3 ms·

The opposite side of the problem is that sometimes people continually tell you you're exceptional, talented, capable, and driven, while you point to your record

The opposite side of the problem is that sometimes people continually tell you you're exceptional, talented, capable, and driven, while you point to your record of actual accomplishments and proclaim your mediocrity. And by "you" I of course mean "me".

grogenaut 9y ago
you could also just have a ton of below average coworkers so your mediocrity is still amazing. This is what happens in highschool sports. Folks mistake "above average" which is get you to college sports (I played D3 I know) with exceptional, eg Pro, or even All Star Pro. Few can even tell at that level. I enjoyed myself a lot by going to a place where I was continually challenged in a domain I didn't know, games. Learned a ton, including humility, and got way better. It broke a lot of my assumptions or held beliefs with plain evidence to the contrary.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  I hugely enjoyed my last job: the coworkers were all above my skill-level in practically everything, but somehow still liked having me around. I learned loads and built great relationships. We still keep in touch. Pity our client cancelled the big project I'd been hired on for, revenue flow never quite got back up, and I was the only person in the company who couldn't do hardware dev :-(.
gist 9y ago
> while you point to your record of actual accomplishments and proclaim your mediocrity Luck being the missing ingredient.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  No, not at all. The missing ingredients are drive from an early age, extreme privilege from almost birth, and/or efficiency of work-ethic from an early age. You can crank things out by putting in a lot of hours, to work towards a goal, but that's not actually enough. You needed to learn how to just process things efficiently and mechanically from the start. You shouldn't have grown a sense of drive at age 23 and then needed to figure out how that works. You should have been efficient since forever, and then been able to deploy that towards drive at whatever age. Ideally, you should have had drive starting around age 14 on top of efficiency. Provided you never managed any of those things, you should have just been born right. It's easy to hit all the top-ranked targets in life without having efficiency, or even an idea or drive before adulthood -- provided someone sent you to prep school, put you through top universities, and let you know you could start a business without worrying about ever starving or missing rent. (I've met some people as privileged as that last description. The best among them is absolutely one of the most friendly, helpful, overall nice people I've ever met. Many of them are self-aware about the whole thing. Those who are neither nice nor self-aware are a danger to society, and IMHO haven't really earned it. Oh, and worse, some of the non-nice, self-unaware ones are in some very, very high places. Apparently they're awkward at parties, too.)

grogenaut 9y ago

you could also just have a ton of below average coworkers so your mediocrity is still amazing. This is what happens in highschool sports. Folks mistake "above average" which is get you to college sports (I played D3 I know) with exceptional, eg Pro, or even All Star Pro. Few can even tell at that level. I enjoyed myself a lot by going to a place where I was continually challenged in a domain I didn't know, games. Learned a ton, including humility, and got way better. It broke a lot of my assumptions or held beliefs with plain evidence to the contrary.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago
I hugely enjoyed my last job: the coworkers were all above my skill-level in practically everything, but somehow still liked having me around. I learned loads and built great relationships. We still keep in touch. Pity our client cancelled the big project I'd been hired on for, revenue flow never quite got back up, and I was the only person in the company who couldn't do hardware dev :-(.

gist 9y ago

> while you point to your record of actual accomplishments and proclaim your mediocrity Luck being the missing ingredient.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago
No, not at all. The missing ingredients are drive from an early age, extreme privilege from almost birth, and/or efficiency of work-ethic from an early age. You can crank things out by putting in a lot of hours, to work towards a goal, but that's not actually enough. You needed to learn how to just process things efficiently and mechanically from the start. You shouldn't have grown a sense of drive at age 23 and then needed to figure out how that works. You should have been efficient since forever, and then been able to deploy that towards drive at whatever age. Ideally, you should have had drive starting around age 14 on top of efficiency. Provided you never managed any of those things, you should have just been born right. It's easy to hit all the top-ranked targets in life without having efficiency, or even an idea or drive before adulthood -- provided someone sent you to prep school, put you through top universities, and let you know you could start a business without worrying about ever starving or missing rent. (I've met some people as privileged as that last description. The best among them is absolutely one of the most friendly, helpful, overall nice people I've ever met. Many of them are self-aware about the whole thing. Those who are neither nice nor self-aware are a danger to society, and IMHO haven't really earned it. Oh, and worse, some of the non-nice, self-unaware ones are in some very, very high places. Apparently they're awkward at parties, too.)