Avoid Mediocrity At All Costs

Eight Strategies for Doing Different

Settling for mediocrity is being less than who you can be. We are all guilty of small negative habits that creep into our daily lives: Spending hours scrolling social media, wasting our time following the news, keeping ourselves busy with meaningless tasks, and worrying about small things that will not matter after one year.

Chris Guillebeau says we live in an ocean of mediocrity, yet we need to avoid mediocrity at all costs: “If there is any good news to the normalization of mediocrity, it’s that when you do something excellent, it will be so uncommon that you will instantly stand out. People will be amazed because they’re so used to the good enough that the excellent is truly rare. This can work to your advantage when you decide to take things up a level and exceed the low expectations around you.”

In a similar vein, Seth Godin says: “If you’re remarkable, it’s likely that some people won’t like you. That’s part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise–ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out… In your career, even more than for a brand, being safe is risky. The path to lifetime job security is to be remarkable.”

Michael Goldhaber agrees: “If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself, you won’t get noticed and that increasingly means you won’t get paid much, either.”

In this article, I provide you with clear and simple strategies to avoid and transcend mediocrity. After each section, I also provide you with a set of reflective questions to put these strategies in action. Please write your responses to these questions and use these questions to create your own ideas or strategies.

1. Establish Your Own Game

In order to transcend mediocrity, you need to establish your own game in this life. This means you need to be remarkable and outstanding in what you do. You need to resist the temptation to copy others or follow the crowds. You will strive to do your own unique thing. You will embrace what makes you crazy and weird. This means you will be feeling uncomfortable at first, but you will be stubborn in your vision. When someone says it cannot be done, or it is impossible, you will be the first one to test it out. You will do things no one else is willing to do.

Ask yourself: What sets you apart from other people? How can you build on your unique strengths and talents? How can you build your unique game? How can you find an area where you can excel at? How can you follow your passions and curiosities?

2. Be Indispensable

You will be the linchpin — the indispensable person everyone goes to. You will solve problems that are incredibly hard, which means you will rise above all. You will develop a rare combination of skills and experiences that will strengthen your position wherever you go.

Ask yourself: What is everyone else doing? What is it that only you believe in? How can you leverage and amplify this into something that you are proud of? What skills and knowledge set you apart from others? How can you build on your unique strengths? How can you build your personal brand?

3. Do Different

A great example of creating a unique game is journalist Rob Orchard. In an era of instant and hyper-speedy digital news, Rob calls for a Slow Journalism revolution. His magazine, Delayed Gratification, proudly announces that it represents the last and the slowest journalism out there. This gives him leverage, depth, and quality.

Jack Ma is operating on a similar philosophy and he calls it Tai Chi. He says: “Tai Chi is like ‘you fight there and I’ll go over here. You’re at the top, and I’ll go down. It’s a balance. You are heavy and I’m small. When I’m small, I can jump. You’re heavy. You cannot jump. Taiji is about a philosophy. I use Tai Chi philosophy in the business. Calm down. There’s always a way out and keep yourself balanced.”

If your competitors are all trying to be modern, you will be stubbornly old-fashioned. If other organizations are all competing based on price, you will charge a premium and offer an exceptional experience for your customers to delight them. You will never fit in and you will believe in your own game. You will focus on raising up your own game instead of focusing on your competitors. Competing is overrated. Establishing your own game is underrated.

Ask yourself: How can you find your own niche in your career and in your life? How can you find your own thing that you will enjoy and excel at? What are the things that only you can do? What are the things that only you do love? What are the unique areas that only you are curious about?

4. Create Your Own Creative Assets

You can best establish your game if you give yourself a lot of opportunities for being curious, reading a lot of books, following your passions, making experiments, improving yourself, creating your own creative assets, and learning exciting things every day. You can reinvent yourself, start a new career, begin a business, start a hobby, do an exciting thing, establish your YouTube, kickstart your Instagram brand, create your artwork, write your own book, or start your Medium writing journey.

Instead of just consuming content and watching stuff, you need to work really hard on achieving your dreams, becoming a master in the things that you care about, exploring new things, creating exciting stuff, meeting fascinating people, and creating your dream job.

Ask yourself: How can you establish an effective system to create your creative assets? How can you allocate time in your calendar for creating your assets? How can you share your excitement with the whole world? How can you bring inspiration, excitement, and value to millions of people?

5. Be Persistent and Take An Action

You need to stop complaining and take immediate action to go forward. When things get tough, you need to persist, solve problems, rise above the situation, pursue your desires, and achieve your full potential. Do not settle for anything less than what your heart desires. Get it or die while trying. That’s it.

Ask yourself: What are you obsessed with? Why? Why do you care? What is your calling? Where do you see your unique mission and contribution? How will you make it happen? How can you act as if you are the hero in the movie of your life?

6. Take A Long -Term View and Do Different

We know that the best entrepreneurs, artists, and professionals do things very differently. There are tons of articles on the habits and mental models of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. These are geniuses and pioneers who have taken the long-term view and who have been wildly successful. They each followed the paths that were less traveled. They each carved their own paths step by step. They solved significant problems and thus created value for millions of other people. They followed their dreams like a marathon runner.

