The best is for losers
And what a relief to not be first. (Here’s the Apollo 16 crew about to splash down, 51 years ago this week.)
If you don’t want or need to be the best, you’ve got an extraordinary opportunity.
Instead of sweating about trying to get into Harvard (acceptance rate: 4%), you can attend UMass Lowell, less than an hour up the road (acceptance rate: 85%).
Rather than being the eye doctor with thirty years of experience and a waiting list, you can be the one that people call when they can’t get into that guy’s practice.
You might decide that you don’t need to have the best, either. Instead of spending $30,000 on your dream kitchen, you can enjoy your still-functional appliances and countertops from the twentieth century.
Every time we decide that number one isn’t necessary, we free up resources. And maybe we can devote those resources to being the best at something that really matters to us, but we may also find that competence is good enough across the board.
It’s kind of a funny thing to advocate for, isn’t it? Being pretty good instead of exceptional. Competence over consummate mastery. Being number two or three instead of number one. But I rarely see anyone take this position, so I guess it falls on me to highlight the possibilities of this underrated strategy for happiness and success in life and business.
Trying to be the best requires a disproportionate amount of resources. I might only need to study for an exam for fifteen minutes to get an 80, whereas I will need to put in fifteen hours to get 100%.
I can have a decent business through referrals and a bit of advertising, but if I want be at the top of the Google search results page, I will have to put a lot of time, money, and effort into SEO.
The more competitive the field, the more significant your investment will need to be. And in situations in which only one person or entity can win, that investment carries a risk. You might go all in and still lose.
I would argue that it’s perfectly reasonable to settle for second best. It might mean the difference between a happy adolescence as a well-rounded athlete vs. spending your teenage years on a strict diet and exercise regimen in order to excel in one particular sport.
It might mean that you can be pretty good at a few things instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket.
When you buy the $90 microphone instead of the $9,000 one, you are making a compromise. It really makes sense for most of us to make that compromise, doesn’t it? You don’t have to go to the extreme upper right in every quadrant you participate in.
Being the best shouldn’t be a compulsion. The beauty of a commitment to be the best is that it is a choice. It is, in a way, an irrational choice, and that’s why we admire the people who make it. Well — we only admire those who make the choice and actually succeed at becoming the best. The ones who tried and failed, with nothing to show for it, are losers.
Ideally, we try and succeed. To do that, we should be very choosy about which thing we want to try to be the best at, and then put the rest of our energy into areas where, even if we’re not the best, our work can still pay off.
We might even find that we’ve found the best thing for us somewhere down the list.
So, yeah, you won’t find me running for president anytime soon, or trying to get a major label record deal, or seeking 100% market share in any industry. It’s not worth it. I’ve got nothing to prove.
Instead, I’ll be over here quietly living my life: running a business that will never reach a million in revenue, playing music competently, being bad at tennis, and having a great time.
What about you?
