Ask HN: How do you deal with the fact of being average? I have been thinking about this recently and it is deeply bothering me. Even if you are good at what you do(heck you may be slightly above average) you will still not be the best. You will probably won't be next Bill Gates or Jonathan Ive. Truth is that while you will certainly develop in your field, and you might even be really good at it, you will never break this "average bubble" we all live in. How do you deal with this feeling? |
I am the best, though.
I'm the best coworker. I'm the best friend. I'm the best mentor. I'm the best leader.
Plenty of people have told me so. Not newspapers, not random internet commenters. People who mattered to me told me to my face that I'm the best.
Gates, Ive, and whomever else you might think of aren't "the best". They're just well-known. I'm not famous. So what?
So, I have nothing to "deal with".
Sorry if it seems like a nitpick, but the number is off by the entire population of China and India...
A cute trick that I do: everytime I asked myself that question (which happened to be a lot), I tried to name the top 30 billionaires living in the world, the Nobel winners in the last 20 years, or the 2nd richest guy in Rocketfeller time. How about kings around the world a hundred years ago? I can't.
That's not to put down the greatness of those people. They're far better human than I could ever hope to be. But I think part of the existential crisis about being average is that we realized we're easily forgotten, and it helps to realize that even the great people will be forgotten too.
You also have to think outside of the box, don't follow the status quo, enhance it, ask questions and challenge the norm of how things are done. That is the only way to really evolve and transcend to the top.
If Elon Musk went with the sky is the limit mythology there would be no SpaceX. If Steve Jobs gave up after he was fired from Apple there would be no Pixar or Apple today.
Where did you get these artificial limits of never breaking this "average bubble" or will still not be the best type ideas. Thinking that way will not help you rise to your full potential and only slow you down on your way up. The greater something is, the harder it will be to obtain. This is the great thing about being at the top, that it will be very hard for others to race you there as your skills evolve way above the norm.
There are over 7 billion people. By definition they cannot all "excel way beyond [their] peers".
There's a certain philosophical impossibility to your advice that it's best for everyone to think outside the box and not follow the status quo. If everyone is trying to think outside the box, then that becomes the status quo.
But to start with, why should someone's goal be to "make it to the top"? What's wrong with living a good life, be nice to other people", helping make the town a nicer place to live, or any other equally noble, and more achievable goals? People need vets, and plumbers, and doctors, and yes, even programmers, without always needing the best in the world.
The flip side for all the people who try to be the next <fill in the blank>, and fail, and ruin their lives by doing so. The divorces and suicides and alcoholism and severe depression of the tried-to-reach-the-top-but-failed aren't as well known as the success stories. Or are simply brushed aside for "not trying hard enough."
Picking winners after the fact is tricky. If Jobs gave up, we might have had BePods and BeWatches, or the latest line of AmigaPros laptops. Also, I think you mean Pixar, not DreamWorks.
If you are competitive then striving to become the best you can be comes naturally. Helping others on your way to the top also comes naturally as to make it there you have to have the help of others since it cannot be done alone. The good life is relative to ones goals in life, thinking outside of the box goes against the status quo as it is a different way of doing something that has not been done.
Normally on your way to continuous self-improvement and helping build up others around you become a leader in your field, company, group, etc. without even thinking about it. No need to try to be the next so and so, it is better to be yourself and enhance your potential at a pace that keeps you challenged and on your toes. The world is better off with unique leaders, versus people not being their genuine self when trying to lead change and improve things for people around them.
However, if you assume that people are smarter than you, that could lead to you listening to them more than you should, holding back in voicing concerns and sharing opinions that seem right and important to you.
Not to claim that I do these things.
And let's say you're among the best, making what you make. You're so good that you've never met anyone better. You are provably, demonstrably among the best of the best.
Whatever you make, there are physical, regulatory and economic limits on how good that thing can possibly be. In this environment, you're so good that there just isn't enough hose capacity to accept the flow of brain power and competence from you to the product. You're the best, and given the above limitations, some portion of your ability is going to waste, spilling out all over the universe. You're overkill. You are so the best that someone else who is almost the best could probably make the exact same thing, and not as much of them will spill all over the place.
