A friend once told me, "I wish I was less emotional and more logical." She said this because she was working as a software engineer. But when I think about the people who are truly obsessed with their work—technical or not—they're deeply emotional. Sometimes even vulnerable.
There's that famous video of Elon Musk tearing up when reminiscing about how both Tesla and SpaceX almost failed together in 2008. Or the 'dark side' you see in ultra-high performers like Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan, and Steve Jobs. They all draw on emotion as fuel.
I remember tapping into that same side when I was running. But with cold approach, I had to do the opposite and consciously keep that emotional edge in check, or else it became destructive.
Then there's the Naval and Miyamoto Musashi camp, where calmness and precision are seen as virtues even in battle.
It turns out these aren't opposing philosophies. They're two parts of the same puzzle that fit together perfectly. When there's mentally strenuous work like calculating the trajectory of rocket landings or cutting someone down with a single strike, you need to be calm. Or rather, in flow, which looks like calm from the outside. Emotions serve no purpose here and will actually pull you out of flow state or prevent you from entering it.
So where do emotions come in? Everything else. Talking to your team, assembling a robot, writing emails to customers. Paul Graham has a great essay on this called Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule. You don’t necessarily have to be managing people in this case, but any work outside the maker’s schedule might benefit from emotions.
The key distinction is between mentally strenuous and mentally taxing work. Figuring out where the bug is that crashed your entire server is mentally strenuous, being angry won't help you find it and might cloud your judgment. Trying to punch someone while avoiding their punches for 45 minutes, is mentally taxing. Both are hard, but being angry at the bug is counterproductive while being angry in the final rounds can unlock physical strength you never thought you had.
For the physical component, I think this has to do with our brains being wired to protect us from damage. We can always only exert a certain amount of strength, or go for a certain number of hours, before the body starts breaking down. The mind limits you to protect the body. The Navy SEALs call this the 40% rule.
But when emotions are at play, they serve as a way to temporarily override these limits. Our mind perceives something as a threat, and the downsides of bodily damage seem lower than the perceived damage from external factors.
This is a double-edged sword that can be harnessed, but it comes at a cost. If you follow Mike Tyson, I think he truly believed he was a demigod of some sort, and it paid off big time in his boxing career. But now he has to live in fear with this demigod he created for the rest of his life.
In Elon's case, he would wake up in cold sweats screaming, dreaming that SpaceX and Tesla would go bankrupt. We've all been stressed and woken up from nightmares. But screaming? It wasn't a life-or-death situation with a gun to his head, but in his mind it was exactly that. Do or die.
I'm starting to think this is all a matter of belief. Naval and Miyamoto Musashi believed zen was the best way to approach their work. Steve Jobs and Enzo Ferrari thought the best way to get a team to do great work was to rile them up so the team cared more. Their beliefs about what was best led them to act in ways that served their obsessions. Emotions were simply the manifestation.
Maybe the thread I'm pulling here isn't really about emotions or logic being the key factor, but about belief itself. Everything else seem like the byproduct. If you believe you're a demigod, you'll fight with the fury of a thousand suns. If you believe humanity needs saving and inspiring, you'll work 100-hour weeks for years with seemingly infinite energy.
And you'll do it the best way you know how.