Being "the best" creates a sparkly kind of lemmings
I’ve been working at the level of identity quite a bit over the past few years, as I’ve transitioned to a life of deeper meaning, and gotten closer to living my vocation.
During this transition I found it really tempting to try to define myself at various points. If I’m not Ryan-the-unicorn-CEO, well, then maybe I’m a coach. Or maybe a writer. Or maybe, simply, a good, useful person.
Each of these identities felt right at the time – super useful, and closer to home – but ultimately each proved as artificial as the last.
Today I want to explore this impulse to define ourselves, and uncover how it hinders our ability to unfold into who we really are.
The problem with hustle culture
There’s this idea going around that, well, I’ll just show you:
It’s pervasive online, and when I read it my first reaction was, probably like you, something like “yeah, I need to be the best!” With some fear mixed in, because that’s the intention of the tweet. That tweet isn’t abnormally manipulative. That’s pretty standard fare in my experience.
But it’s wrong. So wrong.
Aiming to be the best doesn’t mean being the best. Aiming to be the best simply leads you to try to conform better to what most people seem to want. To be the best SaaS recruiting platform, you need to figure out what others want from that category, and then become that. To be the best fundraiser, same thing.
But this process is the exact opposite of the approach taken by nearly every genius throughout history.
Consider Steve Jobs. Everyone else was trying to create this, he created that.
Consider Ford. Everyone wanted a faster horse. He could have gone for that, but instead he went his way.
Tesla.
Einstein.
Show me a genius, the people who really changed the world, and I’ll show you a person who didn’t give a shit about being what you thought was the best. I’ll show you a person who wanted to be different. To be themselves. To be contrarian. A person who knew themselves well enough and had the conviction to go in a direction that most people thought was stupid at the time.
If Jobs saw that tweet, he’d probably have thought “that’s stupid. Don’t be the best. Build something new. Think different.”
And that’s really the charge for us all. To stop trying to be the best. Give that shit up for lent, or for new years, or however. And ignore all the hustle porn posted online.
Instead, look within yourself and embrace your weird. Find the part of you that is different, that is rebellious. That wants to build something that nobody else thinks is best practice but that you have a hunch just might work.
Be different. Do your best work. That’s the path to genius.
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