In defense of being obsessed

Mozart was a nerd

Some years ago I met Gary, the reigning world champion of competitive sheep herding, and his human coach.

If that sounds confusing, here’s a video of Gary:

We had the opportunity to ask Serge van der Zweep about his dogs and his methods of training and he said something that I found surprising.

The first step to raising world champions is to start when they are puppies: you get them close to a flock of sheep and see which one of those pups is obsessed with sheep. All the others we train for something else (border collies make for great agility dogs) or just not train at all and sell to some dog lover.

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A popular notion is that you need to train 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, however, that is a myth, and even the author of the study that supposedly proves that in “nature vs nurture” the winner is nurture, wrote a rebuttal.

I think instead that empirical evidence shows clearly that the secret to becoming great at something is an obsession.

There is no doubt that to become great at something you need to practice over and over again, this is how the 10.000 hours myth begins, and sometimes genetics play a role (in basketball you need to be tall, in horse riding you need to be short).

Practice and genetics alone are not enough to explain the astonishing difference between an amateur and a professional in the same field, or between a world champion and a lesser professional.

Otherwise, any tall person could challenge LeBron James or Michael Jordan given enough time. No, there is something else, and that something else is the willingness to push through when it sucks so badly that you want to quit, to make sacrifices that normal people won’t even consider, the drive to be the best and beat all your challengers.

Max Verstappen is arguably the best F1 driver alive and someone who spends an incredible amount of time playing video games. Which video games do you ask? Of course racing games, he just drove a 3-hour nightshift of sim-racing right after winning pole position at Imola.

He is not alone, Alessandro Nesta (one of the best defensive players on the Italian National team) famously strained his left thumb tendon for playing too much football on his PlayStation.

If they were not famous sports players we would call them nerds, wouldn’t we?

And yet, their being nerds is exactly what makes them great. They are so obsessed with their sport that their brain just can’t switch off.

Obsession is the best sign of true passion

It is very common in my job to have conversations with many people about what they want to do next in their job or life.

Oftentimes people try to answer the question rationally, they look at what other people are doing or what is the best way to make more money.

That is a possible way to answer the question but not, in my opinion, the way to have a successful and fulfilling career.

What I look for instead is: what kind of boring work do you naturally gravitate toward? For example, if your manager is away, do you naturally make sure that your team is still working fine? Or do you focus on something else?

I could give you a lot of explanations of why I ended up in the job I do, but you will understand better why I am in management just by playing an escape room with me and observing how I will get the team in line to try to beat the best time.

We should remove the stigma from being obsessed and take back the power of being a nerd