In college, meeting someone that was better than me by every conceivable metric. You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category. Perfect grades, involved in many communities, and generally pleasant to be around. There was no caveat, no excuse. Dude just straight up rocked.
I have met more people like that while travelling. I felt badass riding my motorcycle super far, but wherever I went, there was a greater badass riding along. Some of these travellers were on much longer journeys, on much smaller budgets, on a much worse bikes, riding offroad all the way, camping every night. Some were on bicycles, going around the world under their own power. I was just a rich tourist with a great bike who slept in hotels.
In a way, meeting those people was liberating. I will never be a world champion at anything, so I might as well play for the love of the sport.
I wonder if super-people like this balance their various activities so that doing each charges them up for some of the others, and then they can hit a resonance like state of being in-the-zone excelling at each one in turn. And not letting small interruptions derail the system. It would be the opposite of being stuck in a soul-sucking
rut between unsatisfying work and unsatisfying non-work life.
It took me awhile to realize that some people can simply talk a really good game. They will genuinely pick up a little bit of a skill but can speak about it as if they’ve spent every waking moment thinking about nothing else.
I had that realization when an amazing-guy-“
at-everything said something at 100% confidence and 100% charisma that was quite wrong.
On the flip side, maybe we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the things we know. The above comment was a topic I didn’t consider myself an expert in, but in hindsite I’ve spent many hours/days on the subject and am quite interested in it. So maybe it’s not that I knew less but rather I lacked the ability to demonstrate that knowledge. (Which is its own, admirable skill).
The Internet did this to me for a lot of things -- when I was an island, I used to think I was really good at a lot of things: Table tennis, Tetris, some other video games. And relative to my friends and sometimes even the people a few circles away from them, I was!
And then, The Internet. And I discovered that I am absolutely NOT good at table tennis. I am not even CLOSE to good at Tetris. And I am TERRIBLE at every video game.
Oh well -- so much for competition! Time to enjoy ;)
> Oh well -- so much for competition! Time to enjoy ;)
Some people reacts like this. And some react by doubling down and doing whatever it takes (even cheating, lying and harming competitors) to win. When I played soccer in a local league I meet a worrying amount of people that thought that dangerously kicking a better oponent, for example tackling to the knee, was perfectly reasonable. Elbowing someone in the face was OK it the referee didn't get you. My coach once warned me that I didn't have a proper rate of yellow cards for my playing position, so I should play harder for the sake of it. I fed up and left the sport at 23-25 y.o.
A lot of people is unable of competing with themselves ("I want to do X better than myself from the past year, so I need to practice"), and as long as they don't know about someone who is better they don't care to get better at something.
I think it’s also humbling to look at these opportunities as a learning experience. “If you are a smartest person in the room, you are in a wrong room!”
The real step 1 is not trying to be good at anything and just doing it for the enjoyment
Attachment to outcome is very real and hold a lot of people back
For example I started getting really good at chess when I stopped caring how many rating points I lost or won today and completely forgot about ratings altogether
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the
right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I
moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years.
If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to
revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping
out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is
liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest
motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. The crowning touch, the one
thing that really puts true world-class badmotherfuckerdom totally out of reach,
of course, is the hydrogen bomb. If it wasn't for the hydrogen bomb, a man
could still aspire. Maybe find Raven's Achilles' heel. Sneak up, get a drop,
slip a mickey, pull a fast one. But Raven's nuclear umbrella kind of puts the
world title out of reach.
Which is okay. Sometimes it's all right just to be a little bad. To know your
limitations. Make do with what you've got.”
I identify by the things I love and excel at. If being an artist is a big chunk of who you are, it can hurt your ego to meet q much better artist who is also good at many other things.
Imagine playing the bongos, and you meet some guy who plays it really well… and it’s Richard Feynman.
I cant help but chime in here because I used to feel this way and all the typical advice never felt right (ie that you shouldn't care how good you are at things)
Very quickly I will list the 3 main points that have helped me the most
1) the things you care to try to excel at is a statement about things worth excelling at and actual skill is often a minor detail. It's okay to identify with where the effort goes and how much you give rather than the result of it. In this way it is like voting, and there is no best person at voting. You identify with the tribe, not your ability
2) when being competitive does actually matter, the best in the world cannot be everywhere at once, so there is actually a lot of meaning behind being the best locally at something. Or even just not the worst locally. Identity is irrelevant on this one, but it does require you care and are self aware about how good you actually are at things.
3) how you relate to others is also a big part of identity. being in the middle of the pack on most things makes you much more relatable than being best. For some person who is better than you at everything, are you able to deeply connect with them or do you get distracted by comparison thoughts, insecurity, or ideas to use them for something self-serving? If not you, still how often in their life do you think that happens for them with others?
