Chasing money might be dumb but chasing excellence in your own personal goals might be the only meaning to life that there is or ever will be.
I am sure that is true. That said, whether such a person lives a satisfying life depends on the motivation behind such a drive.
Do you pursue your research, your sports training, and your writing because of your love of the process and the activity itself? If so, you are doing great.
Do you pursue your research, your sports training, and your writing because you are "climbing the ladder" toward a Nobel Prize, an Olympic medal, or the status of a famous writer? If so, you are probably going to have a bad time.
The message I took from the book is not "don't excel" or "don't put your heart into things". Rather it is that excelling at something and putting your heart into something should be a conscious decision on your part, instead of a default response (e.g., mindlessly climbing the corporate ladder) because that is what everyone seems to be doing.
In fact, if you look at Google books ngram viewer [1] or Google search trends [2] you’ll find the term is a very modern one.
I think there are lots of ways to live a fulfilling life. Relaxing and not worrying about being exceptional is one of them, but it feels to me like there’s a trend towards demonizing hard work (whether at $dayjob or in personal pursuits) which doesn’t seem healthy.
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=work-life+bala... [2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=work%20l...
“I wrote for two or three hours in the morning, then went to a gym to work out,” he said. “I’d have lunch alone at a counter, go back to the apartment and work some more. Sometimes I’d lie down and just think about the book all afternoon — daydream if you will. In the evenings I’d often go out to dinner with friends.”