Ambitious people always strive for more, they are never satisfied
Once Apple was the giant it was, Steve Jobs didn’t want to let the company coast, but instead kept pushing.
Elon starts a new project every couple years even though he is too busy.
Why? Because they are ambitious. There is some deeper goal, that is unachievable—and they are after that.
I really enjoyed hearing Elon’s response to what he believes the meaning of life is.
In the book, the answer 42 comes up as the result for the meaning of life. Musk said that we shouldn’t ask what’s the meaning of life, the universe is the answer, but what is in fact the question. “The real problem is trying to formulate the question,” Musk said.“To understand (the meaning of life), we should expand consciousness and ask better questions.”
You can be relatively ambitious or absolutely ambitious
Relatively ambitious people want to aim high compared to those around them. For example, being the first person to go to university in the family, or trying to work at a quant firm as a computer science undergraduate.
Absolutely ambitious people compare themselves with their role models. They want “world domination”. Obviously they play the small games when necessary, but their devotion to this cause seems either manic or noble.
I believe crossing from relative ambition to absolute ambition has a lot to do with beating life’s bottlenecks
Defining ambition
When thinking about goals and one’s future, it is common to think about what you care about:
- Impact
- Power
- Money
- Glory We then go on to prioritize each one. After talking to Dhvani, I realized this tends to be a sign of relative ambition.
In absolute ambition, the aim is for the very top of any one of these values.
For example, you could get generational wealth through buying and running Dairy Queens across the country, but there are not many avenues to become the richest person in the world. This would be relative ambition.
It turns out that if you are absolutely ambitious, and serious about it, then it means you will definitely achieve all of the above values, if you achieve just one. If you become one of the most powerful people in the world, surely you will have lots of impact, money, and glory to go with it. Vice versa for any value. It isn’t pareto.
Caveat
This is assuming infinite life. Many impactful innovations were made, in which their champion died too early to bathe in money, power, or glory.