Nobody is Special - Collaborate with other people
Nobody is Special - Collaborate with other people
- From the article “Harsh Truths for Success from Linus Torvalds”
In motivational videos and books, there is a common message: You are not ordinary, you can achieve whatever you want by working correctly and giving all of your energy and then you become someone special. They should be right, because, take a look at history, there are lots of people we know their names among billions of them. We know them because they achieved something big and the common message is that we can achieve the same thing if we push the right buttons.
I believed in such ideas a long time ago. But they are complete lies. Nobody is special and one can achieve very less by itself. Generally, the one common thing we don’t generally notice is that successful people achieve things by not working hard but using other people’s work power for what they want to achieve. Humanity has been doing this for a long time. Great commanders used countries for what they wanted to achieve. In recent history, we started doing the same thing by creating companies. These companies discovered that great things can be achieved by paying people and using their power.
Big names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs… All of these people have made their fortune by using the same strategy. Even Warren Buffet… Generally, we think that he made his fortune by doing investments with his own money for a long time and because he invested a very long time, he is successful. However, at a point, he noticed that his personal money is not enough and started using other people’s money and he invented new ways to do the same thing.
What about Linus Torvalds? He invented a new way to achieve the same thing. He took the risk and decided to open his kernel’s source code to everybody, then he noticed that people contributed good ideas. Later on, he created Git to allow people to implement their ideas which made this process faster, and by doing the same thing for 25 years, he created something special. However, he didn’t do this on his own. Today, if you check the GitHub page of Linux, you can see that this project has more than 13 thousand contributors. More than 13 thousand people worked voluntarily on the project he created. Also, we didn’t even count the people in companies who use Linux to create new business models. Millions worked to bring Linux to its today version.
In brief, nobody is unique. We all are small pieces in a massive system. Like ants and bees, we achieved great things together. The Internet is not created by one person, there were lots of workers who placed cables deep in the ocean to connect people on different continents. Hence, if you want to become successful, collaborate with other people and learn how to use others’ power for your project. If you think you can do much on your own and you’re unique, then you’re just another Buzz Lightyear.