Obsession
Hugh Hefner, the urbane and controversial founder of Playboy magazine, once confessed that despite his commitment to a life of sensory indulgence, there was still a drop of puritanical blood remaining in his system. He sheepishly admitted that if he could somehow bring this drop into the tip of his pinky finger, he would happily chop it off.
Had I been the interviewer, I know precisely — precisely! — what my follow-up question would have been: “For the record, Mr. Hefner, would you agree to chop off any appendage into which this drop of puritanical blood happened to drain?"
In another life, perhaps.
Hefner's confession was a quirky but representative instance of what we often observe in people of consequence: they tend to be obsessive.
Steve Jobs was famously upset with early iterations of the Apple computer because the circuit boards fell short of his design standards. Engineers were aghast as he lambasted them on the unsightliness of an interior component that was invisible to the consumer, but he refused to back down. The pursuit of technical and aesthetic perfection was his dominant drive.
When Sara Blakely was building Spanx, she was determined to fix all that was wrong with traditional hosiery. She was especially bothered by a visible back seam that became twisted throughout the day. Intent on banishing this bane of all womankind, she personally tested her prototypes under various conditions to ensure they kept their form.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Bumble, was adamant about finding the perfect shade of yellow for her logo. She looked into countless variations and consulted with color psychologists on the emotional impact of different hues. She explored every conceivable avenue to ensure the color was just right.
The irony that permeates all these examples is that purity and perfection are just figments of our imagination. Nothing in the natural world is pure because of the rich diversity of life. Trade-offs, variety, and compromise are in fact the norm. It requires enormous effort and many artificial adjustments to produce anything that purports to be ideal.
But that's what makes these individuals so inspiring. Perfection and purity, while attainable, gave them clarity of purpose and direction. They felt compelled to bring a unique and highly individualized vision to life. They insisted on resetting the standard.
In every field there are the obsessives. They are the ones who make the biggest difference, the ones we remember. Not because they achieve perfection, but because they can't help but strive to do so.