Rejoice In Mediocrity: There Is No Better Experience Than Mediocrity — Savour It; Don’t Despise It
A journey, in its most basic form, is comprised of three parts.
A start, a finish, and everything in between.
In terms of growth, there is a wealth of information about how to start, and crossing the finish line seems self-explanatory.
But what about the middle?
What about the voice of the in-betweeners?
Those who aren’t just starting out
Who aren’t novices or fledglings struggling to fend for themselves?
What about those who are capable but not yet perfect?
The mediocre.
Those trying to bridge the gap between intermediate and master
Not finding themselves or their feet, but establishing their stride?
What about them?
Well,
They’re truly living.
The mediocre enjoy what the beginners dream of and the masters reminisce about.
A Growth Journey Is Complicated
As a beginner, mistakes are generously accepted.
As a master, the margin for failure is comparatively strenuous, and rightly so.
But the middle ground is a grey area of sorts.
It’s expected that you should know enough to stop making ‘rookie’ mistakes whilst also refining yourself towards the habitat of mastery, where mistakes aren’t accepted.
Moreover, the parameters for a journey are equally undefined.
10,000-Hour Rule
As coined by Malcolm Gladwell,
“it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and materials.”
This rule is based on the acquisition of absolute knowledge.
The time it takes to consume all of the necessary and supplementary knowledge in a field – complete mastery.
There’ll naturally be some limbo between each individual, but let’s assume these are our parameters.
The journey will require 10,000 hours of practice.
Okay.
What about beginners? What does it take to shift from the start to the middle?
100-Hour Rule
The 100-hour rule states that with 100 hours of intense practice, you’ll be better than 95% of the world in that discipline.
This rule is based on relative knowledge.
It argues that after 100 hours, you’ll be relatively further ahead than the 95% who have no knowledge.
Moreover, some have argued that with just 100 hours of intense practice, you’ll be proficient enough to have an impact on your career or life.
Reality
The reality is that both of these rules aren’t final.
There are too many varying factors.
Some activities have a steeper learning curve than others, irrespective of the time and effort invested or the participant’s natural affinity for said activity.
However, with some imaginary limbo-room, we can use them to analyse our ‘journey’.
The Journey
Based on the above, it takes 100 hours of intense practice to transcend the ‘beginner’ phase or start of a journey.
And after 10,000 hours, you’ll have reached the 'mastery' phase of a journey.
Following this, after 100 hours, the ‘in-between’ stage begins and it continues for another 9,900 hours.
Take that in for a second.
That’s 412.5 days of intense practice.
No sleep.
No rest.
Just work, and hard work at that.
Since we aren’t zombies let’s factor in some extra variables:
- With 8 hours of daily sleep: it’s 619 days.
- With the 8 hours of sleep and 4 hours of leisure: it’s 825 days.
- With only 4 hours of effort afforded each day: it’s 2475 days.
Humbling, right?
It’ll still take over 2 years to reach mastery even whilst committing half of your 24 hours every day.
No other tasks or other commitments.
That’s a long way to go.
Is Mastery What You Actually Want?
For most, we only need functional proficiency.
We want to be good enough at something.
Whether that be for our career, general life, or personal satisfaction.
And that threshold is typically personally determined.
In that case, 10,000 hours might not be necessary.
The middle stage could be much shorter or much longer.
However,
I want to be a master.
For those who want to walk the road of absolute knowledge acquisition.
Who wants to reach the highest heights?
Have no equals.
To be unrivaled.
It’s a long road.
The Best Stage Is The Intermediate Stage
Whether you want to be a ‘master’ or not, you will face the intermediate stage.
That’s a guarantee.
No matter the discipline, occupation, or even role,
It will happen.
As a parent, student, intern, boss, teacher, examinee, examiner, or partner, you’ll have a period where you aren’t yet perfect.
You’re just mediocre.
And that comes with an ocean of emotions, whether it be frustration, impatience, satisfaction, joy, hopefulness, or distress.
However, Tom Vanderbilt offers some solace to us all,
“If I’m doomed to be a mediocre surfer, I’m okay with that. The word “mediocre,” after all, comes from Old Latin, meaning “halfway to the top.””
To those of you who are on your way to the pinnacle,
It will come with its ups and downs, but you are not mediocre.
You are halfway to the top.
You may be distant from the finish line, but you’re similarly distant from the start.
The reason that the intermediate stage is the best stage is best characterised by the composition of a ‘hero’s journey’:
A ‘hero’s journey’, in epic literature, is composed of three stages.
Departure, initiation, and return.
The ‘middle’ stage is the initiation stage.
Which contains the trials and tribulations, the friends and allies, the exploration, and the reward.
In other words, although you’re ‘mediocre’, it’s the most exciting stage of every journey.
It’s the stage of growth.
The stage of big upsets and bigger triumphs.
The stage where the author has the reader hooked by the twists and turns.
That’s the stage you’re LIVING in.
Master is just another word for someone who has lived and learned from all those experiences.
The ‘mediocre’ person, who doesn’t give up, is the one walking them.
Rejoice in your mediocrity, for you are truly living.
Don’t give in just because you’re mediocre now; rejoice because there is much more to explore.
LM
Thank you for reading!
American psychologist Alok Konojia, or ‘HealthyGamerGG’, says:
“The absence of reflection is the reason you’re stuck.”
To solidify our growth, let’s reflect:
Petrichor’s 1-Minute Reflection:
- How did you feel before reading?
- How did you feel whilst reading?
- Do you feel any different now that you’ve finished?
- What is your one takeaway from reading this?
