To win or to be right
For debate class, I saw an interesting distinction between who’s playing to win and who’s playing to be right. Would you like to guess which side won and why? If you guess the person who debated with facts, it would be a good guess but you’re mistaken.
The skillset of one side overwhelmed the other through a series of bending truth, skewing information, and savviness with the English language.
I’ve always thought those who were prepared with facts were a determined winner. It was also interesting to see how those with more intelligence could “manipulate” their way to victory, sometimes ignoring the facts themselves.
From an outsider looking in, it seemed preposterous to see what had unfolded. But it reminded me that a lot of us play games to win, and it’s that same desire that can ultimately hijack the path toward truth.
It makes sense to try to win
“If you’re not playing to win, what are you playing for?”
Those were words burned into us at every single high school practice and game. It made a lot of sense too, why do something if you’re not trying to be first? Why try something if you’re not aiming to be the best? It all connects right?
I disagree wholeheartedly.
If you don’t get caught up with people trying to group things together, you’ll see that these are two separate things and they can coexist. You can win, but also not be a jerk. You can still be great and not have the idea of being the best.
There’s no need to put all your groceries in one bag. Everyone has different objectives and end goals, and thus different outcomes and methods are born out of that.
But I understand what coaches are trying to do by putting their athletes in a “win-first” mentality. In order to win, you need to work hard and put your best effort into something. Something underlooked is that winners get a cumulative advantage—they get the attention, and the opportunities to succeed even further.
Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book, Outliers, about how kids born in January and February get a major advantage for hockey because the season would start around June. Kids born earlier had an extra 4-5 months of physical development compared to everyone else. When you’re at the age of puberty, those 4-5 months mean a lot.
So if you have that advantage, you can now perform better than your peers. Scouts will take note of this and select you to play with the other better kids—which raises your level as well. Do this enough times and the gap exponentially increases.
It hits the boiling point when you focus so much on winning, that you’ll do anything to win. When you have to forgo principles and morals to win, that’s when you lose yourself.
All of the benefits aren’t worth it when you lose character in my opinion. There are a lot of cheaters in professional sports that had fame and money, but there’s something about looking at yourself in the mirror and knowing you did it the right way.
The right way is harder
When I was a part of the track team, there was a guy with a bad habit of not running past the finish line during drills. He would always ease up at the end and get yelled at constantly for it. He was the fastest guy on the team so he felt that he could get away with it.
He would get punished for this bad behavior at the championship race when he eased up at the end and the opponent edged him out by a millisecond.
It reminded me of how our coach would make us run laps back and forth, and I would see how the athletes who didn’t touch the lines would have the same lazy mentality as in other aspects of their lives.
Perhaps it was a coincidence but whatever your repeated actions are tend to be the philosophy you follow usually. If you’re someone who skims on the important stuff in your personal life, the chances are you skimming on the important stuff at work is high.
That’s where I believe the struggle and the extra you put in to make sure it gets done the right way pays off way more. I call it a struggle because there will be many days when you just want to take a shortcut and finish it quickly.
No one is watching and it’s so easy to justify cutting corners. You’ve done it right this whole time what’s one slip-up? Then it becomes more frequent and then you’ve listed your purpose in the first place. It’s hard to maintain good habits and what you’ve worked for can easily be tossed out the window in seconds. The climb is tough and long, but the fall is just one wrong step away.
Choosing the harder path anyway
I wouldn’t recommend motivation to help you with doing the right thing because motivation doesn’t last too long. You must create an identity in which your values are about doing the right thing, even if no one’s watching.
This is even more so when you don’t get punished for doing something bad. No repercussions for doing bad things is one of the most dangerous traps anyone could fall in. You’re now drunk with power and the flag pole of morality has been pushed even further. Why even bother doing the right thing if no one apprehends you for it?
That’s the golden question. Why is it worth doing the right thing in the first place?
I’ve been thinking about what makes people do questionable and even evil things. Perhaps a psychiatrist can give a better answer, but I think it stems down to because it feels good.
It feels good to get away with something you didn’t work hard to get. It feels good to make another person feel stupid during a debate. It feels good to win basketball games and not get caught cheating. It feels good to be that person that never gets caught.
Inversely, if you work your butt off and do the right thing, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be successful or win. You’ll look over at the next person and see they’re getting the same or even more than you by taking shortcuts. It’s hard to fight that temptation to do the same.
But what you gain from doing it right is an opportunity to be righteous, morally incorruptible, self-respect, and a reputation for being the person who does it the right way.
People do take notice of others that do it the right way. The top-notch performers of the world didn’t get there by cheating. They got there from building it from the ground up, and understand the necessary work it took.
One thing about the best people is that they make it a habit to surround themselves with other great people. Especially people that won’t shortchange them or cross them. By being that person who does it the right way consistently, you’ve now given yourself an opportunity to be around the best people.
You’ve been given a chance to build trust and many doors will open because of that. Since you did it the right way, you’ve gone through many trials and tribulations that would give you insight into what went wrong and right. It’s this insight that will help you solve important problems.
My brother would be that guy to tinker with computers and see how they work. He spent many nights figuring out why such parts were placed there. That accumulated knowledge helped me land a job where some of the most important people in the company go to him for help. Whenever he runs into a problem, he finds it exciting because he now gets to learn a new thing that will undoubtedly make him even more valuable.
He ended up winning just by doing it right.
When you focus on winning. everything else gets blurred. When you focus on doing things right, you wonder why everything is blurred.
We fight the temptation to win at all costs, and I certainly fall into this category every single day. Even if you don’t do it for the glory or the reputation, you should do the right thing for yourself.
Frank Sinatra said it best, “I did it my way”.
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