How to win any competition you enter
I always love when people don’t try for something because they’re sure they won’t get it.
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“I’m not going to apply to XYZ College…I’ll never get in, and even if I did, I could never afford it.”
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“There’s no way I would ever get that job…you need 10 years of experience.”
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“What? Enter that contest? There are probably 5,000 other people doing it.”
YES! THEY’RE RIGHT! They’re never going to win…because they already eliminated themselves from any consideration.
One of the best principles I’ve ever learned is, “Don’t do their job for them.? Let the admissions committee reject you, if they decide you’re not right. Don’t do their job for them.
Your job is to apply and give yourself every advantage in winning. But the fear of rejection makes most of us not even want to step to the plate.
I’ve written about this in the Craigslist Penis Effect. That’s when other people are so terrible that you win just by simply being “adequate.” It’s one of the ways I managed to win $100,000+ in college scholarships to pay my way through undergrad and grad school at Stanford. And to get my own phrase listed on UrbanDictionary. My parents are so proud.
Today, I’ve invited Jay Cross, creator of DIY Degree and my former editor, to share a fascinating new framework on changing the way you think about taking risks.
I love his approach because so many top performers intuitively do this — but he’s written it down into a usable framework for us all. When you hear yourself saying, Eh…I could never never get that, you can use Jay’s strategies to reconceptualize the way you think about risk and success.
Put another way: Let others select themselves out of the race, while you can push through your barriers and win.
Here’s Jay.
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I’m going to let you in on the best-kept secret of competing.
If five hundred people enter a contest, maybe ten of them will be truly world-class. The rest filter themselves out for you. Meaning if you really dedicate yourself, you only have to beat ten people!
I call this model (illustrated below) “The Continuum of Doers.”
Thinking this way lets you turn demoralization into inspiration — and truly surprise yourself. Let me show you how.
Ready to improve your habits and level up your life? Download our FREE Ultimate Guide To Habits below.
My first confrontation with the Continuum of Doers
Back in 2008, Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords author Perry Marshall posted job ads for two new positions. I wanted one of them. Yet these were not typical ?send me your resume? ads. They were contests. And before you could even apply, Perry charged $25, non-refundable application fees to everyone who wanted in.
I will never forget how people reacted.
Faced with even a tiny obstacle, most people backpedaled. Check out some of their whiny comments:
A handful of others complained in agreement. Not me.
SWEET, I thought. “These guys quit before the race even started!”
But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Wait a second, I realized. This is a continuum within a continuum. If five people were angry enough to complain, what if dozens more just silently gave up? I might actually have a shot!”
Perry later estimated that hundreds would have applied without that fee. Instead just eighteen did: the ones who really believed they could win. Five were rejected for sloppy applications. The remaining thirteen were assigned an unpaid project, causing three more to drop out (weren’t so committed after all.)
Of the ten who completed their projects, six were merely “respectable” in Perry’s words.
Only four finalists of the starting eighteen did ?excellent? work. I was one of them.
The winner was chosen by taking the ?mini-products? each of us finalists created, offering them for sale to Perry’s readers, and hiring whoever sold the most.
The other three were professional copywriters aged 35 or older. One worked at Google. I was a 21 year old college kid with barely any experience.
I didn’t win. But I did make it to the final round when many better-qualified applicants (including an ?editor of newspapers, magazines, and books?) couldn’t even crack the first. My skills didn’t take me there. My approach did.
Instead of pouting, I studied the winner’s work. I compared his strategy to mine and noted what he did better. Six months later, when legendary copywriter John Carlton held a similar hiring contest, I won handily.
Three years after that, Ramit hired me at IWT — largely because of my work with Carlton. All of these experiences, in turn, spawned The DIY Degree. I couldn’t have foreseen any of this in 2008. But in hindsight, a single contest that I chose to see differently sparked a series of life-changing events.
Like Steve Jobs said, “You can only connect the dots looking backward.” The complainers will never know where their dots might have led them.
Tragic.
Every barrier “thins the herd” for you
What does this all mean?
