On being a fanatic

Defined in some of the English language dictionaries, a fanatic means a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics. The latter characterization is a slice of what aspect of life one can be fanatical about. To me a fanatic has been a distinction between the middle of the bell curve populace where I would fall and the outliers that have the power to shape the trend lines. But I wonder what makes someone truly fanatical about their job or profession? Is it a deep and uncompromising love of what that job entails? Is it pride? Is it trust in something that is core to their constitution? Or is it this other intangible called Faith? Is this fanaticism driven by the reward at the end (could be monetary or power enhancing or fame inducing) or the journey itself feeding into the drive. I am sure its all of the above and its very personal for every one of us. The levels of dedication we provide to a task or service are fluid but for those that are totally sold on to a particular belief they are the fanatics. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are the outstanding examples in modern times that essentially dedicated themselves to a belief to change how the world would compute and connect. Today I read an article outlining the views of a former Google executive who now heads up Yahoo in Silicon Valley talk about work life balance. Her point of view essentially is that there is no such thing as Work Burnout. She herself is described by today's lexicon as a workaholic and someone that drives herself till she is satisfied with the outcome. I would beg to differ on that point of view where she indicates that staff working for her should be able to carve out timetables to attend to their personal lives but be able and available to jump back in to the work tasks with gusto regardless of the time spent tending to their employer's demands. I think the basic concept of employer - employee is in direct contradiction to the notion of having an excessive enthusiasm to the work units that the worker could put in. Often the cliche cited is that you want to be in a work environment that you really enjoy and it does not feel like work. That is such an outlier that its meaningless. Most work performed by humans by design is repetitive and not meant to inspire. Hence the bell curve. A lot of factors go into defining the enjoyment of the work at hand largely driven by what Abraham Maslow (an American psychologist) described as a Hierarchy of Needs. It is an impressive and logical explanation of how motivation is at the top of the need pyramid and is the privilege of select few. To that I might add that there is a notion of fatigue trying to scale the pyramid (figuratively) that one can imagine missing out on the win (the last 888 ft) to be on Mt. Everest after the first gruelling 28,000 feet.