You’re motivated. But are you obsessed?
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Yurui’s Summary
The secret to outlier success is obsession.
Motivation can and will waver - but obsession is long term, and compounds to reach incredible success.
It feels like waking up, and having this incessant urge to work on this one thing. Like, you literally jolt out of bed and spend hours meditating on this one thing.
Obsession will lead to intellectual isolation. It builds confidence as a result.
Obsession can be positive; because you will do anything to succeed - you live and breathe it. Negative, because if you immerse yourself in it too long, you disregard other important things in life and make it your whole meaning.
"He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the living room, and while lying in bed at night."
– divorce complaint of Richard Feynman's second wife
Obsession is a weird concept - but it trumps motivation, any day of the week.
Motivation is a catalyst for action. It’s found in a lot of places, like when people get jolts that they ought to do something. Maybe a family member or a peer/colleague at work is inspiring them to do something or other. And they think that they’re going to do something amazing.
Motivation is so important to get over the cold start problem. It’s what catalyses our desire to we start work. What gets us to stop doing the default, and transition into something magical?
But the idiosyncrasy of motivation is that once an individual gets past the cold start, motivation can waver. An individual can skip out on the days of work that they know they should be continuing on.
Especially now, in the wake of the New Year - I hear of so many people finding the motivation to pursue New Years’ Resolutions. According to some statistic I read on LinkedIn from Tony Robbins, 95% of resolutions fail in the second week of January.
How do people persevere, then? It’s all well and good to pronounce that you’re going to be starting this new venture and all, but how much do you want it?
Motivation runs out. But discipline is the epitome of perseverance through hardship.
Obsession is the secret to reaching outlier levels of success.
Zach Pogrob’s whole personal brand is around obsession: here’s a post I really like. https://www.instagram.com/p/C1AgysFgXDc/
“The key is to make work into the thing you’d rather be doing.” - Alex Hormozi.
The Power of Obsession
I think that obsession manifests at the intersection of a couple of areas - namely, one’s passion (what they genuinely enjoy doing) and one’s skillset (what they are actually able to do).
When these two intersect, an absolutely magical thing happens - the individual realises that absolutely nothing can stop them from success, and their tenacity and indefatigability is unmatched.
It feels like waking up, and having this incessant urge to work on this one thing. Like, you literally jolt out of bed and spend hours meditating on this one thing. It’s such a weird feeling but important one to have if aiming for outlier success.
Any setback, any hardship is nothing in the eyes of the individual’s obsession, and it really is a truly powerful thing to have in the palms of your hands.
I think I was obsessed with the gym for a while. Like, I spent time in the day randomly thinking about how great my workout at the gym was going to be - pushing myself past my limits, grunting at the sign of failure during a heavy set. And I got this incredible hit of dopamine before, during, and after the gym. I’ve been consistently going to the gym for maybe half a year now.
I had to force myself to take rest days - and I think that’s what obsession is.
I sent a draft of this article to one of my friends and this is what he said:
“Lel when I read the word obsession I immediately thought of u and the gym… obsession ifl is something within u that’s always there but it gets molded constantly by ur experiences and thoughts and can change in intensity and direction/what ur obsessed about… only rly gotten into flow state for maths I aint got lie LMFAOOOO Ig the real power comes when ur able to do this for things that u don’t get dopamine from doing… ig obsession transcends dopamine”
It’s funny - this friend of mine has this obsession for maths, and that’s lead him to outlier success (on the international level). I would hear stories of this guy spending hours back-to-back thinking about maths problems. And that’s what it takes. An irrational sense of obsession brings an incredible amount of success.
When this friend asked me “How do u keep urself focusex on self improvement wld u say its mainly discipline”, this was my reply (cheers SP for transcribing my voice message while I’m on holiday haha):
It’s a very simple answer.
I wouldn't say it's discipline - it's obsession. Like, I literally cannot go a day without doing these things. Like, I just found it's what gives me happiness and what I love doing is doing these things. Like, I don't have to force myself to do it. Forcing yourself is discipline, motivation is like having sudden bursts of urges to do something, but obsession is found when you pursue your curiosity - and when you pursue your curiosity, you try out a lot of things and eventually something clicks. And when something clicks and you just love doing it. I don't need to tell myself I need to go to the gym, I want to go to the gym, I think about the whole day going to the gym. I don't have to force myself.
