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.