David Letterman is getting ready to retire from his long late night TV career and in a recent interview he was asked whether the constant awareness of having to beat his competitors was a positive force or negative.

Letterman said that for a few years he was obsessed with trying to beat competitor Jay Leno in the ratings but just had to settle for the fact that Leno would always be number one.

This is no slight.  There are lots of things that contribute to great ratings in late night programming not the least of which is the 10pm network program that preceded local news and, yes, whether audiences stayed tuned for local news.

Once David Letterman stopped trying to do the impossible, his show got better, he got more creative and he became happier (even for the sullen sour puss image that he emits).

His quote says it all:

“The guy in the race who spends more time looking over his shoulder, well, that’s the mistake”.

No one ever accomplished anything good by looking back.

A runner looks ahead at the finish line and we should do no less.

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