Jordan Peterson on the Price of an Exceptional Career
Peterson is an effective classroom lecturer. Here, he offers his students good advice.
In 1963, at the age of 21, I adopted the lifestyle of the exceptional performer. I decided that I would literally reconstruct the field of economic theory in terms of the Bible. Nobody had done this before. I did not think I would get much support from the Christian community. I was sure I would get no support from the academic economic community. I knew that this would be a one-man project. I also knew that it would probably take me all of my life. I was correct. I really did not finish it until January of this year.
By the time I was 23, this lifestyle had taken over my mind. That was when I started researching Marx's Religion of Revolution. I did not have to write it. I did not do it for career advancement in academia. I was internally driven to write it. It was part of my overall life's plan. I wanted to make the case against Marxist communism: philosophically, historically, and economically.
So it was graduate schools and writing for me. I had to put in long days. I did not marry. I really never dated. I did not have relaxation except on Sundays. I put in 12-hour days on a regular basis. This is not normal behavior.
I knew that I had to perform on an exceptional basis in order to get a hearing within the academic community. In fact, I had no expectation of gaining such a reputation. I thought that I might gain it inside the conservative community and the evangelical Protestant community. But these communities are not noted for careful reading of scholarly materials. So, I had to learn how to write on a popular level. I began doing that in the mid-1960's.
By the time I married at age 30, I had adopted the lifestyle of the dedicated scholar.
I adopted the lifestyle that Peterson describes: no close friends, no hobbies, no group relationships outside of weekly church meetings. I did interact with my children, but not as often as I should have. I was not an absentee father, but I was a part-time father during the week.
Peterson does not recommend this. He is correct. His career reflects the lifestyle he does not recommend. He became internationally famous because of his lectures. He spent at least 25,000 hours in actual clinical practice. He became an academic and got tenure at a major Canadian university.
Then, without warning, his life spiraled out of control. He did not have the emotional reserves to deal with what he believed was his wife's terminal cancer. (She later recovered.) He became dependent on a drug. He had to go through an intense withdrawal program in Russia. He still conducts online interviews. He still has a wide following. But he is not the man that he was in 2018.
He does not discuss the vast majority of the tiny minority of men who adopt this lifestyle, yet who never attain exceptional status. They do not become famous. They do not get rich. They do not attract large followings of disciples.
He made the point that women figure out that this lifestyle is self-destructive if they ever adopt it in the first place. By the time they are 30, they stop pursuing exceptional careers. They see that the price is too high. Men are much less likely to recognize this.
I do not regret that I did not, but the only reason that I was successful was that my wife was patient with this lifestyle. Her father had adopted an equally intense academic lifestyle, and she had grown up in this kind of an environment. She was familiar with it. She could tolerate it. She was intensely committed to our children. She provided an excellent family environment. She also was an excellent accountant. When I launched my business, she kept track of the money to the penny. The same was true of the Institute for Christian Economics in the early days. If she had not been willing and able to do this, you probably would never have heard of me.
I recommend pursuing mastery. I do not recommend pursuing virtuosity. Somewhere in between mastery and virtuosity is exceptionality.
If you pursue mastery, you can become a leader. Then doors will open. Go through each of those doors to the next level of mastery. But do not try to knock down doors. Let somebody on the other side of the door open it for you, and invite you in. I spent too many years banging on doors that never opened. I even tried to knock down a few of them. That was a career mistake.