> It serves me well. I listen more. I ask a lot of questions. I’ve stopped thinking others are stupid. I assume most people are smarter than me.

> To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning. You focus on what you need to improve, not your past accomplishments.

I dunno, I'm not convinced this is what "assuming you're below average" really looks like. At least not all of it.

When I think I'm below average I go along with decisions I disagree with; "that's not the strategy I'd go for but you're the person who actually knows our customers" or "that's not the architecture I'd implement but you have more experience with these things". When I think I'm above average, I'll push back harder. It would be nice to get everyone on the same page, ask questions until either I'm convinced or they are, but I don't think that's always realistic.

What does Derek do in situations like that?

I think he meant tackling each problem by assuming that you're below the average and therefore examining and solving it more thoughtfully and carefully than you would if you just knew you're so damn good you don't really have to pay much attention to it.

So, how I saw it, it's about emphasizing that you're not quite sure how to solve a problem and, in this, thinking everyone else does makes it easier to remember the meticulousness that you desire.

Of course I'm nitpicking though. His point is that you shouldn't aspire to averageness, and overall it's a great speech.

Even if that's true you're making the assumption that being excellent at something will make the poster happy and improve his self-esteem. Maybe being average at lots of different things will make him happy.

I can do both:

- assume that I am below average (don't underestimate others)

- assume that I have talent (don't underestimate yourself)

To be fair, you used the wrong example. Saying something like that IS a recipe for failure - there are too many areas that somebody could decide to become good at; becomming just above average on your choosen area means you are about worthless.

And that's another problem with people's perception. Exceptionalism is the rule, people are diverse.

I didn't mean that the weaknesses have to be obvious. I agree the first example I used was a blatant one, but in the other case the person had lived 5 decades without recognizing the impact that lack of communication skills had on his life. He always just thought "that's how I am."

So in your case, of someone who is "just average at many things" - perhaps there's a fear of chasing a direction, a reluctance to commit, an inability to focus, etc. that probably got them to "just be ok" and living below their potential, and probably overcoming that thing is a meta-skill that they need to gain.

That's probably a decent strategy overall but as someone that can't pass Google HC I don't see how that would help.

I think I'm pretty mediocre at all of the things that might be lucrative and really bad at everything else.

On some dimensions. On other dimensions, some will not have more ability.

I may be good at programming computers. That does not make me good at welding or art.

In particular, I like the fact that it drives home that it is NOT okay to set up our society so that it demands better than average in order to be considered to be a "worthwhile" member of society.

A person who is simply "average" should be able to have a meaningful life.

Most people are so worried about doing something great that they never do anything at all."

That was wow! Though, thinking you are below average outs constraints in some people making them believe that certain bigger things are "not for me". That can be devastating.

People who want to do great things, and who have the right combination of talent and drive to actually do them, have usually done great things already. Perhaps not in the same sphere, and perhaps not as great as they aim in the future, but still great.

If you don't have much to show, why should you expect to be regarded favorably in any competitive endeavor? Evaluating people based on what they have demonstrated is by far the fairest method, and I can't really imagine what you would propose to replace it with.

If you don't have much to show now, you have the opportunity to see to it that you will in a few months. Just because some doors are closed to you now doesn't mean they will be forever.

Good luck to you!

There are a thousand ways to say you're good at something. Some of them will make you appear arrogant, some will make you appear humble, with endless options in between. I don't know who this author is or what specific axes they have to grind, but instead of taking broad swipes at all of society, maybe consider your own communication skills and how they are not leading to the results you desire. If you're starting from a position of "there is one way to express a thought and it will always be met with this specific response", you are a pretty far way from actually improving your situation.

Luck being the missing ingredient.

In general it may be that it reminds people of their own failings and nobody likes to feel like a loser.

Reversion to the mean would be underperforming past elite performance, not underestimating actual performance.

And it would draw toward the mean, not the ~70th percentile.

+1; How close is my paraphrasing to what you were thinking?

achievement(person) = potential(person) - adversity(person)

People implicitly assume the 'adversity' term is negligible. But in reality, the 'adversity' term can very large, and vary widely from person to person.

[yep the "equation" isn't dimensionally consistent. It's meant to be a "completion prompt" to your internal LLM to translate those tokens to a longer paragraph.]