Ask yourself: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? Visualize and write down your dreams in HD resolution. How do your ideal day and life look like? Where are you now? What are you excited about? What makes you tick? Come up with 3 scenarios (5, 10, and 15 years). Make each scenario detailed and specific.

7. Follow Your Heart’s Desires and Find Your Own Voice

Exceptional top performers have a different mindset: They have all established their own games in life. They are outliers not just in their accomplishments, but also in their personal systems and routines. They are willing to be different and daring. They fully follow their own hearts, desires, and voices.

Pleasing other people or following trends guarantee that you will be mediocre. As Oscar Wilde remarks: “Everything popular is wrong”. If you follow the crowds, you will never fully develop the best of yourself. You will not maximize your innate talents and strengths. You need to aspire to be 100% of yourself and the best version of yourself. This means upgrading and hacking yourself until you have absolutely reached the best version of yourself.

Ask yourself: How would the best version of you look like? Describe that ideal version of yourself in detail. How would this person spend his or her day? Who are their ideal friends and collaborators? How would he/she make a remarkable contribution to the world?

Exercise: Write your own manifesto now. What are your own guiding principles? How will you put them into action?

Create a not-to-do list now: What are the things that you will not do? What are the things that you will say no to?

8. Navigate Uncharted Territories and Find Your Blue Oceans

If you want to make your career and your contribution remarkable, you need to navigate uncharted territories and find your own ‘blue oceans’. Red oceans are red because there are too much competition and blood — everyone is competing with each other there. Red oceans leave little room for growth. Supply exceeds demand and there is intense competition. It is a bloody war and it is not worth fighting for. Blue oceans are about the creation of new innovations and opportunities that did not exist before.

You need to stop competing against your peers. A competitive mindset harms your psychology and creates unnecessary negative feelings and stress. Stop assuming that this is a zero-sum game. You can find and create your own path of value creation. If you do, you can create a much greater pie of value. You then have the potential to create innovation, new jobs, new frontiers, new hopes, and a better future.

You need to go out of your comfort zone and traditional boundaries to explore and find your own blue oceans. This involves discovering your best strengths, building on your talents, developing your creative confidence, and finding your own voice. Remember that you need to have a long-term perspective to achieve these. It is a long-term game — do not expect short-term results. You will also need to swim up against the currents and defend your own views and position. Create a roadmap for traveling the road that is less traveled.

Ask yourself: How can you find your blue oceans? How will you create fresh ideas that will solve important problems? How will you create a new market? How can you think from a view of unlimited potential and abundance? How can you better recognize opportunities around you? How can you learn and develop a rare skillset about burning but overlooked issues in the world, in your industry, and in your vocation? Why are these issues or problems overlooked? What can you do about them? How can you contribute?

Ask yourself: How can you develop a rare combination of skills that you truly care about and that people or organizations are struggling with? How can you look for new technologies, platforms, or methods that allow you to solve the problem or seize the opportunities? How can you create outstanding value in areas that no one else is bothering with? How can you uncover and challenge the accepted conventions that hold us back? How can you use your imagination to build alternative better futures? How can you cultivate hope? How can you turn pain points into new opportunities?

8. Develop Your Creative Confidence and Celebrate Your Weirdness

You are all far more creative and capable than you give yourself credit for. You need to tap into that unlimited imagination of yours. You can create opportunities that are far larger than what you think. Develop your confidence to explore new possibilities that others do not see.

Don’t be afraid to be different. Dare to disappoint mainstream views. Embrace the things that make you different. Adopt different routines. If everyone around you is getting up early, try working between 22.00 and 2.00 am. Do things that are just crazy, but somehow works for you. Take very cold showers or do Bollywood/K-pop dances. Embrace what makes you weird.

Ask yourself: What are the three small actions that you can do today to avoid mediocrity and find your own thing? Write them in your diary and take the 3 smallest possible actions to differentiate yourself.

Ask yourself: What are the things that make you unique and weird? How can you celebrate and cherish these? How can you celebrate your unique voice and strengths?

Take-aways:

• People feel bored, upset, annoyed most of the time. The best way to differentiate yourself is to be enthusiastic, passionate, curious, and full of wonder.
• Figure out practical ways to build on your unique passions and strengths.
• Think about strategies to differentiate your unique value proposition.
• Stop being competitive and follow your own blue oceans where you can establish your own game. Establish a game where you can be the best in the world.
• Do not follow the crowds and trust your intuition to be different. Dare to be different and be ready to disappoint others.
• Spend 100 hours to acquire a rare skill in your industry. Repeat until you have a rare combination of skills.
• Keep learning, growing, and experimenting with new strategies.
• Escape from large crowds and popular trends — find your own unique thing. Develop your own secret sauce that works.
• Develop a thick skin for criticisms.
• Be remarkable and outstanding in what you do.
• Invest in your personal brand and build trust-based high-quality connections.
• Embrace what makes you weird and authentic.
• Follow your heart’s desires and find your own voice.
• Say no to all. It is a ‘Hell No’ if it is not a ‘Hell Yes’.

Fahri Karakas is the author of Self-making Studio. You can explore more here.