Why 'All In' Is No Recipe for Success

"A single-minded, relentless drive -- that's what it takes to be successful. Be "all in." Burn the boats behind us.

That message is ingrained in our society, from self-help books to Nike advertisements to social media influencers all telling us that we need to commit more and strive harder. The world continually sends the signal to narrowly define your goals and objectives and chase them with an obsessive zeal.

For much of my life, I believed in this credo. I was a phenom of an athlete, becoming the fastest high-school miler in the country my senior year, when I ran a 4:01 mile. In the midst of my ascent, writing in my high school running log, I left a comment with the typical self-dramatizing flair of a teenager: "I don't go out, I don't party, I don't live the life of a normal teen. Is this even living? Why do it? I want to be the best. I will not settle for mediocrity. I will take my body through hell, testing its limits."

Teenage Steve was certainly obsessive, and he was convinced that going all in was the key to success. He was mostly wrong.

When my progress as a runner stalled, I spent time with a renowned sports psychologist. He told me a story about a world-class runner who had become stuck while struggling to make the transition from success in high school and college to Olympic-level performance. The psychologist asked me, "Do you want to know what helped her break through?"

I leaned forward, prepared to hear what surely was the secret to making the Olympics. He looked me in the eyes and replied, "knitting."

She had taken up knitting to relax and to take her mind off running. I was too young and stubborn to heed the advice. I doubled down -- and never ran faster than my high-school record or broke a 4-minute mile.

In the years since, working as a coach with elite performers, including Olympic medalist runners, I kept noticing that their single-minded focus -- their supposed superpower -- was getting in their way. Their focus on achieving specific goals had become an obstacle, a constant, disabling signal that they were not measuring up. The relentless approach was backfiring.

Research backs this up. According to a 15-year survey of more than 5,000 would-be entrepreneurs, those who kept their day jobs, instead of focusing only on their own project, were 33% less likely to fail.

Researchers at Michigan State University looked at over 100 years of Nobel Prize-winning scientists and found that they were more likely than their less-accomplished peers to have creative interests outside of their research. The prize-winners were 22 times more likely to perform, sing or act as a hobby; 12 times more likely to pursue creative writing; and about seven times more likely to participate in a craft like sculpting, painting or glassblowing.

As for athletes, those who specialize early in one sport tend to be worse off over the long haul than their compatriots who dabbled in other activities and specialized later. A 2021 meta-analysis evaluating 6,000 athletes found that those who made it to world-class competition tended to have more multisport practice, started their primary sport later, accumulated less practice time and progressed a bit more slowly.

To be sure: The more we care, and the more our job or pursuit feels like a part of who we are, the harder we'll work. That's helpful to a certain point. Research looking at everything from getting people to vote to taking care of the environment to eating healthier tells us that when we identify closely with something, we're more likely to make sure our actions and identity align.

But such narrowing comes with a downside. As we shed other parts of ourselves, and that one activity becomes an ever bigger presence, fear starts to take over. We don't just want to succeed. We have to. We're not just playing a game -- it's our self on the line. Fear of failure rises and moves from "I failed" to "I am a failure."

Studies by Patrick Gaudeau and colleagues at the University of Ottawa found that striving with a hyper-results-oriented approach leads to less experimentation and a propensity to stick to the status quo and avoid challenges.

In sports, such striving is at the heart of choking and underperformance. Athletes with a singular identity based on their sport more often experience what's called threat-stress response. When fear of failure dominates, athletes produce more of the stress hormone cortisol and less testosterone, a mixture that nudges us toward avoidance and protection. When we feel challenged but not threatened, it's the opposite effect: more testosterone, less cortisol.

When outcomes are all that matter, and winning or losing becomes self-defining, our default response isn't to become a warrior. It's to retreat.

The secret is to go in a different direction. When the world screams to go narrow, elite performers learn to go broad.

It's a lesson that professional mountain-biker Kate Courtney had to learn.

As she told me, "My superpower is being able to grind." And it worked for a while. But after initial success, in the prime of her athletic career at the age of 25, she felt worn out, and her performance was going backward. Courtney didn't do what most athletes do in those moments: double down and work harder. She eased up.

"When you have a more well-rounded life, it doesn't take away, it doesn't distract you as an athlete," she said. "It makes you stronger and better. And able to have a clear head when you get the opportunity to line up . . . I bring who I am to the bike. But the bike does not make me who I am." Now 29, Courtney is currently ranked ninth in the world.

It's not that knitting is special, any more than the various hobbies that the Nobel-winning scientists took up. But any activities or perspectives that give complexity to our self-image help send a message to our brain that the thing in front of us is important, but it's not all that matters.

Other performers I surveyed spoke of simply putting the experience above the outcome. As one world-class runner put it, "I had to know when to throw the watch away." An entrepreneur relayed to me, "Somewhere along the way, we numb ourselves to the experience in the name of chasing metrics."

It's better, he said, to remember what the motivation was for the enterprise in the first place: "It's the feeling, the excitement, curiosity, just this energy that makes us feel alive."

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Steve Magness, an athletic coach and performance consultant, is the author of "Win the Inside Game," from which this essay is adapted, and "Do Hard Things."" [1]

1. REVIEW --- Why 'All In' Is No Recipe for Success --- In sports, business and other fields, single-minded focus is often the path to burnout and disappointment. To achieve ambitious goals, well-roundedness is a better bet. Magness, Steve.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 22 Feb 2025: C5.