The trick is to be selectively ambitious: to work hard on the things that you care about, where the extra effort has a good chance of accomplishing something worthwhile, and not to waste your time & energy on efforts that are relatively unimportant or ineffectual.
People can go wrong in both directions. In school, some people are overly ambitious and work too hard just to get good grades. As a result they might burn out, not enjoy themselves as much as they could, or fail to engage in activities outside of class that would be good to do. Other people are not ambitious enough and do as little work as possible just to get by in their classes. As a result they don’t learn as much as they could, they don’t engage with the material in ways that can be enjoyable and enlightening, and they might develop bad work habits which make it hard for them to be productive at tasks that they care about.
A big part of the problem is identifying your goals & priorities and figuring out what you really care about. In both of the school examples that I gave, part of the problem is that the person is focusing too narrowly on grades, which are the standard measuring stick for academic performance but are not really the point of education.
The trick is to be selectively ambitious: to work hard on the things that you care about, where the extra effort has a good chance of accomplishing something worthwhile, and not to waste your time & energy on efforts that are relatively unimportant or ineffectual.
People can go wrong in both directions. In school, some people are overly ambitious and work too hard just to get good grades. As a result they might burn out, not enjoy themselves as much as they could, or fail to engage in activities outside of class that would be good to do. Other people are not ambitious enough and do as little work as possible just to get by in their classes. As a result they don’t learn as much as they could, they don’t engage with the material in ways that can be enjoyable and enlightening, and they might develop bad work habits which make it hard for them to be productive at tasks that they care about.
A big part of the problem is identifying your goals & priorities and figuring out what you really care about. In both of the school examples that I gave, part of the problem is that the person is focusing too narrowly on grades, which are the standard measuring stick for academic performance but are not really the point of education.