? Dimensions of FÆRLESS - Fearless Tribe

A good friend of mine, Michael, is an academic quantum physicist. He is optically the stereotype of a nerd: Skinny, glasses, but he is very smart, funny and extremely driven.

Although he is passionately convinced about his job and he went from strength to strength past years, he seem to hit a plateau two years ago. He didn’t have these epiphanies and breakthroughs he could rely on past years. Since he is 15 he knows being a physicist is his true calling. He started to question his talent because his colleague Konrad seem to outperform him over time. Konrad, who works next to his bureau, got so much more output although he works much less. It was really frustrating to him that it was now Konrad and not him who won all these paper awards.

The harder he tried the less he seemed to be able to improve and I noticed that he was slowly burning out. Some day he opened up about his struggle and I had to laugh a little bit because it was so obvious to me. He thought his problem was that he was not smart enough or did not have enough talent. He questioned his work ethic, although he used to think about quantum physic the whole day. He even “enjoyed” convenience food while he was working because he never took a break in order to consume more quantum physic papers.

I told him, that he maybe he should question his sleep routine, his breaks, exercise and think about his nutrition. Despite he said he would never give up working evenings and nights, he agreed that we would now meet twice a week in the gym. He had to start from zero because he never hit the gym before or did any kind of sports before and his start was extremely hard. But after a while he liked it and because of his bloody ambitious nature, he started to optimize his nutrition in order to gain more muscles faster and increase his performance.

Now, instead of working long hours, he usually works out in the evening and needs the night to recover physically. But it was not only the physical improvement, but since he had a real hobby now, he could also mentally have a break which increased his focus while working. He got back his creative juice. He started to see the future more optimistic again and could perform again at work.

And after some months he won a paper award against Konrad who had participated at the same conference. And this was just the beginning: his contributions were beginning to get more and more attention from the scientific community and he got a new job offer from one of the best institutes in Europe.