I know you've been told that “you're not competing with anyone”, that the only competition you have is with YOURSELF.
Where is the lie there? Well, there's no lie. There's no lie in that, but only if you live in a world of your own - but if you live in this world with us, then you've got competitors other than yourself.
James Clear, in his book 'Atomic Habits', shared the story of the British Cycling team.
Photo by Brent Olson on Unsplash
The fate of the British Cycling changd one day in 2003. The organization, which was the governing body for professional cycling in Great Britain, had recently hired Dave Brailsford as it's new performance director. At the time, professional cyclist in Great Britain had endured nearly one hundred years of mediocrity. Since 1908, British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic Games, and they had fared even worse in cycling's biggest race, the Tour de France. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the event.
Brailsford had been hired to put British Cycling on a new trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains”, which was a philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. Brailsford said, "The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together."
Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip. They asked riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete responded to a particular workout. The team tested various fabrics in a wind tunnel and had their outdoor riders switch to indoor racing suits, which proved to be lighter and more aerodynamic. But they didn’t stop there.
Brailsford and his team continued to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas. They tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery. They hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold. They determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider. They even painted the inside of the team's truck white, which helped them spot little bits of dust that would normally slip by un-noticed but could degrade the performance of the finely tuned bikes. As these and hundreds of other small improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined.
Just five years after Brailsford took over, the British Cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where they won an astounding 60 percent of the gold medals available. Four years later, when the Olympic Games came to London, the Brits raised the bar as they set nine Olympic records and seven world records. That same year, Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. The next year, his teammate Chris Froome won the race, and he would go on to win again in 2015, 2016, and 2017, giving the British team five Tour de France victories in six years. During the ten-year span from 2007 to 2017, British cyclists won 178 world championships and sixty-six Olympic or Paralympic gold medals and captured five Tour de France victories in what is widely regarded as the most successful run in cycling history.
How can you replicate this approach in your own life?
Be growth conscious
It simple, Brailsford knew what team he had and the kind of reputation that preceded them. In fact, the performance of British riders had been so underwhelming that one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear.
That was how bad the British Cycling team were. It is only in this instance, in the aspect of wanting to grow, that the only competition you've got is yourself. Either you borrow the concept of ‘the aggregation of marginal gains’ from Brailsford, ‘Kaizen’ from the Japanese or the concept of ‘compounding effect’, whatever term you decided to use, the main idea is to grow.
Just like Brailsford did, strip down what you're doing into tiny little improvabel parts, create a system for growth and improvement, and be consistent with it. Be 1 percent better in what you do today than you were yesterday - the only competition you have in this is yourself.
It was Joshua Wooden who said,
“Don’t try to be better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be.”
Identify what you want
It was Charles Schulz Z. who said,
“Life is a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.”
It is one thing to want growth, it's a completely different thing to know what to grow in. You've got to make it a life goal to grow decisively, you've got to know what you want - only then can you know what you can truly accomplish.
Brailsford knew what he could do and how he would go about it - he knew what he wanted to achieve with the Brits cycling team.
What do you want to be the best at?
What do you want to be the first choice in?
You've got to know what you want out of this life. When you've got that covered, then you can fully explore the unlimited reserved potential that you carry around.
Always bring your ‘A’ game
It was Charles Schwab who said,
“When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.”
Everyday is another opportunity to be great at what you do, you've got to give everything a 100 percent daily.
We make the mistake sometimes of thinking we could balance our efforts another day (or time), we give a 90 percent today thinking we would give a 110 percent the next day. The overhead 10 percent would not cover for the 90 percent you gave a day before, life doesn't work that way.
Benjamin Franklin had this to say.
“One today is worth two tomorrows; what I am to be, I am now becoming.”
Accept the fact that you've got other competitors
Former pro basketball player and U.S. senator, Bill Bradley said that he attended a summer basketball camp when he was fifteen years old. There former college and pro basketball star “Easy” Ed Macauley told him,
“Just remember that if you’re not working at your game to the utmost of your ability, there will be someone out there somewhere with equal ability who will be working to the utmost of his ability. And one day you’ll play each other, and he’ll have the advantage.”
The business world is a testament to this fact. Anyone delivery goods or services is always refining, always making his/her goods or services better that it was. They are always looking for ways to appeal to consumers better than their competitors.
I recently read a commendable review about a food vendor in Jos Nigeria - Asapkitchen and confectioneries. The consumer was satisfied with their service delivery because of one thing and one thing alone, they delivered faster than their competitors.
Break your own records and outstrip what you did yesterday, do these not just because you are your competition. Accepting this single fact alone helps one to discover that which sets one apart from the rest.
Do not boycott or be throat cutting, rather work on what makes you, you
In one of his pan-african speech, professor Patrick Lumumba said this about the political arena of Africa,
“The Africa political space is cut throat, and sometimes, throats are actually cut.”
He further shared that he looked forward to a time where African politicians would turn politics to be a ‘competition of ideas’ and not a competition of who has the deepest pockets.
There's is something that puts you apart from the rest, there's something that would make Mr A chose you rather than the other. Take a look at the business world, again the delivery of goods and services are always edge cutting - everyone is trying to put something on the table that the other hasn't. This driving force of the competition market of ideas was at the forefront of every invention and is still the driving force of today's innovations.
What makes you who you are? Find it and you've got yourself on a roll.