Dismantling the Mediocrity Fallacy: How do I produce more creative work when I don’t know if it’ll be any good?

Giving in to the fear of mediocrity stops us from creating something valuable more so than the fear of failure does. This is because the fear of mediocrity is a much more insidious force that prevents us from starting. If we don’t start anything, there’s zero chance we create something. Overcoming this fear is extremely valuable and we need to empower ourselves and others to do this.
The Mediocrity Fallacy
The mediocrity fallacy is that we shouldn’t do something because our efforts might turn out to produce something mediocre — this fallacy needs to be dismantled because:
- the process of creating any work is valuable in itself;
- even if the work is mediocre, it can lead to great work; and
- stripped of pre-judgement, what you thought would turn out mediocre might turn out brilliant.
Giving in to the fear of mediocrity stops countless constructive conversations, pieces of creative work, and the first steps to something greater. It’s important to understand why this happens and what we can do to overcome it. The fear feeds procrastination because as humans, we associate mediocrity with a painful experience, and we avoid starting anything to avoid that pain.

Some Context
To set some context, I’m talking about the realm of creative endeavour where there are no external expectations to produce something and therefore those situations where it is easy to back out and not be accountable.
I’m not talking about situations connected to external expectations like writing a PhD thesis, submissions for a court case or drafting a commercial contract. Usually, a sense of responsibility (or high cortisol levels) kicks in to drive you to produce valuable work of a high standard in those situations. Since service professionals (like accountants and lawyers) are used to the latter context, and usually hold a high fear of mediocrity, it can be challenging for them to engage in creative work.
In saying that, the value of not giving in to the mediocrity fallacy can apply in situations like speaking up at a work meeting or starting a business idea, where you aren’t expected to produce anything but when you do, it will collide with external expectations or reactions.
For example, there is well-known literature in lean startup methodology and the concept of minimum viable products, with a great chapter on this in The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
Similarly, Reid Hoffman in his writings on “Blitzscaling” refers to one of the key principles as making sure “you’re embarrassed by the early release of your product” so you can get customer feedback, iterate rapidly and grow a company quickly (but importantly, not “ashamed”of that product as a result of subverting laws and regulations).
For The Revue (a stage show I co-founded and produced for 5 years while working as a full-time lawyer), anyone was allowed to come up with material for stage or A/V performances, but apart from one or two allocated writers, no one is explicitly expected to — so this was a blended realm where no one is really expected to come up with all the material but there was still a show to put on for a paying audience.
Hundreds of sketch ideas were whittled down to twenty or so and in my experience, if there is no comfort within the cast about coming up with ideas that may be seen as mediocre or not very good, then the overall volume and quality of the final material suffers.
Why does the fear of mediocrity affect us?
The fear of mediocrity gets us worried about outcomes and the resulting judgement from ourselves and others towards what we might produce. Here are my three semi-deep dives into this question:
- Numbness. Your work being called “average” leaves you with a feeling of numbness; a feeling that your work is not even worth paying attention to. With failure, it’s polarising and there’s a reaction — but at least you feel like there has been some attention paid to it. Feeling mediocre and not paid attention to can feel even more painful because irrelevance can feel worse than doing something that’s had an impact.
- Social pressure. There are social pressures to be the best at what you do. Someone else has probably written what you’re about to write, with more clarity, more articulately, more well-researched, and has garnered critical acclaim. That someone else is out there, and your work might not make you feel good at all when you compare it with others.
- Risk of exposure. Linked to all the above, we fear being exposed as the fraud that we secretly think we are. To take writing this article as an example, I’ve had multiple thoughts like: Who am I to say anything about this subject? What if “they” think this article is poorly written, whoever “they” are or even worse, what if “they” look down on it as not even being worthy of discussion? What if I’m disappointed by it?

