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The Pyrrhic Victory
How to avoid being miserable
Beware the trap of being really smart yet spending most of that brain power on criticizing other people's work instead of creating your own.
High intelligence with low agency is the pipeline to unexplainable anxiety.
You can't solve a courage problem with more intelligence.
Success isn’t really success if it looks good to the world but feels bad to you.
To me, true success is being able to live your life the way you want to live it.
Writer Zach Pogrob on curating your circle:
"Surround yourself with relentless humans. People who plan in decades, but live in moments. Train like savages, but create like artists. Obsess in work, relax in life. People who know this is finite, and choose to play infinite games. Find people scaling mountains. Climb together."
“First, I was dying to finish high school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start working. Then I was dying to marry and have children. Then I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school so I could return to work. Then I was dying to retire. Now I am dying... and suddenly I realize I forgot to live.”
— Anonymous
Avoid The Pyrrhic Victory
“All I want to know is where I will die so I’ll never go there.” - Investor Charlie Munger
In 279 BC, a Greek king named Pyrrhus of Epirus went to war against Rome. By every measurable standard, he won. His army defeated the Romans on the battlefield not once but twice, and the Roman casualties were staggering.
His generals celebrated. His soldiers cheered. But when someone congratulated Pyrrhus on his great victory, he reportedly looked out over the wreckage of his own army and said, "One more victory like this and we are utterly undone." He had lost so many of his own men winning those two battles that he could not afford to fight another one. He won every fight but lost the war.
A Pyrrhic victory is what happens when the cost of winning exceeds the value of what you won. And it happens in real life more than most people realize. As author Edward Abbey once wrote, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Not all motion is actually progress.
Think of the investment banker who made partner at 40, bought the house, earned the title, but came home one night to a note on the kitchen counter from his wife saying she couldn't do it anymore.
Or the entrepreneur who built a company worth tens of millions but spent so many years skipping meals, skipping sleep, and skipping the gym that she barely recognized herself in the mirror when she finally sold it.
Or the academic who dedicated thirty years to her research, published papers that changed her field, but raised kids who felt like they grew up with a stranger.
These people hit their targets. They just didn't realize what they were sacrificing along the way.
This is why goals without boundaries are not just incomplete, they're dangerous.
There's a framework worth borrowing from entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson called the "Anti-Goal." Instead of only defining what you want, you define what you're not willing to sacrifice to get there.
When you imagine yourself at 80 looking back, what is the thing you would be most devastated to have neglected?
What is something you have already sacrificed that you wish you had not?
Think of someone whose success you admire but whose life you would not want. What specifically would you not want about it?
What are the non-negotiables in your life, the things you would be unwilling to sacrifice no matter how good the opportunity looks?
If you achieved everything on your North Star list but felt miserable, what would most likely be the reason?
For me, my North Star has always been pretty simple: a fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love, meaningful work, and enough wealth not to worry about it.
For the last 5 years I've been chasing the wealth and learning parts of that list, working to build skills and make money. But I've never been willing to sacrifice my fitness, my peace, or my relationships with my family and friends to get there.
That said, I don't think balance means giving everything equal attention all the time. There are seasons where certain things have to take a back seat. That's just the reality of pursuing anything worthwhile.
But I don't believe in going ghost mode and cutting off everyone you care about in the name of grinding. I don't think an all-or-nothing mindset makes sense. You can go hard on your goals without abandoning the people and things that actually make your life worth living.
Your goals tell you where you want to go. But you also need “Anti-Goals”, a clear picture of where you refuse to end up. The tension between the two is what helps you filter decisions. Because what's the point of getting everything you want if you destroy everything you need along the way?
Pro Tip: You can apply this same mental model to anything new that you're doing:
First, write out what you want.
Then, write out what you don't want.
It sounds so trite, but it works profound wonders.
Here's the simple list I wrote before I started college:
And then when I realized that I could increase the likelihood that I get what I wanted without being in college, I dropped out… but that's a story for another day.
Until next week,
Jay “Win The War, Not Just The Battle” Yang
Author of You Can Just Do Things
Ps. This is cool
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