Use Your Unfair Advantage

Focus on what you can control.

I was born in a poor family in India.

We had no income. We survived on rations from the government and financial help from extended family members. We didn’t have access to TV, Fridge, Mobile, Computers, Internet, etc. We never traveled outside of the city and never went to a movie theater.

I didn’t get a chance to read anything outside the school textbooks. I never went shopping and wore thrown-away clothes from my cousins. I couldn’t hang out with friends as I didn’t have the money for restaurants.

I was fortunate to get a decent education. Education was always the priority for my parents, they thought that would get us out of poverty. I learned coding from books borrowed from the library. I didn’t have a computer at home, so used to stay late at college to practice coding. Later I went to the university and got an internship.

I was shocked when HR asked me for bank account details, we never had any connection with the bank. They were unhappy with me for not wearing good shoes and clothes. I struggled to deal with office politics. Apparently, formal education wasn’t enough to get success. I felt out of place there.

By then I was exposed to the internet and realized how far behind I was from others. I wanted to bridge the gap with my peers. I spent everything I earned on my learning. I bought books and courses. I studied every day and never took any breaks.

I continued to improve my skills and got settled in a new job. But the goalpost kept moving. I needed more skills to get to the next level, but nothing was enough. It felt like I was walking in a desert towards the mirage.

I had fallen behind my peers and found no way of catching up.

Bridging the gap with others

Let’s try to break down the problem using first-principles thinking.

What is success? For me, it’s about enjoying every moment.

What is needed to get success? I need more money.

How to earn more money? Provide more value to people.

How to provide more value to people? Learn highly valuable skills, like coding, writing, speaking, etc.

And this is where I had fallen behind.

I lacked soft skills like communication skills and dealing with people. I knew coding but started much later than the top people in that field. And I couldn’t bridge that gap with hard work.

So I asked myself this question:

What needs to be true to get what I want with my current resources/skills?

There are two options I had:

1. Reduce my expectations.

2. Improve my skills.

I didn’t want to reduce my expectations, I wanted to get all the experiences I missed in my childhood.

But I failed to learn skills fast enough and bridge the gap with others.

My unique advantage

What is the way of getting exponential results?

Have something unique i.e. Discover something completely new.

Here the common misconception is that you need to study a subject for decades before you can come up with something new. What if I can challenge this notion?

Why we are trying to get knowledge from outside?

Why not explore what we already know?

It’s like drilling for oil inside your nation instead of importing from Arab nations.

My unique advantage is not having much experience.

I don’t have any prior biases which help me to see things from a new perspective. I had lived life as a poor person and now climbing up the social hierarchy, so can empathize with all kinds of people.

After lots of reflection, now I can explain human behavior in 3 sentences.

1. Humans only act out of their self-interests. That might be conscious or unconscious.
2. The subconscious mind is focused on ensuring our survival. It prioritizes tasks that it feels would help with our survival. 
3. To understand a human we have to look at two things - Power and Motivation. How much power do they hold and what is their motivation?

Using these three principles I have resolved all my issues - Social media addiction, Game addiction, Anxiety, Perfectionism, Laziness, Making my own decisions, Taking more risks, Hero worship, Quitting sugar, Getting confidence and self-esteem, People-pleasing behaviors, Staying motivated without external support, Jealousy, Improving communication skills, Getting fluent in English, etc.

I have become self-sufficient. And I can teach my unique principles to everyone which comes naturally to me, where I have 25 years of experience.

Eventually, I will reach my money goal by doing what I love to do while having a positive impact on the world.

Summary

When things are not going our way, it’s our natural instinct to complain about how unfair the world is. 

That feels good at that moment. But no one cares about our struggles. 

We can stay where we are and complain all day, but only we will suffer the consequences.

The world is an unfair place. 

That is not the problem. 

The problem is not using our own unfair advantage.