Thread by @eriktorenberg

Two different conversations around vulnerability & work-life harmony:

1/ Vulnerability will make you a better leader. Jobs succeeded in spite of lack of both, not b/c. Apple would be better w/ a more vulnerable & balanced Jobs.

2/ Maybe building Apple isn't so important anyway.

Clearly, if someone is depressed or burned out they're unlikely to build the next Apple.

But I wonder if we've steered so far in counter-acting the previous grind-it-out culture that we've started to pathologize ambition (e.g. Hustle Porn)

Maybe if hustle porn were "competition porn"—

But putting down ppl who work hard & celebrate it is counter productive and against our own interests, since expanding the pie carries society forward.

Competition can be misdirected hustling, but you can't expand the pie w/o work

The 40 hour work week twitter dilemma sounds silly, but is actually a very important conversation.

Sure, it’s easy to say “let people do what they want. Don’t judge.

The real question is: “yeah but what’s the default?”.

Status is the mechanism by which society tells people what to do.

So: What’s higher status? Working harder or working less? What's norm? If someone has to—b/c of our inability to handle nuance at scale—who should feel better, the ppl working 50 hrs or the ppl working 40 hrs?

Other questions where setting the default is important.

- Are differences in outcomes due to skill or luck?
- Is more technology growth (e.g productivity growth) better or not?
- Should we care more about the overall size of the pie or the distribution?

I also wonder whether we're starting to glorify opposite

Our parent's generation never talked about therapy. It was shameful to be sad, or not ambitious

We've made progress normalizing these things

Relentless ambition isn't everything—it can be at a great cost to self & others

But have we gone so far that we've not only normalized, but glorified the opposite?

Ofc, let ppl be themselves, but back to the Q—what's default?

Is it cooler today to be happy-go-lucky or tortured but deep? Ambitious or balanced? Build or protest? Self-sacrifice or self-care?

How would Steve Jobs have been pathologized / diagnosed today?

Would we have encouraged him or discouraged him?

Kobe was not for this "everyone gets a trophy culture" or work-life harmony (no friends, by his own admission). Don't get me started on Jordan.

e.g Mamba mentality

Ambition requires sacrifice.

Are we encouraging people to take sacrifice, or are we discouraging them by diagnosing, pathologizing, or ridiculing them.

Or are we telling them they can have it all, and even if they can't, everyone wins a trophy, because you're all special

Sometimes there’s the paradox that ambition might not be great for you in the short term, but good for you long-term.

Or that sometimes it might not even be good for you long-term, but great for the commons.

Most people who've overworked but achieved any success wouldn't trade.

What is the state of ambition today?

Are ppl encouraged as much as possible to "build"?

Is the next Steve Jobs focused on building Apple today?

Is the next Zuck at Harvard today gonna make the next Facebook? Is that's what's cool?

Is the celebrating of ambition under attack?

The world might be better, if, all things equal, ppl were more ambitious (constraining for sustainability)

Core to this is the idea that economic growth (ie expanding the pie) is a good thing

Less growth = less nice things (education, healthcare, etc)

https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1077643642074845184?s=20

To me, this is just another example of the great challenge of our time: reconciling meritocracy & egalitarianism

Working hard shouldn't be a threat to working less, and vice versa, but given that there is competition over which ideas to celebrate to young people, defaults matter