thing and many millieux in which being seen to "want it too much" is seen as a major failing.

What differs significantly within any population, however, is the spectrum on which one judges these things. I work in a highly competitive profession that is known for its "Type A" personalities, and consider some of my colleagues (and a larger proportion of my counterparts at other firms) to be on the wrong side of the line (to my eyes, the affliction is even more common among investment bankers).

At the same time, I'm sure that some people (including some on here, I'd imagine), would consider me to be overly driven/ambitious/obsessed, or whatever label one wants to apply. I'm not one to put much faith in alleged universal measures, but this seems to me to be a particularly infertile ground for any such attempt.

To get back to your initial point, one aspect of the athletic version of this that has always troubled me is that the nature of athletic competition tends to require that one begin an athletic career very early in one's life, almost always before one is really capable of making decisions on one's own. The phenomenon of parents or other adults who obsess over their children's athletic performance (often in the statistically highly unlikely hope of financial reward, glory, or college scholarships) is a very widespread malaise in youth sports in the US, and one of the things that drove me away from them (not being terribly good being another such thing). If that drive is not genuinely taken on by the kid in question, for their own purposes, and not out of fear or a desire to please their elders, what we call "burn out" is an almost certain outcome, and a very sad one for all concerned.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ambition and drive

Vergil had a phrase for it:

"forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit"

One day it will be pleasant to rememember even these things. Sadly, it (walking round the abandoned Greek camp) isn't pleasant for very long.

I've never been that sort of person myself, and am equally turned off.

[Femme Folle]

Ambition and drive

Same here. I work with some people like ursus describes (most of them are attorneys). I have watched people move up in the company and I've seen some of those people self-destruct. It isn't pretty, and if that's the cost of ambition, then I'm glad I'm not one of them. I have moved up, although not as much, but I'm content with what I'm making for the amount of work I do. If I wanted to bust my ass, I could make a lot more. I'm just not willing to pay the price.

My brother-in-law's nephew loves to swim. My nephew (who is in BR visiting) told me he hasn't even seen him since he got there a week ago because he's always either in school or swimming. I can imagine him competing in the Olympics. But addressing a point that ursus made about parents pushing kids at an early age, I can tell you that in this case, it's all the boy and his love of swimming.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ambition and drive

The bloke who won the 1000m kayaking gold for Britain is an A&E doctor, who works 80 hours a week at his job. And then goes off to train to be the best kayaker in the world.

Now I don't think I have enough hours in my week for that kind of thing. I only work 40 hours a week or so, on average, and still don't have enough time to keep on top of my shopping and laundry. Let alone double that and be an Olympic champion.

These people are certainly driven. Mind you, I spend at least an hour a day pissing about on OTF, so maybe I should be practising my kayaking skils.

[Guest]

Ambition and drive

but i bet he hasn't racked up 1200 posts on ne OTF though.

[ursus arctos]

Ambition and drive

At least when it comes to major sports, the Olympics used to be for shamateurs, be them products of state sponsored sports systems or recipients of under the table payments.

The "true amateurs" tended to be reactionary toffs like Pierre de Coubertin, Avery Brundage, and Joao Havelange. I much prefer the professionals.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ambition and drive

Had one-day cricket been invented a bit earlier then it might have made it into the Olympics.

Any chance 20/20?

[Guest]

Ambition and drive

"My nephew (who is in BR visiting) told me he hasn't even seen him since he got there a week ago because he's always either in school or swimming. I can imagine him competing in the Olympics."

That goes to show that its a natural instinct to want to do what you excel at, and to compete against others. Thats why to suggest that olympic athletes are just these ultra competitive individuals who've been damaged by their parents..I disagree.

The athletes love what they do, it's their passion in life, thats why they're so devoted to it.It's good to have a passion in life and commitment to something.

Like most of the population, I wasn't born with the talent to be the best at the world at anything, but if you do have exceptional talent in a particular field, then surely its a commendable thing to try and realise your potential.

[Reed John]

Ambition and drive

This is a topic that has haunted me most of my life and gets lots of time in my sessions with my shrink.

As I understand it, there are some people in the world who are very happy defining themselves by one or, maybe two or three, pursuits.

There are other people who are interested in lots of different things and cannot define themselves by any one or two activities because they're interested in so many things.

