Student vs. Competitor

By Daniel Miessler on December 13th, 2005: Tagged as General | Musings | Personal | Sport | Table Tennis

I realized something about myself tonight that’s worth noting.

It seems that when I approach a skill (say Table Tennis) I focus so much on being a student of the discipline that I almost ignore the element of competition altogether. That may not sound bad, but it is.

Essentially, when I study things, I study to master my technique. I don’t study to win. I want to win, or at least it would be nice to win, but it is far more important to me that I flawlessly execute my movements.

One could argue that I am not focused on the right thing for competition. I noticed this in my last tournament. I was working on doing x or y in my game, and I was losing. After one of the games a guy came up to me and said, “Why do you keep going to his forehand? He’s got a wicked shot on that side and he almost never misses! Don’t go over there!”

It was quite profound. I realized then that I wasn’t even paying attention to how to beat the guy. I found myself thinking, “Yeah, maybe I could beat him if I did that, but I should be able to beat him going to his forehand.” In short, in my mind I wasn’t winning because I wasn’t playing good enough.

To put it another way, finding the other guy’s weakness isn’t attractive to me. What I want to do is develop my own strengths instead — and subsequently overpower my opponent doing what I want to do. It’s utterly inefficent to do this without also attacking places where your opponent is weak.

I contrast this to my buddy Ken. He’s a competitor of the highest caliber. He’s the type to finds a new hobby and is competing in it at the regional level within a few months (when others would take years to do the same). He focuses directly on victory in competition. He masters technique as well, but the whole time he’s studying it, he’s studying with one goal in mind — winning. So if an opponent presents a weakness, he’s going to see it and be able to take advantage. I don’t seem to do that by default.

Perhaps I should do so more. I don’t want to do it so much that I lose what I love about my sport, but perhaps it’d be fun to win more often.

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Viewing 3 Comments

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    I would argue that you are focusing on what is most important. You're understanding of the task. I commend your integrity. By the way, fuck winners, they just make the losers feel like shit so they can feel good for a second, all the while doing something that matters to nobody.
    • ^
    • v
    Ah, but some people (my friend included) do both. They learn the techniques, but do so in a focused manner designed for results.

    This makes sense to me. If I like to compete, then shouldn't I like to win also? It's like I'm not even playing with another person when I compete. I treat them like they're a wall and I'm trying to get good enough to go through it.

    If I were to pay attention to the fact that it's a person over there, and that they have weaknesses, I'd be able to capitalize and win a lot more matches. Again, I don't want to focus *too* much on winning -- but perhaps more than I do.

    Oh, the other place I noticed this was in Warcraft III. I was invited to get on a team and play against others. My response was, "no." I don't want to focus on how to win. I had a tactic I liked to do -- making certain units and using a certain combination in a certain way.

    My measure of success was how well I pulled off that tactic. If I win then great, but I sort of refused to do something different even if it would give me a much greater chance of winning. It's really weird.

    Anyway, thanks for the comment. I'm glad someone appreciates my warped approach to things. :)
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    I think the two are different parts of the equation though. There's mastering the skill and then mastering the game. Many people win the game but never master the skill. That's almost always due to them competing against other non-skilled people. They end up being the most skilled of the un-skilled.

    I think focusing on the skill shows dedication, and once you master the skill, the game becomes trivial. Just like computing and everything else.
 

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    This site is an avatar for my own self-assigned life purpose--an attempt to model the world in the most accurate way possible, and to do so without bias or fear of unpleasant truth. I desire to develop, articulate, and perpetually improve models of how things work, and then to use that understanding to increase happiness and reduce suffering. I seek those on similar paths and thrive on sharing an appreciation of the interesting and beautiful with others.



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