I'm generally not a competitive person so this is so strange to me. Even as an introvert on the spectrum, this sounds terrible. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. I'd rather do my best to study ahead of time, have fun, and see where it takes me during the competition.
>For me, I would stand there and keep reciting difficult words. And although I was slightly dyslexic, I still won every freaking spelling bee. With this simple trick, I dominated it so much to the point that my teachers, who loathed me for being a slacker, once tried to rig it in favor of their obedient A-students (I still won).
>I used to be a pro gamer, and when my friends and I picked up a new video game, everyone would follow the game's instructions and do the obvious thing. On the other hand, I would explore the edges of the game. I'd explore every weird build, every different weapon, and frankly look like a noob for a long time. That's good. They'll underestimate you. But you're compounding. And eventually, you'll go vertical, creating a massive distance between you and the next participant before they know what hit them.
You just put way more effort, that's it. That's the real advice - put effort into things and make consistent progress. Be curious.
>Think of Apple and how taking privacy and security seriously—despite competing against Microsoft, which didn't care about either at the time—created a lasting consumer trust advantage.
Yea, because Apple is saint :D
Choose your gurus wisely.
That said, let me give mine. Persistence over generally pays more dividends that constantly chasing quick wins. The modern information economy has cheapened success and skewed perceptions of how much effort and luck is behind outlier winners. The success I've had in startups was not quick, was not a straight line, and honestly probably didn't net me as much as if I had joined Google or Facebook early career, but the benefits in terms of broad skills and success that I can credibly claim on a personal level are actually more valuable to me than a larger number in my bank account.
I think this is a very insightful post. On why people made products like Replit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195
"Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project" (2021)