Achievers

Readers, I spent part of the weekend in Oxford, mingling with the world's future elite. People who know that Yale Med School sends backits replies later than all the others even if they've never considered applying themselves, simply because that's the idle chatter in the hallways. People with truly amazing social skills, as if they've been training for 20 of their first 25 years on how to best entertain their guests at the embassy. I'm not sure what the difference is between these people and me. I think it's that their drive is much more focused than mine. I've always been able to solve the problem right in front of me, but have never been able to summon much energy to seek out the next problem or to make sure that the next problem is a good one. These people don't have incredible consistent focus -- they may flit from scientific to philanthropic to literary ambitions, or even to temporarily slovenly unproductive ones (these must always be temporary, and probably have to be the right kind of unproductive breaks) -- but I think they've always had incredible consistent focus on achieving. Doesn't matter what they do so long as the application to the next level is in the mail, so long as there is movement forward towards something new and admirable and objectively valuable. And though it was at a dinner party, the people I've met on this and my other trips all seem happy and self-directed. They have something figured out, I think. I'm pretty good at the happy, it's the self-directed I need to work on.