The personality and characterization of top level, professional athletes seems to be of great interest to the general population as a whole. From press conferences, to social media, to Netflix documentaries, we’re always hungry for more on what makes them the freaks of nature that they are, how they go about their practice of greatness, and what occupies their brain power and attention. The root of why we care may vary a bit. For some, an inquiry into the possibility of repeatable behaviors of success. For others, pure unfettered fandom. Regardless, we often discover that these athletes, whose personalities are so highly sought after, are actually either very boring, a little odd, or both. I have a working theory about why this is, and the good news is that if I’m correct it should give us at least some broad actionable examples to apply to our own lives and behaviors.

The first, and not necessarily relevant, reason to us today why high-level athletes seem so prone to privacy and a reserved demeanor is actually quite obvious. Due to the nature of their career and culturally popular industry of work, they’re quite literally in a spotlight at all times. If possible, there is a camera recording their every move and documented immediately on the internet for the rest of foreseeable history. You’d be reserved too.

Nonetheless, the more pertinent reasons why these elite athletes seem to live to the beat of their own drum have much more to be harvested. For a moment, imagine we’re talking about the world’s leading research scientist in a field that you’ve never even heard of. They realized at a relatively early age that they had a gift. Then, they had to figure out where in the world that gift could be of value. Then, they had to navigate the waters of a conventional education, practice, and career path. Finally, as they began their professional career, they quickly rose to the top of the industry and are now breaking the mold. Discovering things we didn’t know existed. Finding answers to questions that no one thought to ask. Their outputs are a combination of both their natural gifts and proclivities, along with their undying work ethic. Their lane of expertise is extensive, but narrow. It takes a very long time and much funneling of focus to become an expert or elite at anything. It’s granular work. It’s hard and time consuming. They have to become an absolute nerd about their specialty. They don’t have time to watch the new season of Drama Island or stay current on the hottest new Crap album (rap and country). They’re not consumers in any sense. They eat, sleep, and poop their specialty. They’re on a mission and they have the very realistic perspective that all is fleeting. It doesn’t last forever. They’re movers and shakers. When it’s over, then they can sleep. They can do the celebrity thing. They seem quite boring and uncultured because, well, they are. Outside of their specialty, they don’t know, or care about much else. Elite athletes are no different.

The way I see it, there are only about 3-4 categories of your life that you can afford to really excel in. Things like your faith, family, education, career, and health can easily be one of those categories. If you have an exorbitant amount of resources, maybe you can have more. In 82 years, if you want any kind of return on investment for your time and effort, you have to have an elite level of dedication into whatever those 3-4 categories are. If you end up becoming elite in anything, there’s a really good chance that whatever that specialty is, will end up stealing time and effort from the other categories of your life, no matter how few or important they are. You can learn a lot from high level athletes, even if they don’t provide as much context as the pure fandom insists on. You just have to pay attention. Look at bodybuilders during their competitive careers, look at Tome Brady, look at Kobe Bryant. During their careers, they said and did very little outside of their specialties. But you can, and someone has, written a book about the value of what they did. There are many blueprints on what it takes to become elite, but there likely isn’t enough written on the price that’s required, and there definitely isn’t enough written about how those two things are the same.