Ask HN: How do you deal with mediocrity?
How do you deal with stuff that you are sh-t with? Are you upset that you are not on the NBA? That you are not a world-class oceanographer? That you are not an astronaut? You and are not mediocre with those, we are downright failures. Maybe you say you are not trying to be that, but still, why doesn&#x27;t it bother you? Not because you didn&#x27;t choose them as a career, but because you simply don&#x27;t give a flying f-ck.<p>Or look at it this way...even places like Harvard and MIT and Stanford only have one person who graduates first in their class. These are high-end universities with the best and brightest. How do all the people who didn&#x27;t graduate first in their class even live without committing suicide for not being the best? Let alone those who graduated last in their class at some tiny no-name university that no one has ever heard of, and compare themselfves to someone who graduated first in their class at Harvard? Why even try to get a job?<p>But I think at the heart of it all is not about mediocrity, but about comparing oneself to others. This is not about mediocrity, but about self-image, self-respect, and mainly about not giving a f-ck about other people.<p>As far as how do you get to that point, you have to immerse and care about something that you care about. And that does not have to be static for your entire life, you can get new hobbies and ideas. I don&#x27;t have a family, so clearly it won&#x27;t ever be that. But at various times, I have cared about many other things at different parts of my life, like hiking with a group of people which I did for 2 years, martial arts which I did for 20 years, running in ultramarathons, which I did for about 5 years. Executive director of a large non-profit. And in between each of these activities, I had some downtime where I didn&#x27;t really do anything.<p>But one does have to make an effort. One cannot just sit in their basement waiting for it to happen. If you like to travel, you have to travel. If one likes to cook, one has to cook. But again, is one going to travel as much as a professional traveler who does it full-time? Or cook as good as someone with training at the best cooking schools and at the best restaurants in the world? No.<p>But I didn&#x27;t compare myself to all the best, because I am mediocre in everything compared to the best. I like that have done many many things, though, that most people have not. Who has done all the things that I have - 6th degree black belt, run 50+ miles at one time, etc? But I was pretty mediocre in each compared to itself. By far and away not the best in martial arts, never won any sort of competition in ultras.<p>And part of it is you have to embrace the suck, if that makes sense. Have a Plan B is important. Lots of peoples&#x27; identities are caught up in what they do. Like, they don&#x27;t know what to do if they all of a sudden cannot do what they are best at. Happens all the time. Like professional athletes, they get injured in their first month of being in the NBA or NFL, and they fall to pieces and think they are valueless. Well, you have to not tie up your identity in any one thing. You are <i>you</i>, not <i>what</i> you do.<p>I guess one is not mediocre if one does what one likes to 100% of their abilities, in whatever one wants. But even then, don&#x27;t get caught up in the 100% &quot;all the time&quot; thing. There are days when I have done all my activities and one day I will just suck at what I&#x27;m doing, or for weeks at a time I will only go at 70% or 50%, but then, in week 3, I will see a lot of gains and get way better. Some people say  you have to give 100% each and every time but that is bullsh*t. Nobody can except some super rare individual. I even heard Michael Phelps, who won so many Olympic gold metals, say in a video that he has had shitty days in training - not 100%. Does he just quit, then? No.<p>So, anyways, lots of words which give a tone and timbre to my overall feeling about the matter.<p>The answer is that you have to find things that you care about, and do them. And do them as best you can, but don&#x27;t get too tied up in them. Things change. Be ready to find other things you want to do in life. Drink deeply from the cup of life. But be ready to find something else. For example, if you have a family and all of them get wiped out in a car accident except you, be prepared to move on after understandable time of utter desolation and grief. Let the dead bury the dead and all that. Nothing lasts forever, and eventually, your whole family is going to die anyways, right? So many times we all read about people being devastated when a spouse leaves them, or is caught cheating. Really? Come on, don&#x27;t be 5 years old. 50% of the population divorces, so how can one be &quot;utterly blindsided&quot;? So the point is, you cannot really even depend on what you said in your last sentence, that what matters if family, or hobbies, or religion. Not 100%. Many men I have known have had their children snatched away from them in a divorce - they go from seeing their children every day, being happy and love their children and gives them a great source of enjoyment in life, and then a divorce and they only see their children every other weekend, instead of every day. So you have to always have Plan B and move on to that. What matters is to enjoy stuff when you can, but always, always have a Plan B to move on to something else you enjoy. But it takes work and effort. You actually have to go to a hiking group, or put one together. It&#x27;s not passive.