Recommended Readings

1. The Ambition Explosion

David Brooks in The New York Times (6 min)

Summary

Brooks takes on the topic of ambition in capitalism and addresses the costs it is imposing in China which is witnessing an explosion of both ambition and Capitalism.

Selection

“The real contradiction of capitalism is that it arouses enormous ambition, but it doesn’t help you define where you should focus it. It doesn’t define an end to which you should devote your life. It nurtures the illusion that career and economic success can lead to fulfillment, which is the central illusion of our time.

“To survive, capitalism needs to be embedded in a moral culture that sits in tension with it, and provides a scale of values based on moral and not monetary grounds. Capitalism, though, is voracious. The personal ambition it arouses is always threatening to blot out the counterculture it requires.”

2. Relationships are more important than ambition

The Atlantic (9 min)

Summary

Survey of the sociological research on the connection between ambition and happiness. Spoiler alert: the correlation between the two isn’t that strong.

Selection

“Using longitudinal data from the nine-decade-long Terman life-cycle study, which has followed the lives and career outcomes of a group of gifted children since 1922, researchers Timothy A. Judge of Notre Dame and John D. Kammeyer-Mueller of the University of Florida analyzed the characteristics of the most ambitious among them. How did their lives turn out?

“The causes of ambition were clear, as were its career consequences. The researchers found that the children who were the most conscientious (organized, disciplined, and goal-seeking), extroverted, and from a strong socioeconomic background were also the most ambitious. The ambitious members of the sample went on to become more educated and at more prestigious institutions than the less ambitious. They also made more money in the long run and secured more high-status jobs.

“But when it came to well-being, the findings were mixed. Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller found that ambition is only weakly connected with well-being and negatively associated with longevity.

“There really wasn’t a big impact from ambition to how satisfied people were with their lives,”Kammeyer-Mueller, a business school professor, told me.”

Read the article here

3. What I Learned About Life at My 30th College Reunion

The Atlantic (8 min)

Summary

A Harvard grad from the class of 1988 reflects on what she learned in the years after she graduated.

Selection

“Though we all went to the same school, and Harvard’s name likely opened doors for many of us, at the end of the day—or at the end of 30 years since graduation, in this case—what was so fascinating about meeting up with my own richly diverse class during reunion was that no matter our original background, no matter our current income or skin color or struggles or religion or health or career path or family structure, the common threads running through our lives had less to do with Harvard and more with the pressing issues of being human.

“Life does this. To everyone. No matter if or where they go to college. At a certain point midway on the timeline of one’s finite existence, the differences between people that stood out in youth take a backseat to similarities, with that mother of all universal themes—a sudden coming to grips with mortality—being the most salient. Not that this is an exhaustive list, but here are 30 simple shared truths I discovered at my 30th reunion of Harvard’s class of 1988.”

4. Are You Successful? If So, You’ve Already Won the Lottery

New York Times (7 min)

Summary

Charlie Munger once said of success, “The safest way to get what you want is to try and deserve what you want.” We like to think that ambition and hard work is all it takes to be successful. We underestimate the role of luck. But like Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, this short article reminds us that success is often determined simply by circumstance.

Selection

“Consider the history of the Mona Lisa, perhaps the most famous painting in the world. After having languished in obscurity for most of its early existence, Leonardo da Vinci’s work was pushed into the spotlight in 1911 when it was stolen from the Louvre.

“The widely publicized theft remained unsolved for two years until Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian maintenance worker at the Louvre, was apprehended after trying to sell the painting to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. His arrest provoked a second wave of publicity, with images of the Mona Lisa splashed around the world.

“In the years since, the painting has come to represent Western culture itself. Yet had it never been stolen, most of us would know no more about it than we do of the two obscure Leonardo da Vinci canvases from the same period that hang in an adjacent gallery at the Louvre. Like Kim Kardashian, apparently, the Mona Lisa is famous largely for being famous.”

5. Not Throwing Away My Shot

The Gathering Blog (5 min)

Summary

I couldn’t do an issue on ambition without something related to Hamilton. The author, Fred Smith, after seeing the musical Hamilton, shares a touching picture of his father’s ambition to make it to New York City.

Selection

“Alexander Hamilton represents for all of us “the relentless ambition of the outsider…who thinks he can remake himself and his country.” David is right. It is a play about ambition performed in the heart of the city driven by ambition. Unlike Portland, where people joke about its being “a place young people come to retire,” no one moves to New York unless they are looking for a place to rise up. As the old tune goes, “If you can make it there you can make it anywhere.”

Postscript

I have four children under age ten. One of them is six months old. I am also a year into the journey of starting new businesses. And I write The Weekend Reader on the weekends.

In other words, I am tired most of the time.

According to my mom this week, all my life I’ve taken on as much as I could possibly handle, and sometimes a little bit more. I don’t know why, exactly. Part of the reason is that being busy makes me feel good. Doing a lot of hard things all at once feels kind of like a game and it’s fun to win games. It’s fun to be totally engrossed in a challenge that requires all of you. If you’ve ever read Csikszentmihalyi’s classic book, Flow, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t read it, you should.

It’s about more than just “fun” though. Because sometimes working hard isn’t all that fun. Sometimes it’s about fear. I work hard because I’m afraid of failing, afraid of embarrassing myself, afraid of losing control. Sometimes it’s about earning enough money to live the kind of lifestyle I subconsciously think will make me happy.

Ambition has been both a positive force and a negative force in my life. It has been positive in helping me do things I’m proud of: writing a book, starting a business, writing this newsletter, succeeding at some things others thought couldn’t be done.

It has been a negative force when it has led me to invest less in friendships, when I’ve called my sister and parents less frequently than I should, when I’m distracted at my kids’ soccer game by checking my email.

My community group at church is reading Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, a terrific read whether you are single or married. He argues that many people get married with the goal of achieving their own fulfillment. The problem is when both spouses are looking at marriage as meeting their own needs, they are ultimately selfish. It is only when a spouse decides to prioritize the happiness of their mate that they achieve their own happiness. Tim writes that the intent of marriage is to teach us how to serve each other. He says that traditional marriage views emphasize sacrifice and modern views on marriage emphasize personal fulfillment but that they are both only half the picture. “The Christian teaching [on marriage] does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice.”

In my own life, I’ve felt “flow” most poignantly not just when I was caught up in an ambitious challenge, but when the object of my ambition was in some way related to serving others. So if I want to be happy, how do I direct my ambition toward the happiness of others in my life and my city? That’s what’s on my mind this Sunday.

Read widely. Read wisely.
– Max

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