Meaningful outputs require meaningful inputs, and extraordinary outputs require extreme inputs. If you are going after a goal most people never reach, you will eventually have to do things most people will not understand. People will call your life unstable, unsustainable, and out of balance. Some will say it kindly and some will say it to make you feel guilty. Expect both.
Two sources of advice that will slow you down
Two kinds of advice will get between you and a hard goal. Both sound reasonable, both are usually well meant, and both are aimed at someone other than you.
Therapy culture gives the safest advice to the most people
The first is therapy culture. Rest. Treat yourself. Focus on yourself. Protect your mental health. Don't burn out. Live a balanced life and don't get too extreme.
None of that is wrong for most people. It is the safest advice you can give to the largest number of people, and that is the problem. Advice built to be safe for everyone is built for the average case. It says nothing about the activation energy it takes to reach escape velocity from a situation you do not want to be in.
The self-care it offers is short term. It asks how you feel this week. If your goal runs years out, a different question matters more: what will it take to get there, and how do I stay able to pay that price the whole way?
Greatness involves competition, and competition means going to lengths your competitors will not. Most of the people you are competing with are following the therapeutic advice. That is fine for them. It is also your opening.
The balance message comes from two groups: people who are comfortable without financial independence, and people who already have it. Both will tell you to put a balanced life ahead of your goals, and both are speaking from where they stand. People who choose balance are not living less meaningful lives. They hold different values. The mistake is letting their values quietly replace yours.
Success stories present the rarest outcome as the model
The second source is people claiming success: the founder who built a business worth millions on four hours a week, the billionaire explaining how to invest, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur explaining how startups work.
Even when those stories are true, they are not typical. Holding them up as the example is misleading, and it gets in the way of people doing the work, because it tells them the work should feel easy. Taking business advice from an outlier has the same flaw as taking life advice from a therapist. Neither was written for your situation.
The transition that matters most
People have plenty of philosophy about work, meaning, and how to build a good life. The most meaningful transition in adulthood is simpler than any of it: moving from financial dependence to financial independence. It is the difference between a life where you have to work and a life where you work because you want to.
There are two ways to get there. The traditional way is to start working young, save young, invest young, and let compound interest carry you. If you chose that path early, you get to benefit from time.
If you are starting later, that path does not work the same way. You do not have the years for compounding to do the heavy lifting. You need an extraordinary output, which means an extreme input. You will have to sacrifice things and live a life that is not typical in order to gain an advantage. That is fine. Be ready for people not to understand it.
What the extreme input costs
Most people in my life have not accepted my routine. They look at it as weird, though most of them are not doing what I am doing either. Most of the people I have dated and many of the friends I have had did not really understand that I needed to focus on other things. I have had to say no a lot. I have had to show up late a lot. I have had to put up boundaries so I could say, I have to work.
I have also had to tolerate being called a workaholic, along with the guilt and the shame that come with it. We are told we live in a workaholic culture. I do not think we do. I think we live in a culture that is biased against ownership, and it shames people for working too hard.
We cannot change that culture. We cannot change therapy culture or influencer culture. All we can do is change ourselves, live our own lives, and pursue our goals as strategically and consistently as possible.
Self-care that serves the goal
None of this means burning yourself out. You may need to build a mindfulness practice. But a mindfulness practice and a balanced life are two separate things, and you can have the first without the second.
If you have extreme goals, don't live a balanced life. Find whatever self-care strategies support and enable an imbalanced, extreme lifestyle, and keep it up for as long as it takes to reach the goal.
Min maxing and max maxing
A lot of people are min maxing: trying to get the maximum output from the minimum input. I think anyone with an extraordinary goal should be max maxing instead, going after the absolute maximum output no matter what input it requires. That is my philosophy.
The takeaway
Stop taking direction from advice written for the average case or the lucky exception. Answer four questions for yourself instead:
- What is my specific goal?
- What path gets me there?
- What competition and obstacles stand in the way?
- What advantages can I give myself?
Then take strategic action with focused consistency, and keep going until the goal is real.