My best work is better than work I do to be the best

October 6, 2023 Ryan Vaughn

Welcome entrepreneurs. I’m so glad you’re here.

It’s 80-degrees outside in Michigan right now and it feels like yesterday that I was running through the hallways of Great Wolf Lodge casting spells at trees this summer.

So it felt a bit weird to learn that we’re now 3/4 of the way through 2023.

Nevertheless, as the seasons change each quarter I like to take the opportunity to reflect. At the end and middle of the year I have developed a whole process around this. But for April and October, I tend to simply journal freehand and see what comes up.

If you don’t have a process like this, I invite you to start one. Regular reflection is how you transform experience into wisdom. How you grow wiser, rather than just older. And it doesn’t happen on its own.

Reflecting on my own 2023 as we segue fully into Autumn, dear reader, I must admit that I was a bit disappointed in myself. And as my disappointment involves you, in a way, I feel I must make some amends.

So let’s get to it.

At the beginning of this year, I made a commitment to myself. A bit of a radical one, given how much of my life I’ve spent in heated competition, between basketball, business, and even Monopoly. I committed, both to myself and to all of you, that I wasn’t trying to be the best this year. That instead, I’d optimize for being myself and doing the best work I know how to do.

Nine months into the year, I discovered that at some point I fell off the track. I’ve been competing. With other coaches, with other newsletter writers, with all of you. I’ve been striving to be the best. Not always for myself, according to my own definition, but for others.

And I’m sorry.

Competing takes me away from the person I want to be. It makes me try to transform myself into someone closer to society’s ideal, and lean away from the quirky, offbeat parts of myself that I am continuing to grow to love. And so today I am taking a moment to forgive myself, for unknowingly sacrificing all those wonderfully weird parts of myself to try to be more successful. Today I will start again.

And I’m sorry to all of you who, unbeknownst to you, I competed against. Those of you I looked at as competitors and rivals. I know intellectually that we can all win, and that when we do we help one another. But some deeper part of me, apparently, still wants to stand alone at the mountaintop and thinks that the only way that happens is if I beat you.

I know that’s not true. Even if not all parts of me have caught up yet.

And, finally, I’m sorry to those of you I’ve let down, by not bringing my whole self to my work. Each time I make a conscious or subconscious decision to be a bit more put together. A bit more likable. Each time I smooth out the pointy bits of me so as to not offend or to, heaven forbid, gain followers. Each time I do these things, I give something less than all of myself to my work and to you.

My best work is better than the work I do to be the best.

It comes from somewhere deeper.

I don’t know yet if what I’m doing at this moment is my best work, but I promise you it’s coming from that deeper place.

The race I’m running

I saw a friend of mine post that he had reached 20,000 newsletter subscribers. Another friend hit 70,000 Twitter (X? 🙄) followers. These people I love dearly, when I heard about their accomplishments, I felt pride and happiness, yes, but also envy. And a strong inner pull to up my game. To do better. To write better.

I’ve read before about how the greats in any industry lift each other up through their accomplishments. Clapton vs the Beatles. Jobs vs Gates. The presence of a worthy competitor demands that each individual reach higher, faster than they might ever do alone. From that perspective I appreciate the little bit of envy I feel toward my good friend’s accomplishments. I suppose that if I told them how I felt, they might even have something similar to say about their own benchmark. Like the first person to run a 4-minute mile, the sheer fact that someone did it forces everyone else to raise their game.

Only, it’s so easy to get caught up in growing visible metrics and then lose track of the race I’m running. I’m not really interested in optimizing for 20,000 subscribers or 70,000 followers. I know what it costs to give the masses what they want.

And more than that, I know why I’d do it.

Sure, I have a bunch of logical reasons to pursue a large following, but if I’m honest, more than a little of it is about public recognition. About wanting to be admired. It’s that part of me that still only loves my accomplishments. Twenty thousand followers convinces that part, temporarily, that I’m worthy. That I’m good enough, in some existential way. Just like $20m in venture funding and 40% of the US high school sports market used to. Just like becoming an “exited founder” used to.

Only, I’ve run that race before. And despite temporary memory lapses like this one, I know deep in my bones that it’s a path that will never satisfy.

(The ironic thing is, I know the two people who reached those milestones well enough to know that followers / subscribers isn’t what they really want either.)

I made the decision years ago to run a different race. To be great, in my own unique way. Not the best, according to others. It was the best decision I ever made, and I’m not turning back now.

Progress, to me, isn’t measured in thousands of subscribers reading what I write. It’s measured in my ability to love and respect and cherish my work when I only have 700 subscribers. Or zero.

It’s measured in my degree of willingness to express myself, even (especially) when it’s unpopular.

“It is not your business to determine how good (your work) is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

– Martha Graham (a quote that has ironically been framed in my office all year)

Progress, to me, is discovering more and more parts of myself that don’t fit neatly into any little box, and probably don’t sell particularly well, and loving the shit out of them anyway. Not despite their imperfections – because of them.

And today, that means loving the part of me that wants to win. To dominate. The part that caused this issue in the first place. I can read the frustration in that sentence because I knew better.

But like a seven year-old breaking the vase by throwing the football in the house, when you specifically told him, dozens of times, to take it outside, I can be frustrated with the issue and still love the kid with all my heart. I can recognize that the kid who got overly competitive is also the same kid who helped me achieve forall those years and build this amazing life. And instead of yelling, I can give him a hug (after I take the football outside ;)

So I’m sorry that the competitive kid inside me got carried away and broke the vase. I’m sorry that he’s seen others as my rivals, and that I ever wished them anything but the very best in their lives. He did it out of love. He wants the best for me, he just doesn’t quite believe, yet, that I’m lovable, absent a trophy to prove it.

But I plan to keep showing him that he is.

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