What do Bill Gates and Hockey Players have in common? What is Your Unfair Advantage?

Today I am going to talk about "unfair" advantages and how to use them to help us be successful.

Everyone has different advantages and disadvantages. The key to finding success in your life is to find out what your unfair advantages are and figuring out how to use them to your advantage.

Many people like to complain because they don't think it's fair when the see other people gaining advantages with no, or little, effort on their part. I'm not going to talk about the morality of this or whether the world should or shouldn't be fair. I'll save that for another day. For now let's just realize that the world isn't fair, but we can either complain and be unsuccessful or we can just move on and focus on what we can do!

You might think that this is referring to strengths, but it is actually a bit different. Strengths and weaknesses are personal things. They are part of you. You and you alone can change or improve them.

What we are talking about are external advantages and disadvantages. Things that you cannot control (or at least are not completely in your control). They are things that are around you, they are opportunities and trials. Let's look at an example from the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell.

Some canadian statisticians started noticing a strange trend among the players in the top hockey leagues around the country. Here is a sample. See if you can pick out the strange trend.

Do you see it? Its ok if you don't, I didn't see it right away either. I'll give you a hint. Look at their birthdays.

Still nothing? Look at the months? Which month is there the most? Which months aren't there?

I'll break it down, here is how many players are born in each month.

January - 8 (32%)
February - 3 (12%)
March - 3 (12%)
April - 3 (12%)
May - 2 (8%)
June - 1 (4%)
July - 0
August - 2 (8%)
September - 1 (4%)
October - 1 (4%)
November - 0
December - 1 (4%)

Do you see it now? The majority of players are born in the first three months! Almost none of them are born in the last two months!

Now that is just one team, but that trend continues through the whole NHL lets look at a study, published in the online science journal PLOS ONE:

The report found that 36 per cent of players drafted by NHL teams between 1980 and 2007 were born in the first quarter of those years, or from January to March, compared to 14.5 per cent of draftees who were born in the fourth quarter.
[source:NHL.com]

So how can this be? This seems unfair! Why is it an unfair advantage for hockey players to be born at the beginning of the year?

The answer is actually very simple. In Canada, where a kid starts getting into hockey leagues when they are young, they divide the kids into teams based on their age. So the kid who was born in December would be on the same team as the kid born in January. Almosts an entire year apart in age! Which kid do you think will be better? Even if both kids had the exact same skill, speed, intelligence, etc. the older boy is still going to be better just because he is older! That is the unfair advantage. Now when they take the better kids and put them on better teams with better coaches and better training facilities, which kid will they take? Soon the older kid is much better, just because he got the better practice and experience. He ends up making it in the NFL while the December kid sits at home and watches.

Lets look at one more example. You have all probably heard of Bill Gates. He has been up and down between the top three richest people in the world. How did he get to be so wealthy? Building Microsoft. He is a coder, a programer. But want to know what is interesting? When he was growing up, he happened to live right next to a school that offered free computer time when most places charged for use of a computer which would've made it impractical for him to spend any time there. He spent hours and hours writing code on those computers and when the schools funding dried up, he found a company that he could sneak in at night and use their computers! He would code all night most of the week. By the time he graduated high school, he already was an expert just in time for a big boom in computing! It seemed like the pieces all just fell into place.

So what can we learn from these examples?

There are two necessary ingredients for success, skill (which includes work ethic, positive mindset, etc) and opportunity.

Bill Gates had many "unfair" advantages that helped him to gain the skills he needed. The hockey players had "unfair" advantages that gave them opportunities.

So now the question is, what can we do about it? I don't have an unfair advantage to make me a great hockey player or the owner of a worldwide software corporation. But I do have different unfair advantages.

What are your unfair advantages that you can take advantage of?

I'll give you some examples of where to look to find them.

Where do you live? Are there companies near by that you could get some experience in? (Bill gates got hours and hours of free computer time)

Who do you know? Do you know someone who knows someone that could get you an unfair advantage? (Warren Buffet had a great mentor that helped him make many connections)

What are the trends? Is there a new technology or societal revolution that you can be ready for? (14 of the top 75 richest people in history were born in a 9 year span leading up to the industrial revolution)(Cryptocurrency, including steem, is definitely a trend that gives us an unfair advantage)

Once you have found your unfair advantages, you need to decide how you can profit from them.

What if the NHL player born in January never played hockey, or never pushed himself to be better? His advantage would be wasted.

What if Bill Gates hadn't coded all night long on so many nights? He might not have been ready when his opportunity came

Action Steps:

1. Always try to find your unfair advantages.

2. Use them to build your skills

3. Use them to find opportunities

4. Take advantage of your opportunities when they come.

Good luck everyone!

Check out the book Outliers for more great examples. http://amzn.to/2A1AvWf (Referral link)

If you liked this post be sure to upvote, resteem and follow as well as leaving me some feedback. I'm just getting started on steemit so any suggestions are much appreciated.

Also if you have any other thoughts or questions for me, comment below and I'll probably address it in a future post or podcast.