This post marks a new phase in the Thinking Beyond Competition blog, wherein I go from some general perspective on society to the very specific dilemmas and path decisions that an individual faces. The idea behind this post is to explore the “races” that we are often made to run and how these races could influence us as individuals.
In this post, I will make the following points:
- The “race” mentality — that of trying to compete with others to do things as fast as possible, extends (Sometimes unnecessarily) to events other than races– be they entrance examinations or elections or market-based competitions.
- The maxim of “slow and steady wins the race” is widely understood and acknowledged by people. Yet, few have the resilience, strength and courage to see the results unfolding very very slowly, to see progress at an ant’s pace, to genuinely be prepared for a long and lonely haul.
- Often, people seek to use a quick measure to peg themselves and then try to faithfully live down to wherever they have pegged themselves.
- Most people enter races without feeling any great deal of either motivation or confidence. Poor performance at a preliminary stage thus cements the lack of confidence and then, even if they work hard, it’s like losers trying not to be losers. On the other hand, if they do well to begin with, this may give them the necessary push and confidence to doing well in later laps as well. However, the effect/gains are purely psychological. There is no reason why a person cannot have a burning confidence in himself/herself before starting and why such confidence should be contingent to performance in an initial lap.
- If structured races like IIT-JEE preparation make people feel uneasy about long hauls, what happens about innovative and entrepreneurial races, such as writing a new novel, setting up a company, solving an intractable problem? Here, the time period could be much longer, there is no externally imposed structure/guidance (Though there are externally imposed limitations). Are we as individuals growing up to be people who can take on these more advanced challenges when we feel bogged down by races with a clearly defined external structure?
Points end
The term “race” (as in, a running race) is typically used for a competition where the goal is to run up to the finishing line as fast as possible, with one’s relative ranking being what counts. In greater generality, the term “race” is used to describe many a competition which is cut-throat and where relative ranking is what counts. It is interesting that the other aspect of a race — the “speed” aspect, thus gets imported into the other competitions as well.
Thus, for instance, preparation for an entrance examination is treated as a race — suggesting that the goal is to prepare as fast as possible. Standing for an election is treated as a race — suggesting that the goal is to get the votes as early as possible. Selling a product in the market is treated as a race — suggesting that the goal is to capture the market as early as possible.
So if we use the race analogy, what counts for success in a race such as preparing for an entrance examination?
Preparing for an entrance examination with two years in hand (as is the case for preparing for engineering examinations) is analogous to a marathon, a race with a very long running stretch. The uninitiated in running may think of a marathon as a scaled-up version of a sprint, which is a very short stretch of running. If a sprint requires a huge burst for a short time, a marathon must require a huge burst of effort for a long time.
Anybody who has played or watched the sport, however, can immediately correct that — the important point in a marathon is to maintain a steady pace throughout. The story of the hare and the tortoise superbly illustrates this, giving the much touted idiom : “slow and steady wins the race”. Thanks to this story, it has now been generally appreciated and understood by people, at least in principle, that to win a race, steadiness, firmness and consistency is more important and useful than short bursts of intense activity.
However, how many of us really understand this? Are we really prepared for the toll that a two-year long preparatory effort takes on us? How many of us are willing to go that painful slow way, without seeing any results, without seeing any change in our state of performance and understanding? How easy is it to walk slowly and steadily, with the destination seeming so far away?
How can one maintain one’s tempo and stamina in this kind of a race?
I think that, slow and steady as the race may be, it is the very first few laps of the race that determine to a large extent performance in the rest of the race. Or let me put it another way: the first few laps do not determine the winners, but they eliminate most of the “losers”.
After finishing tenth standard (the lower secondary school) I joined a coaching institute called Vidyamandir Classes that is famous in Delhi for its IIT-JEE coaching. Vidymandir (at least at the time I joined) used to get the creme of students according to performance and aptitude shown at the end of tenth standard. What made Vidyamandir stand out was its innovative approach of heavy reliance on notes, low class frequency, and a complete training package.
At the end of the first lecture, the physics teacher of Vidyamandir stressed that the main thing about studying for IIT-JEE at Vidyamandir was that one needed to follow thoroughly the material provided by Vidyamandir and to rely the most on oneself for the resolution of all doubts — to use the class only as a last resort when all else failed. He said that one simply needed to follow the material well to succeed at IIT.
The maths teacher said some similar things. He told us that he could recommend several books that he himself followed — that was the easy way out for him, but the best way out for us was to follow his materials and to try to obtain a thorough mastery of what was given in their booklets.
This was followed by the chemistry teacher, who reiterated all the things said by the other two but added a number of points, some of which I still consider very significant and illuminative.
He gave some illustrative examples/analogies/metaphors:
- He likened the VMC people to doctors — with an important difference. A doctor takes a sick person and tries to make that person healthy; they, he argued, take in healthy people and try to make them even healthier.
- He likened IIT preparation to crossing a deep river in a boat. He said that there are lots of macchliis (fishes) that keep dragging our boat down — like the board exams. But Vidyamandir, the people who row our boat, are determined to pull us safely to the other shore.
- He told us that to court success, one must have the psychological capacity to be prepared for failure. He said that ultimately, when one fails to make it through an entrance test, one must take responsibility for it and learn to keep going on.
- Using both the doctor and the rowing-boat analogy, he emphasized that it was important to follow in their footsteps and to not let other pressures get in the way of our pursuit of the goal.
