It was the qualifying round of an inter-school quiz competition. We put our answers down and shared them with the quizmasters. While they were officially evaluating it to see who gets into the next round, one of my team members started analyzing the questions on his own. On seeing my puzzled face, he obliged to explain.
See this question. Everyone will know this.
Oh, this is tricky but still not that hard. About half should get this.
Now, this question. I know the answer to this because of so-and-so (don’t remember the exact details!). It’s highly unlikely that anyone else here would know this so we’re ahead in the game.
I had never looked from this lens before. How rare is this? I only saw how difficult is something. But if everyone is doing the same difficult things, it’s not a differentiator. This calibration helped me. Hard work is not the only way to go about things. See what things are others avoiding? Many times, it’s simply that most people don’t want to do some things. Those things need not necessarily be hard.
Most people consume content passively, so making notes is rare and valuable. Reading books is valuable now as not many people do it. If everyone starts doing it, it becomes the new baseline. Do what others won’t. Know what you know that others don’t know.