The Wharton-educated bank executive quits weekend bird-watching excursions after missing a prothonotary warbler (rare orange and yellow-headed songbird) sighting. The tenured physics professor storms out of the kitchen because her batch of gazpacho soup turned out a tad too peppery.\u00a0First-world problems, to be sure. But they\u2019re also the type of increasingly common complaints hyper-accomplished professionals make when their hobbies and passion projects don\u2019t result in the level of quality and polish they\u2019re accustomed to in the work world.<\/p>\n
Many high-achievers find these \u201cshortcomings\u201d tough to stomach because they\u2019ve seamlessly risen to the top strata of American professional society. Yet when it comes to weekend and evening hobbies, they\u2019re sometimes less than perfect. And that\u2019s ok\u2014or at least it should be.<\/p>\n
High achievers need not give up on or decline to pursue hobbies just because they won\u2019t be great at them. They ought to get over it and enjoy themselves.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing new about highly successful people in one area tending to think they\u2019ll be good at everything else they try.<\/p>\n
Author Stephen Brill explores this theme in his perceptive, if dourly-titled 2018 book, Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America\u2019s Fifty-Year Fall\u2014and Those Fighting to Reverse It<\/em><\/a>. The \u201cwinners\u201d in modern American society, Brill writes, feel their achievements have made them immune to failure, in any realm.<\/p>\n Over the last half-century or so, Brill says, meritocrats \u201cwere able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the government that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t