Are you driven or lazy?

I’m lying in bed mid-afternoon, fighting a cold, so thought I’d write a post. November is a good time for puzzling, so I’ve been in a Jigsaw puzzle phase. Every time I dump a new box of pieces on the table, Ray says, “Uh oh”, because he knows I won’t come up for air until it’s done. Some people set up a puzzle table and let it sit there for weeks, months even! For me, that’s the equivalent of having unfinished chocolate in the house. It’s just going to haunt me until it’s done so I might as well sit down and finish it.

Ray and I recently watched the movie Nyad on Netflix, the story of Diana Nyad who swam from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64. It took her 53 hours. It’s not an enjoyable swim by any measure and she made five attempts before being successful. Admittedly, an impressive feat, but my main reaction was, “Why? Why would anyone choose to do that?” Just chill in a hot tub lady, you’re 64! You’ve earned it.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about why some people seem to have an intense drive to achieve and others don’t. Is it an inborn personality trait? Birth order? Learned values?

I’m not ambitious, or driven, or goal-directed. I don’t measure success in terms of my accomplishments, productivity, material possessions or achievements. I’ve always been more motivated by intellectual engagement, social connections, a sense of purpose, and contentment.

Case in point. I spent almost a decade at university and ended up with a masters degree specializing in ethnomethodology, an alternative social theory about the interpretive practices we use to make sense of the world. Never heard of it? Well, trust me when I say that this is not the academic path of someone who is career minded. I stayed in school because I loved the philosophical discussions, the travel and the social life. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do afterwards and rarely thought about it. After graduating, I got a job at an Intelligence agency a few years before 9/11 happened. Anyone who worked there before that date and didn’t end up in management, was actively choosing not to or was incompetent. I like to believe I was in the former category. I liked research and writing and strategizing. I wanted to do interesting work, not sit in meetings all day and be responsible for making consequential decisions.

Another contributing factor to my lack of ambition is that, from the time I was young, I’ve operated more by an inner scorecard. I had a fairly low need for external validation. That can be a good thing because it’s easier to live a life in line with your values, rather than feeling the pressure to live by other people’s expectations (but note that sociopaths also operate by an inner scorecard – I’m not a sociopath…but I’d say that even if I were).

During one period where I was an acting supervisor, we had a consultant administer personality tests to the team. It turned out I was an extreme introvert leading a team of extraverts, and I was someone who didn’t need external validation (and therefore rarely gave it), supervising a team who all needed external validation (and weren’t getting it). I was like, just do work that you’re proud of, isn’t that enough validation? Apparently not. I was supposed to give them ‘positive feedback’. As you can imagine, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that I stayed off the management track.

In my early 20s, I developed a theory, based strictly on observation, that people with a lot of drive had something to prove. They had parents with high expectations, or maybe a parent or a teacher who’d made them feel they weren’t good enough and they were – either consciously or subconsciously – trying to prove something. They had a chip on their shoulder. That’s a broad generalization, and I’m sure it’s not always true, but I think it’s a factor in a lot of cases. I grew up with unconditional love from my parents combined with relatively low expectations, so there was no need for me to prove anything. My dad was more family man than career man. He knew how to live in the moment, make people laugh, and appreciate the joys of everyday life. My mom was all about kindness and compassion, so they modelled values that didn’t have a lot to do with achievement.

Those factors, plus a naturally laid-back personality, have all combined to make me less driven. And I’m the middle child so no pressure on me to do anything really. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad trait to have, because I’ve lived my life the way I wanted to. I don’t have regrets. You don’t want to climb that ladder only to discover too late that it’s up against the wrong wall. Like everything, though, there’s a flip side. I’m unlikely to change the world in any significant way, and those same traits mean that I can be selfish (in some senses of the word) and lazy (in many senses of the word). On the other hand, many driven, high-energy, high-achievers find it hard to feel content because they’re always looking forward to the next goal. They want to achieve more, earn more, be more. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to believe that one of the keys to happiness is deciding that you have enough.

I’ve now had a nap and Ray is making me a lovely comfort food dinner of home-made soup and grilled cheese, so I’ll sign off. I feel like I should add a disclaimer that this post was written under the influence of brain fog so I reserve the right to disagree with anything I’ve written at a later date.