It means other people can be “better” than you on paper (higher GPA, faster lap time, stronger resume, etc.) without hustling, executing, or selling themselves to the top.
I pushed myself in Perry’s contest because I knew most people wouldn’t and that alone gave me a great chance to win.
I literally CELEBRATED the barriers (the application fee, the unpaid project, etc) for the drop-offs they foreshadowed. Every barrier was another chance to leave people in the dust.
You can use this framework to pump yourself up for anything, including the “impossible” competitions.
Let’s look at the continuum of professional baseball players.
In a given year?
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2,000,000 kids play in little league
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455,000 kids play in high school
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25,000 kids play in college
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1,500 kids get drafted by MLB teams
The craziest part? Not even the drafted players are guaranteed to make it. The adjustment to pro ball filters even more players out. Most of them “peak” in the minors, never stepping foot inside a big league batter’s box. In fact, at any given time, only 750 players are dressed in uniform on a major league team’s 25-man roster.
Of course, now that you know about the Continuum of Doers, you should know ability isn’t the only filter. Big leaguers aren’t just the most talented: they were also the hardest workers, emotionally stable, team players, likely had supportive parents, stayed clear of legal trouble, etc.
Put another way: plenty of sufficiently talented players wash out, clearing the way for less talented players to outshine them on less obvious (but still important) dimensions. That’s where your opportunity is.
Consider these examples:
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Getting into top schools. Every applicant has a perfect GPA. But how many can write an arresting essay on why Harvard should invest in THEM? Far fewer. Admissions officers actually complain about how imitative and cookie-cutter most essays are.
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Landing dream jobs. Everyone is a ?detail-oriented team player? in search of meaningful work. But how many speak the hiring manager’s language to separate themselves from the pack? English majors don’t have to finish last if they understand this.
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Writing guest posts. “A-list” bloggers get pitched daily. But how many of those pitches are brief and specific and original and considerate of what’s in it for the blogger and do all the work for the blogger and align with the blogger’s audience? Hardly any.
Want more proof? Check out Ramit’s post on using tiny barriers to avoid kooks:
Before, I used to hand out my card and tell [prospective PBwiki interns] to get in contact. Maybe 10% would. (This is already a dismal follow-up rate for a group that self-selected themselves to go up and ask for someone’s card.) Now, I hand out my card and tell them this: “Yes, definitely! Here, take my card and get in touch. Just make your own wiki first and then email me. We can talk about what you’d want to improve.”
New response rate? Maybe 2%. When I ask them to do something really trivial (creating a wiki takes 10 seconds), in other words, 80% of the people who used to contact me drop off the face of the earth. But the people who do get in touch are far more interested and better qualified.
Of course they are. The 8% who didn’t follow through weren’t serious or assumed they wouldn’t get hired or both. The other 2% knew better. That’s the pool business owners hire from.
Do what it takes to be in that pool.
The Continuum of Doers in your life
One more thing: some people mistake this framework for the oft-repeated quote that ?half of life is just showing up.? There’s legitimacy in that idea, but you can never control outcomes, only probabilities. So the Continuum of Doers is NOT saying you just need to show up. Rather, it says that if you?
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Identify the specific barriers that trip other people up (it could be body language, the ability to meet deadlines, even the way you word emails)
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Systematically improve yourself in each of those areas
…then your chances of succeeding are higher than you ever dreamed possible.
Jay Cross is the founder of The Do-It-Yourself Degree and helps thousands of independent learners graduate faster for less. His college acceleration strategies have been featured by Fox Business, Huffington Post, Popular Mechanics, Brazen Careerist, The Personal MBA, and UnCollege.org.
Ready to take control of your finances (without tedious budgeting?) Get the first chapter of Ramit Sethi's NYT Bestselling Book below.
34 Comments
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David Hunter
Just remember this when you apply for a job... A lot of people can't even pass a drug test these days. So if you are applying for a position that has 100 applicants, 50 of them probably can't even pass the drug test. If you don't do drugs you're already ahead of the game!
