Jachiam: People Who Do Hard Things Often Have Worse Self-Control

jachiam0 · x · 2026-11-14

Investor Jachiam offers an alternative take on Misha Glouberman's observation that people who accomplish enormously hard things still fail at basic social norms around love, marriage and sex. His view: extreme outliers are not better at mastering urges and desires — they are often worse than average at self-control. They are consumed by specific drives such as ambition, excitement, rejection of the status quo, grievance or the wish for wealth, which pushes them off the beaten path, past constraints most people accept, and stops them from talking themselves out of it. It is therefore unsurprising that people with poor self-control professionally are also poor at it personally; this says little about humanity's capacity for self-control, nor does it necessarily indict social norms around love and marriage.

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