The Cultural Instinct of Waiting To Get Picked
Renege and pick yourself for a change
Only after finishing my internship did I discover the wave of luck I have been riding all along.
Before waves break, they form due to a disruption in stillness or after a confluence of forces. Think of sound, produced by a certain source. It disrupts the air, forcing the particles to conform to the energy the source makes.
This wave can hit a barrier and reflect, interacting with the initial sound wave, to produce echoes. Or picture a radio wave transmitted across a hill. The wave diffracts at the top when it crosses the narrowed aperture, just like in the double-slit experiment.
Eventually, waves collapse.
Such a wave of luck hid all the forces moulding my path. They deceived me into thinking the narrative I was told by my teachers all along.
Study hard. The world will reward you.
I did. For the first years of my life, I got rewarded. Massive recognition at the school level. Reputation among my peers. And after the completion of high school education, national acclaim, ranking among the top 100 students in the country.
I joined medical school. Midway, I got accepted to do an intercalated programme because of my good performance in human anatomy. I began teaching and giving lectures while still an undergraduate, as a tutorial assistant. My struggles were my own, despite every other person thinking I was having it easy.
Throughout the greater part of my life, I was picked. I was picked to represent my school in football competitions. I was picked as a class prefect. I was picked to solve math problems from primary school all the way to high school. I was picked to join a high school I had never heard of. I was picked to join the school football and basketball teams. I was picked to speak during literature classes. I was picked to read the first reading in church during Mass. All my life, I was picked.
Then the wave collapsed.
Picking systems
This wave is so deceptive because it hits and carries you when you’re still young. If it has been all you have ever known, its sudden loss of energy can be surprising. I was even picked to intern at a hospital I eyed because I had played my cards right, hoping they would retain me after I was done.
I had to wait for around five months of torture. In the fourth month, I woke up one morning at 2 something a.m., not knowing where my next rent would come from. I had applied for all the opportunities I knew about, thinking they would pick me because I was always picked.
Heck, I was picked to serve as a polling clerk when I presented myself to the interview with nothing but my MOCK results slip. The high school national exam results had not been released. I was the most underqualified in the line. Despite it all, I was picked.
Those five months were the harshest I had ever gone through. I was no longer being picked. I even applied for a Chevening Scholarship. I got the offers from the top UK universities, which deceptively convinced me that I could continue riding that wave, but reality soon hit like Thanos’ snap.
I’m not the only one. I doubt I have a billionaire on my email list. So this article will likely hit most people who can relate to this fact — we have been indoctrinated to position ourselves to get picked.
Most writers are not James Patterson, Dan Brown, Nora Roberts, or John Grisham. They have to present their book proposals to publishers, hoping they get picked. If they are lucky, they get an advance. That might be the only thing they get from their book.
When they get published, the identity of a behemoth of a publisher like Penguin is a stamp on your identity as an author. But even then, you hope that once your books hit the shelves, whether the physical ones in book stores or the virtual ones on Amazon, you’ll get picked.
Your book is being picked. Hopefully.
Your childhood memories of being picked resurface, but now, you hope you get picked by the New York Times and get listed as a best seller.
It’s not just about the book authors. Scientists will spend months crafting a manuscript and present it to journals, hoping they get picked. If the study is expensive, they might have spent countless hours presenting their case to a panel, hoping they get picked and receive funding. After your manuscript is accepted, if it gets accepted, you hope readers, particularly your fellow scientists, will pick it from the other list released in that issue.
An entire documentary shows a young Kanye West rapping his heart out at record labels, hoping they pick him as a rapper, not just a producer. Dr. Dre, before releasing The Chronic, moved from record label to record label, hoping someone would notice its genius. Eminem was moving from one battle rap to another, hoping someone would pick him and sign him up.
Current and past basketball legends dreamt of playing in the NBA. How were they selected? Draft picks. Basically sitting down in suits, contorting your butt and hoping you get picked.
When I was young, I wanted to take my country, Kenya, to the World Cup. You’d need the willpower of Iron Man to convince me otherwise. I was good. But then, when the opportunity for selections came up, we were moving house. I had planned to show up and hope that I would get picked. I wasn’t.
A few years later, I joined Ujuzi Football Club. The coaches are hopeful. They forwarded my name to the managers to be sponsored to represent my country in the Sweden Children’s World Cup. I hoped to get picked, but the managers had other plans.
The coaches, distraught by the manager’s indifference to their pleas, told me to enroll for the tryouts to join the two top Kenyan teams at the time, Thika United and Tusker FC. I was thirteen at the time, but tall enough to compete. They believed I could join their under-17 team. I was months away from my final year of primary school, so I barely gave these teams a chance to pick me.