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Randy
I agree that it is very important for people not to loose faith in their ability to succeed. As long as you learn from your mistakes and move forward with them, there is no reason why you shouldn't succeed!
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Jordan M.
This is very good advice. I am a firm believer that anything is possible as long as you put your mind and energy towards your goal.
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Joshua Rodriguez
Self confidence plays a huge role in success. If there is enough determination behind a goal, there is no reason why it couldn't be reached. Thanks for sharing with us!
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Irina Z
Such a great article. I can relate - earlier this year I won Tim Ferriss' $10K Memory Challenge (the task was to learn to memorize the order of a shuffled 52 card deck in under 1 minute). I remember the night I saw the blog post announcing the challenge, I seriously thought "Somebody will win. Why the hell not me?". Practiced for 5 days straight and managed to score the prize. Fastest $10,000 I have earned in my life. I am still in slight disbelief. Later I spoke to Ed Cooke, who co-organized the challenge and he confirmed that only a small percentage of the 5000 people who started the challenge actually proceeded to practice beyond the first day.
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Jay Cross
Perfect example! :)
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Jarrod
Ramit/Jay- Have you ever read Cyril Parkinson's essay on how to run a competitive selection? The gist is that ideally you should set the parameters of the competition such that only one person applies, whom you ultimately select. This post reminded me of that essay (which was exaggerated for humorous effect), but from the other side.
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Jay Cross
I have not read that essay but I have a feeling I will love it. Will dig it up now. Thanks for the tip!
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Jay Cross
Another example I wish I included in the post: videos on YouTube. Look at any video series with three parts. An interview, clips from a TV show, anything. You will invariably see the number of views tail off from the first, second, and third videos until something like 1/4 of those who started actually make it through to the end.
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Ragnar
Very cool approach to changing your perspective on barriers... I'm incredibly commitment averse so I can relate to just not bothering. I mean, I have been out of work for a while and have stubbornly refused to go meet managers face to face because I somehow feel that doing that for the mere chance to get a no-skills-required job is beneath me. I even know it's counterproductive and stupid. I find it very confusing.. but hey, at least now I know how to win the next competition that offers up a career path that I'm actually interested in!
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Laura
I love this. I can think instantly of a handful of times I've said those sorts of things to myself, "Oh I don't fit the requirements." And who knows what would have happened if I went for it anyway. I can also see how I can reverse this process (like I imagine Ramit's article you linked discusses, but I haven't clicked it yet) and use it to filter out people who aren't going to work as hard for me. For instance, I hired a VA once and pretty much gave them the job the first time we talked without even hearing much about them. They performed at a very low caliber for my needs and actually added work to my plate instead of taking it away. If I had told the VA that to get my business they would need to prove that they could filter through content and pull out the gold for my audience, she probably wouldn't have done it or wouldn't have done a good job and I would have saved myself a lot of time and some money too.
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Jay Cross
Bingo :)
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Anca
So obvious and yet so not. I'm going to let this concept worm its way into my brain. What I take from this is that pretty much everyone is afraid of failure/rejection, you don't have to be less afraid than your competition, you just have to push through those feelings for a few seconds longer than them and you'll find yourself succeeding more than you expected. "You may already be a winner!" So true. :)
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Jay Cross
Anca, You're right: it seems obvious, but like so many things in life, it's still not practiced by the majority of people. I use this framework mainly to motivate myself. When I'm in the trenches and thinking about quitting (or half-assing it) I think of everyone else who's doing that and remember that I have a really good shot if I push harder than them.
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Mike Goodman
Absolutely correct. Thinking your couldn't do it will not get you anywhere. No matter how many excuses you give it only boils down to one thing, you re not good enough and you're just too scared to admit it outrightly.
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Marissa
Thanks for the post- i'm in a similar situation as Ragnar's comment below and I'll take this perspective to heart as I interview for (or create!) the next best role for me.
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Tawnya Greene
I agree with the last part...When you identify what other unsuccessful person do, you can get a clear overview of the things you must not do in order to succeed with your goals. Making yourself better or best in areas where others are failing can give you an edge over them. The same holds true in taking control over your finances.
