Adam Sand argues persistence beats talent. Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett look for persistence when evaluating leaders to invest in. Lacking self-belief creates anxiety and an inner voice of inadequacy that can lead to burnout.
If you take the most capable person and the most persistent person and put them up against each other, the most capable person will gradually decrease in their persistence. But even if the most persistent person doesn't have the capability, they will win. When Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett are looking at like CEOs and leaders for like the companies that they buy and invest in, they look for persistence over competence. And sometimes the hard reality we face is that we don't have belief in ourselves or our business, or we don't have a reason why we're doing it. And then that translates into a physiological reaction that looks like anxiety. But what it is, is it's this creeping voice inside you that says, I'm not good enough, I don't belong here. And the reality of that could create a consequence. And sometimes if you're at a 3 out of 10 level of happiness, it's bad enough that you're not fulfilled, you're not happy, but it's not so terrible that you're willing to take a grenade and blow it up, then you will just continue. And that is where burnout comes from.
