Fairly unfair advantage
Life is not fair. But somehow, that’s good news.
Let’s play a little game.
Go through the list below, and for every item you have (or once had) or that correlates with you, give yourself 10 points.
- Wealthy parents (Middle class & above)
- Quality basic education
- Presence & attention of both parents
- Good food (at least 2 square meals)
- A place to live
- When the electricity goes off, you put on the generator (at least a few days a week)
- Shoes
- Clean water
- Access to good health care (doctor is always on standby)
- Transportation to and from school (either school bus or guardians)
- Extra lesson teacher
- Literate parents
What’s your score?
The mere fact that you’re reading this is a pretty good indicator that you can’t get less than 60 points. I had 90.
But here’s the thing: there are 700 million people in the world, humans just like you, who can’t score up to 20 points because of extreme poverty.
Somehow, you & I were born in a safe place, in a happy family, and with some cash in our parents’ wallets.
Simply because of that, we are many steps ahead in life. Our chances of success are much higher than theirs and we have access to better opportunities than they do.
That’s an advantage. It’s an unfair advantage.
How would David beat Goliath?
Beyond the natural distribution of our birth, there are many situations of unfairness in our lives. Let’s call these situations losing games.
Losing games are difficult experiences that we all go through once in a while. When you’re playing a losing game, your odds of success are very low and you’re more likely to fail.
For instance, you’re applying for a job with 6 months of experience alongside someone with 3 years of experience. That’s a losing game because the more experienced one is probably better than you in many ways. To get the job, you need an unfair advantage.
David was playing a losing game against Goliath — he could have been crushed in the hands of the giant. But somehow, David found an unfair advantage.
Life itself is a losing game(whoa! That’s a bold one).
I mean…think about it. The things that are most appealing to us are things that can destroy us.
Work is boring, Netflix is bae. Books are sedatives, Tiktok videos are stimulants.
It’s like our own self is working very hard to destroy us (I wrote an article on this) and we have to consciously work to control this if we truly want anything great for ourselves.
That’s a losing game because the moment we let go, that weirdo inside all of us will take over and start running rampage.
What then?
If you love to sleep and just have a lot of fun (Tom Cruise’s latest banger is gonna be released this Friday!), don’t feel bad. That’s exactly what the brain wants — comfort and fun.
So if my brain just wants to flex, how then do I achieve my goals? You need an unfair advantage.
There are many unfair advantages that can help us defeat the Goliath in us. Some people motivate themselves while some enforce discipline. Some others are like Cal Newport, they stay away from digital gadgets totally.
While all of these are great, I think there’s an unfair advantage that’s even better.
That unfair advantage is called COMMUNITY.
It is being with people who are doing similar things as you are.
It is working alongside people you care about, who can motivate you and keep you moving.
It is being part of a group geared towards creating meaningful results.
The interesting thing about this unfair advantage is that it is also deeply wired in us — just like comfort and fun.
We are social beings — we love and care about others and what they think of us. We love to be respected and admired by others. We are also motivated by the (real or imagined) presence of others.
Communities are not common enough, c’mon!
I witnessed the power of communities first-hand as a participant in the ongoing Build Sprint at Growthron.
I decided to join with the goal of completing a course.
Disclaimer: I’m very bad at courses. It took me 3 years to reach 23% of a Java Programming course I bought
Something just keeps ringing in my head and pushing me to work on my goal, because I know that I will have to update the community on what I did for the week. I don’t want to look bad.
The mere fact that I’m part of a lively community of people working on their goals makes me feel bad if I’m not working on my goal.
That’s enough motivation.
When people ask me about how to stay disciplined to certain actions, I used to advise them to brute-force their way through. Now, that advice has changed.
If you need to be disciplined or motivated, go join a community where such is nurtured.
If you’re Elon Musk with an endless reservoir of motivation, then this article was probably not for you.
For the rest of us that are not Elon, we better give ourselves an unfair advantage in life and find good communities.