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Ryan @ Impersonal Finance
Spot on article man. Too many people want to be handed something, and when the smallest obstacle gets in their way, they quit. There are always going to be excuses NOT to do something, you just have to find one single reason to actually do it and go through with it.
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Gareth
This article is right on the money. A couple years ago, I entered a contest on Twitter to win a year-long VIP pass to one of my town's most popular music venues. The contest had multiple questions that had to be answered, and with each question, fewer and fewer people answered. When the last question came around, it required contestants to physically go to a location in my town and take a photo of themselves at that location. I was literally one of only two people who completed this final step. So even though hundreds of people entered the contest when it started, it came down to me having a 50% chance of winning the prize just by virtue of persevering and sticking with it to the end.
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Jay Cross
Amazing, isn't it Gareth? Once you go through this once or twice, you start seeing examples of it everywhere.
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Rasha Hisham
Loved you post. It reminded me of a quote my teacher always used to tell us, 'half of life is just showing up'. Your post was especially relevant for me today because I just entered a startup contest. It made me really think about everybody who would possibly enter and what mistakes they may make. Thank you so much Ramit for such an insightful article.
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Bill
Wow this is incredible Ramit, personally I'd embrace the thought of having total confidence to win the challenge.
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Jason
This is awesome... And thought provoking. And, I want you to buy my new ebook! Send me your email and I will tell you when it is available.
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Ray Silverman
Years ago a friend told me that life is like a war of attrition. The winners are those who are left after everyone else drops out! It made sense to me then, and it made sense to me today while reading your blog. When you get right down to it, the only thing that really matters is not giving up. It may sound negative, but it's actually the most optimistic--and the most courageous--thing in the world. As Helen Keller once said, "Truly, I have looked into the heart of darkness and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence. But in spirit I am one who walks the morning."
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Christian Johnson
Oh my *bleeping* Jesus! So, y'all know how there are folks that talk about God talking them? Haha well he just slapped me in the freaking face!!! I just started blogging like literally last week, and my first thought was to try to write a guest post for Ramit. I ready his "guide to writing an effective guest post for high-traffic bloggers." Afterward I immediately crumbled and thought well maybe i'll come back in six months when I have some traffic. Something just told me to come to this site tonight and look at this post. This was God slapping me. Telling me to Wake UP! Thanks Ramit and Jay!
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Eleanor
Great article. I had an experience where I applied & was accepted to a top international conference even though I was scared of rejection. A guy I know who has a better network in the field didn't apply, so didn't get accepted & ended up whining about it afterwards. Can't find the exact quote, but goes something like "he who can suffer 15 minutes more, has won the battle".
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Erik Lim
My gosh, great article ! Success is a process, not an event. Sadly, most people want to shortcut the entire process and jump to the end. Doesn't work that way. You want to succeed, you better be damn willing to do the necessary. Brings back to mind one of my favorite quotes 'Don't let someone else's highlight reel be your everyday routine.' Thanks for sharing Ramit.
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Ross
Great post Ramit/Jay. This story reminds me when I tried out for the high school golf team. The tryouts were split into three days where you played a course each day. Two friends I knew also were trying to make the team. They played poorly and quit after the first day! One of them I remember said to me he was "sick" as his excuse to not play the final two days of try outs. I didn't make the team but unlike my two friends, I didn't do "their" job for them and competed all three days until I was formally rejected.
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dormitory definition
Hello mates, pleasant article and fastidious urging commented here, I am truly enjoying by these.
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The President Of The United States
I love this article. I am join a contest and the real thing that stood out for me is: "If five hundred people enter a contest, maybe ten of them will be truly world-class. The rest filter themselves out for you. Meaning if you really dedicate yourself, you only have to beat ten people!" This is so true! I used this momentum to really push hard and get into the final 5 of a competition with 1000 people!
Comments are closed.
Amber
This is a great article! Too many people cut themselves down and out of competitive situations just because they are not sure of themselves. If you don't succeed the first time try try again!