Seeing things that others don't
Seeing things that others may not see is one of the most powerful skills that you can have, and it can give you the ability to create massive success.
I thought about this last night as I watched the movie The Big Short. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a great film about the financial crisis of 2008.
In a nutshell, back in the early 2000s, there were a ton of crappy mortgage loans handed out to unqualified homebuyers. Michael Burry, an investment fund manager played by Christian Bale, saw signs that these loans would go to go into default soon. And he predicted this waaaaay before anyone else did.
He bet huge that the housing market would collapse. Everyone thought he was crazy. He wasn't. And he won big.
Seeing things that others don't isn't limited to predicting the future, like Burry did.
For instance, back in 1998, Google saw that all the existing search engines were absolute crap, identified why, and built a better one.
Sergey and Larry didn't have a crystal ball. They just saw a problem, a problem that no one else really saw, and solved it.
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, often asks entrepreneurs to "Tell me something true that nobody agrees with." (I ask this question in my podcast, and the answers my guests provide are always interesting.)
If you can answer this question, you're seeing things others don't.
I'm not sure if this skill is can be learned or if people are born with it.
But I imagine it's an amazing thing if you have it.
Can you see things others don't?
This is day 13 of my experiment to blog for 30 consecutive days.