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. I go out there to have a good time and play my best. 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. I just don’t measure “well” by the score.
You can imagine how annoyed I get in Olympic years. Even if people aren’t talking about sports, they are still talking competition. And the ideals of competition. I don’t subscribe to the Olympic ideals. Not for sport. Not for knitting. Not for anything else. And while I understand 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’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.
For some people, competition demotivates.
A lack of competitiveness or lack of commitment to competitive values and the things that flow from them might be part of the problem you have in making your best contribution academically.
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?
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.
Yes, sometimes you are going to have to compete. If you want to get funding, for example. 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 you don’t have to focus on that.
What motivates you?
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, then know that none of my services are framed in terms of competition. The Academic Writing Studio might be just the kind of community you need to support your non-competitive self as you pursue this career.
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Originally posted during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Revised and republished 12 September 2012. Edited and recategorized 8 Feb 2016. Re-edited March 2023.
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!
Thanks for this…
I’m sitting here crying right now. Doubting all my choices to go into academia. I’m preparing to apply for phd programs next year so am doing a post-bacc program in the meantime. And I’m starting to question if I should even be going down that path. If I can’t handle the competition now – just to get on labs in order to get references for my applications, how will I cope in graduate school, or post doctorally? Is it even worth it? Can non-competitive people make it?
This was helpful to read because I was beginning to think I was the only person who felt like this.