I am clearly the latter type because no one thing interests me so much that I don't get bored of it after focusing on it exclusively for a while. Also, I've never been comfortable around people people who seem to all be driven in one direction - like when I was in graduate school - I always felt like we were missing out on so many of the little joys and surprises that make life worth living.

I tend to compare my achievements with those of the former type. Of course, the person with a more narrow focus is always going to go further than a scatterbrain like me, so it's a recipe for failure and disappointment.

My shrink, and others, have said that I am more of a "creative" type. I don't feel very creative. I feel like a big loser.

I also don't do well with long term goals. I look at the long road ahead and get very discouraged and lose the will to move forward.
I need to get in shape, but I get discouraged by how long that's going to take. I want to learn to write creatively and draw and fly fish better, but my current state of crapitude in all of those fields crushes me. I know that's silly, but it does.

But even if I can sort all of that out, I don't think I'll ever have much use for "ambition." At least not in my work. My work is only one of many pursuits in life that I find interesting and 40 hours a week on it is more than enough to satisfy my interest in it.

Besides, my field doesn't lend itself to long term goals. I aspire to find new interesting article ideas and pursue those. I aspire to become a better writer every day. I aspire to improve the overall quality of our publication however I can. I aspire to convince my boss to let me move to Minnesota and work from there.

But those are all sort of day-by-day, marginal improvements. I don't know what sort of specific long term goal I could set. In other fields, being the best one can be at something means "moving up." If you're a business manager, then you'll maybe aspire to be a CEO because that's the biggest challenge a manager can have. If you're a footballer, you'll aspire to play for your country and a big club, because that's the toughest competition.

But there's nothing really like that for me. In my job, I'm more or less free to make it as challenging as I want to, it's just up to me find a project that interests me.

As my work gets better and better, I won't necessarily get a better job title or much more money. It's just the nature of the business. So few people understand our business that even if I wrote the Moby Dick of medical device stories, only about a dozen people in the world would recognize it as such and they wouldn't be willing to pay much more for it than mediocrity. So my own satisfaction has to be my reward.

I suppose I could aspire to be promoted to higher and higher editor jobs, but then I'd be a manager and not a journalist and that's not really what I want. I suppose I could aspire to make more money somehow, but that wouldn't really be a journalistic aspiration. I suppose I could aspire to work for a more widely read publication, but having read those (WSJ, NY Times, Washington Post, etc), the sort of journalism they do doesn't interest me that much. It pays better, but it isn't actually better than what I do now - at least not in any dimension that would interest me, if that makes sense.

[WOM]

Ambition and drive

The most interesting people I know are not the single-minded pursuitists, but the dabblers. People who have a fairly shallow interest (or a deep but fleeting interest) in a wide variety of things tend to be far more interesting and engaging, to me at least, than people who've spent years honing one skill.
This seems to be true of hobbies and interests, but doubly so when it comes to athletic pursuits. I find hardcore athletes to be complete dullards. You'd think that spending hours inside one's own head while running or cycling or swimming great distances would lead to some interesting perspectives and insights on things, but the exact opposite seems to be the case.

[Reed John]

Ambition and drive

I agree with that. I've known some people who spent a lot of time on sports and also did really well in school (the NCAA likes to showcase these people) but the diversity of their interests usually ended more or less right there. They're remarkably useless on a pub quiz team.

Every now and again, I come across somebody like Ursus Arctos, or Gyuri or WE who manage to know a lot about everything and hold down high-intensity jobs requiring fancy degrees and manage to be lovely people. But this seems to be rare. Come to think of it, I can't think of too many non-OTFers that I've met that fit the description.

Maybe my friend whose an electrical engineer, father, husband, former competitive swimmer, and has an encyclopedic knowlege of world history and sci-fi television - but I don't think he actually gives a shit about his job. He's just so smart that he can devote 10% of his mind to it and still do better than most people.

Most of us have to make some more difficult tradeoffs.

[blameless]

Ambition and drive

I didn't used to have any ambition at all, but over the last few years I seem to have acquired some - mostly through irritation at other people's incompetence (the old "I'm going to take charge of this and make it work properly" syndrome).

But other than that, I'm with Reed - there are far too many interesting things around to obsess over one or two of them.