Achievement Unlocked

What Happens when you've reached your goals?

I was reading my news feed, which includes anything related to Formula one and I saw that the newly crowned F1 Champion, Nico Rosberg was retiring at 31.  Aside from any jealousy, I was more concerned with how anyone was shocked by this decision and announcement.


A career spanning eighteen years and Nico's goal was to become F1 Champion.  Well congratulations to him, he made it.  But he made it after a long and difficult struggle to get recognised by a major team and have the reliability behind him to win races and remain in the drivers championship.  Not to take anything away from Nico but his success (in what was his final year) was largely due a stellar reliability run compared to others on the track).  Nico is probably all too aware that the likeliness of him retaining his title in the next season is slim and would he prefer to go out on a high or just go through the motions and increase his stats of races won and pole positions taken.  I for one am not surprised at all and I envy the situation he is in for setting goals and achieving them.

Bored with that

I make loose comparisons between this and some of the games that I play on Xbox.  After finishing the game and unlocking all of the achievements, there is very little incentive for me to continue with the game.  While I could continue to compete against other players online and try and increase my rank, ultimately I know there's plenty of other games I could be playing, or other activities I want to pursue, so no matter what enjoyment I got out of the game originally, some of it is lost upon completion.

Resigning from your job

The other comparison that I draw from this is the fact that Nico has effectively resigned from his job with nothing else to go to.  In my current company, we have seen two senior members of staff do just that in the past week.  In their own words, they have simply had enough.  This is effectively retiring from IT.  That doesn't mean they won't still work, but they have given up their foothold in the industry to try something new.  I understand where they are coming from, because it has crossed my mind as well.  That's not to say I've had enough of software development/engineering, more so that I've had enough of the department we work in.  It has ruined the enjoyment factor for me to the point that I'd rather be doing something else with my time.  This leads me to question the other reason for Nico Rosberg retiring from F1.  Has the politics of the sport gotten so bad that he feels it's not actually racing anymore?  If this is the case, the accolade of F1 Champion must feel pretty empty.