What if success in life isn’t purely a result of hard work and determination but a combination of luck and resilience? I’d argue that being able to stay in the game is an underrated success factor.

I recently heard (or read) a comment that suggested, “The longer you survive, the closer you are to success.” This struck me because I had previously thought that success was largely a reflexive loop and as long as you stayed within that loop, spinning to greater and greater heights, subsequent successes were easier to achieve. If you fell out of the virtuous cycle, it was likely that you could find yourself in a doom-loop and then finding a subsequent success could be much harder.

However, if you consider the Lindy effect, named after a delicatessen in New York where comedians used to meet up to discuss the success of recent shows, it was found that the longer a show was able to stay open, the longer it was likely to stay open. This effect can also be seen in social artefacts, like novels, if they are considered a classic, it’s likely that they will continue to be valued by society into the future. The same could be said of crypto-currencies, those that succeed despite the issues that they have faced are more likely to be able to continue to survive. What doesn’t kill them, makes them stronger.

The examples in business are probably more interesting. One example that I find particularly interesting is Vanguard. Bogle introduced the Vanguard 500 Index Fund in 1976, raising only $11.3m out of the $250m target. This didn’t stop him from continuing with the business. After 42 years and a number of business cycles, the firm now manages $5.1bn and index mutual funds represent 17% of total US equity exposures. By any measure, this is a phenomenal feat. The company has continued to offer new products while at the same time reducing the fees that customers pay, creating massive amounts of value for retail investors.

We might see similar examples in the startup world, where AirBnb fought to stay alive by creating cereals (Obama O’s and Captain McCains) as they tried to prove out product-market fit. It took a long time for them to see the change in behavior patterns as more people began to use the platform regularly. They also had one moment when Wimdu, a Rocket Internet business, started up in Europe and threatened to undermine their conquest for global domination. Any investor could have been scared about the potential competition. In reality, it was a threat that never was, Wimdu merged with another European competitor in 2016 after it failed to adequately scale. All that was important for AirBnb was, in hindsight, to keep operating and executing. They didn’t need to worry about the competition they just needed to keep pushing forward.

Conclusion

This leaves me thinking that, overall, competition is good because it brings out the best in yourself. Mentally, some of the best athletes aren’t trying beat their competition, they’re just using the competition to drive out the best in themselves. This could also be applied to other aspects in life. If you’re worried about competition, focus on executing and creating the vision that you’ve set for yourself. It might be that your competition disappears after a relatively short period of time. If you’re doing things for the right reasons, you’ll likely be able to continue to drive yourself forward. Being able to stay in the game might be a more important determinant of success, as Ice Cube once said:

“Life ain’t a track meet, (no) it’s a marathon…” — Ice Cube