I have not a competitive bone in my body.
When I play (recreational) sports, I don’t even know the score most of the time.
People who are competitive find this odd. They wonder how I get motivated to play well if I don’t care about winning. But I go out there to have a good time and play my best. And I care about how the rest of the team plays and that we all get an opportunity to make our best contribution.
If we’ve played well, I’m happy.
You can imagine how annoyed I am by the Olympic coverage.
Even if people aren’t talking about sports, they are still talking competition. And the ideals of competition.
Hell, the competitive Olympic spirit has even infiltrated the knitting community.
In case you haven’t figured it out, I don’t subscribe to the Olympic ideals. Not for sport. Not for knitting. Not for anything else.
And while I get that competition (whether against others or against themselves) inspires some people to reach new heights, I resent the idea that competition is necessary to get there.*
*I enjoyed this week’s edition of Tapestry, for example, but I disagree profoundly that the point the guest was making is generalizable to all of us. It’ll air again Thursday if you’re interested.
For some people, competition demotivates.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.
It occurred to me today that a lack of competitiveness or lack of commitment to competitive values and the things that flow from them is part of the problem some of you have in making your best contribution academically.
After all, if competition is demotivating you, you might feel like you are just not cut out for this.
If you aren’t competitive, why should you publish in the “best” journals?
If you aren’t competitive, why would you even consider applying for funding when it is so hard to get (and competitive).
How do you go about looking for an academic job when the advice you get seems to be all about getting a job at one of the “best” institutions and you don’t really care about that?
I get it.
And I don’t think that not being competitive is an impediment to being a successful academic.
Yes, sometimes you are going to have to compete. If you want to get funding, for example.
And other people are going to compare your work to others and treat the whole thing like a competition whether you want them to or not.
But if competition isn’t what motivates you, then you don’t have to think about competition.
You need to think about making your best contribution. Doing your best work. Your calling, or whatever it is that got you interested in research and academic life to begin with.
You need to figure out how you are motivated to do that work. That is the basis of your work plan.
Maybe just knowing that is enough.
Maybe you just need permission not to care about the competition. If so, I hereby give you permission not to give a damn about competition.
But if that isn’t enough. If you think it would be helpful to talk to someone who gets this non-competitive thing in order to work out what motivates you and help you figure out what the road you want to be on looks like…
Yes, I’m going to charge you. If you think that my help is valuable to you, then I need you to demonstrate that in the culturally appropriate way of giving me money. It’s not a perfect measure of value but it’s what we’ve got.
Or you can hang out here on the website reading all the free stuff in the light of your new knowledge that I get the non-competitive thing.
Whatever you choose, I’d love to hear your reaction to these thoughts on competitiveness. Comment on this post on the website. E-mail me at jove@jovanevery.ca. Or tweet me @jovanevery.
I can’t tell you how warming it is to hear someone say this out loud.
I have been the least competitive person I know for my whole life.
Interesting to think that when people talk about competition, what they’re ‘really’ saying is that that is how *they* are motivated. Thinking that everyone is going to be motivated in the same way is silly.
And yet and yet those values seem to be everywhere.
Glad to join a groundswell of people who are finding a different way.
So, well, yay.
Thanks!
This is the kind of stuff that changes the world. Seriously. Wow. Rock on, JoVE! I think part of it, too, is the element of choice. When I choose to compete in tennis, it still feels fun. Without that choice, competition just becomes dreadful. Which is maybe why I hated the tennis team in high school. It’s nice to have a reminder that we DO have the option to opt out of all this. Even if everyone else is acting like it’s the only way.
growing up in an all-female household, I didn’t think it was especially strange that we didn’t keep score when we played Scrabble. We cheered for cool words and were known on occasion to swap a letter with our ‘opponent’ when necessary. Years later I ran across an article by Alfie Kohn- The Case Against Competition. http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/tcac.htm
He later wrote a book called No Contest. One line from the article sticks with me: competition is to self-esteem as sugar is to teeth. It’s a heretical point of view to be sure, especially here in the US, but certainly more true to my experience. Education as we know it tends to be built explicitly or implicitly around the idea of competition, and the higher you go on the academic food chain, the more intense it gets. You will be a great asset to anyone who wants to compete only on their own terms!