on obsession
Some people daydream about beaches. I was all about Realm of the Mad God.
It’s the most bootleg, crappy, made in Adobe Flash game you’ve probably ever seen. Yet it captivated me entirely. Nights just evaporated as I played, hunting for another one in a thousand boss drop, and the dopamine hit that came with it. I still remember the rush of one such night in 2014, connected to 4G instead of the wifi that my mum had cut, only to be caught in the act at 3am. Let’s just say the resulting conversation wasn’t fun.
This wasn’t just confined to gaming. From marathon snooker sessions to a near-scholarly pursuit of poker strategies, to studying chess openings - my then-girlfriend’s confused, disappointed look at chess puzzle number 53 said it all. She was far from impressed.
Even now, I find this mindset (optimise everything you can optimise, aim be the best, because if you’re in second place why do it at all?) permeating everything I do. If you ask my therapist, she’d probably tell you it boils down to a naive teenage Wilson being thrust into the world of do or die competitive tennis. I’d add that the escapism aspect really doesn’t help.
It’s a fine line between a healthy obsession and full-blown addiction - between indulging in a hobby because it brings joy, and using it as a shield against the real world.
It wasn’t until I started working that I encountered the other side of obsession.
From Mr Beast being a world class player of Dune: Imperium Uprising, to Peter Thiel being a chess grandmaster, to an Uber CEO ranking in the top 3 globally in Wii Tennis - the similarities were there everywhere I looked. Shaan Puri put it perfectly:
People who were very, very successful in one area, more often than not if I asked them about some random side quest hobby, they were also like world class at that thing.
Once you develop kind of this laser beam that can come out of your eyes and you hone that laser beam on your main thing, if you ever shift your focus to something else, you can just burn a laser through whatever that next thing is.
These were people who obsessed, but in a constructive way. It was the same laser focus, channeled in a meaningful way - that without intense self-awareness, could veer off course just as easily. They didn’t succeed in spite of their obsessiveness - it was because of it.
Even in my own life - it seemed like my professional successes all stemmed, in some way or other from obsession. The time I locked myself in a room for 3 months to learn to code properly. The time I obsessed over mental health, started a podcast and messaged almost every mental health founder I could get in touch with (and interviewed to an awesome few).
It’s (as Tony Robbins puts it) the ability to just immerse yourself, you know? To channel your attention to one thing, one activity, so much so that the world around you just fades out like a movie screen.
I’m still unsure about where that line of addiction and ruin lies - but I think it’s time to give myself a break. To the embrace the late nights, the sparks of flow, the crazy ideas. To put it in the most dramatic way possible to: “Find what you love and let it kill you.”
Because, in the end, what’s life without a little obsession?