Producers hope their scripts get picked by major production houses. Actors also hope producers will pick them for various roles, both the Hollywood Boulevard stars and the upcoming ones.
Candidates will spend a ton of money on coaches and CV editors to ensure they kill it during the application. They hope they get picked. After surviving the first round, they will present themselves before an interview and hope they get picked by the panel.
Again.
People get into various competitions, hoping to get picked. Essay competitions, plays, hackathons, Y-combinator, you name it. The desire is to get picked.
Throughout our lives, we have been shaped to position ourselves to have a better chance of getting picked. While reality can hit hard for those who don’t get picked, the framework remains ingrained because there are those who got picked.
These sad outcomes give the impression that the problem is not the system. The problem should be you. You need to fix yourself. Fix your CV. Fix your experience. Volunteer. Seek mentors. Worship at their altar. Smile when you can. Lick boots. Conjugal encounters for a slot on the short-list. Pay the manager. If you’re not doing any of these, you’re not doing enough to get picked.
All around us, systems are modelled to do the picking. But who built these systems?
Saying No vs Hell Yeah!
Just once, jua tu ka naeza ido unaeza ido
Take chance— Nyashinski
Humans. Not mysterious gods from Mt. Olympus. Humans like you and me built these systems because they did not wait to be picked. They picked themselves. I can’t resist the temptation to complete the phrasal verb: they picked themselves up.
They didn’t wait to be chosen. They did the choosing. They chose themselves. I’ll have to give the cliché examples, like how Steve Jobs used the yellow pages to make the vital call, or how Darwin chose to board the ship that would seal his legacy.
Perhaps using the example of Musk might tarnish the spirit of the message, but it’s inescapable. He picked himself, again and again, throughout all his ventures, whether you liked them or not.
Seth Godin has built a global network and massive following because he did the simplest thing. He picked himself. Today, his blog is read by millions, myself included. His message has never changed. You may wonder why people still read him. He picked himself, and after years, his first breakthrough post, people started picking up his books.
There were times he didn’t post daily. Today, I hardly miss an email. Godin has positioned himself such that the more he continues to pick himself, the more others pick him.
50 Cent gave people ‘the good stuff’ for free. He artificially created demand. When he began gaining recognition, he started asking for a fee. He picked himself.
Nobody thought Jay-Z could rap. Heck, getting signed was an issue. So what did he do? He started his record label. He picked himself. Dr. Dre did the same thing.
The story of J.K. Rowling is repeated every time as a form of inspiration, to tell that dreamer to keep writing. Stephen King was rejected just as much, but he didn’t stop. Lynn Margulis’s signature paper was rejected so many times, but she continued submitting it to journals. Eventually, they all got picked.
These stories relay the deceptive message. They want these picking systems to persist. The goal should never be to get picked. The goal should be to get these ‘picky’ systems off your back. The easiest way is to start by saying No. It’s what Ted Gioia did when he started The Honest Broker.
I can never forget the first powerful message I got from reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. It equated life to a cart with a string tied to you pulling you forward. The cart, which represents life, would always continue moving. You could let it drag you, or you could actively move along with it. The former hurts; the latter reveals your locus of control. In short, picking yourself is powerful.
The easiest step is to say no. You could do it with tact or be blunt about it. Either way, you will be choosing yourself.
Saying no is like lifting a fog that has been clouding your vision. You begin to prioritize your time. It’s nobody else’s. Preserving this energy, you gradually begin to notice the kind of activities you would say ‘Hell Yeah!’ to.
Soon enough, you only focus on a small few, the kind that you have picked, not the ones that have been picked for you. Sometimes, you cannot simply say no and move on or move out. But you can start by snipping the unnecessary outlets stealing your attention.
The wave of influencers has become powerful because the account owners picked themselves. There will, however, be moments when they forget how they started their online journey and submit to being picked. These are the perils of audience capture.
But the persistence to continue being picked should hardly be the goal. We live in a permissionless economy. You don’t need permission to pick yourself. If it’s not a ‘Hell Yeah!’ or a ‘Mmmh! Interesting,’ then it’s a no!
Point blank.
But words are easier said than done. Anyway…
What I’m trying to say is…
Nyashinski took a concept and converted it into one that no single Kenyan artist has ever done. He imagined a concert where he was the headliner and the curtain raiser. He cleverly dubbed it: Shin City.
Declaring himself the mayor, he sang:
Then the showman says
“Come see me live on stage
The night will be amazing, one you will never forget”
As the showman he is, we didn’t forget.
He didn’t wait for other corporations to pick him. If that were the case, he would have been competing with other artists.
By picking himself, he forgot about the competition. Now everyone wants to pick him.
Learn the lesson.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube
I really enjoyed this piece. The numerous examples, the structure, the rhythm — all of it. I want more!