The competition that is beating you is doing so by working harder than you, putting out more high quality content than you, or something along those lines. They have a higher ratio of creation/consumption than you do. This ratio is very important. If you spend 70% of your day consuming, and 30% of your day creating, you don’t stand a chance against someone who spends 55% of their day creating, and 45% of their day consuming. Creators are the ones who run the show.
Watching TV Means You Give The Show Creator Your Production Time
Anytime you stop to watch TV, you put on your consumer hat. You switch to the side where you can’t get anything out of the equation. In one video interview Puff Daddy did with Lil’ Wayne, he reminded us, and Lil’ Wayne agreed with the statement, that you get out what you put in. What does this mean? It means if you spend 0% of your time creating something for others, you will get nothing in return that isn’t the standard fluff that anyone would get. You won’t get any perks, compounded gains, investment value, new connections, experience, etc., and your time will still have passed by. Next time you go to watch TV, remember that Oprah doesn’t watch TV. Hopefully that will ruin your TV-watching experience.
Compare Your Diligence With Those At Your Level
If you started a technology site five months ago, don’t compare your success with that of TechCrunch, or think to yourself that you will never catch up to the subscriber-ship that TechCrunch has. If you are in your second year of college, don’t compare the material you are learning to that of a graduate student, thinking that your material is useless compared to the research they are doing, as they were once in your shoes. What you want to do is only focus on those at your level or stage, and see who’s level of diligence is higher. Those are the people you want to outdo in action.
Gary Vaynerchuk recently posted a video on his personal site talking about how talent isn’t enough, and that those who think they can ride on some quality or plateau they have reached will get beaten by those with solid diligence. While he was referring to large industries and businesses of all kinds, he also was referring to folks like us. You look to the left of you, and to the right of you, and have to outdo those folks to get to the next tier. Exponential and compound gains are the reasons people quit something, because the person they would have been able to compete with and conquer becomes insurmountable in authority and indomitable in strength if given enough time. That hilariously unrelated picture there about carbon emissions is still related in that it shows how compounded/exponential gains make your competition unable to catch if you let them fly ahead early on.
Do You Start With Long-, Medium-, Or Short- Term Expectations Of Yourself?
A part of a new psychology book I read today talked about how one of the best indicators of how children would do in music classes was based on their attitude before even starting. If they felt like they were going to make the goal long-term and go far, they were able to latch onto exponential gains and become much more proficient than the children that stated they would probably put in medium effort, and those that felt they would put in short-term effort. The process you are undertaking starts before it starts. Listen to what your mind says to you. If you are in a robotics class and are offered the opportunity to join in on a team robotic project, the attitude and plans you take into the project are the biggest indicator of whether you will have a large part in making the project remarkable, or whether you will barely be a team member that has a nominal effect on the results.
Cut Out Short-Term Projects That Would Be Forgotten Anyway
Only do the things where you are comfortable taking a long-term attitude to it, and you will not have any problems with competition. In this case, it wouldn’t be about talent or position or situational factors. As you know from various categories, people that are the outliers or non-standard individuals in the category, but who work diligently due to their long-term focus, are the ones who end up stealing the show, much to the surprise of everyone that saw them as inconsequential.
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This is totally my problem…I want to run a serious blog but I spend so much time consuming and produce far too little content for the time I have been running. I am trying hard to adjust that balance.
I hear you there. It looks like you already hit step one in understanding the problem so you are probably soon to be on the way to adjusting that ratio more to the creator side. This is a large improvement over those that don’t get a sense of the effects at work on them, and how much control they have.
I may end up writing more on this creation/consumption dichotomy in another article.
Thanks for your candid expression.
I acknowledge the the wisdom you have shared here. We have to use more of our time on creating, yet many are unconscious of this: those who watched TV most of the time. And I agree with you on comparison of diligence. Your comparison should be related to those of the same level.
Walter: We sure do. We must do that, because our time isn’t for generic absorption; that is, if bigger and bigger creations are on the mind. Others may not as well, but our own creation will either entertain them as well or challenge them to join in.