So now, there are two facts. One, you're the best. And two, thousands of people have used and benefited from your product. Their surgeon's job was easier, and he had more success than without your product. People beat speed traps. Houses were sold quickly. Which fact has improved the world more, your "being the best," or the outcomes for all those thousands of people. And remember, those products didn't actually require someone to be the best to get essentially the same outcome.
Pick up "being the best," and hold it in your palm. Rub you fingers over it. (Yes, it's a real thing, this "being the best." I'm not making a metaphor.) Hold it up and rub it with your cheek. Damn, being the best feels good.
But there's also this new guy in the field, at this other company, and dammit if he isn't the best now. You look all over the apartment for your being the best, and it just isn't there anymore.
If your goal is to be the best, you may actually be the best for a time. And you'll make things. And lots of other people will work with you, who are in no way the best but still without a doubt good enough to walk in the door every day. In fact, you couldn't possibly have made those things without the help of all those people who are not the best. In facter, you might actually be one of those other people, and not the best. And you'll all, together, make things, which people will use and enjoy. And all of those people will forever have had the experience of making the thing that you and your colleagues made, even if your being the best didn't last as long, or if you never actually had a being the best.
Now that we've read this far, I feel like our relationship is strong enough that I can say this. And I'm just sayin', but ... I think this wanting to be the best is something of a fetish. I don't think it's healthy. In fact, you might think it's driving you forward, but we all think it's holding you back. We're concerned. We'd like you to stop torturing your self over wondering about being the best, and distorting your career choices. Most of us have found that there's a lot of satisfaction in thinking about the impact of our efforts on the people who use our products. Most of the rest of us are not the best, we merely strive to be the best that each of us can be. And that's pretty good. We're happy, and the people who use our products are happy.
We'd like you to be happy too.
What about luck?
If we accept that luck is something wholly out of our control, then there is no point thinking about luck. If we accept luck is somewhat within our control, in terms of creating causes which create possibilities for certain conditions to arise, then it works to consider, "How can I do things which create possibilities?" So whatever the nature of "luck", the power to determine is up to you.
What about "structural inhibitors of success", such as, genes that don't work, physical or mental disability, structural oppression like sexism or racism, or being born in a poor country or family, or anything else?
Again, it works to rationally consider each of these compelling excuses for a lack of achievement. There are people who have possessed these, and at the same time succeeded.
Perhaps anything people sometimes cite as an excuse or obstacle to "explain" a lack of achievement, are simply opportunities to create improvements, again?
One way of looking at difficulties is that they are treasures leading you to the success that perhaps you have chosen for yourself. If it's the "difficulties" that you feel are preventing you from achievement, doesn't that also make them the very opportunities for things to improve to create your achievement?
Another way is thinking about athletes: how many great swimmers started life as kids with asthma? It was the very difficulty that was in fact an opportunity for them to create this improvement. And they succeeded.
It's perhaps incorrect to say Zuck was having trouble meeting people at Harvard, but isn't there something to the idea that it was the very difficulty with easily knowing about other people in college, that was an opportunity for him to create Facebook?
From the point of view of startups, anything which is a difficulty for some people, is the perfect business opportunity, and people will pay you to solve it for them. So if you are born without difficulties, perhaps you are very unlucky indeed, tho if you are rich in difficulties perhaps you have many opportunities to create success :)
Yes, there are plenty of people with difficulties you can cite as being unsuccessful, however, it works to consider the question: does that say something about the life-determining power of difficulties or does it say something about how those people have thought about their difficulties?
The idea that we are not responsible for the path our lives take is an extremely compelling delusion, and because so much of people's self-explanation of why they haven't been successful hinges on blaming external factors, they will defend the truth they ascribe to these factors with all their will, because their entire satisfied relationship with an unsatisfying life rests on that fallacy. The alternate choice, to take responsibility, and see they also had power to choose to do things differently that may have produced different results, means surrendering the fake pay-off of blaming something else.
