Top performer are not balanced

 Very often I hear the sentence : you have to find balance in your life.  

Balance is relative but for most of us it represents doing a little bit of everything.  It means not pulling the cover all to one side.  

I like the concept but at the same time I don't agree with it.  Being balanced everywhere is possible, but I will argue that it is not what top performers do.  If the goal is to simply go through life, being balanced will indeed be possible.  If the goal is to create a dent in the universe then being balance will be detrimental to our success. 

Think about anyone that you admire, anyone that changed the world, anyone who made a difference in the world.  Study how they lived.  Read their biography or look at a documentary about them.  You will quickly realize they were not balanced.  The cost of being a top performer in one area of their life was to be sub part in other areas of their life.  Or at lease to be unbalanced in the way they lived their life.  

Did they act that way on purpose.  I am not sure.  Did they decide to become unbalanced or was it a result of them pursuing their goal?  I am not sure.  It is hard to know what comes in first.  Is it because they spend a lot of time on their sport for example that their business life or personal life is sub part?  Or is it because they have a specific personality that is comfortable being excessively focus on a narrow area of expertise that allow them to develop their edge?  In that later case it would be a curse transformed into a gift.  Or is it?  

We tend to idealize the top performers.  For example our favorite athlete, or businessman.  But that is because we only see their success, we do not see the cost of that success.  I am not talking about the amount of time it took them to master their craft.  I am talking about the burden to live an unbalanced life in a "balanced" life world.  These top performers are usually lonely.  They have a small circle of friends and family members who accept their way of life.  They are usually forced to isolate themself because society makes fun of them for having "no social life" for "being cheep" for "not being balanced".  

Now days being balanced is used like an excuse.  It is the reason to have a piece of cake, a couple of beer, to sleep in, to call in sick, to be average!  It all starts from a good intention : too much of one thing ends up being attached to a high cost.  If you decide to be an expert at the piano all the sudden you have to say no to a lot of activities that become in the way of your goal.  You need more and more time to practice.  You cannot afford to go into a long practice not being 100% present witch starts to cost you some valuable attention that you cannot use with your friends and family, etc.  This is when usually someone will give you the speech that you need balance in your life.  They will explain to you that you will be missing out on a lot of things if you only focus on one main goal.  That is where I disagree.  

One thing for certain is that all top performers have a shelf life.  Especially in sports.  It is only for a relatively small portion of your life that you will need to only focus on one main goal.  And I will argue that the benefits that come with it will out run the cons.  All that learning experience of understanding what it takes to be at the top is only available to those who put themself in the situation where they have a chance to be the best.  In order to have a change to be the best you need to focus on only one main goal for a while.  You need to give yourself 4 to 10 years all out in one thing if you really want to know what you are capable of doing.  You need to allow yourself to be unbalanced!

Now I am not saying that it is impossible to do other stuff than your main goal.  Like raising a family or having a job.  It is just that it won't be your main focus.  It can still be important but you won't excel at it to the level you could if it was your main goal.   That is probably why there could be a strong argument to be unbalanced as early as possible in life in order to become a top performer early and then to gradually be able to bring back some balance in your life, or focus on a different goal like parenting.  

I could write about this for a long time but I believe that the goal of this article has been met : you should clarify what is the cost of being balance and make sure that you don't use it as an excuse for not seeing how far you can go if you had a healthy unbalanced life!