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"what do you do when you can't compete with people smarter and more ambitious than you?" IMO: each time you encounter someone working on X, subtract X from the range of things you’re focusing on. over time you develop a narrower focus, of things that nobody else is focusing on
practice this way of thinking for a while, and encountering someone who's working on X becomes a relief – "ah, they've got that covered, now I can focus on Y instead". collaborative model of learning and exploration. the territory is infinite, and we learn from each other
if you get good at this, and keep track of what people are working on, and support them in their pursuits, and introduce them to each other, and generally be a nurturing and wholesome presence... people smarter than you become eager to contribute to *you* and *your* work
*cracks knuckles* school indoctrinates kids to compete with each other on standardized tests, to see others as competitors rather than potential collaborators. this atomizes people, makes them feel isolated, disconnected, fearful of not measuring up, jealous of others' successes
the more interesting qn to ask, compared to "how do you compete with smarter people", is "how do you win the love, trust, support & goodwill of smarter people, so that THEY are on YOUR side" it's interesting how rarely anybody seems to ask this. i think about this all the time
make friends and support them https://t.co/9Fzs72xbgl
There is an art to replying and commenting, and probably like 60-70% of people I’ve seen on the internet fail at it. The important thing is not to speak your mind, but to “support” the OP. You can support them by disagreeing well & you can “mis-support” them by agreeing stupidly
also you can be useful to people smarter than you just by taking notes for a long period of time https://t.co/NekIomPb27
An interesting thing @guanyinmiao pointed out to me recently is that reporters who stick to a beat over time develop a deep understanding of history and context, and so they can pull out all these interesting and insightful bits that even smarter writers will not be able to https://t.co/SAa8LbCpma
Take notes, make friends https://t.co/BmrkCY15BM
@visakanv https://t.co/5jYnjpbwBx School is a game. What do we do when our games turn into weapons against us? I stop playing games I don't find fun.
@visakanv I sometimes kick myself that I spend all that work learning Japanese when it turns out that being the one engineer who doesn't hate the discipline of marketing gets you basically the same amount of market defensibility *literally the day you declare yourself that.*