Fake pay-offs are addictive feelings that let people feel like they have achieved something without actually having done so. They're what people substitute for actually choosing to take responsibility. If you can feel okay about your lack of achievement, if you can deal with seeing other people's success by explaining it as being because you are a victim of circumstance, or they are privileged, or their success is not real success, then you can say, "It's not my responsibility I didn't achieve like them." This is like a tonic you apply to your challenging feeling of witnessing another's success. Except it's fake. Because you didn't achieve something. And it doesn't work for you, because saying "it's not my responsibility", actually disempowers you, and trains you out of thinking of ways you can actually choose to create improvements, that may lead to success.
Sadly, it seems fake pay-offs like in the narrative above are almost as compelling as actually achieving something for real. If people really do achieve below their potential, I'd say repeating incorrect, disempowering narratives is one contributing reason.
What’s the antidote to these kind of narratives? Realizing you can create narratives that empower you based on taking responsibility. This doesn’t require disempowering anyone else (which is really just a kind of weakness), rather, by realizing that you have choice, you will see that there is no one to blame, and that in any situation, you are responsible for how it is going for you.
What else is required?
I’d say that having a workable relationship to other people’s success works. When you see someone else successful, be inspired by that success and ask, “Wow, that’s cool, how can I get that for myself?” If you choose to be jealous, it’s just going to more readily lead to narratives where: you’re not responsible for your own lack of success, and their success is not real because they’re privileged or because it was fake.
That is one way of addressing the fake idea that it is the difficulties, instead of our choices, which limit our lives.
From another perspective, yes, "everyone is average." By definition this is true. Yet what is the nature of that truth? Is it a powerful all-encompassing truth? Or just a weak truism? If you unpack it it's "everyone except for a few outliers are within a few standard deviations of the mean". That’s not the kind of life-determining truth that’s going to rock your world. That’s just talking about some unmentioned metric, by which everyone’s measure is being taken. Maybe your standards are different. Maybe the measure by which you are average is unimportant for you.
And maybe even if you are average today, you may not be in 5 or 10 years time. Maybe you will be the next Jony Ive. If you get there, it won’t be because it was given to you, it will be because you kept making choices that worked to get you there.
In terms of how weak the impact of ostensibly “big” difficulties can be, consider this: Steve Jobs is dead. And he’s still having an impact. I’d say there’s plenty of things you can do with the life you have.
All of the above works if your choice is to try to do something extraordinary.
Being Average
If you just want a normal, average life, then you really do not have to worry about such highfalutin notions of taking responsibility, or empowerment. Because the average delusions adopted by many will work just fine, and may even keep things smoother, because in the masses people expect to blame each other and be blamed for things that aren't their responsibility. Complaining is the great refuge of the average person, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So if you would prefer an average life, then a more "average looking" philosophy will work, and that's totally okay too. Even if you want to just take a break from being an entrepreneur this can work! The Buddhist notion of detachment from worldly forms, which are all just like lights and magic in a stage play, and empty of inherent reality because they're just the result of a whole bunch of other causes, works as somewhere to start. The Daoist notion of "achieve by not achieving, act by not acting" also works.
Just let go, and be content with average. Stop grasping after worldly forms, and you'll be happy. There's plenty of people who will show you the way to be content with an average life. Society (and your biology) already has a prescription prepared for you: entertainment, eating, drinking, love and sex, partying. These are the great distractions which can make you feel better about your lack of achievement. Which is not to say they are not good in themselves, nor that there is anything wrong with maintaining social harmony, only to talk about how we've constructed them as aspirational myths, which also work as great distractions from actually achieving. And if you have a highfalutin notion that you want to be a somebody, watch a hero movie, and play out your fantasies on the big screen, through the entertaining catharsis of being someone who never existed.
Which is not to say that if you do want to be a "serious entrepreneur" you got to feel guilty enjoying such entertainment. Enjoy it. And do your work. If you just enjoy it, and believe it's the pinnacle of aspiration, and then do nothing, you'll be average.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, and maybe average is what you already chose, and you're looking for a way to accept it. Combine the great distractions for the more biological and adrenal urges, with the Buddhist and Daoist philosophies for the more cerebral ones, and you're set. Averageness Nirvana. Or choose to take responsibility and choose to be extraordinary. Rich in Difficulties. Blue Bill, Red Pill. :)
I don't think there's anything wrong with being average, nor with everybody choosing an average life at all. Cows in the field are happy, and they're not doing anything special at all. In India, cows do even less, and there they're gods.
