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Desperation is underrated motivation
A KKR executive took a big pay cut, made a commitment to his family to try something new, and joined Instacart as one of the leaders of a large team. The thought that we have to make this work became a very real motivation, one he hadn't felt before. He had felt pain and a fear of failing at KKR, but he doesn't think he had ever felt truly desperate.
With no other way out, the idea from Ryan Holiday's books applies: the only way out is through. Getting to those points is probably a good thing.
Money still mattered. Earning some early in his career made it possible to take a bigger financial risk later by leaving for Instacart.
Where does the obstacle-is-the-way idea come from?
Ryan Holiday's 2014 book The Obstacle Is the Way draws on Stoic philosophy, especially Marcus Aurelius. In his Meditations, written as private notes in the second century, the Roman emperor wrote that what stands in the way becomes the way. Holiday's book applies the idea to figures from business, sport, and politics.
Why did Cortés burn his ships?
According to the popular account, Hernán Cortés destroyed his fleet in 1519 after landing in Mexico, so that his soldiers had no way home. Historians note that he more likely ran the ships aground or dismantled them rather than burning them. The phrase 'burn the boats' comes from this account.
Does pressure always improve performance?
In 1908, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson reported experiments in which mice learned a task under different strengths of electric shock. Performance improved as the stimulus grew up to a point, then fell. The pattern, called the Yerkes-Dodson law, is often drawn as an upside-down U. The original findings also depended on task difficulty, with harder tasks peaking at lower levels.
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