- He urged us to study about 5 hours a day during these summer holiday and not try to race ahead of the syllabus by doing a lot of additional material. He said that the days of hard work lay in the later future.
The classes had begun in May 2002, and it was in the last week of June 2002 that the first test was conducted by Vidyamandir. This was dubbed a Unit Test (because it covered material covered in the first Unit) and was preceded by much tense discussion. There were speculations of how performance in the first Unit Test correlated with performance in the IIT-JEE, and how one’s rank here could be a predictor of the rank in the IIT-JEE. There were also questions of how questions here could be very hard and could be used by Vidyamandir for chucking students out of the institute.
When I wrote the examination, I was, for some reasons, in a bad mood and unwell, so I felt that some of the examinations didn’t proceed well. However, talking to others, I discovered that most people had not done as well as me. Surprisingly, it turned out that I was somewhere in the top ten students among all of Vidyamandir’s 170 students.
What was interesting to note, though, was that many people used the scores in the unit test to peg their rank for the IIT-JEE, and hence, the kind of effort that they would put in and the kind of scores they would aim at. People who had scored in the higher ends of the mark range felt convinced that they were bright and capable of doing good on the exam (though of course the self-flagellative style of talking forbade anybody from admitting such things) and they redoubled their efforts towards studying. Among those who had scored low, there were some who relaxed their efforts (or continued with their relaxed efforts).
There were others who continued to work harder than ever, but with the attitude of an inferior person. That is, there were people who vowed to work harder than ever, but as a lower class striving to be of a higher class, as an intellectually inferior category of people who were trying to overcome their intellectual inferiority by working hard.
There were others who sort of gave up and started viewing the whole IIT-JEE preparation with a cynical perspective — What does it test anyway?
Those who considered themselves to have the intellectual cut and thrust for the IIT-JEE thne proceeded to do well in further tests (the performance of other students kept oscillating). These people formed close cliques that discussed the entire contents of a lecture just after a lecture, that eagerly and carefully compared lecture notes, and that sought to be obsessed with the material being taught. Others too sought, half-heartedly, to imbibe this kind of passion and obsession, but with the clear mental attitude of not being that smart but still trying.
So the question: what gave the winners (the ones who performed well throughout) their headstart? Was it good performance in the first unit test? Did it go even farther back to individual confidence levels?
And why does performance right at the outset, or even factors before that, affect the end so dramatically?
Why does taking a lead right at the start matter when the race is so long?
My feeling is that the only way a head start can make the difference between a winner and a loser is psychological. Yes, a good head start gives a slight advantage, but when the race is so long, that advantage is too small to be significant in itself. So a person really determined and confident about winning may get value from feedback in the first few laps but will not suffer a severe drop in confidence on account of failure at the first rungs.
However, most of us enter the race half-heartedly, as losers — we don’t really think we are cut out to be winners. The fact that we’re not cut out to be winners is reinforced by many factors — by peopel around us repeatedly admonishing us whenever we boast about ourselves, by parents, teachers etc. repeatedly indicating that it is fashionable to cut ourselves to size rather than forcing others to do it, by the acts of self-flagellation, mutual flagellation and topper flagellation that we are so apt to commit.
Which is probably the case with IIT-JEE preparation. For many people entering this race, there’s pressure from parents, there’s peer expectation, and of course, there is the pressure on oneself to prove one’s potential and to excel. This is specially true for the people entering a place like Vidyamandir Classes. Most of them may not have deep interest either in Engineering as a subject, or in Engineering as a career, or in the Science subjects that they need to study in order to qualify the IIT-JEE. They may be interested only in a few of the many things they study. But exhorted by their parents, teachers and others, they decide (?) to make an all-out effort for the IIT examination. But since what started motivating them in the first place is too far out from the actual physics, chemistry and mathematics that they are studying, they clearly find that the actual preparation is too different.
Even a student who may enjoy somewhat the physics, chemistry and math needed for the IIT may find the whole activity irritating and painful to do particularly since the final pay-off (IIT-JEE) is too far away to provide satisfaction. Hence, the race starts to get depressing even before it’s begun. Not just depressing but boring.
Which is where VM’s motivational talk comes in. The motivational talk is designed (?) to counter the demotivation that one encounters in the first steps of IIT-JEE preparation, those first steps where one realizes that recognition is far from immediate and far from certain. The motivational talk, including analogies with trees, doctors and little girls, tells people to overcome the need for immediate rewards and to be prepared for a long haul.
But these deeper innuendoes are often lost on people who are in the sprinting mentality to begin with.
(Of course, many of these ideas start making sense later — which explains why there are so many Vidyamandir fans on Orkut)
So this is the situation with a person starting on a two-year preparation as per a syllabus set by a coaching institute, following a curriculum and a routine. What about a person who is preparing all alone, without any guidance, for an examination. Or even more generally, a person who, without any external guidance, is writing a whole new novel? A person who wants to set up a new company? Does the person look for immediate satisfactions? Can the person follow the IIT-JEE preparatory style of expecting to “reach fast” into the topic?
J. K. Rowling spent nearly as many years designing the plot of the Harry Potter series as she spent in actually writing the series. In those years, she was working hard to sustain herself and her family. Creating a plot like Harry Potter definitely did not give her a “head start” in any visible race. But she persisted, because she had confidence and faith in her abilities. How does this compare with people who, two months into IIT-JEE preparation, peg their potential on a unit test offered by a coaching institute?
