In my Openness book, I argue that we should allow each other the freedom to choose intensity over work-life balance. David Brooks is sometimes thought-provoking and eloquent, for instance in the passages quoted below where he defends intensity.
One question that Brooks discusses elsewhere in his essay is: how do you find your “passion,” your “misery,” your “vocation”? He tries but after reading his answers, I think the mystery mostly remains. The best answer to this question that I have found is in a book by John Chisholm called Unleash Your Inner Company. Chishom suggests that you should apply yourself to something worth doing, and work to do it better. If you do that, he suggests, you are likely to eventually find you increasingly care about what you are doing.
(p. 9) My own chosen form of misery is writing. Of course, this is now how I make a living, so I’m earning extrinsic rewards by writing. But I wrote before money was involved, and I’m sure I’ll write after, and the money itself isn’t sufficient motivation.
Every morning, seven days a week, I wake up and trudge immediately to my office and churn out my 1,200 words — the same daily routine for over 40 years. I don’t enjoy writing. It’s hard and anxiety-filled most of the time. Just figuring out the right structure for a piece is incredibly difficult and gets no easier with experience.
I don’t like to write but I want to write. Getting up and trudging into that office is just what I do. It’s the daily activity that gives structure and meaning to life. I don’t enjoy it, but I care about it.
We sometimes think humans operate by a hedonic or utilitarian logic. We seek out pleasure and avoid pain. We seek activities with low costs and high rewards. Effort is hard, so we try to reduce the amount of effort we have to put into things — including, often enough, the effort of thinking things through.
And I think we do operate by that kind of logic a lot of the time — just not when it comes to the most important things in our lives. When it comes to the things we really care about — vocation, family, identity, whatever gives our lives purpose — we are operating by a different logic, which is the logic of passionate desire and often painful effort.
. . .
. . . I have found that paradoxically life goes more smoothly when you take on difficulties rather than try to avoid them. People are more tranquil when they are heading somewhere, when they have brought their lives to a point, going in one direction toward an important goal. Humans were made to go on quests, and amid quests more stress often leads to more satisfaction, at least until you get to the highest levels. The psychologist Carol Dweck once wrote: “Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means that you care about something.”
All this toil is not really about a marathon or a newspaper article or a well-stocked shelf at the grocery store. It’s about slowly molding yourself into the strong person you want to be. It’s to expand yourself through challenge, steel yourself through discipline and grow in understanding, capacity and grace. The greatest achievement is the person you become via the ardor of the journey.
. . .
So, sure, on a shallow level we lead our lives on the axis of pleasure and pain. But at the deeper level, we live on the axis between intensity and drift. Evolution or God or both have instilled in us a primal urge to explore, build and improve. But life is at its highest when passion takes us far beyond what evolution requires, when we’re committed to something beyond any utilitarian logic.
For the full commentary see:
David Brooks. “A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible.” The New York Times, SundayOpinion Section (Sun., March 30, 2025): 9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 27, 2025, and has the same title as the print version. The first couple of paragraphs quoted above appear in the longer online version, but not in the shorter print version, of the commentary. In the third quoted paragraph, the words “like” and “want” are italicized.)
My book mentioned in my initial comments is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
The book by Chisholm that I praise in my initial comments is:
Chisholm, John. Unleash Your Inner Company: Use Passion and Perseverance to Build Your Ideal Business. Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2015.
