Contribution
Let's re-think the idea of winner-take-all.
Rodney Mullen had the most competitive run in the history of skateboarding.
In the early 80s, he won 34 out of the 35 freestyle contests that he entered.
Despite this, Rodney does not define success by trophies.
We are measured by the contribution we make to the community.
Rodney Mullen, Digital Science Speaker Series, August 2024.
If you read his autobiography, it’s obvious that Rodney sees skateboarding as an art with infinite possibilities.
When you see the world that way, it’s not zero-sum. It’s not about winning and losing.
Winning and losing is a finite concept.
Rodney sees skateboarding as positive-sum, where when one person pushes into the unknown and creates a new known, everybody wins.
The purpose of playing the game at all is to push into the unknowns.
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In an interview with Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi said the following about those who make it to No.1 in the world at tennis:
Everybody that gets to number one in the world brings something the game hasn’t seen on some level, right?
He then goes on to explain that once the rest of the world has seen that, they have to adjust to it.
Viewed on an individual level, it may look like one person (The No.1 in the world) is ahead of the pack for a little while. But viewed on a collective level over time, that one person shifts the entire field of players forward.
By bringing something new to the game, they made a contribution.
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What I love most about this concept of contribution is that it can take us out of a scarcity view of the world, and shift us into an abundant one.
In many ways contribution is the opposite of competition, yet in a somewhat poetic paradox, competition can also fuel contribution.
There’s a quote I read once that explains why being measured by contribution is a powerful way to think in a world driven by ideas:
… if you have an apple and I have an apple, and we swap apples — we each end up with only one apple. But if you and I have an idea and we swap ideas — we each end up with two ideas.
Charles F. Brannan, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, from a broadcast over NBC, April 3, 1949
Let’s be contributors. We’ll all be better for it.
