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Enjoyed reading the post but find it glosses over the easiest way to escape competition, doing something unique. It's a safe bet that uniqueness will become eve
by andrewjl 6y ago
Enjoyed reading the post but find it glosses over the easiest way to escape competition, doing something unique. It's a safe bet that uniqueness will become ever more disproportionately rewarded in the near-future.
This can mean developing a unique perspective or using your existing, unique experiences to do something no one else can. The trouble of course is that as general advice, it's all hand-wavy and each individuals specific situation has its own context and limitations. Everyone is forced to figure it out without the benefit of direct examples, by definition.
I think the single best "starter advice" for someone interested in taking this direction is to train your mind to be habitually observant. Meditation is one way but other good techniques exist as well. Coming up with something unique almost always involves figuring out how a "weird" piece of external reality fits.
- jrumbut 6y agoUniqueness to the point that it can beat optimization is a very high bar to clear. Think of the wonderful galaxy of unique internet databases that were supplanted by Google's relentlessly optimized text field, how many unique communities got overrun by Facebook and Reddit, optimization really chases uniqueness out. You need a little slack to leave oxygen for new ideas.
- 10000truths 6y agoAnd how do you think Google, Facebook and Reddit became dominant in the first place? They didn’t overrun their competitors by being just like them.
- jrumbut 6y agoMy argument is they beat them by being a better optimized version of what came before.
- andrewjl 6y agoThere's a distinction to be made in corporate vs individual uniqueness. It is easier for an individual to pivot and try something completely new. And on communities or databases, I think much of the story remains unwritten and current circumstances aren't permanent.