In my mid-20s my dad noticed that I perceive everything as competition… Q: For each item below, is the endeavor/struggle/// mostly personal or fundamentally competitive? Specifically, is it realistic to define success without benchmarking with competitors?
By the way, if we all target a single limited resource [like educational resource, top job positions, or a desirable mate] then competition is inevitable, but in reality people often choose different targets.
Below items are half-grouped. The more obvious/shorter items tend to move up.
— For wellness .. I would say non_competitive. Personal endeavor.
— hobbies .. non-competitive by definition, including so-called competitive hobbies. A hobby is a success if it helps the individual grow, express the self, reach out to a community, regardless of competitive position achieved.
— burn rate and cashflow mgmt .. I would say non_competitive. Some individuals spend $10k/M but they are doing fine due to high income. I spend $2k/M and feel good, but how do I compare to those supersavers who spend $700/M? I think both can be doing fine.
— For personal investments … non_competitive.
Even if my portfolio is lower return, higher risk, it is Fine. If my portflio risk is too high, then it becomes a problem but not really due to peer comparison. (In contrast, if you run a fund then you must compete for mindshare. )
— for family livelihood .. fundamentally non_competitive. For most people, salary doesn’t depend on competition.
jolt: I’m in the minority to perceive salary as fundamentally determined by competitive job interviews.
— family harmony, unity .. non_competitive
— parenting .. fundamentally non_competitive.
However (jolt), exam-oriented parenting can be competitive to some extent like “want to make my kids perform better than those families”.
Some parents even set a target to send their kids to some top school. In such a case, success depends on benchmarking.
I feel I have grown wiser, stronger, mellowing up. I now care slightly less about exams or top schools.
— important exams .. fundamentally competitive, as the top schools only want to recruit cream of the crop. Some students are not competitive. Some treat studies like serious hobbies.
In NUS, First-Class honors is bell-curve based. In UChicago, many examiners use bell-curve. However, if result is either P or F like driving tests, without a grade, then that exam is non_competitive. You are up against the examiner’s standard, not peer benchmark. The minimum requirement to pass is non_competitive. We often see the entire batch complete a program.
Reading a transcript or a GPA score, the exam results are non_competitive, since the reader has no idea of the distribution of scores. For example, I scored a C in sociology, which was the average score, but it looked bad on my transcript. Also, my Beijing high school transcript shows very high scores by Singapore standard.
— job interview .. competitive at least in the high-end tech interviews, because these are elite teams. QH.Dong said something like “GTD criteria is too low. Probably 80% of candidates can clear that bar. We need to find someone stronger than existing team members in at least one area, to complement the our mix.”
The more senior, the more you hear “seeking the strongest candidate that our budget can attract.”
If an employer targets a salary below the national median, then recruiter probably has a hard time filling the vacancies with qualified people .. non_competitive . Agilent/Spherion interviews were non_competitive because they want to fill all the vacancies quickly.
— dating: competitive among the “desirables”. You could be a fine person, but (more often than the other way!) in the dating market you may appear less attractive, less humorous, less resource-rich, less “suitable” as a life partner. Mate selection is fundamentally “picking the best mate that I could grab”.
jolt: I have carefully omitted personality match — the notion that what I want (in a mate) differs from what my volleyball teammate wants. Well, I choose to focus on the fundamental and universal desires. At the fundamental level, we both desire the same type of mate. Therefore, competitive.
Some people say they simply want to find someone “barely good enough” i.e. without major personality mismatches. I think this attitude is more common in arranged marriages, because the arranger can’t give you 200 choices. Also more common among older singles.
After the initial dating, how about the effort to maintain the love relationship? non_competitive
— academic research and publishing .. non_competitive. However, there’s a minimum standard in this _profession_. In some influential journals or conferences, you would need to produce outstanding findings to be accepted. Consider contributors to the Christian magazine [[parenting teens]]. Clearly a serious hobby. Yet to be accepted, your content has to be non-trivial, professionally-written.
In contrast, teaching profession is non_competitive.
If you publish only on a blog, or you self-finance a print publication, then it’s like a serious hobby.