If the people are happy, all is well. In fact, that's a really important measure of how well things are -- how happy are the average people? All of your technologies mean nothing if they don't contribute to people being happy and free. Just because someone is average doesn't mean they're not special.
And then there's biology. Darwinism explains why extraordinary success is not really a positive selective pressure, because even if you're a 1000x success over average, you don't have 1000x offspring over average. We're not selected to be extraordinary, which is not an excuse, and is another way to think about how being extraordinary is really a choice people make.
Average people benefit from extraordinary people. When they do, extraordinary people's work becomes meaningful.
I also think it's important that there are people who are choosing to create technologies to advance the human race. One reason is because then everyone choosing to be average can have a better quality of average, and that's awesome. Like what if all disease was cured? And aging could be reversed with periodic maintenance? And we had an energy source which let us build and feed everyone to a minimum standard level? That would be so awesome, and that's just some of the things that are possible with technology. So long as a there are people choosing to be extraordinary, and make things that are meaningful for average people, that will happen. If you create a technology that nobody uses, it's not a technology. It's an experiment, it's research.
The ideas above are just one way which works to be extraordinary. If being extraordinary is what you choose, there's a whole bunch of other ways to do it, and there's more things in this way that work too. Taking responsibility for your own path works as a place to start tho. Also, being positive, constructive, creative and figuring things out for yourself work too.
Footnote: If you want to be extraordinary do it in tech, not research
And if you're capable of making something people use, I'd say you have a responsibility to capture value from that so that you can fund yourself to create the possibility of your making more things in future. That's why science is more broken than tech, because the people with capacity to do useful things are not the ones ensured to keep doing useful things in future. It's a apprentice system, not a free market, and that doesn't work because it doesn't most incent the people who can create the most value.
How? Get a new perspective. No one can tell you with one will work for you. Try a few on for size. See how they fit.
You write "you become a leader in your field, company, group, etc." but that's not really thinking outside of the box, is it? There are those who create entirely new fields, without being a leader. Some of them aren't even known for their work until after death, so can be called 'leader' only in a way synonymous with 'pathfinder', and not at the top in some sort of hierarchical sense.
It also sounds like you define your life around your occupation. What happens if someone wants to be the best parent they can be? Or the best neighbor? What does it even mean to be the "top" in that field?
You write "due to not being challenged enough in life" and I look in disbelief - change jobs. Become a surgeon, or concert violist, or bush pilot, or any of thousands of challenging jobs that have nothing to do with what you do now. Why stick with the same field to find challenges? There's more than only vertical growth. Or learn new hobbies. There are many so-called 'skilled junkies' in the world, and I've not heard of anyone who has mastered everything. You mentioned 'well-rounded', so I assume that's what you are talking about as well, but skills acquisition doesn't need to be part of a competitive world-view. It can be for enjoyment only.
I even find odd your concept of worrying about giving up when it appears to get too hard. If the goal is breath-taking-ness then choose routes to maximize that. There's no need to manufacture and reach a specific unwavering goal for the side-effect of getting that breath taking feeling.
The classical models of conflict are "man against man", "man against nature", and "man against self." The competitiveness you talk about I think only refers to the first of these. I long ago decided to avoid those, and focus more on the latter two, so that I'm doing the things based on my own scale, and not always ranking myself against others.
As an example, in my 30s I started doing a lot of partner dances. I deliberately did not advance past a certain level. I found as I got better I was having less fun dancing with people locally. If I got much better still, I would only be able to enjoy dancing by going to regional dance events, and what I wanted from dancing was to be social with local people.
I don't think I was trying to be the top local dancer. I don't think I was trying to be the best of friends with people. I didn't organize dance events, etc. I was enjoying myself, enjoying being part of the scene, and learning new skills in the process. I don't see how that sort of continuous self-improvement is strongly connected to being a leader of any sort.