Like you with maths, I don't have to tell you to do maths, like you want to do maths. It's sort of like you have to follow your curiosity. And sometimes if you don't have the curiosity, yeah you do have to force yourself. There are those days where I have to force myself as well. But generally, yeah, just follow your curiosity, and if you want to genuinely improve, when that desire to improve is greater than that desire to quit, you'll be there. You just have to find that desire.
Focus
Another key tenet of obsession is the idea of focus. As the late great Charlie Munger described, “the first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”
When we obsess over something and really focus in on it for an extended period of time, that obsession will inevitably pay dividends. Compounding can only exist when we focus - cutting out absolutely all other distractions and thoughts, dedicating 100% of our bandwidth to the task at hand. This means clean physical surroundings, but more importantly, a clean mind. No social media, nothing on my desk, no music unless it helps me get into a flow state.
This whole article I’ve written in one sitting. I’m just focusing in completely on it - it’s just me and my keyboard. As a result, I really hyperfocus on something and don’t get distracted. I’m almost abnormally obsessed over the task, and that will take me so much further than motivation.
Isolation
Throughout my time in high school, I absolutely obsessed over my personal development.
By pursuing obsession, you are ideologically lonely. But that is the only way to cure loneliness - to find your people. Teenage years are the hardest time to go against social pressures. The path to success is lonely.
Intellectual loneliness and isolation is a confidence builder, though. If you can persevere through this isolation and find your own version of success, you gain an insane amount of confidence in yourself - you were able to go against the grain and emerge victorious! It’s important to realise that confidence is humility, though, and you don’t let your confidence evolve into arrogance.
“The price of growth is outgrowing people. In practice, it’s nearly impossible to “grow together” as true growth requires obsession.”
— Naval
Thoughts on Finding Obsession
I don't think there's a secret formula - it's often quite serendipitous, as with most beauty in life.
You randomly come across something in your feed and hours later you come to your senses. Somehow, you've spent a whole afternoon reading about this interesting concept.
I think that giving yourself the freedom to follow your natural curiosity leads to optimising for your surface area of luck ind finding your passion, and hence obsession.
It’s so important for us to stick true to our personal principles and find success in that sense.
A Warning
I love chatting with other obsessed friends.
We discussed how obsession can either be positive or negative.
Positive, because you will do anything to succeed - you live and breathe it. Negative, because if you immerse yourself in it too long, you disregard other important things in life and make it your whole meaning.
Remember - obsession is a powerful concept to grasp. Use it wisely, and remember to chase your obsession.
Yurui
“I’m one of those guys- I’m a dark person. I come from a dark world. I changed my life- I stopped getting high, all I did was watch fights all day. That’s all I did because that’s all I wanted to be. I knew all the etiquette about fighting, everything. Anything you asked me about fighting, I could tell you.
The most successful people that ever lived in history- are megalomaniacs, but they have low self esteem. They don’t think much about themselves, but they think they’re god in another hand too.”
— Mike Tyson, Hurting is Beautiful [YouTube]
“Extreme talent requires extreme practice — training like an Olympic athlete.
Extreme success requires extreme focus — saying no to distractions and leisure.
Extreme fame requires extreme ambition — taking the spotlight and its pressure.
You can’t do what everyone else does. You can’t watch 63 hours of everyone’s favorite TV show. You can’t get two dogs that need you to be home. That’s for normal people who want a normal life. That’s not for you.
The music business is no place to be normal. The more intense, the better. Normal people will think you’re insane. But your fellow achievers will welcome you to the exclusive club.
When you are not practicing, someone somewhere is practicing. And when you meet him, he will win.
Throw yourself into this entirely. Find what you love and let it kill you.”
- Derek Sivers, You don’t get extreme results without extreme actions (Your Music and Your People) (h/t Baxter Blackwood)
