The problem is IMHO that you consider achievement a terminal value and a rather exclusionary or overriding one. If there are terminal values at all, happiness or inner piece is a better one. Why achieve for the sake of achievement?

Achievement means taking actions in the real world. Inner peace is a fundamentally selfish pursuit. I could equally ask, why seek inner peace?

This is why throwing ego into what you work on can be a huge problem. It anchors you.

Anchors are good as well as bad, you know. A good ship is one that can both lift and drop the anchor, not one that doesn't have one.

Your internal/external distinction is interesting. I would say, this type of very external attitude is small-ego. For example there are tennis players who care about winning and continuous improvement towards winning and nothing else and they are very critical with themselves, "I played really crappy today" because that is how you improve. They want to actually win, not feel like a winner. And it is a small ego thing, because their eyes are on the goal and not on themselves.

See, it's interesting, because I agree with you that this behaviour is ideal, but it seems to me to be the opposite of what you claim elsewhere. These people do not have inner peace. They are not "extremely content with [themselves] as people." They are, as you say, intensely self-critical. Interestingly, they seem to be driven not so much by the desire to succeed as the desire not to lose - all the top professionals seem to talk about how physically painful it is to lose, and similar. Their focus is not on "living a happy life and generating social utility for others" it's on achievement (and in a zero-sum game, to boot).

In any sane description, these people have invested their ego in being the best at tennis. This isn't keeping your ego small, in any sane description. Now, you are right that one possible problem mode is to redefine the terms of what it means to be "the best," so as to excuse failure, but this is almost the definitional problem of the small-ego case, where you always "win" because there's no way to declare your life a failure.

We can draw up a 2*2 table:

• Invest your ego in being the best, judge by external achievements - Roger Federer
• Invest your ego in being the best, judge by internal processes - Harvard sociologist
• Don't invest your ego in being the best, judge by external achievements - Nepalese peasant
• Don't invest your ego in being the best, judge by internal processes - Jeffrey Lebowski