The Story phase
In the book Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, there is an idea that I came to resonate with.
On a given planet, the dominant species may not be far ahead of the next species in line. It only has to be better than its closest competition. Once the most dominant species of this particular planet reaches that margin, the pressure can flatten out, and they do not need to become infinitely better. It only needs to be better enough.
At first, this seemed to me like a very interesting thought, and to some extent, a comforting one. But that excitement only lasted until I applied it to us: Homo sapiens, the apex species of planet Earth.
The problem is that whichever species is next in line is far behind us. All of them are.
Why is this?
Is there a species so close to us, one that is next in line, that we compete with but cannot see?
Turns out, there is. And it is just us.
We compete with ourselves in more versatile ways than other species compete with their closest rivals.
Matt Ridley makes a version of this argument in his book The Rational Optimist. What separates humans from other animals is not only intelligence. It is exchange, specialization, and the division of labour, which means none of us has to do everything alone.
One person learns one thing. Another person learns something else. Then we trade, borrow, imitate, improve, and build on each other’s work.
This creates a different kind of competition.
Now we are not only competing with other species. We are also surrounded by other humans who are raising the standard in every direction.
The better writer raises the standard for writing; the better engineer raises the standard for engineering; the better athlete, teacher, photographer, scientist, or doctor changes what “good” means.
It creates a benchmark for what is good, and this benchmark moves over time as the skill progresses.
So it becomes clearer why humans became so dominant over the species behind us.
But from a personal perspective, another question appears.
How do we keep up?
How do we cope with a moving benchmark?
And how do we not lose our place when things move lightning fast like this?
The Structure phase
To make things simple, let’s say the benchmark is not moving. Let’s freeze time. Now we can use this benchmark as a reference point, a fixed line to compare ourselves against.
If the benchmark is below your level of competence, you may still feel the urge to improve your expertise a little bit, and then you would stop.
Because you know you are good enough in your arena of expertise, the pressure to get ahead slowly weakens.
This is very similar to the idea from Children of Time: a dominant species does not need to keep improving forever once the gap is large enough. And this comfort of superiority can be very dangerous.
It does not always destroy ambition, of course. But it makes you work less on yourself.
A competitive environment changes that.
It puts your standards on a line where others doing the same kind of work may get ahead of you, or already are ahead of you.
Now things are different.
When the discomfort lingers in your consciousness, you start to find ways to become more efficient and to beat time compared with others. You start to look for ways to sharpen your thinking, discipline yourself more strongly, and lean toward people who take ‘quality of work’ more seriously.
This is very similar to ‘widening the gap’ between Homo sapiens and other species.
But now, instead of generating a collective competence among humans, you generate a subjective competence within yourself. And that carves a path toward self-progression.
The dominant species in the Story phase, in this way, projects perfectly into the personal standard in the Structure phase.
The interface
So what creates this inner competition?
I think it begins with being in the right place and choosing the right people to associate with.
But it is not only about people who give you that sense of competitive pressure.
It is also about people who help lift you up when you are trying to become a better version of yourself, people who are supportive through your own inner battles.
You need people who raise the benchmark, but also you need people who help you survive the pressure of reaching toward it.
Because the goal is not to live in constant comparison, that would slowly ruin the whole point.
The goal is to stay close enough to excellence that your idea of “good enough” keeps changing and evolving.
This is how to keep us with a moving benchmark.