The reason why I can't relate to this much is that I play the bongos not to be the best bongo player, but because I like playing the bongos. I know that, for some people, the motivator is "being admired at X", but that's not what drives me, I usually just like doing X. Sometimes, I get good at it. Other times (like with tennis), I keep sucking, but I still like the process.
Being great only matters if you need external validation. I want a life I appreciate. If there’s anything to win it’s the game of having a good time.
All of the suffering people impose on themselves, on their children, on their society, to be great and envied is wasted. Be successful as a means to be happy and have excess to share with others.
>> I want a life I appreciate. If there’s anything to win it’s the game of having a good time.
Thank you for this, I'm currently getting stuck seeing many people here developing their kickass project and feel like if I am not doing this kind of thing in my free time, I am not a valid engineer, this kind of pressure slowly eats out my passion, perhaps it's okay that I don't feel like doing this at them moment, I still love my job and technology, I just want to do something else in my free time that's all.
I met people like that. I had the pleasure of later overtaking some of them in terms of (some) achievements.
Now I'm sometimes on the other side. At least I talked with some friends that confided that impression they had of me. It feels weird. (Especially because I am also very aware of areas where I absolutely suck. But they just hadn't come up with those friends or co-workers before.)
I'd been interested coding and electronics since I was a young teen, and was very much the guy that everyone approached for such problems - it's easy to get cocky like that. In our first year we had a guy that transferred from econ (to electrical engineering). He had to take night classes to catch up with the math and physics, as he didn't take the required AP classes in HS.
Anyway, the guy was just a machine. He worked incredibly hard - studied 12 hours a day all week, on top of working in the weekends. The guy picked up everything so fast.
Got straight A's, and advanced much faster than the rest of us. We did have some informal internal competition, but this guy was just way up there - no one bothered.
He went on to get a Ph.D. in AI/ML, and got a great FAANG job.
But, there's never a guarantee. I've met similar people - just straight up rock stars, that for whatever reason didn't reach the stars. I can't help but to think "What a shame, talk about wasted talent" - but who am I to judge, they could be perfectly content with life.
Anyway, college is definitely a good place to meet people that are smarter than yourself. If you're the smartest around, you're likely not studying at the right place.
I met someone similar in a previous company, but was way more objectionable than your college buddy. Some ex-Google DevOps bozo who just made it his life to snipe at other people's code and projects and undermine them whenever possible. I was talking to someone this bozo just called out in a very public forum, and asked why he wasn't furious and the response was more enlightening than anything - "That's all he's got", which was true - the DevOps bozo had absolutely no other life outside his small corner of tech and needed constant reassurance of their own superiority through publicly critizing others work.
In the end, folks just ended up ignoring whatever this person said - talking it with a grain of salt.
> You'd think that he beat me at one thing by neglecting another, but nope, the guy was excelling in every category.
This is literally impossible. A person cannot be Einstein and Picasso at the same time. A person cannot be Steve Jobs and Pope Francis at the same time. We all have limited time in life, and it is only possible to excel in one thing by focusing on it and, as a result, not focusing on something else.
This is a beautiful thing. I watch the teachers in my kids' schools and they do a great job and I think "that's why they're teachers and I'm a lawyer." I watch a great play and I think "that's why they're actors and I'm a lawyer." I hope I'm as good at my work as they are at theirs. But I can't excel at what they do. I don't have time.
The point isn't that 'someone can be the best at everything'. It's 'some people can be better in every category than some other person', which is a heck of a lot more reasonable. I've certainly experienced it. Similarly to the poster above, I went from top of the class to middle of the pack in university, and in part that was because I didn't focus on the academics, instead working on student projects that were valuable but didn't improve my grade. But there were people working on those projects that contributed more to those projects than I did, also came top of the class, were substantially more athletic than me (actually competing vs essentially no exercise), more social (also not super hard, but still), and somehow also got more (or at least better) sleep than me. It's a thing that happens.
>and somehow also got more (or at least better) sleep than me
It must be better sleep, because these people also seem to only need 4 hours and yet are able to function at 100% the rest of the time, meanwhile I've been tired for 20 years no matter how much sleep I seem to get.
You just need to meet someone like that, they are rare but they exists. It doesn't means that they are good at everything, just that they are better than you in every way.
I had a colleague like that. She was super nice, super smart, very good looking, was well-balanced emotionally, and dated a professional athlete. The kind of person who has a very good career, and then train for the marathon on the weekend. Even her name sounded cool.
