High Achievers and "Rushing Sickness"

Dan Kennedy, in his book No Rules: 21 Giant Lies About Success How to Make it Happen, discusses how all high achievers live their life fast:

If you want to insist that "haste makes waste", you'll be forced to acknowledge that achievers accept or ignore the waste and make haste anyway. In the book Profiles of Power and Success, Dr. Gene Landrum notes that the superachievers studied all were afflicted with a kind of "rushing sickness." They ate, talked, drove, even slept fast. Napoleon graduated from college in half the normal time. Walt Disney went on periods of prolonged, fast-paced working binges broken up by periods of complete collapse, and slept on the couch at his office nearly half his adult life because he resented the time wasted commuting. At age nineteen, Picasso was turning out a new painting each day. He was warned by art dealers that he would ruin the market for his work. (They were wrong).

Impatience and intolerance for anything impeding their progress characterized every supersuccessful man and woman featured in this extraordinary book, which I recommend highly. As I think about it, the most successful people I've ever worked with -- and there have been plenty of them -- have exhibited both these characteristics in great abundance.

Those who are constantly harping at you to slow down and take it easy probably do not understand what makes you tick, what gives you fulfillment, in life, or what it is necessary to succeed in the environment you operate in. While those with "the rushing sickness" do admittedly pay a price for their achievements, this is also their key to high achievement. Further, success-oriented urgency does not necessarily have to create waste or require sacrifice of quality. Most people work slower than need be.