Find Your Unfair Advantage in the Unfair World

What is an Unfair Advantage?

Have you ever wondered how people like Elon Musk get ahead whereas others in the same field have failed for decades?

There is one fact about the world that I believe in: The World is Unfair.

And there is nothing wrong with it. This makes all of us unique in our way due to all the variations we have. And once we confine all these uniqueness, you build up a brand.

Some people are born in rich families, some in kind and simple families, some are miserably poor and some are born with more IQ than others.

All of these people have something unique in themselves that needs to be channelled into a beam of focus and improved upon. And once you find it, you are unstoppable.

Unlocking the Unfair Advantage

People born into rich families have monetary and social advantages. If those people need to start up a business, it’s easier to get networked among other people and have backups ready for them. And that’s alright, it’s an Unfair Advantage over someone who is starting from scratch.

On the other hand, a person born into a poor family does have an unfair advantage of observing the world from the lowest perspective. They might be exposed to more problems that require to be solved by a huge mass of people. Here, the monetary perspective is not the Unfair Advantage, but something else, natural and circumstance based.

Having a high IQ can lead you to a reputed institution with a decorated degree in some field and you can stick it out everywhere you would be working. Given that few people get a chance to study in that particular institute making you at the top of the competition is an Unfair Advantage due to your natural-born talent.

You need to find the one or two things you are good at. It may be anything, from building a PC for optimal performance to cost ratio to cooking a certain cuisine better than others. And this is something you find in yourself from your early childhood. These talents are like those unfair advantages that you can have over other people.

Combine that with hard work and discipline, you get to the top of the world.

Compiling all of those Unfair Advantages into a Niche

Back in the day, people used to study for like 4-5 years in a university for a certain topic and work on it for 30 years till retirement.

Today, you have 9 months to learn a skill which would go outdated in 4 years. You make wealth in those 3 years and 3 months you have in between.

So you need to have a niche into which you want to channel these skills.

You may be good at mathematics, so in these 4 years cycle, you need to jump among topics of maths and its applications. From data science to machine learning, adaptive learning to reinforcement learning, you must have the ability to jump and learn.

And having a niche certainly helps.

I am a developer, hacker and writer at the same time and that’s my niche. I love finding security issues, building secure software and writing about it to spread information that then 1000s of people read.

In that niche, I improve myself and adapt to various technologies on my way.

I realised my niche with My Unfair Advantage of getting access to computers at an early age. My family owned a computer before buying anything, even a sofa which was bought years after we had a computer in an empty room. That made me get access to Corel Draw and Office tools at an early age of 5-7 years old.

I had a curiosity towards electronics and physics. I remember going through the scraps of electronics in my apartment to find something and experiment with it. The Unfair Advantage of physics kept my physics grade high in high school, while not being good at mathematics and usually scoring less since it was not my Unfair Advantage.

Conclusion

Every single person is unique in their ability and circumstances. And finding the best out of it and channelling it into a niche is important to unlock the highest potential possible for getting ahead.

In the economy after the industrial revolution where people are treated like cogs in a big machine, all doing the same things, it has suppressed the diversity of talents among people, which is not only essential for an individual, but for the betterment of mankind.

Book Recommendation of the Newsletter

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Eric Jorgenson

Naval Ravikant is the founder of AngelList, Epinions, Hit Forge, and Vast.com and a successful early investor in startups like Uber. He has been named “Angel Investor of the Year“ in 2018. Apart from business wisdom, Naval is one of those people with incredible work-life balance. In this book, Eric compiles the collective wisdom of the Naval into this book. A recommended one for anyone regardless of career background.