Short read: The Way of Mediocre Man

One might wonder about the title about the article – why would anyone care writing about let alone celebrate mediocrity. To be sure, the author is referring to mediocrity as perceived by the world at large in professional life. It distinguishes the grind that most professionals go through in jobs and careers they don’t love yet embracing the glory that world ascribes to hard work driven achievements of goals. The author talks about his experience of this and how he quit and instead embraced ‘mediocrity’ which he found more fulfilling.

“Mediocre man flows through life. It is his birthright. He is not great man aiming at great results but merely trying to do enough of the right things over a long period of time such that it might lead somewhere interesting.

Mediocre man is one who learns to trust the journey because he is fully aware that one cannot quite know what will result from any specific effort. Society tells him he is lazy and that he is a fool and that he should have goals, big goals! But he has stumbled upon a secret: mediocre effort beats extreme effort for most people, most of the time.”

He talks about his grind at consulting and then move to writing which he enjoys with no goal in itself. But he acknowledges people who are naturally wired to slog and enjoy it:

“I have also met many people who are wired to operate at higher levels of energy and total commitment to work, combined with the self-confidence that they are meant to be doing such things.  But here’s the thing about these people: they have never had to force themselves to be this way. They have been wired like this their whole lives. They aren’t reading this essay.  They are going hard on their thing.

The central feature of writing and the many other kinds of work that lend themselves to mediocrity is that there is no arrival. Visceral opposition to the idea of mediocrity almost always arises from people with clear goals, ones that suggest arrival. And that works remarkably well for some people. This essay isn’t for those people.”

But most of us aren’t like that.

“Most of us likely have a fixed amount of effort that we can use up in a day or week. If we waste most of that effort on things we don’t want to do, we might end up wasting years of our lives. I spent ten years working in the strategy consulting industry. At first, I loved the work. It was challenging and pushed me to be better in many ways. But toward the tail end of that decade-long chapter, I had to use up far too much energy for the tiniest of tasks.  Even on light weeks, I’d have nothing left after getting home from work.

The best way to use our effort is to “spend it” on daily, weekly, or monthly practices, which we can sustain longer than most others. This is the secret of mediocrity. It only appears mediocre from another person’s perspective. Over long enough time horizons, you can actually become one of the best in the world at your craft because of a simple truth: most people quit.

…Mediocrity does not come with a playbook and requires a stance toward life that is fundamentally different from what it takes to succeed on a traditional path. It requires emotional sophistication and a tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. It requires enough self-awareness to know what you might be deluding yourself about your own desires. And it requires time and patience to develop these capacities. Sometimes even an extended break from work.

…We have convinced far too many people to chase things that are not aligned with their ideal states of being, and it has robbed them of their own belief in their potential. For years, I mistakenly paired my inability to grind with a lack of competence and ability. I existed in a world of extreme effort and had consistently mediocre results. I didn’t think I was capable of doing great work. But now I have tasted the sweet fruits of mediocrity and know that it can be a path to thriving. I know that mediocre effort only means mediocre output if you are stuck doing things that you don’t care about.  The truth is that great work does not always require extreme effort.

In today’s world, almost everyone blindly embraces an ethic of “hard work.” But what they are really doing is embracing an ethic of extreme effort.  This is not ideal. Today’s problems that we struggle with are increasingly not effort problems but imagination and ingenuity problems. They don’t require more bodies and hustle but steady mediocre work that involves rest, contemplation, and ease.”

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