This is why most people put in effort, but never make it.
It might sound corny, but I have learnt a lot about life from observing Lagos hold-up.
If you leave early, you will jam hold-up. If you say, “Okay, I will avoid this hold-up,” and take an alternative route, you will meet other people on that alternative route trying to avoid the hold-up like you: and then you end up in another hold-up.
You did everything right - woke up early, drove fast, and still didn’t escape the hold-up.
It is so in life too: you could do everything right and still not move ahead.
A lot of people assume the reason this happens is because they were unlucky. But let us circle back to the hold-up example.
You need to get to work early, and so you woke up early; but everyone has the same thought, so you get stuck.
Now, what do you think the solution is?
…it is simple. To escape the hold-up, you simply don’t go early.
If you leave the house by 10am, you will beat the traffic because everyone else has left. But then, you would be late for the office.
Which tells you that sometimes the problem is not you: it is just the game you are playing.
And sometimes the best play is to exit the game completely.
Here is what I mean:
If hypothetically the hold-up is a big deal, and you can’t deal with it - to escape it, you simply have to quit the job, so you can then be able to leave the house by 10am when the road is free.
This is just a hypothetical example that will help you understand the idea of “rigged games.”
People are stuck in hold-up, putting in effort, in a game that is rigged.
One example is the man who is trying to make money through betting platforms, so he loses way more than he makes - he is a victim of the game.
Then there is the owner of the betting company, who doesn’t bet on games but makes significantly more.
For example, the owner of Bet9ja started ValueJet because he had so much cash in dollars that he wasn’t allowed to take out of Nigeria; so he bought jets with it.
The betting man is trying to beat traffic.
While the Bet9ja owner exited the traffic entirely and played another game (owning the platform).
If you see this game in life, you will NEVER unsee it.
It is everywhere.
People do things because everyone else is doing it, and so they end up in the same traffic as everyone else; and hope for a way out.
The best game to play is to play games where you are most likely to win. If you bet your life with Messi on who is likely to score a free kick, he will most likely win. The best play is to compete with him at a game YOU are great in.
…so if the game is the money game, trying to compete at a game of effort, where you are great with strategy, is futile.
It is why i start by busineses around what i am great at.
If anyone else competes with me in those arena, I will have them for breakfast. But whenever i try to copy others at what they are great at, they beat me.
Rather than put effort into beating the traffic, find ways to exit the hold-up completely.
And the way to do this is to lean into the things you are naturally great at.