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Competition

Benefits, detriments, implementation. Significant overlap with Alone vs. Team.


Contents


Background

I've been a competitive person for most of my life, but with no outlet to express and develop it. The rest of my family is fairly lax about most parts of their life, and the areas I was competitive in didn't overlap with them. The same goes for my friends. None of them took seriously and competitively what I took seriously and competitively.

Having a community like this is ultimately detrimental—or at least limiting—to personal development and progression. (Of course, it's still important to have family and friends who are not competitive in the same areas as you.) Without some overlap, development is or becomes limited by the individual, and based on Alone vs. Team, this can only take one so far. A partner is required to make progress at the higher levels in specific areas. Competing against oneself offers little challenge and little reward besides more self-discovery (which is not a bad thing!). Competing against others forces challenge and reward in the pursuit of achievement and victory, continually edging each person up little-by-little.


Benefits

Information

A core philosophy of mine is that feedback and learning from others is almost always valuable: if the advice or takeaway is beneficial, then it can be implemented later, personalized, or built upon based on situation at hand; if it's detrimental, that's a lesson learned (hopefully in an easy way) that won't be used in the future and can still possibly be changed for the better; if it's neutral, it does no harm but still provides information about what does and doesn't work. Information is gained and future selves benefit in every case. Competition is the same way:

Again, information and a plan of action are learned in every case. A few examples:

Those examples are only for intra-discipline competitors, but learning opportunities are abundant between inter-discipline competitors, i.e., competitors from one discipline can easily learn from others in a different discipline. Carmella can learn from Tony about making a big push in the middle of an extended effort, as well as finishing strong when other competitors are close behind. Paulie can learn from Christopher about maintaining mental strength despite being behind and the other person appearing to be comfortable with the current pace. There is a lesson to be taken from everything.

Motivation

In some runner's training journal (I have searched and searched, but cannot find it), he mentions that both winning and losing result in motivation. Winning affirms training and the preparation that taken place for the big day. Losing produces frustration/anger and a desire to do better next time. There are two special circumstances to be aware of, one for each outcome:

  1. Continual winning fosters a false sense of security. The winner starts to think they can't lose. They get lazy, competitiveness decreases, and suddenly their rank is slipping. Some can muster the momentum to start training sufficiently again, while for others it may take a bit of time. The simple way to prevent this to understand the fact that at any time someone can become better, whether it's due to their work or a personal fault.
  2. Continual losing causes distrust of the training and a general lack of motivation. Imagine training hard (reminder: hard ≠ better!) and race results, either in place or performance, not showing for it. The initial thought is that hours, days, months, even years of hard work have been for naught. No one likes feeling this way, so care should be taken to avoid continual losing, especially to the same opponent or a major rival. (Again, dosing is everything here.)

Outside of those two cases, the statement is generally true. Winning should be experienced more due to the impact it has on one's psyche, but losing is important in its own right, too. More on implementing winning and losing in the Implementation section.

Signaling

Being known as a competitive person has its advantages. Getting picked over others is more likely when the position requires someone who will do whatever it takes to win. Why would a company choose inept David for that director role when they know Frank hates losing, whether it's a sale or chili cooking contest? The choice is obvious.

Being competitive often benefits those on the same team. Spouses and children will benefit from their working spouse's/parent's competitiveness in the form of raises; players in the form of wins and lessons; companies and stockholders in the form of productivity; employees in the form of more business and more raises. Learn to control competitiveness based on the situation and watch popularity skyrocket.


Detriments

Unhealthy

As mentioned above, being ultra-competitive and losing too often can wreak havoc on one's mental health. Not good enough, not training hard enough, continual bad days, etc. All reasons for losing. All ways to lose self-confidence or try to overcompensate in an unhealthy manner.

Becoming okay with losing is an integral part of competition. It allows for clarity in the mind after a loss, giving the loser time to mull over his successes and mistakes and create a plan to address them. Agitation and anger cloud the mind and often cause bad decisions to be made.

