I Overcorrected.
And I Think You Do Too.
I came home from walking the El Camino thinking I had finally more fully embraced something I’ve been wrestling with for years — that the journey is the whole thing, that arrival is almost beside the point, that we spend our lives chasing feelings we could be having right now if we just paid attention to the road under our feet.
Then I started reading all the feedback from some close friends and family about version four of my book, Chasing A Feeling: Move Toward What Actually Matters.
And I realized I’d been so busy arguing my case for the journey that I’d quietly minimized and neglected the importance of setting a big important goal, a destination to head toward.
More on that after some news, which relates to and reinforces my insight.
But First, What Just Happened.
AI & Tech — OpenAI’s productivity research points to fascination, not discipline. An internal study circulating this week shows that OpenAI’s most productive research teams share one trait: they describe their work as genuinely interesting, not just important. Teams chasing prestige metrics burned out faster and produced less. Fascination, it turns out, isn’t just a personal virtue — it’s an organizational performance variable.
Leadership — Diamandis doubles down on moonshots. The X Prize Foundation announced three new prize categories this week, each worth $100M+. Diamandis has spent thirty years proving the same thesis: humans achieve their most extraordinary feats not when they’re managed toward incremental progress, but when they’re aimed at something that seems almost impossible. The goal, sized correctly, changes what people believe they’re capable of.
The Workforce — “Destination anxiety” is rising Therapists are reporting a surge in clients who achieved exactly what they set out to achieve — the promotion, the exit, the finish line — and feel nothing. Or worse, feel lost. The achievement arrived. The feeling didn’t stay. I’ve been writing about this in my book for many years. It’s becoming a clinical pattern.
The Human Side — Fascination vs. passion, and why the distinction matters Bill Gurley’s new book Running Down a Dream makes a quiet but important distinction: the most successful people he studied weren’t passionate about their work. They were fascinated by it. Passion burns. Fascination sustains. When you’re genuinely curious about the problem you’re solving, the process doesn’t feel like sacrifice — it feels like the thing itself.
Now, What This Is Really About
Let’s get back to my point. I’ve been sitting with since finishing the fourth draft of my book — and I want to be straight with you about it.
I overcorrected.
Not dramatically. But enough to matter. When you’re making an argument, you naturally pull from the far end of your position to make the point land harder. You emphasize what the other side is missing. You push back on what you think is being underweighted. It’s how all of us argue — and it’s also how polarization works, even in a book about living well.
