Desire Fueled By Overconfidence

Most of the work I do is with highly ambitious people who summon abundant drive and energy, and, yet, end every day with an often expanding to-do list. It's a consequence of wanting more than we have, combined with the perception that if I don't do it today, I can do it tomorrow.

I often tell the story of my driving in Los Angeles during the "greed is good; I want it all" era of the early tech boom. It was not coincidentally the early boom of recreational use of cocaine as a productivity booster among ambitious hard chargers. 'I want it all" was a common bumper sticker.

One day though, I saw a bumper sticker that read, "All I want is a little more than I have."

Ahh. an example for our time of John Bunyan's "primrose path to perdition."

What's hard to understand is how much of our behavior, even what we think of as our measured and deliberate behavior, is driven by deep reflexive responses. The more we learn about these, the harder it is to believe in free will. At this point, I agree with the assessment of Isaac Bashevis Singer, "I believe in free will. What choice do I have?" 

Our dominant drivers are fear and greed. What's profound is these responses seem essential to living things. Even one-celled organisms move away from unfavorable conditions and toward favorable ones: the precursors of fear and greed. Watch for the tells of fear and greed in your own behavior.

Our metacognition, which allows us to predict, observe, and remember our own responses -- the deliberate practice of this I call anticipation, activation, and reflection -- also allows us to make choices -- even to the point of making choices that may be against our best interest in the service of what we perceive as a greater good. Free will?

Now, we have the wild card of hubris. Hubris is a sense we have been granted special powers, either in the moment or as part of our make up, that protects us from the consequences of our fear and greed. This is different from Peter Rabbit's lucky escape. It's a sense we're beyond the consequences so that we ignore the threat in order to risk destruction for an opportunity.

As a very definition of hubris: Prometheus stole fire from the gods. What was he not thinking? 

At the same time, now we have fire. Bad for him. Good for us. 

Most of life requires keeping fear and greed in balance. The ambitious, driven, energetic people accomplishing much while feeling that they are falling short, have a slightly modified relationship with fear, greed, and hubris. They manifest desire fueled by overconfidence. Metacognition kicks in to hold off self destruction. Metacognition keeps hubris on a tight leash. The side effect is the holding off of satisfaction. 

Desire fueled by overconfidence. It looks like an exercise of virtue. 

Almost.

Warm regards,
Francis Sopper