The Over-Achiever Bias

 Humans were never genetically altered to over-achieve.

The rarefied class of those we call over-achievers – people who, by general consensus, have done more than anyone (or the vast majority) could – is one that I am familiar with.  In this layer of the atmosphere of  achievement, I have met many in the thirty-two years since 1989, but no one I have met – not one – has been compassionate or outward-focused or unhurried or caring in a way that would make them humane.  Or a good listener (but, that shortfall, as you know, does not limit itself to over-achievers).  

Every one of the overachievers I know has been egocentric, stressed because he (or she) was unkind to himself or herself and to others, engendering conflict in the process, and self-focused to the point of ignoring the basis of our genetic heritage of a hundred thousand years: sociality and community bonding, that the tribal societies we now consider primitive prioritised above all else.  The language and actions of the modern day overachiever, even when they do yoga to ‘de-tox’ or set goals of weight-loss, are  aligned to a self-centric compelling desire for overachievement that is as incomprehensible as it is unreal and damaging.  Or take the running of a marathon: some – very few of the many runners I know – are the natural marathoners who run for the joy of running and would stop when they choose, to laugh with a child, or greet a friend on the road and shoot the breeze.  Most run because it gives them validation of some sort; they are in competition mode with themselves or others and conviviality is an unaffordable distraction.   

When you read the motivational spiels about achieving your true achievement-potential, have you thought of just what that means?  If you have, and if that thought has resulted in an answer, I would be grateful for the clarity, for I have – I really mean this - no idea of what a human’s potential is; we can measure it for a vehicle based on its horsepower and torque and for the boiling point of water, but for a human?  It is not the desire to create the next best app or a cool electric car – that, as Elon Musk demonstrates in his behaviour vividly, is egocentrism at its zenith and leaves in its wake the usual collateral damage that today’s businesses see within: team members running hard to stay in the same place and using meaningless, trite language to seek affiliation to a peer group, extraordinary variations in pay and inequality in society that engender trepidation, neglect, jealousy and retaliation, the creation of an utterly fake public persona by equally stressed PR folks who are asked to transform a beast into a butterfly in the media and the endless desire to seek validation and praise from everyone, as a billion posts on Linkedin demonstrate. 

This made me often wonder, when I was in my thirties, if I was built differently (and wrongly) and hence, if there was a need to course-correct and try to achieve more.

I now know better.

The people I know to be overachievers have used phrases like, “We must work hard and play hard” or “Conflict is inevitable” and are glued to entirely fictional tokens of perceived excellence with convenient logos that include the now-familiar ‘stretch goals’ ideology, all of which repel those who hear them (that includes me!) and seek to divide rather than unite.  Competition of this sort and with this attitude bears a cost that society, and now the planet, is unable to bear.

The only goal post that we need to see everyday and to aspire to reach is to be happy with oneself: at times, this results in achievement of the kind that is recognised as such, but for most part this itself is the achievement, for its own sake .  It takes, as a dear friend of mine once said, very little to be happy.  Yet, it is a goal post that seems to recede into the distance as the chimera of cheers keeps the castle aloft in the sky. 

The real mirror before us shows no chimera, so let us listen to ourselves while in front of it.  Time has never been our enemy and let us not make it one.