To Reach Your Goals, Do You Have To Forego All Pleasure?

I coach some very ambitious people. At the same time, they also want to enjoy their lives. "Work hard, party hard," that kind of mindset. But is that realistic? Let's find out.

I.

You must put the hours in. There is no way around it.

If you put five hours per day in, and your competitor puts ten hours a day in, they will beat you every time.

There are no hacks; there are no shortcuts.

Whenever someone tries to sell you some variation of "Work smarter, not harder," run for the hills. It's a scam.

Do you think Michael Phelps somehow hacked his way to the Olympics? Do you think Elon Musk works 4 hours per day? No. They outworked everybody else.

II.

So, if you must put in the hours to succeed, ideally, you should do nothing but work — 16 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The problem is that this is not sustainable. At some point, you will have to cut loose. To counterbalance the high level of structure in your life, you will have to do something very unstructured and uncontrolled — go dancing, get drunk, have sex, etc.

Whenever you indulge, though, there will be a loss in productivity. You will have a hangover. Your sleep schedule will suffer. For a few days, you will have brain fog; your decisions won't be as sharp as usual.

III.

That is what the game of success is about — structure vs. excess. How do you balance the two?

More specifically, it is about how long you can live in the realm of structure before you must take a trip to the world of excess.

For the average person, that is every seven days or so. They will work their 9 to 5 and then get drunk on the weekend to forget about their misery.

For the successful, it cannot be like this. They must learn to push off their excesses further. If they can be highly productive for a month straight before indulging, they will get much more done than the average person.

If they can push off their excesses for six months or one year, they will be in the top one percent. For them, success is practically guaranteed.

IV.

How long can you push off your excesses?

One week? One month? Six months? One year?

Think about it.

V.

I want to be clear — I am not anti-excesses. They are a necessary part of the game.

That is what Nietzsche's dialectic of the Appolonian and the Dionysian is about. You can't have one without the other.

If you try to only pursue structure, eventually, your productive output will diminish to almost nothing. You will be "dry," bereft of any life force.

The pagan tradition was more aware of this. Here, the Dionysian element was somewhat tolerated; think of the Bacchanalia in ancient Rome, a festival of orgiastic frenzy.

The Christian tradition tried to suppress this dialectic but never quite succeeded. You can pretend to abstain from all excesses like the Puritans did, but then they just happen behind closed doors.

VI.

Be strategic about your excesses.

First, push them off as far as possible. Go as long as you can without indulging while still being productive.

At the same time, don't wait for too long. It's better to grant yourself a crazy night out and return to your habits the next day than starving yourself for too long, going on a rampage, and skipping all your habits for the next three months.

Overall, space your excesses further and further apart. The long-term trend must be increasing intervals.

The further you space your excesses apart, the harder you should hit it. You must make it worth your while, or you will too soon want to indulge again because you didn't get your fill last time. Now, the interval between excesses is decreasing, which is bad for productivity.

On a side note, that's why the filthy rich often get caught in scandals. They work harder and for longer than everybody else. But when they do indulge, it is private jets, cocaine, and orgies.

Ordinary people get outraged by this. But they will also hit the bar every weekend and watch every game. They have never learned to optimize their structure-to-excess ratio; otherwise, they would understand.

Another newsletter done, and a fun one (at least for me). Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Until next week,

Niels