Two Words, One Generation
If you had to pick two words to capture the mental state of contemporary Chinese youth, "involution" (内卷) and "lying flat" (躺平) would be the strongest contenders. One describes the predicament we're experiencing; the other describes how some people choose to cope.
As a soon-to-graduate college student, people around me have visceral feelings about both terms. Some grind until 3 AM revising resumes; others simply move back home and take a stable government job to "lie flat." Behind these seemingly opposite choices lies the same anxiety.
Involution: A Competition with No Winners
"Involution" originally an anthropological term describing "growth without development" — increasing input without corresponding output growth. Now it describes a widespread social phenomenon: everyone is working desperately hard, but the overall pie isn't getting bigger — each person's slice just gets smaller.
In university, involution is everywhere:
- GPA Inflation — A 3.5 used to be excellent; now everyone grinds to 3.9 or 4.0, but the number of graduate school spots hasn't increased
- Internship Arms Race — Starting internships as freshmen; your resume "isn't enough" without three big-tech experiences
- Certificate Mania — Getting certified whether you need it or not. CET-4/6, Computer Level 2, PMP, CPA... certificates become a source of security
The essence of involution is limited resources with too many competitors. When one position receives 500 resumes, everyone is forced to invest more effort just to maintain their existing competitiveness. This isn't any individual's fault — it's a structural predicament.
Lying Flat: Passive Resistance or Rational Choice?
In 2021, the term "lying flat" (躺平) suddenly went viral. Some interpreted it as young people's degeneration and giving up, but I think it's more complicated than that.
The core logic of lying flat: when the marginal return on effort approaches zero, reducing effort is actually a rational choice. If overtime doesn't lead to promotion or raise, why not spend time on things you actually enjoy?
Lying flat comes in several varieties:
- Low-Desire Type — Lowering material demands, not pursuing high-salary high-pressure jobs, "enough is enough"
- Selective Lying Flat — Lying flat on unimportant things while continuing to invest in genuinely passionate areas
- Strategic Lying Flat — Temporarily exiting meaningless competition, conserving energy for better opportunities
I think the second and third types are actually a form of wisdom. Not all effort is meaningful — learning "not to try hard" is also a skill.
The Third Path: Meaningful Hustle
Between involution and lying flat, there actually exists a third option — what I call "meaningful hustle," or more accurately, "directed effort."
The fundamental difference between these two approaches:
- Involution is passive — Others are doing it, so I must too. The driving force is fear and comparison
- Meaningful effort is active — I choose to do this because it has value for me. The driving force is interest and goals
Take my own example. I chose to dive deep into computer vision not because "this field has good job prospects," but because I genuinely think teaching machines to "see" the world is cool. This intrinsic motivation keeps me from giving up easily when facing difficulties, and from getting anxious when I see others "hustling" harder.
Real competitiveness isn't "working harder than others" — it's "understanding better than yesterday what you truly want."
Some Practical Advice
After all this talk, here are a few pieces of advice I find genuinely useful:
1. Find your "asymmetric advantage." Don't compete head-on in areas where others excel. Find the thing that comes easier to you but produces better results than others, and master it.
2. Build your own evaluation system. Don't let GPA, salary, or title be the only measures of your worth. How many good books you've read, how many great friends you've made, what interesting problems you've solved — these matter equally.
3. Learn "strategic abandonment." You can't be good at everything. Rather than dabbling in everything but excelling at nothing, focus your energy on the 1-2 most important things.
4. Stay curious about life. Involution turns people into tools; lying flat turns people into spectators. Only curiosity keeps you a "participant" — stay interested in the world, and you'll never truly "burn out" or "lie flat."
Final Thoughts
Neither involution nor lying flat is our enemy. The real enemy is "not knowing what you want." When you clearly know where you're going, the noise of involution and the temptation of lying flat both become less important.
The challenges our generation faces are indeed unprecedented — information overload, intensifying competition, increasing uncertainty. But we also have unprecedented tools and opportunities. The internet makes knowledge accessible; globalization removes geographic barriers to collaboration; AI dramatically expands individual capability boundaries.
Rather than anxiously worrying about "not keeping up" or debating "whether to lie flat," spend time figuring out: what is worth giving your all to? Once you answer that question, the rest will follow.