The Myth of Balance: Why Greatness Demands Obsession

"But I don't want to go among mad people"; "Oh, you can't help that, we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."; "How do you know I'm mad?" ;"You must be, or you wouldn't have come here"

Let's cut through the bullshit about "balance" that everyone keeps preaching.

You know what I'm talking about - that seductive idea of "work-life balance," of spreading yourself evenly across different areas of life. It's the gospel of mediocrity masquerading as wisdom. And I'm here to tell you why it's completely wrong if you're aiming for greatness.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Excellence

Here's where most people will disagree with me: Balance is for those content with being average. There, I said it. If you want to be truly exceptional at anything - and I mean anything - you need to embrace imbalance. You need to be obsessed.

Remember "Whiplash"? That movie got it right. The path to greatness isn't comfortable. It isn't balanced. It's intense, it's consuming, and yes, it's fundamentally unbalanced. And you know what? That's exactly how it should be.

Why Unbalanced Is Fucking Awesome

We need to stop apologizing for obsession. Instead of preaching balance, we should be celebrating those who throw themselves completely into their passions. These are the people pushing boundaries, advancing fields, creating extraordinary things.

You need three things to be great:

- Passion that burns so hot it scares normal people

- Love so deep it looks like madness from the outside

- Obsession that makes others uncomfortable

The Engineering Example

Want to be a great engineer? Let me tell you - it's not about checking boxes and maintaining "work-life balance." It's about:

- Being obsessed with your craft

- Surrounding yourself with engineers who make you feel stupid

- Reading and understanding the best solutions and most complex fuck-ups

- Contributing to mature products that challenge you

- Solving problems elegantly and simply

Here's the thing about great engineering that most people miss: it looks deceptively simple. Any average engineer can create complex solutions for complex problems - that's easy. But the truly great ones? They achieve the impossible: they make everything so simple that you almost don't believe it's possible. Yet it is.

That's the mark of engineering excellence - when your solution is so elegant, so straightforward, that it seems obvious in hindsight. But getting there? That requires obsession, deep understanding, and the courage to strip away complexity until only the essential remains.

And here's a truth about LLMs - they're trained on average code, on average solutions. But true engineering excellence follows a power-law distribution - the best solutions are outliers, not averages. That's why no LLM will replace truly great engineers who understand this.

The Beauty of Obsession

Maybe your first obsession won't lead to greatness. That's fine. Find another mountain to climb - whether it's sports, relationships, art, business, or something entirely different. The specific field matters less than the intensity you bring to it.

The world doesn't need more balanced people. It needs more people willing to become obsessed with excellence, willing to push boundaries, willing to be unashamedly passionate about what they do.

The Final Truth

Average is for average people. And that's fine - not everyone needs to be exceptional. But if you want greatness? Embrace the imbalance. Dive deep. Get obsessed.

Because in the end, nobody changed the world by being balanced.

Don't just be good. Be fucking great. And never apologize for the obsession that gets you there.