Ok, so you’ve got (or will soon have) your university diploma. You have decent to good grades; some industry experience. Extra-curriculars. And so have hundreds—thousands—of other people around you. Welcome to white collar nation.
At each stage of your career there are a set of alternatives which are considered the next logical steps forward. They are not trivial to obtain, yet completely within reach. Consecutively ticking these off will undoubtedly move you forward at a steady pace, but at each new conquest of merit you will still find yourself around just as many people as before.
This is the prime indicator of the path of mediocrity—it is predetermined and planned ahead, proven good enough by the many people who have followed it before. It’s the only real alternative for the faux ambitious who want to prove their capacity.
Each next step completely logical and anticipated. Good but not great. Mediocre.
Once you start walking down this path you’re likely to be stuck there. Why? Because those around you giving career advice walked the same road as you. And because those who achieved real success are too busy accomplishing something—yet they are the ones who would most happily share their secrets. But do you really want to listen?
The next logical step is not Plan A. It’s plan Z. Skip steps and go after the next stage set out for you—years ahead of “schedule.” You’ll be surprised of how few people even try. It’s perfectly possible to get your dream job right away.
Better yet: forget the standard path and pursue your own projects and goals. Create something of your own. It makes you a thousand times more interesting and whole as a person.
Take Fredrik as an example, saying “Screw this, I’m moving to Japan. Because I want to.” Or a really cool person I met last week, Viktor, saying “Screw this, I’m going to Singapore. With my bike.” Both leaving behind a half-finished education in engineering.
Or every entrepreneur on earth.
Always operate outside of your comfort zone. Make up your own set of alternative next steps. Make bold moves. That’s all there is to it.
Great post, though I am not convinced that I like You calling me mediocre ;)
I find what You are discussing very interesting since it makes me think, and also since it is close to what I perceive as the truth.
Your argument relies heavily on what is defined as success. As I understand it you are talking about career success. Though there is no definition of what success in a career is, which I guess is because You understand that it varies greatly among individuals.
Then my question is, can one determine the way to success if you have not determined what it is?
I believe that Your path to success is great from many perspectives but I have some issues/questions.
1. If everyone pursues Your path, would that make the people following it mediocre? If this is the case, then what sets it apart from what You term the “mediocre” path is simply the amount of people following it. This brings me back to the definition of success, if you are convinced that being unique will give you success, then Your path is definetly the way to go, if you can handle the risk…
2. As You mentioned in your post, “You’ll be surprised of how few people even try”. I believe that a reason for this is the risk that You also mention. Not everyone succeeds when taking risks, and that’s another important difference between Your way and the “mediocre” way. With the right understanding of success you can be much more certain of reaching your goals. For example, the risk that you take by e.g. biking to Singapore might as well, in my opinion, turn out to be a big mistake (in terms of reaching career success) even if you have a great time and your “life quality” increase.
3. Also, regarding the risk of Your path. As a student from economics I cant help to relate to the theories on arbitrage. If opportunities appear where risk is low and benefits high, people will make use of these, which will make the opportunity disappear. Since we probably are not the first to stand before these choices the opportunities that existed should have been exploited by now. Which indicates that the risk you take is equal to the possible benefits.
Most importantly in this post: know your goals and follow the path that will take you closest to them with the lowest amount of risk.
In the end it all comes down to hard work and luck (don’t know if you remember the story of Bill Gats from Outliers, thanks for a great book by the way), 10,000 hours within any field and you can term yourself expert.
Thanks for these post, apart for being great for taking my focus away from writing essays, I truly enjoy the way you can make my head spin. Keep up the writing.
I’m not completely sure that ‘mediocre’ applies to you, Fredrik :) Thanks for the comment though! I’ll try to answer your questions.
One thing first though: I didn’t write that this is my path :) It might very well be what I’m striving for, but I still see myself as an outside observer.
“If everyone pursues Your path, would that make the people following it mediocre?”
It’s a very interesting question. The simple answer is yes—that would make the path mediocre. But the dynamics are more intricate than so: if everyone would start pursuing this path, then the “average” career of tomorrow would be comparable to a successful career of today. The next logical step would be a much greater step, compared to yesterday’s. In other words: to stand out you need to do more. Just as you need to study more in school today as compared to hundreds of years ago. The collective average is much higher (see also Social Singularity on why this is a good thing.)
