The Right Place & Time for Cloning

We are the product of our five closest friends. There are many variations to the message that our environment matters. Another derivation is the importance of selecting the right idols, mentors, teachers, etc. Once again, the people we surround ourselves with matter. None of this is new. 

It would be obvious to point out we shouldn’t blindly follow our idols. It would be prudent to say we should each learn to think for ourselves. What if I used a fun analogy to display the importance of this through the aerodynamics of Formula 1 racing? 

Formula 1 (F1) is an action-packed racing sport where two-meter long single-seater cars blast down race tracks at 300km/hr. Those who’ve watched a race will have heard the terms “slipstream" and "dirty and turbulent air.” 

This video explains the difference. 

Both slipstreams and turbulent airs happen to the car closely behind the car in front. The car in front is met with wind resistance as it punches through the air at 300km/hr. This creates a space behind the car that is large enough to fit another car where there is no wind resistance. 

That means a car that closely follows the car in front gets a free ride as their speed won’t be impacted by the need to fight the wind resistance. This is the slipstream. 

The slipstream of every generation of society prospering off of the success and mistakes from past generations. Without the adults and older generations of today, we wouldn’t have iPhones, Google, global supply chains for goods, the internet, modern transportation, medicine, and everything that makes living in the world so great. 

At the micro-level, this slipstream can be the young investor reading everything Warren Buffett has been teaching in public. It’s the simple idea of cloning what the greats did and do as we coast in their slipstream, shielded by the mistakes they had to make to learn these lessons. 

Yet, staying too close to the slipstream can turn into turbulent air. The slipstream exits when the cars are going in a straight line. Once the cars start going through turns, the air that comes off the lead car turned into turbulent air. 

F1 cars are designed to digest the air they are punching through and spit it out in all kinds of directions that will allow the car to continue driving fast in tight corners. The air the car digests out will be even more complex in form and force than the clean air it hit in the offset. 

The garbage of air digested by the lead car is the turbulent air. It’s the messy filtered air that creates a weird vortex that makes it even more difficult for the car behind to make tight turns on corners. The car behind may need to use more of its brakes and this will heat up the brakes, wear the tires down further and hurt the car the longer it stays in the turbulent air coming from the car in front. 

The valuable slipstream will morph to hurt the car behind when they are too close as the vortex of air starts becoming an unstable force that hurts progress. That’s the case when your idol zigs and you are too close. An important learning from those you admire is to also learn when to ease off the pedal and not follow them too close.