The Cost of Success

By valo | Valo | 28 Aug 2022

Be a good boy/girl, ace your studies and you will succeed in life.

Many parents tell their children to be good boys/girls, ace their studies, and you will succeed in life. While it makes sense to an extent, it is not 100% true. What it certainly causes is burnout. You will feel miserable. You are a loser in your own eyes. You are underperforming and wasting your potential. In the end, you spend months and even years trying to recover.

The Strive for Perfection

Do not get me wrong, I am all in for getting yourself well educated. I hold a doctoral degree, and I have been teaching. I have seen bright students struggle to get every detail right. Is this worth it? Is a university a place to pass exams or a place to acquire knowledge? How valuable is it really to get the highest grade in each course?

More importantly, what is it that one gives up in order to get perfect scores? Time is a limited resource. We look at the bank account to see what we can spend and what we can save, but how often do we evaluate what is worth our time?

What is it that one gives up in order to achieve the perfect result every time?

Time management

Every day I have 24 units of time, i.e., hours. I could… sleep during half of them, then drink during the other half and then repeat. That calculation excluded writing online, so I am apparently not just sleeping and drinking.

I could sleep for 4 hours, and then I am left with 20 hours to be productive, relax, practice my hobbies, and spend time with family and friends. Sounds great! I could start the day by working out, let’s say, wake up at 5 am, 1 hour in the gym, get my home in order, then by 7 am I can sit and read the news, then maybe do some creative activity depending on what inspires me. Then I spend 9–5 at work. Back home an hour later, bringing groceries, spending time with my family all evening, taking the dog for a walk, then at 1 am I could go to bed! Sounds amazing!

(Picture: Unsplash)

The Consequences

Well… when something is too good to be true, it is too good to be true. We all know that. I have tried trading my sleep to study longer. I highly recommend against it. This becomes a vicious circle. Tiredness builds up slowly, and you get used to it. It’s the… new normal. You are tired, but that is fine, you no longer notice it. You get a bad headache. Well, it does not matter. You just have plenty to do, perfectly understandable.

Ruins Collapse

One beautiful day you collapse. Mentally and/or physically. It is a wake-up call. This is a sign that something needs to be done. Oh, but I will just get X done, and then I can take a break for a while.

Time goes on. Others notice you are not doing well. You know that you need a break. Yet you fear failure. How come you cannot pull through? Are you some kind of jelly? No, you have to go on.

You know you are a wreck. You wince every time someone mentions well-being and asks how your day was. You reply “busy” if it is a familiar person, to a stranger, you put on the pretty mask “good, thanks”.

Perfectionism turns you into a wreck. (Photo: Unsplash)

The Aftermath

Is this a life worth living? We all agree that drinking all day is bad — it is harmful but also wastes money and your life. However, is burning out yourself in the name of perfection any less harmful? Why does society encourage people to be hardworking and rewards those that accomplish amazing achievements without asking what they sacrificed for them?

Sadly, high demands for performance can be deadly! As many as 15% of the patients with major depression commit suicide! A scientific publication discusses the matter https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9457005/.