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Day 5 | |
To compete is to choose to play somebody else's game. This | |
can be a massive source of energy, but it's also a dangerous | |
game. The billionaire investor and founder of PayPal, Peter | |
Thiel, said that the fierce competition in his college career | |
nearly kept him from doing what he actually was meant to do. | |
He later wrote in Zero to One, "All failed companies are the | |
same: they failed to escape competition." | |
When we're locked in competition we tend to obsess on doing | |
the same thing but faster, bigger, or cheaper. Competition | |
can blind us to opportunities to truly distinguish ourselves. | |
In fact, the fiercer the competition, the more similar things | |
get. Harvard Professor Youngme Moon writes in her book | |
Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd that, "The dynamic | |
[of competition] is not unlike a popularity contest in which | |
everyone tries to win by being equal parts friendly, happy, | |
active, and fun. Or an election campaign in which all the | |
candidates try to be charming, serious, humble, and strong. | |
Once everyone starts doing it, no one stands out." | |
Put simply, Moon has found that, "The more diligently firms | |
compete with each other, the less differentiated they can | |
become." | |
Even more often than businesses, individual lives are ruined | |
by being too preoccupied with competition to look around. | |
Where are you competing in your life that you don't actually | |
want to be (e.g., money, audience, position, possessions, | |
looks, awards, travel, experiences etc.)? If you weren't | |
worried about winning that, what would you focus on? | |
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This topic doesn't really fit me so much...or maybe I'm | |
misunderstanding this. I 'm not really a competitive person | |
these days. I know that before, I had more competitive | |
tendencies, but even then, I would not consider myself | |
competitive. The older I get, the more I see the value of | |
cooperation rather than competition. Even though I am | |
generally a loner, I do find the strength of cooperation and | |
the strength of the team to be of more value than anything I | |
could do on my own. | |
I think if there is competition, it would be mostly against | |
my personal best. Or what improvement can I do compared to | |
last time or yesterday. The Japanese have a term, "kaizen," | |
I think it is. I means something like continual improvement. | |
I think Toyota or some other Japanese manufacturing company | |
uses that term for their work. For me, it would be more | |
appropriate to compete against myself rather than anybody | |
else. | |
As you can probably tell. I was not really into competitive | |
sports. I did enjoy sports, but more for recreation and | |
leisure. I enjoyed playing...winning or losing did not | |
matter so much. Yeah, I like winning, but I think I find | |
more value in the playing. I'm not too big on watching other | |
people play sports on TV. Maybe I'm the target market for | |
participation awards...actually, scratch that. I think those | |
are silly and defeats the purpose of having awards. I would | |
rather just enjoy playing. | |
Now, my wife and my son, they are competitive. They would | |
probably know more about competition than me. | |
Some of these topics seem like it is not really where I am in | |
life these days or do not really pertain to me as much as it would | |
have in my younger days. I think I will still continue with these | |
topics but will stick with the perspective of where I am | |
today. I don't really feel like rehashing the past so much | |
these days. | |
That is 20. | |
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