The Mindset Mastery Memo is for ambitious professionals who want to lead with clarity, composure, and confidence. Each edition offers practical tools, mindset shifts, and real-world examples to help you navigate pressure, build stronger teams, and break free from patterns that no longer serve you—so you can lead with intention, not reaction.

My ragged breathing is drowned out by the hard rock soundtrack. I’m 7th on the leaderboard, and falling fast. All around me, women and men — mostly women — are sweating and grunting, churning out ergs and spiking their heart rates at paces I’m struggling to match.

This is my first — and probably only — class at Orange Theory, a strip mall gym in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We’re all wearing identical bluetooth heart rate monitors and sitting atop identical Water Rowers that relay our stats to a bank of identical screens on the wall in front of us.

Now 8th. Now 9th. Now I’m 11th, relegated to the second column as Fancy Nan 93 overtakes me in the race for the coveted top 10.

I don’t know why I care about my ranking, but I sure do.

I grit my teeth, tense my fingers, and redouble my effort on the water rower. Faster, faster, faster, I’m doing it, back in column 1, leaving Fancy Nan 93 in the dust, closing the gap between me and NellieCat — when WHAM.

The rowing machine’s seat flies out from under me as I uncoil and I plummet unceremoniously onto the hard wooden frame, bruising my coccyx and wrenching my lower back.

My heart rate also plummets, as do my ergs, and my self-esteem. I will spend the next 6 weeks recuperating, sitting gingerly, and shaking my head at my own foolishness.

The Leaderboard Effect

I smashed my ass bones because I was bent on competing with a bunch of people I didn’t know. Because I interpreted the existence of a leaderboard as an unrefusable invitation to compete.

Orange Theory provided a literal leaderboard, but most of the leaderboards in modern life are more subtle. Social media in particular can conjure a psychical leaderboard that hovers over every aspect of our lives.

In the quest to be a good enough provider, partner, person, the easiest way to self-assess is to compare ourselves to others.

We compare ourselves to our colleagues when we consider our career trajectory. Do I deserve this promotion more than Kwesi or Pema? Have I added enough value? Burned enough (visible) midnight oil? Kissed enough C-suite ass?

We also compare ourselves to ourselves, via an arbitrary yet compelling imaginary timeline. Am I “there” yet? When will I get there? Have I fulfilled my potential? What are the Objectives and Key Results by which I can measure and judge myself, to use as carrot and stick to keep me on track?

The Function of the Leaderboard

Orange Theory has a leaderboard because it’s motivating. I’ve spent enough time straining on a rowing machine to know how boring, how aggravating, how annoying it can be after the first couple of minutes.

Rowing, after all, is a sport that involves racing against other rowers. The leaderboard at the gym is a way to recreate that incentive.

It makes us work harder. Do more. Transcend our self-imposed “comfort” limits.

Visible competition makes us stay later, ring more doorbells, and push through rejection in our quest to win the car or the set of steak knives.

The Cost of the Leaderboard

While leaderboards have their place, they also have a cost. The problems of playing for position on the leaderboard extend far beyond a bruised booty.

Most obviously, playing for position on the board can interfere with our internal motivation. Countless athletes, who mastered their sports through maniacal passion in their youth, burn out when the pressure to win eclipses the joy of playing.

When winning becomes the sole focus, we jettison playfulness, curiosity, and self-awareness. Because they’re dangerous distractions from the “climb the leaderboard ladder at all costs” game we’ve chosen.

Obsessing about our position on the leaderboard can distract us from the fact that we’re not enjoying the game itself. We may want to win because other people want to win, not because it’s something we truly care about in the soft, cuddly parts of our soul.

For a cinematic representation of this phenomenon, I refer you to Steve Frazelli (Ed Norton’s character in The Italian Job, who is the very personification of mimetic desire: wanting what others want only because others want those things).

The upshot: by optimizing our experience for the leaderboard, we sacrifice meaning, joy, and self-expression.

Career Development as Leaderboard

I’ve currently reading Tiny Experiments, by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Highly recommended.

Le Cunff writes as, and for, the Google demographic. Smart young people who jump into an insanely competitive environment, surrounded by other smart young people, and who can climb the ladder of status and money and challenge by playing by the rules. And who find themselves gasping for air in the midst of career win after career win, wheezing out the lyrics to “Is This All There Is?”

The single-minded quest for “success” can blind us to what it takes to have a worthwhile and enjoyable existence. We can run the race, always striving to be ahead of others, and never allow ourselves the recognition that the race itself is making us miserable.

Liberation from the Leaderboard

So what can we do? Is it possible to gain the benefits of good-natured competition without making the game more important than the experience?

My friend Keith Corbin offers an interesting thought experiment. Suppose everyone in your organization were paid exactly the same, whether they worked in the mail room or the C-suite. Whether they were a VA or a CFO.

In that situation, what would your ambitions be? What role would you most want?

What would motivate you to perform?

And what would you want to motivate your colleagues?

In the absence of that structure, of course, competing for raises and promotions makes sense for you as an individual.

But taking the time to reconnect with intrinsic values — being of service, solving tough problems, brainstorming new approaches, etc — can serve as a moment-by-moment counterweight to the relentless focus on the endgame.

And, I’d be willing to bet, playing the game for the game’s sake is one of the best strategies for “winning,” both in terms of experience and outcome.

And you’re much less likely to end up with a bruised ass.