1. Everyone Is Equal Before the Machine
Every day we take in a huge amount of digital information, but very little of it actually helps us. Most of it is like junk food: it provides no nourishment, yet it takes up capacity, leaving you unable to dig into the truth and form your own thinking and judgment.
You can sit there motionless, scrolling Weibo, Douyin, Toutiao, and Tencent News all morning. But the next day, if someone asks you what happened yesterday, whether it was true or false, and what impact it had on you, you may still know nothing at all.
Recommendation algorithms determine the digital content we consume. More and more information is recommended to people, and valuable information drowns in the noise. Google’s recommendation system can even actively probe for the user metrics it needs. People seem to have become force-fed animals.
The digital world is so flat, and so dull.
2. Anything Goes β So Why You?
The convergence of information leaves people with no focused loyalty. “Anything goes” has become the choice of most people, and most people have become the ones being chosen.
The internet has lowered the barrier and the cost of acquiring knowledge. A new term you heard just yesterday, you can already chat about with friends today. A technology someone else spent years cultivating, you can pick up a fair amount of in a week or two.
But on the same starting line, when something comes up, what makes others think of you first?
3. Differentiation Is Competitiveness
The value of a message depends on the probability of the event. If it happens often β for example, you did not win the lottery β there is no value in it. But if someone tells you that you won the lottery, only something with such a tiny probability can be called a valuable message.
Only what is different can be quickly recognized.
For a person, if you have an ability that others do not have, or an ability deeper than everyone else’s, then you are valuable.
This valuable ability forms one aspect of your competitiveness within a group.
4. Positioning
Often it is not that we do not understand β it is that understanding does not mean doing it well.
Only the right positioning lets you market yourself. You can think through every aspect of yourself, and it holds for all of them.
Positioning means discovering your comparative advantage, acquiring a tag in a field, entering other people’s minds, and thereby influencing their behavior.
5. What Is a Tag?
A tag has a strong sense of direction. It not only gives others a very intuitive impression, but also shapes the direction of your own effort and your future choices.
This is a process of positive accumulation and continuously reinforcing feedback. The deeper the trace of the tag, the more you invest. The more you invest, the more it helps you grow into an expert in the field.