I know it sounds like jealousy, it isn't, I'm honestly happy for her, but it's just a reminder that sometime people can be more advanced than you, and that you shouldn't place your self-worth only by measuring yourself with others, cause people like John Urschel[1] do exists.
[1] An up-and-coming american football player who abandoned his career at the NFL to focus on his PhD in Mathematics at MIT.
> just that they are better than you in every way.
Nope, I have never once met a person like that and am confident I never will. OK, so John Urschel plays football and is great at math. Are you telling me he is also a particle physicist, a statesman, a mountain man, a mob boss, and an astronaut? If not how is he good at “everything”?
Wait so you are a particle physicist, a statesman, a mountain man, a mob boss, and an astronaut?
Stop thinking global maxima (everyone in the world) and start thinking local maxima (you) and I promise there is someone that beats every local (you) metric you have.
Nope. There is no one that beats me at every metric I have. Does anyone know my family as well as I do? No. Does anyone know my staff as well as I do? No. Does anyone maintain my house as well as I do? No.
It is a painful admission, but in this world there are many people who are close to their families, close to their staff, keep a great house... and know technology better than you and have more impactful jobs that you and do more to improve the world and made more money than you and are loved (or at least needed) by more people than you.
There is nothing wrong with that. But it is a fallacy to expect that by some cosmic balance, it's impossible for anyone to best you along all meaningful categories.
It's probably easier to reason about this in the other direction (which is kinder on our egos): Do you believe that there is some individual on this planet who reads less than you, is lazy compared to you, treats their family and friends worse than you, contributes less to the world than you... and where at the end of the day, there's not any axis where they exceed you?
But there is someone who knows THEIR own family better than you know YOUR own family, they know their staff better than you know your staff, and they maintain their house better than you maintain your house. Again, at the metrics you care about, whatever they may be, there is someone better.
Of course you are the "best" version of you, but there is only one of you, that's not the point.
That is a bit of a reach. You are defining the categories very narrowly.
If instead of saying “knows your family” it would be more natural to compare how well you know your family with how well they know their own family. Similarly about their own coworkers and their own house.
But of course you can define the categories that narrowly. In which case you are simply not talking about the same thing others are, and you are willfull missunderstanding their point.
Also, good luck being the best in your own private game. I hope it makes you happy.
Assuming you're all of those, then one day you might meet someone younger than you who does all of these a bit better than you, and also is good at piano. And he or she will be nice and graceful about it, too, so you won't even be able to hate on them.
It's not a personal attack against you, it can happen to (almost) everyone :D.
It sounds like there is a misunderstanding here. Two kinds. You are taking too literally the “every category” part and your bar for “excelling” is higher than it is commonly used.
In your comment you talk about being the best of the best. “Excelling” doesn’t have this connotation. You could say that someone is “excelling” at business if they have a nice, well-run pizza shop. They don’t have to be the literal Steve Jobs. Excelling in classes would be someone who effortlesly gets good grades, not someone who has a Nobel prize. Much lower bar.
Also the “every category” is not the same as “literaly everything”. Just everything the commenter cared about at that point in their life. Probably popularity with others, popularity with girls, academics, sports, something creative like music, maybe dressing, humour, etc.
I would not, unless otherwise qualified, would assume that the person was literally excelling at neurosurgery, and astrodynamics, and crystalography, and parliamentary rules and customs. But since those topics don’t just naturally come up in real life the commenter had no way of knowing that.
This is what your parents tell you. I reality some people are good at anything they touch. Unreal at maths, writing, music, drawing, taste, music, spirt and very nice people. Not many. But I have known people who are known for their sporting achievements but I know how good they are academically. It is a downer at first untill you grow up.
I seem to get way more interesting (and weird..) ads from Google than most of the people I know.
But maybe that's just because Google gives me things I find interesting?
It's stuff like a three story tall Diesel engine for a container ship. I'm not really in the market for that, but I would totally want to be someone who's casually in the market for that.
Not necessarily. Person A might naturally be more talented than B at video games. And person B might naturally be more talented at playing sports or reading books or socialising. The only difference is that they don't notice it because they don't do those things.
Why are you discounting the importance of video game skill? With esports people are making a living on it. Person B is specializing in a skill and mastering it. Person A is a jack of all trades and master of nothing.
I've played a lot of computer games. But in no way will I ever be an esports star.
Playing computer games is simply another "skill" in the toolbox of a jack of all trades.
How many people do you personally know play way too much video games? And out of them, how many has made a successful living out of playing video games?
Playing video games for that long destroys your body, I personally know from experience. Exercise also makes you better in every other thing in your life as well (including video games).
