Peter Thiel on why competition is for losers, building a growth mindset, and Steve Jobs' post-dropout resume

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Peter Thiel on why competition is for losers

“Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking. We preach competition, internalize its necessity, and enact its commandments; and as a result, we trap ourselves within it—even though the more we compete, the less we gain.

Our educational system both drives and reflects our obsession with competition. Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them.

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking.

For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation.

Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

Source: Zero to One by Peter Thiel

2: Building a growth mindset

“The growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training. 

Did you know that Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children? That Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was completely uncoordinated and graceless as a child? That Geraldine Page, one of our greatest actresses, was advised to give it up for lack of talent?

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.“

Source: Mindset by Carol Dweck

3: Steve Jobs’ post-dropout resume

A job application Steve Jobs filled out a year after dropping out of Reed College:

Name: Steven Jobs
Birth Date: February 24, 1955
Address: Reed College
Phone: None
Major: English Literature
Year: [Not specified]

Past Employment: [No employment history listed]

Driver's License: Yes

Access to transportation: Possible, but not probable

Special Abilities and Interests: Electronics tech or design engineer (digital) - from any area, Hewlett-Packard

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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