If you have the time, I would love to hear more of what you mean with “risk.” I didn’t mention risk in my post on purpose, since that’s worthy of a whole other post :) Do you mean that risk is what’s holding people back from striving further? Risk of failure? The arbitrage parable is really interesting!
“In the end it all comes down to hard work and luck”
Very true, with emphasize on hard work. Still, to get really far luck is crucial. Fortunately, hard working people always seem to be more lucky :)
I agree with Fredrik, this is a great post! And an interesting discussion. Especially the role that risk plays. I believe risk is an important factor in these matters, but not so much the objective risk. I think that we rarely have an objective view of these kinds of risks and even more rarely act rationally upon the information we got. The perceived risk of loosing a more traditional career should not be underestimated. This is where the classical risk aversion kicks in, in most of us. And an unproportional amount of consideration is given to the possibility and effects of failure. So the benefits of taking the risk of choosing an untraditional career path must greatly outweigh the risks of failure before most people will even consider it.
Regarding the luck and hard work, I think that to succeed you need both. The reason they might be perceived to be connected is probably what Nassim Taleb called the “narrative fallacy”. To succeed you need to be lucky and work hard. Most successful people have been very lucky, but not because they work hard. You just rarely hear of really hard working unlucky people but they surely exist and probably in much greater numbers than successful people.
If you haven’t already I recommend reading The black swan. Changed my view of risks.
Thanks for yet another comment! The article itself is really nothing more than a conversation starter.
The most interesting aspect of risk (and related concepts such as failure, success and luck) according to me is found here:
“You just rarely hear of really hard working unlucky people but they surely exist and probably in much greater numbers than successful people.”
I agree that you very rarely hear about hard working people who are unlucky. While these people exist, I think the reason we don’t hear about them can be summarized in “people create their own luck.” While this may sound overly naïve and optimistic, I still think a big part of the truth lies here. Given the nature of a hard-working person, an unlucky but hard-working person will never attribute his lack of success to bad luck; he will just keep on working harder. Thus creating more luck for himself, which eventually leads to some success, which encourages him to continue—because hard work seems to pay off. It’s a positive spiral, and the difference to extreme success is that of very small coincidences.
If hard work is regarded more as a state of mind, instead of a struggle towards success, then no one is unsuccessful even though they may be very unlucky. In fact, I still haven’t heard one unsuccessful entrepreneur over at http://news.ycombinator.com who has expressed regret or bitterness. Years lost to a failed startup and missed job opportunities; in the eyes of the hard-working person they’re just lessons learned.
But yes—the great risk lies in taking the first step. Exchanging a secure future for a insecure and less predictable one—albeit exciting—speaks agains any survival instinct that humans have. It’s damn interesting. And thanks for the book tip, I haven’t read it but I’ve heard of it. Seems really interesting, especially when it can be connected to this discussion :)
For simplicity: path1 = “Your” path, path2 = mediocre path.
Great answer, I am not fully convinced that path1 would provide the same result as your social singularity post suggest, but I am open for a discussion of the topic.
Regarding arbitrage theory:
Arbitrage is, as you probably know, the creation of profits with no risk. They constantly appear on the money market and disappear incredibly fast because of arbitrage traders who utilize the opportunity at the same moment that it is presented. I perceive your post as if you claim to have found a way to success with no or very low risk (at least lower than the potential gain), which would make it an arbitrage opportunity. My argument is that these opportunities have existed for a while now; therefore they should have been utilized, and because of this risk should offset all potential benefits.
But this argument does not hold under the condition that path1 has the potential of increasing all mankind’s potential, as was described in the social singularity.
I also believe that a definition of success would clarify the discussion somewhat.
I had a discussion on this topic with a friend of us both, he believed that path1 is not open for everyone; he meant that it need not necessarily be about risk but rather about capability of the individual. That way it would provide more benefit to the persons who are able and dare to take path1. This make more sense from an arbitrage point of view.
(I would like to add that seeing the world through an arbitrage point of view is naïve in some sense. One can’t really expect all opportunities to be offset by risk, but in many cases I believe that it is the case)
Great post as always. Inspirational, insightful, entertaining writing. Agree. Agree. Agree.
I relation to the discussion: Risk is an excuse. You make your own luck.
That is all.
Inspiring post, Viktors journey is very inspiring as well. I heard about it from an old class mate of mine, Viktors brother to be specific, and I’ve followed his blog since. It is an achievement which shows a great load of character and enhances ones perspective on the world.