Three words.
Rock. Paper. Scissors.
A second to learn, a lifetime to master.
This game isn’t won by being the best or at the top, but rather next leveling your opponent. This post isn’t about games but If you want to learn more about beating people at games, I highly recommend the following podcast from Freakonomics. They actually did a whole episode about board games and what strategy you should employ to beat people at any game. As most people who know me know, I love me a good podcast.
Most games are actually won by this premise. If you truly understand your opponent and your own capabilities,
your best strategy is to just do what beats their strategy, regardless of what you feel is the best overall strategy.
When I sat down to write this post, I had so many different ways to take the concept of the next level that I am going to develop some of these ideas in future posts. I did however want to have a really simple framework, which could be used in almost any case. I didn’t want this to be a post about beating people and having winners and losers as most of you know, my main mission in life is to find the win win solution in everything I do. I wanted this post to be more about how I think about problems and situations in general.
The difference between the next level and the top level
The main difference between the next level and the top level is context. The former is absolute while the latter is relative. The next level requires the knowledge of the current level in order to have any meaning and relevance. The top is actually sort of a mythological place if you think about it. When was the last time you heard about a company at the top of their market, that could actually stay at the top year after year. The only ones that have actually done this successfully, did this by actually getting to the next level and adapting as oppose to just staying at the top and doing nothing.
Why the next level?
Getting to the top level of anything is usually very difficult, is not always going to get you what you want, and usually ineffecient. The next level is typically easier to achieve, sufficient to get the results you want, and therefore, usually very effecient.
As stated above, the next level is usually a much more effecient way to get something done. It’s a much easier way to get things done, and when things are easy, they get done.
Think of how good it feels when you accomplish something, even when it’s a small thing. We as humans are wired this way, so when we acheive something, we feel good and we want to repeat the process, hence the power of the next level.
Challenges of the next level
The next level requires knowledge and understanding of the environment. This is not always easy and a lot of the times, people don’t think about this nor do they think it’s important.
Sometimes the next level can be seen as taking the easy way out as oppose to trying something more difficult. As with anything worth doing, it should not be easy. Sometimes getting to the next level is easy, but staying at that level is hard. Building next level upon next level is really the challenge. Can you sustain growth?
Finding the next level
It starts with honesty. Honesty about yourself and knowing what level you truly are at. The next step is finding a strategy that works for you. This should be done on two axis. Based on the goal, one strategy may seem like the clear winner, but upon further examination of oneself, adjustment of the strategy or another strategy may be more prudent. Simple example, I may decide bench pressing is the best strategy for building muscle mass on my chest. I then need to be honest with myself to see how much weight I should put on the bar so I can challenge and stress my muscles without hurting myself with too much weight.
I recently read Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life and in it he talks about making changes to your life and the criteria for doing so. It was pretty simple, find something you want to change, you are able to change, and you will actually do. Pretty simple.
Pick your strategy based on your environment and yourself. It’s all about the context.
The Next, Next Level
This is the part where I ask you what’s better than the next level? The next level after that and so on and so forth. If getting to the next level only happened once it would not be a great strategy overall. It is however a great strategy when you get to the next level, and once you are there, you make that your current level so you can find the new next level. We should always be looking to improve ourselves and really the conecpt of the next level is about trying to acheive more each day than the previous one.
Thank you as always for reading.
Henry Bill 