What gives you confidence that you have an advantage in any situation? Shane Parrish from Farnamstreet started an interesting thread on Twitter about sources of personal competitive advantage, check them out below.
– Ability to persuade others
– Ability to look stupid
– Advanced Pattern recognition
– Focus
– Ability to say no— Shane Parrish (@farnamstreet) January 31, 2019
That’s 15 sources, I’ll add 10 of my own here:
Fearlessness
I know many people who are driven by a heavy dose of fear. Of failing, making mistakes, looking bad; that’s what pushes them. For me it’s the opposite, I’m driven by my lack of not fearing the unknown. I get more excited the less I know and the higher the probability that things will not work out.
Being hard to kill
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. This is about having grit and resilience the most important quality any person who sets out do things must have; the ability to suffer and figure out a way forward.
Ability to turn weakness into strength
This is about having a growth mindset and being self-reliant, becoming more of what you could be instead of always relying on others; it’s about bettering yourself.
Fluid intelligence
This is about having a thick catalog of mental models, which help you have a wide perspective and have access to many knowledge flows. It means you’re never set in a specific perspective, but can shift from one to another.
Storytelling
There’s a reason why it’s said that the most influential person in a room is a storyteller. Stories move people to act, and someone who can tell a good story has tremendous power for his / her ability make people feel something.
Empathy
The ability to relate to others is a gift that keeps on giving.
Simplicity
People and the world we live in tends to become more complex as we and it grows. Keeping it simple is the ability to subtract, ignore and eliminate what doesn’t matter from ones life so you can focus on what does.
Collaboration
This becomes more important in a world where you can connect with anyone online, because the ability to relate, exchange ideas and work together towards a common goal is extremely valuable.
Purpose
This is about standing for something by having clarity of your values.
Curiosity
The future belongs to the learn-it-all’s because they have the ability to reinvent themselves.
Most everyone is afraid artificial intelligence will render us useless, leaving us without a job. It’s not true, and even if it does happen it won’t anytime soon. More importantly, computers will have a hard time being human because they’ll lack critical thinking, creativity and empathy.