I recently read this quote on mediocrity from Mark Manson’s book, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*$#”, that resonated with writing on this topic:
“Being ‘average’ has become the new standard of failure. The worst thing you can be is in the middle of the pack, the middle of the bell curve. When a culture’s standard of success is to ‘be extraordinary’, it then becomes better to be at the extreme low end of the bell curve than to be in the middle, because at least there you’re still special and deserve attention. Many people choose this strategy: to prove to everyone that they are the most miserable, or the most oppressed, or the most victimized.
A lot of people are afraid to accept mediocrity because they believe if they accept it, they’ll never achieve anything, never improve, and that their life won’t matter.
This sort of thinking is dangerous. Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population (including yourself) sucks and is worthless. And this mindset can quickly turn dangerous, to both yourself and others.”
Why it’s extremely important to overcome the fear of mediocrity
The fear of mediocrity is a fallacy because the value lies in the creating, not the outcome which we fear (and can’t control). Here is why it’s extremely important to overcome the fear, and why engaging with the creative process is valuable, regardless of the outcome:
- Doing is learning. Whatever we write and whatever the response is to that, we will learn something. That is valuable. At the least, we learn about ourselves, we learn and become more aware of how our minds work. You open the possibility of learning from others through engagement. If there’s a negative response, we learn how to react, or not react, to that too.
- Creating anything at all opens up opportunities. There’s no way to know if the work we produce will be mediocre if we haven’t created it. It might even be great. Sure, we get a sense but killing it before it even exists closes the door unfairly on what might have been. Once something is created, there are opportunities to take it in different directions.
- Your work is relevant to you and that is valuable in itself. It is important to recognise that anything creative we do is relevant to us and that’s the relevance that matters most. The fear of being irrelevant to others is an illusion that should be seen as just that, an illusion — if we place significance on creation rather than the result, then external validation is not necessary to attribute that work value.
In The Revue, some of the best skits that make it on stage don’t necessarily start off as crowd-pleasers and sometimes the final product may carry less of the hallmarks of the original creator and more of what the group has contributed. But it only comes to be after having been created in the first place.

How do we not give in to this fear?
I intentionally say “giving in” to the fear and not simply “getting rid” of the fear itself. Like most uncomfortable feelings, the fear exists, whether we like it or not. It’s how we react to it, that matters. And if we react in the right way enough times, we may well conquer it for good. Here are a few practical tips I’ve used or seen in overcoming this fear:
- Defer judgement. One method you can use is to defer your judgement of the work. You can say to yourself, “Okay, I can’t help my mind from judging what I create but why don’t I just park that judgement and then unleash it in full force once I’ve written this”. Chances are that instead of dwelling on and being disappointed about what you’ve just written, the pain of judgement will subside and you’ll simply be going through how to make it better or excited by how you somehow managed to get some words on a page. Combine this with the powerful practical tool, the Pomodoro Technique, to help you get started and overcome procrastination.
- Reframe the scenario. If you’re feeling like you are about to write something mediocre, ask yourself some re-framing questions like Shall we see what this experiment brings? and Who am I writing this for? When we don’t write for external validation, we are freed from the fear. Writing this article, for instance, I was calmed by the thought that I may be the only person to read this and that’s okay but also excited by the prospect of what might spill out in the way a kid gets excited by a cool science experiment.
- See the fear. To be able to react to the fear, it helps immensely if we can clearly see and classify the fear. Hesitation and your mind racing with doubt is the first sign it’s there. Next, asking yourself if you’re hesitating because you think your work will be mediocre is the next step to seeing. Cultivating a healthy mind through diet and exercise is of course beneficial in seeing your thoughts clearly as it is in other areas of life. For me, meditation is another tool that helps with separating thoughts and feelings from yourself and then to see those thoughts and feelings with a clearer perspective.
- Call an ally. If you’re thinking about publishing or making something public through posting on your blog, newsfeed or timeline, just ask a trusted ally to read it and get their thoughts. That’s what I did with this piece and if you’re reading this, then it’s a sign I felt comfortable taking the step to share.
Chasing vs Not Fearing
Not fearing mediocrity as an outcome is different from chasing mediocrity. You’re not setting out to produce something mediocre, you’re simply not letting the fear of outcome prevent you from starting. In saying that, it would be an interesting experiment to intentionally set out to produce something mediocre — some no doubt have the skills to do this, mine are too mediocre to attempt or even know that I’m attempting that.
Value in Starting and Doing
I’ve been plagued by a fear of mediocrity for most of my life, as I’m sure many others have. This can result from a number of societal factors we all face, whether it is from our upbringing, comparing ourselves with contemporaries, and our own inner voice. But there is value in starting something, to creating something that previously didn’t exist, and if we are afraid of producing mediocrity, we stop ourselves from legitimate growth opportunities. It’s a good exercise in thinking about how we judge ourselves and our perception of judgement from others.
One of the most recommended books on writing, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, has this passage on writing, and many would agree, on life:
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.”
In spending a bit of time to write this despite the dread at how average this article might be, I took a leap into the realms of potential mediocrity. But you know what, I’ve written it and I feel okay. I’ve even been interested enough by some of the ideas to go deeper on them. If I choose to share it, someone might call it great, someone might even call it garbage. In any case, I’ve learnt something about mediocrity and how I write, I’ve created something that’s original to me, and someone might even chat to me about it. All those things, like not being afraid of mediocrity, are valuable. I would encourage anyone who’s thinking along the same lines to move beyond pre-judgement, and just get started.

