It's amazing how much this resonates with many of the talking points from the martial arts school! They always encourage us not to compete with others, but to compete with ourselves. Rather than constantly comparing ourselves to others, we should just try to do better than we were yesterday. Winning over others is victory, winning over ourselves is success.
The illustration revolves not around running marathons, but around fighting. If you're trying to become the best fighter, there's always going to be something of a false dichotomy: you either already are the best fighter in the world, or more likely you will find the better fighter and your efforts will be suddenly over.
However if your focus is on being stronger than you were yesterday, the chance of success is much higher, and more importantly it cultivates the growth mentality which is supported by a ton of research. Every paper in my doctoral cohort had some variation of this metric for personal and organizational performance. They called them by slightly different names: "organizational agility", "dynamicism", for mine it was "absorptive capacity", but it all came down to the top performers were the ones who were always improving, for the ones who had already achieved their vision of perfection also hit stagnation.
I like to think of writing as a performance art. Sure unlike a live performance you can and should revise before releasing. But still it is a snapshot in time of your current skill level and ability.
It's amazing how much this resonates with many of the talking points from the martial arts school! They always encourage us not to compete with others, but to compete with ourselves. Rather than constantly comparing ourselves to others, we should just try to do better than we were yesterday. Winning over others is victory, winning over ourselves is success.
The illustration revolves not around running marathons, but around fighting. If you're trying to become the best fighter, there's always going to be something of a false dichotomy: you either already are the best fighter in the world, or more likely you will find the better fighter and your efforts will be suddenly over.
However if your focus is on being stronger than you were yesterday, the chance of success is much higher, and more importantly it cultivates the growth mentality which is supported by a ton of research. Every paper in my doctoral cohort had some variation of this metric for personal and organizational performance. They called them by slightly different names: "organizational agility", "dynamicism", for mine it was "absorptive capacity", but it all came down to the top performers were the ones who were always improving, for the ones who had already achieved their vision of perfection also hit stagnation.
I like to think of writing as a performance art. Sure unlike a live performance you can and should revise before releasing. But still it is a snapshot in time of your current skill level and ability.