Why High Performance Culture Must Be Stopped

Because there is a fine line between Jake Humphrey and Andrew Tate.

Photo by Nghia Le on Unsplash

The British TV presenter Jake Humphrey recently said that he wanted what he calls ‘high-performance culture’ taught weekly in schools. He has a successful podcast that focuses on a sort of turbo-Thatcherite devotion to barmy individualism and extreme productivity . His guests are almost always men - and almost always humourless bores.

There is a tedious self-importance to the advocates of high-performance; an uptight seriousness that lacks charm and imagination; an obsession with dreary notions like ‘consistency’ and ‘process’ that represent the antithesis of almost everything that ever generates fun, joy or beauty.

More pertinently, it almost always sends its advocates fucking mental. I should know because I have flirted with it myself.

At the start of 2016 I was newly sober and I decided I wanted to lose two stone and pay off all my debts by June.

Relatively quickly, I was burning calories and making money like a lunatic and, by April, I had achieved both my goals way ahead of schedule.

Was I happy? Well, yes, I’m afraid to tell you that I was. At least briefly. I was sober, slim and minted. I’m not going to tell you that those things don’t feel great, especially when you first experience them.

I can tell you how I made it all happen so quickly. But, more importantly, I can explain why I came to regret everything about those mental few months.

The previous few years of my life had seen me give up exercise and financial prudence in favour of daytime drinking and cocaine use. As a result, I was fat and skint.

But sobriety had provided me with a surfeit of energy that, back then, I didn’t quite know how to channel. So I put it all into becoming an extreme high performer (also known as a self-absorbed prick).

Having recently watched ‘Limitless’ with Bradley Cooper (a film about a slob who takes a magic pill that turns him into an über-productive superman) I envisaged a New Sam, who could achieve any goal he set himself, no matter how extreme or outlandish.

So I started getting up at 5am to run by the river or train at the gym. I bought a Nutri Bullet and took to making myself putrid green juices for breakfast. I started hosting a daily radio show while simultaneously running my own production company.

Yes, I was smashing my goals. But I was also insane. I was wild-eyed and jumpy. I was always amped up and, I think, pretty difficult to be around. I thought I was looking after myself because I looked healthier. But I had taken things to dangerous extremes and I was completely unable to relax.

As a result, my moods fluctuated wildly; I lost my temper with people at work regularly in ways that surprised even me. I made rash decisions that weren’t really aligned with my core values. Which is another way of saying that I acted like a bit of a cunt at times.

I sacked people on a whim. I shouted when I didn’t get things done the way I wanted. And when I was at home, I was always exhausted, grumpy and uncommunicative with my family. My wife had put up with the previous few years of inebriation. Now she must have felt like she was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I had become enchanted by high performance culture: the sort of psychopathic thinking that drives you to physical and mental extremes on the premise that any lesser goals represent failure. High performance culture pre-supposes that it is impossible to be happy or comfortable with yourself unless you are constantly pursuing some objective form of excellence in everything you do.

I burned out completely when I tried to live that way. I alienated people who I loved and who loved me. I lost a few friendships. And, deep down, I wound up disliking myself. Not quite as much as I had disliked myself when I was drinking - but not far off.

I had effectively replaced one set of manic addictions with another. The motivations were the same: I didn’t feel as if I was enough. I needed outside validation. I wanted something to fill a void inside. But I was looking in the wrong places.

I didn’t really want to be like Bradley Cooper’s character in Limitless. He was, on reflection, a complete psychopath and a bit of a prick. Not much different from Patrick Bateman in American Psycho - or the wanker’s wanker, Andrew Tate. They’re all lunatics with probable daddy issues who want to prove to everyone, especially themselves, that they are better than everyone else.

I’m not trying to go all hippy on you here. I’m just saying that when we work together, accept each other’s flaws, live with our own imperfections and try to empathise with others, we deliver great things. When we are locked in a constant state of competitiveness with ourselves and others, we generate a lot of anger and toxicity.

The Beatles were not big into high performance culture when they made Sgt Pepper. Picasso was not up at 5am on the green juice during his rose period. Aneurin Bevan was not skipping lunch or keeping an ambition journal when he founded the NHS.

Beautiful things happen often when people are just at ease with themselves. Being comfortable in your own skin is what matters. I was never comfortable in my own skin when I was drinking or when I was in high performance mode.

It was only when I stopped back from all of that, reflected carefully on who I really wanted to be, what my values were and where all my low self-esteem was rooted, that I became a more balanced, happier person.

Now I exercise, I work, I earn and I play. But I am measured in everything I do. Crucially, I am not doing any of that stuff in order to create a false impression of success to myself or others. I do it in order to allow me to focus on the things that I really love: spending time with my family, being creative, having fun and relaxing in my own small (often peculiar) ways.

I’m inclined to think that anyone who is immersing themselves in a life of constant distraction - whether that be drugs, drink, exercise, business or fucking crypto trading - is not entirely comfortable in their own skin.

Men are competitive by nature and often seem unable to assess their own value unless it is in comparison to their peers. It’s a shame because that sort of individualistic, sharp-elbowed, one upmaniship is pretty toxic.

The thinking is a form of social-Darwinism. It’s inherently individualistic and ultimately opposed to the sort of connectedness, love and understanding that brings about most of the human race’s best achievements.

Rather than teach high performance in schools, we should maybe be teaching balance: the art of calibrating life, work, play, rest, study and whatever else floats your boat, in such a way that you might be able to one day attain contentment.

Aiming for more than contentment is a dangerous game. Because there’s a very fine line between Jake Humphrey and Andrew Tate.

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Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

https://www.thecalmzone.net

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@CharitySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/gambling-addiction/