Chances are that you are average. Simply put, the majority of any audience is going to be average. Being well above average is statistically unlikely, yet if you ask most people whether they an above average driver most will agree that indeed they believe they are. Thus, there is a gap between perception and reality for most. It wasn’t until I attended an advanced driver training course many years ago that I realise how average a I driver I was.
Of course, there are people born with exceptional skills, but these tend to be in a single area and may lay dormant unless recognised and developed. In short, talent is random and based on the law of averages, is unlikely to be in an arena that you use everyday. This is especially true in the technology arena, which changes so rapidly.
Conversely, skill is something that anyone can develop in any field they choose. All it takes is effort. Many people mistake skill for talent because they only consider the endpoint not the journey the practitioner has been on. In fact, you do the practitioner a disservice by mistaking skill for talent but it is an easy thing to do when all you see is the result.
Where skill also trumps talent is its limit. As i have spoken about before:
Talent has its limits, skill doesn’t
Skill doesn’t have limits, however it does require effort which many are not prepared to invest in. This again, is simply the law of averages in that most people are average to start with and will stay average, especially if an investment of energy is required to shift that.
This however presents an opportunity. If you wish to be more than average all you need to do is invest some energy. The more you invest, the less average you will be. You can optimise the energy you invest with systems and processes so in fact, the energy invested is much lower than you may believe.
Of course, moving away from the safety of the average is daunting and typically held back by inertia. Both of these can be overcome with nothing more than desire and effort. But, these do not magically manifest themselves. They require conscious commitment and execution. You give yourself a much greater chance of achieving this by developing a system that you can adhere to. A system helps minimise or eliminate blockers like procrastination but again is not something that will manifest itself magically. It requires the investment of time and effort.
As I was lamenting recently, I see a congregation of IT Professionals and MSPs around the mean. I see an inertia to do what everyone else is doing which is simply driving things to a commodity market were only the cheapest wins because there is no differentiation.
A classic example to my mind is marketing. There is a belief that market involves doing what everyone else in the field is doing aka search engine optimisation, email marketing, etc, etc. Yet, if you ask these same people where they obtain the vast majority of their existing good customers most will say from a referral. Ok, if most of your business has come from referrals and not ‘marketing’ what systems do you have to drive more referrals? The answer is typically none. Why? Because, it is easier and more comfortable to be average and follow the pack.
I have always loved this quote attributed to Mark Twain:
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
The good news is that it simple to move away from the average, invest some effort. The better news is that if you do, most will not, making your escape from the gravity of the mean more profitable as you move to greener and greener pastures.
The even better news is that the resources required to move away from the average are already available to you today for little or no cost. Largely, the only cost is the investment of your own effort. In short, real success is just on the other side of a little bit of hard work and indeed that hard work typically turns out to be far less that you initially believe. However, you won’t know until your try and break the shackles of inertia.
Most people judge skill by its endpoint, as I said, rather than appreciating it as a journey. Once you appreciation that skills are built not manifested then you can build systems to craft the required skills. Most people who are seen as ‘successful’ (whatever that may mean) will say that they did not achieve this overnight, that is was invest of effort over time. This is not rocket science. It is pretty simple yet it eludes most. Why? The inertia of the mean. It is less effort to be like everyone else.
Of course, the choice individuals make about ‘success’ is totally up to them yet there is a common limitation that we all face. That limitation is time. No one knows how long they have left. The one certainty we all share is that our life will end and we don’t know when that will be. It would be hard to find anyone without regrets, and these you can’t change, but you can learn from them. Most regrets come from a failure to act, from a failure to invest effort towards an outcome. You don’t want to come to the end of your time will an accumulation of regrets. A fulfilled life is one where regrets are kept to the barest minimum.
There is nothing wrong with being average, statistically most people are. The question is, are you happy being average? Can you achieve more than being average? Because the worst thing would be to look back on your life and regret that you could have been more than average and you let something as simple as inertia prevent that. Being above average is simple, all it requires is effort. Skill is the demonstration and manifestation of that effort. Skill is the antidote to regret.
CIAOPS 