“Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they aren’t capable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre.” –Timothy Ferriss
Benjamin Spall, in his post Do Not Overestimate the Competition and Underestimate Yourself, reminded me of this quote in The 4-Hour Workweek. And it got me thinking.
The absurdity of mediocrity
I’m convinced many of us, myself included, default to mediocre. I’d even go out on a limb and say that 90% of our activity is aimed at just being acceptable.
I find this unbelievably sad.
And I know it’s true. It’s true because we’re humans living in an age where every minute we are presented an image, an essay, a book, poster, website, or newsletter … to which we compare ourselves or our own creation. And 90% of the time -my non-scientific estimate- we come up short in such a comparison.
Our conscience will automatically respond that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to anyone, but that’s idiotic in my opinion. It’s because we are human beings with a highly evolved brain that we can make a comparison at all.
Telling us not to compare ourselves to another is like trying to reverse evolution.
The ease of mediocrity
So, why are we defaulting to mediocrity? Because it’s easy. Because it requires less work, less brain power, less creativity. A lot of what passes for just showing up falls into this category of creation in my opinion.
- Crafting a blog post that’s mediocre isn’t that hard
- Writing a mediocre eBook is very manageable
- Creating a video that sucks, a piece of cake
The cure for mediocrity
Being remarkable is the cure for mediocrity. Yeah sure, let’s just all be remarkable why don’t we! I agree that it’s easier to say than do, but it’s possible.
I think being remarkable is linked to living mindfully; making moment by moment decisions; choosing to be, to create, to offer something remarkable instead of something that’s merely acceptable.
Curing mediocrity begins with its rejection. And it’s a huge undertaking. But unless we make this choice to reject the mediocre and strive to always go beyond acceptability, we’ll always be trapped within it.
The personal application
As I review what I’m doing here on BarryMorris.net, I’m not seeing a lot that’s remarkable. And that makes me very uncomfortable. In fact, prior to publishing this post, I deleted 15 posts that, in my opinion, were only acceptable.
I’m convinced unless I focus on being remarkable, writing remarkable posts, offering remarkable experiences, then what I am left with is a mediocre blog that’s acceptable. I don’t know about you, but that makes me sick.
When I show up, I want it to mean something
There are those who write and publish each day. I tried that for 30 days overlapping November and December. It was a good exercise but it left me with a lot of mediocre posts. I think Corbett Barr is right when he says we need to write epic shit. Not many can write epic posts each day. Even Seth Godin’s writing has peaks and valleys.
I think it’s important to strive for epic. Even if you fall short, it’s a worthy target.
Choosing to be epic, to be remarkable, to not show up unless you have something meaningful to contribute is the cure for mediocrity. Do you agree? Is showing up enough? Please leave a comment if you have an opinion. 