In rare circumstances, competitiveness can ruin reputations and even friendships. There is a time and place for competition—pickup basketball at the local church with some randoms is probably not that. Being known as "that guy" does no favors.


Individuals

Mark Twight makes note of men's competitiveness in the gym, stating something along the lines of "put a score on a guy's [yes, women are intentionally excluded from this sentence] performance and he will work his ass off".

And it appears there are documented differences between the sexes. Cashdan's Are men more competitive than women? investigates:

whether women and men differ in (a) what they compete over, (b) whom they compete with, and (c) their competitive tactics, including use of aggression.

The results are unsurprising (following taken directly from abstract):

In Study 1, university students kept diaries of their competitive interactions during the term. Sex differences, few overall, were as follows: (a) men's diaries contained more same-sex competition, (b) women competed more about looking attractive whereas men competed more about sports, and (c) men used physical (but not verbal) aggression more frequently than women. In Study 2 strength of competition was also measured by questionnaire. Women and men felt equally competitive overall, but men felt more competitive about athletics and sexual attention whereas women felt more competitive about looking attractive. In men, but not women, competitiveness for financial success was correlated with various aspects of mating competition. Young men were more competitive than older men in a variety of domains and were also more physically and verbally aggressive, but no age difference in aggression was found for women.

From Niederle and Vesterlund's Gender and Competition:

Laboratory studies have documented that women often respond less favorably to competition than men. Conditional on performance, men are often more eager to compete, and the performance of men tends to respond more positively to an increase in competition.

I believe that men and women's differences in competitiveness (both in discipline and intensity) is largely determined by what society and peers (read: competitors) find valuable. Men are more competitive in sports (excelling in a sport is attractive) and sexual attention (being sought after by many women implies value). Women are more competitive in looking attractive (no explanation needed). The relatively recent rise of women achieving higher statuses in the workplace also corresponds to an increase in competitiveness. Career women are now found more attractive than ever, giving women an incentive to become more competitive in the workplace.

And like Robin Hanson has said, a vast majority of competitiveness is likely based on simple signaling.


Implementation

Development

Developing competitiveness for those who either a) don't have it, or b) want more of it is a fairly straightforward process:

  1. Learn and appreciate how fun it is to win
  2. Learn and appreciate how un-fun it is to lose and the shame that comes with it

These are two high-level points that still encompass all of competition. How these are done is a personal choice, but some suggestions/thoughts:

Community

Again, others are a requirement for increasing competitiveness. Finding them is a simple process:

It's important to remember that a vast majority of people want to improve. No one wants to regress or stagnate in their skills. Making it obvious that they will get better by partnering up will encourage them to do so—a mutually-beneficial relationship.

Feedback

Once competitiveness is at its desired level and a community is found, it is time for training. Implementing feedback from others and reviewing training is a major part of the development process, but is often neglected or never used.

The feedback process is flexible, but should roughly follow this outline:

  1. Find a partner who is of a similar skill level and drive.
  2. Define goals
    1. Train
    2. Review training with partner on regular basis
    3. Implement feedback into training
      1. If goal has been reached, return to step 2
      2. If goal is still in progress, return to step 3a

Design

The win-loss ratio is a personal number, but should not be skewed too heavily towards one side. As mentioned in the Motivation section, too much winning can breed over-confidence and laziness, while too much losing can decrease self-confidence and create disdain for the activity.

A win-loss ratio of (6-7):(3-4) seems appropriate, i.e., out of 10 events, wins occur six to seven times and losses three to four. When in doubt, err on the side of a larger ratio, i.e., more wins. A handful of both wins and losses should be close and possibly due to (bad) luck, while others should not be. Close wins/losses produce hunger, easy wins produce confidence, and big losses (should) produce self-reflection.

Programming this ratio requires knowledge of opponents' skill levels. From here opponents can be picked accordingly. Close wins/losses should come from someone equally as skilled, if not a bit more. Win and confidence is boosted since a superior player was just beat. Lose and it's understandable, they were better. Easy wins should come from worse players (obviously) and big losses from way better players (obviously). Again, take lessons from all competitions.


See Also