I was reading Outside magazine’s interview with Tim Ferriss this morning. They briefly discuss the relationship between achievement and appreciation:
Don’t we also need to just be OK taking our time with some things, like parenting?
Where people get lost is in applying efficiency and efficacy to something that should be appreciated. To feel successful in a given field, you have to have achievement and appreciation. With parenting, a lot of the value and joy comes from savoring the moment as opposed to minimizing the time investment. So could it be applied? Yes. Should it be applied? That’s a separate question.
This is great! At times when I aim for maximum efficiency in a discipline (physical fitness, language, music), I do not gain the appreciation it takes to really stick it out and commit to the work. On the other hand, in the past decade I have spent over 10,000 hours practicing drumming, and as Tim Ferriss put it, I now “feel successful” in this field.
I am wondering how this might apply to CrossFit athletes. Perhaps the efficiency of the CrossFit program might actually skip “a lot of the value and joy” that “comes from savoring the moment,” even if it does accelerate their rate of progress athletically. Thoughts?