On mediocrity

This is the first part of my articles on mediocrity. They will be updated with the links as they are written/uploaded.

I realize, this writing can be thought of as a marketing device for a self-help book or something along these lines. It is not. This is my quest for not being mediocre. I promise, I won’t try to sell you a one time only course in time or project management or somesuch bullshit at the bottom of this article, you have my word.

I’ve been thinking about mediocrity for a long time now. I’d like to know what causes it, why are most people settling for the good enough, rather than going for the kill? I’ve been surrounded all my life with not realized potential, and the most of what I have produced was at best meh. But I would like to change that.

First a little about myself, for context. I have been equipped with a good enough brain, so I never really had to strain myself. I could get mostly good grades in courses that I liked, and I could get enough material crammed in memory to pass somehow in others. But with time I started to understand, that this is not enough. Not by a long shot.

The problem as I see it

I live in a small european country, with relatively low population, so maybe the law of big numbers aren’t working, or maybe other factors chime in (provincial mindset comes to mind), but I don’t really get the idea, that we have a lot of great minds. We have a lot of good ones, for sure, but the fact, that historically almost every one of my fellow citizen, who became great had to leave the country for it to happen is not promising much on the nurturing environment front.

Nevertheless, I would settle for people who are actively trying to be exceptional in things, but even that is a tall order, seems like. For one reason or other most of the people I know and know of are content with a good enough quality in their work, to not get too much flak from the boss, but anything above this is almost never seen. Sometimes I wonder, that things get built and working around here – and I’m not talking about cost effectiveness or timeliness.

Of course, not everyone can like her job to go above and beyond on her duties, however I don’t see too much great painters, writers or businessmen either, for that to be a good excuse. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that everyone should be a busybee, and do every day 12 hours shifts in the factory, but the amount of “don’t give a fuck about what is happening around me” is staggering.

In need of definitions

If I want to get to the bottom of this issue, maybe I should define the words, that I’m throwing about. Let’s try it:

Mediocrity: mediocre is something that can pass most examination, but not that good to pass them with flying colors. Good enough. Mediocre is waking up every workday for 40 years, and doing the same thing without paying it too much mind – aside from the 2-3 months of learning the job in the beginning. Taking the path of least resistance. I think most of us knows this notion, this way of life intimately.

Greatness: Perhaps I should talk first about percieved greatness, so we can see later the difference with real greatness. When we think about people who stand above the crowd – scientists, actors, musicians, writers or their kin – we think most of the time natural talent, good genes or maximalist parents. We try to think anything, that says they are outliers in their performance because of something extra, that you born with or not. We can’t help it, we probably want to spare ourselves of cognitive dissonance.

Real greatness however – with the caveat of a big PROBABLY – lies elsewhere. Sure, genes and upbringing are factors in this equasion, but science may prove them insufficient. There are more and more research (see Anders Ericsson’s books about expertise) that are saying greatness has some – a lot – effort, blood, sweat and tears backing it up. This is the thought that the general population doesn’t want to think.

Cashing in on the 10.000 hours meme

Some writers made popular the notion of 10.000 hours is needed to achieve mastery of a particular thing. Quantum physics? 10.000. Snooker? 10.000. Playing the oud? 10.000. For every one people on this planet? Yes, of course!

This idea is kind of good, but worths next to nothing. It’s a cliché – everyone knows it, but no one pays much attention to it. It’s noise. It does tell you, what you need to do, but at the same time it gives you an out. “Well, I’m not going to sink 10.000 hours in playing Go, just to be able to play it.” Thinking in numbers is not the forte of humans, and this particular number is more than we can imagine.

The problem with this approach is that it’s overly fixated on time. This number is from one of Ericsson’s research, which stated that a student needs around 10.000 – give or take a thou – hours to get really good (but not exceptional) at playing an instrument, like the violin. It doesn’t mean that this is a universal number, and at the 10.000 mark you will feel an otherworldly eureka moment, then poof, you become an expert.

More, the time focused approach is most likely problematic. If 10.000 hours doing something would make an expert out of everybody, then everybody would be an expert with approximately 10 years of work history in a given field, which is most definitely not in attunement with reality. The case is most likely be, that the quality of those hours you spend with the activity of your choice is more important, than quantity.

In conclusion

At the end of the article, I’d like to propose an update, which will have to do, until I continue my quest, on the definition of greatness:

Greatness is the result of waking up every day for 40 years and doing fundamentally the same thing, with paying it all the mind you have.