Grind culture doesn't lead to an excellent life
What does it mean to live an excellent life? If you're like most people, you might think it's about achieving more, doing more, being more productive. I used to think that too. But today, I'm going to challenge that notion of excellence and share a perspective that transformed how I think about living well. If you've been feeling unsettled and dissatisfied despite "doing all the right things," today's episode might help you understand why—and show you a different path forward.
We seem to live in a grind culture based on productivity and external measures of success. This may or may not be a good way to get rich, but it's a terrible way to live and it is certainly not a recipe for an excellent life.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Just recently, I joked with my wife, Tracy, that I needed to go back to being a dean so I wouldn't have to work so much. To those of you who might not be familiar, the life of an academic dean is incredibly busy and stressful especially when compared to the life of a tenured full professor, which is the highest rank a professor can have.
It occurred to me that I may have become too focused on external measures of success. For an academic that's often numbers of journal articles and articles in "top" journals. Frankly, I produce MUCH more than what's required of me, or even what is expected of me. This focus on externals is causing me a fair amount of stress and fatigue (I'm in a constant state of tired). Sometimes I even felt guilty taking time out of my day to play with the pups. That is NOT a good thing. So, it was time for reflection; I’d lost my way a bit on my path towards flourishing.
There were a few outcomes from my reflections. First, I realized that I needed to make some changes to create more space to enjoy life. I’ll talk more about that over the next few weeks. But, something more fundamental struck me. So many of us try to plan out our lives, seeking a perfect recipe for living an excellent, flourishing life. My epiphany is that such a recipe doesn’t exist, other than as a recipe for disappointment. I started thinking more about this. If there isn’t a recipe for excellence, how can people live excellent, flourishing lives? Through this period of reflection, I've discovered some fundamental truths about excellence that might help you on your own journey. Here are three key insights that have changed how I think about living an excellent life.
An excellent life is emergent, not a planned event. Goals, interim goals, strategic life plans, time blocking ... all of these may have their place, but they're all focused on external aspects of life and on external measures of excellence. That's not the path to real excellence though. These external measures and plans may be necessary in modern life, but they're not going to guide you to a truly excellent life. Think of your life as a garden, not a blue print. You can cultivate it, nourish it, but the precise beauty that emerges can’t always be predicted. And that unpredictability is exactly what makes life rich.
An excellent life is experienced not engineered. One of the things my reflection revealed is that I'm not taking enough time or giving enough attention to enjoying the journey. This is a bit ironic since I've written about this before and I know better. Quoting James Taylor, "The secret to life is enjoying the passage of time." As I've found out, it's easy to get caught up in the trees and not enjoy the forest (or something like that). The point is that an excellent life is enriched by the act of experiencing and appreciating every aspect of life. Experience life, don't just grind through it.
An excellent life is built on a foundation of virtue. I cannot over stress how critical this is. Work on being the kind of person you want to be. What virtues make someone a good person--courage, kindness, wisdom, justice, temperance—is different for you than for me. Philosophy and religion can guide your thinking here, but everyone has to determine what it means to be an excellent person for themselves. This is the sort of planning you should do. What is YOUR plan for being an excellent human who lives an excellent life?
So I challenge you: Right after this episode, take five minutes to reflect on your own definition of excellence. Are you pursuing external measures of success at the expense of genuine excellence? Are you over-engineering your life, rather than letting your life of excellence emerge? Do you know what kind of person you want to be and what virtues you want to guide your life? These are deep questions that require considerable reflection but they’re questions that are critical to understanding how YOU can live an excellent life.
Remember, true excellence isn't something you achieve—it's something that emerges when you focus on being excellent and experiencing life fully.
Email Craig at: livewellandflourish@pm.me
All episodes are available online at the Live Well and Flourish website: https://www.livewellandflourish.com/