I mean, playing sports (nowhere near even a semi-pro level) has destroyed my body a hell of a lot more than playing video games has. People just find one source of body destruction more "worthy" than the other, and that's more a societal value judgment thing than an objective danger level thing.
It isn't only video games that get hit with this; for example, in my experience ballerinas get a lot more faux concern about "destroying their feet" than, say, sprinters do, never mind that they have pretty much the same foot injury profiles.
(See also: sitting at a desk for eight hours to play video games is obviously bad for you, but sitting at a desk for eight hours to type reports for your employer couldn't possibly cause you any issues that said employer might be on the hook for.)
I don’t think it’s fair to diminish sports because you personally suffered injuries or long term damage, there are only a handful of sports that carry risks of that severity, where most people will probably get hurt after some time.
Sitting down all day wrecks everyones body indiscriminately unless they are undoing the damage every day.
How is it diminishing sports to point out that they cause a hell of a lot more wear and tear (and involve a greater risk of injury) than sitting down for eight hours (for any reason) does?
And no, unless you are counting things like chess as a sport (and/or conflating exercise with sports), the vast majority of sports carry incredible risk of both minor and major injury compared to a sedentary lifestyle. Here[0] is a list of the Olympic sports for example; there isn't a single one that doesn't routinely cause injuries.
My point remains that if I get tendinitis or bursitis from playing soccer nobody clutches pearls about the sport but if I get the exact same injury from playing video games it's somehow more concerning - this is a reflection of how society values those things, not of their actual danger levels. Hell, I can get the same injuries from playing the piano but pretty much nobody leads a discussion about piano with "it wrecks your body".
100% of people who sit down for years will suffer damage that is very difficult to reverse. Unless they are proactive in counteracting.
< 100% of people who play sports will suffer damage of the same degree.
People don’t talk about soccer in this light because soccer players after retirement don’t have severe hip and glute mobility issues, they can also walk for more than 20 minutes without struggling. Are some of them dinged up? Yes. Some.
Soccer will absolutely leave you with mobility issues - it's a sport that puts immense and rather unnatural load on your hips, knees and ankles. The insistence that overloading your joints won't cause long-term damage when it's because of a sport but will cause damage when it's because of something "trivial" is pure magical thinking. I promise you your ligaments and bursae don't care if the physical stress they go through is "worthy" or not.
Also, it's rather disingenuous to (correctly) point out that long-term overloading of the lower spine and hips from sitting at a desk will develop into chronic conditions unless countered...and then completely dodge the fact that professional soccer players after retirement have had careers full of mitigation (from physiotherapy to outright surgery) paid for by their clubs[0] to counter the acute damage that they suffer. And even with that, plenty of professional athletes still develop issues like chronic ankle instability, because there is only so much you can "ding up" and repair an ankle before it simply loses its structural integrity. Those of us who do play sports know just how much damage there is to counter, and we don't all have a VC-sized budget backing us up to mitigate it.
For goodness' sake we colloquially name various conditions for sports ("golfer's/baseball elbow", "tennis elbow", "runner's knee", etc). I have zero idea how anyone would come to the conclusion that it's rare for sports played for significant amounts of time to damage the body - again, unless they are conflating them with more normal forms of exercise.
0. And yes, the fact that it's paid for by their clubs is important - as I implied in my original comment, the vast majority of employers who demand that office workers sit at their desks for hours at a stretch certainly don't take any responsibility for any serious medical issues that arise from that.
OP isn't saying the person they were referring to is a world-class figure in everything (or even two things), just that they seemed to be producing better results in the categories OP cared about, which is very achievable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonny_Kim - "an American U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, former SEAL, Navy flight surgeon, naval aviator, physician, and NASA astronaut. .. Kim received a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in mathematics from the University of San Diego in 2012, and a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 2016. Kim was a Pat Tillman Foundation "Tillman Scholar" selectee. In 2017, Kim completed his medical internship in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.[6] ... was assigned to SEAL Team 3 with the rating Special Warfare Operator. He deployed twice to the Middle East and participated in over 100 combat missions as a combat medic, sniper, navigator, and point man. As of January 2020, Kim was married[7] with three children.[8]"
I have met more people like that while travelling. I felt badass riding my motorcycle super far, but wherever I went, there was a greater badass riding along. Some of these travellers were on much longer journeys, on much smaller budgets, on a much worse bikes, riding offroad all the way, camping every night. Some were on bicycles, going around the world under their own power. I was just a rich tourist with a great bike who slept in hotels.
In a way, meeting those people was liberating. I will never be a world champion at anything, so I might as well play for the love of the sport.