I don’t know George, but he goes to the same Crossfit gym I’ve been frequenting. Competition, if you didn’t know, is a part of the Crossfit culture. Everyones scores for the days workout are posted on the whiteboard and on Facebook for everyone to see.
What I know about George is that he consistently puts up times that are 1 minute, 10% better, or just ahead of what I can manage. Everyday I show up and he has set a score for me to beat.
For all I know George is some sort of bionic superman out of a military experiment.
I really don’t care if he’s real or not. George is my Crossfit rabbit and I’m going to take him down one day.
It’s important for everyone to have a few rabbits in their life. It’s particularly important if you are running your own business. You need to know who your rabbits are, how you compare, and leverage them as motivation to improve your own offering. It’s important to benchmark, but there are a few things you should know about these rabbits.
- There is always a Rabbit. I don’t care who you are there is always someone better than you at what you are doing.
- They don’t give a fuck about you and you can’t obsess over them.
- You need to run your own race. You can’t beat a rabbit at the rabbits game.
- You probably can’t out-sprint the rabbit, but perhaps you can out-wit, out-lift, or outlast them to change the game into one you can win.
- If you “catch” one rabbit there is always another one just ahead of you.