I assume I'm below average

It's a nice attitude to have in a perfect world but what about this one? In many contexts, especially where there is high noise to signal, people will tend to believe/bet on/buy/hire/have sex with the guy who seems so (possibly over-) confident and makes lots of (possibly empty) promises over the guy who is humble and annoyingly realistic. I can't remember which firm but the leader of a cosmetics firm once said "we don't sell lipstick. we sell hope." I think that's true for lots of social interactions. So this attitude is better to have as a hat one can take on or off, depending on the situation. If you're alone or dealing with knowledgable people, yes, wear your humble hat. If you're selling something or yourself, wear the other one. Just to be clear, I don't like it how it is. But at the moment, being intentionally misleading sometimes, even to the point of eating your own BS, is a valid strategy for worldly success if that is what you seek.

EDIT: Just to be clear, what I mean by "intentionally misleading" is more like hyperbole than like lying. Steve Jobs claiming the "best phone in the world" is hyperbole. Bernie Madoff claiming the "smoothest returns in the world" is lying.

My take on this is slightly different. I think people have different opinions on what above average means.

Take the driving example. I may say I'm an above average driver, since I have good reflexes and can drive at high speeds. However, someone else might say they're a good driver because they follow the speed limit.

I think the reason everyone thinks they're above average is because they are- they're just above average in different ways.

Reminds me about my experiences in martial arts; notably Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You will go in every day to train and spar and get your ass kicked by someone smaller, bigger, weaker, stronger, newer, more experienced, etc. It gets pretty rough on the ego, and if you're not smart enough to figure out that all the ass kicking's don't really matter, then you'll be one of the guys who drops out. But if you keep coming every day, commit to training despite losing constantly, you'll be absorbing more and more information and progressing faster than people who train strictly to "win" or stroke their egos.

This happens with everyone, nobody ever gets to the top by being the best from the beginning. Thats why the best fighters in the world are very humble; they've paid their dues and got their asses kicked every day to get to the top.

There's something to learn from everyone, and learning never stops. The day you think you're better than everyone else, or are "good enough", is the day your results start declining.

This article reminded me of this old gem from PG's "Great Hackers":

"I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent."

It's quite possible for more than 50% of people to be above average drivers. If there are 100 people, and 80 of them cause no accidents, and the other 20 cause 10 accidents each, then there are 2 accidents per driver. 80% have less than average accident rate. By the same logic it's possible for most people to have a below average salary. Once extremes are possible, then averages start being less applicable.

However for things that have no extrmeme (e.g. height, IQs), the above average and below average rates are similar.,

I doubt Derek really believes this. At least for me it would be paralyzing to think that I was below average at everything.

I assume what he really means is, "below average in x, but I make up for that with y."

I think it'd be hard to have done as well as Derek if you honestly managed to convince yourself that you were below average intelligence, below average skill in your profession, below average ability to motivate yourself and so on. It sounds like he's setting the y to "in being humble and willing to learn from others".

Otherwise why would you try anything hard if you believed it to just be a lottery with bad odds? Wouldn't it be better to leave it as an open question so that you're self critical and are able to suss out your own weaknesses?

My high school psychology teacher taught us about illusory superiority by another name (which is discussed on the Wikipedia page): the Lake Woebegone Effect.

This refers, of course, to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegone, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Although that was years ago, I think about the effect often. Part of the reason it had such a profound effect on me, I think, is because the name is just so awesome.

Especially for driving, I think most people are above average. This is because the distribution of driving ability is negatively skewed, meaning the tail on the left is longer than the tail on the right.

If you were to put a number on driving ability, most people would get something like a seven (out of a maximum of 10).

In my opinion, there would be a very small amount of two's and fives. There would also be a small percentage that would get a one out of a maximum of a ten. (The drivers that don't follow the speed limit, make dangerous overtaking maneuvers, and are agressive towards other drivers).

I think those drivers make most people claim they have an "above average" driving ability.

I've stopped thinking others are stupid. I assume most people are smarter than me.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

  "Every man I meet is in some way my superior, and in that, I can learn from him."
  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I used to find myself thinking others were less knowledgeable or less advanced than me in a lot of subject areas. Now I always remind myself that if such a great person could always find something in others better than himself, then there's absolutely no excuse for me.

I actually take the exact opposite approach on life. One of my favorite entrepreneurial rhetorical questions is: "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?". Confidence in your own abilities forces you to try and break boundaries that you would otherwise fail to even start if you felt inadequate. I am proud to have a massive ego and I work daily on breaking down my fears and insecurities. The NUMBER ONE reason why entrepreneurs fail is because they give up. No one gives up if they think they're above average, exceptional, doing better than other startups. People GIVE UP because of fear, insecurities, feeling they are below average.

Just look at all the hot shot entrepreneurs that we all admire, they're all grade-A d-bags (Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Larry Ellison, Donald Trump, etc.) and that's because they believed they were larger than life, they acted upon that belief, and they actualized it.

How does this have 275 upvotes????

Was it a secret that humans like positive thinking?

Why even compare yourself to a nonexistent fictitious "average" in the first place? Considering yourself greater OR less than average is a complete waste of brain resources all together. Individuals selected at random will, on average, be incredibly different from a theoretical individual of all "average" qualities due to the incalculable number of possible quality-types a person could possess.

The average person is a myth.

I think the real lesson from this is not assuming you are really below average, but be aware of the people around you, of their ideas and ways of thinking, and not dismiss them just because you think you're better than them, even if at first those ideas seems stupid.

It is a really common problem with programming in my opinion. Nearly all the brilliant programmers i've met have a self esteem problem. They think they're really smarter than everybody else and that this makes it ok to dismiss most of other people's ideas, completely missing the fact that they would become a lot smarter if they paid closer attention. Now i guess this isn't a generality, and very relative to my own experience, but, i guess the very fact of doing somethings that almost nobody understands will make that bias grow over time, if you don't pay attention.

I don't really pay much attention to the average, or to what other people "know". I mostly compare what I know to what I don't know, or more accurately - What I can do to what I can't but want to do. That is a sure way to keep yourself fairly humble - no matter how smart I am, there is never time to learn to do all the things I want to do.

I think this way, too. I assume I'm a bad programmer, businessman, communicator, etc. It has always served me well. It keeps me asking questions and always striving to improve. Even in the unlikely event that I ever knew what I was talking about, what would it have mattered? It's rule of the Price is Right: you automatically disqualify yourself by going over.

Wasn't there just a thread about the Dunning-Kruger effect recently?

Anyhow, yes; the more you know the more you know that you know little. The more experienced you are the more you know that you lack experience.

But that doesn't mean that you're not knowledgeable or experienced. This kind of worldview is a good basis for approaching anything, but it's not a good way to make decisions.

Highly Relevant: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dunning%E2%80...

It is really interesting to read the responses to this piece. I was surprised to find many people saying that if they followed Derek's advice it would harm their self-esteem. Assuming that others possess more skill than you does not diminish the value of your own skill. I don't think it is a zero sum game. I think the biggest realization for me recently is just that one should not underestimate people. It is easy to think that others (especially faceless others) aren't as good at something as you are. To quote the late great George Carlin "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" It is depressingly easy to judge, and usually we judge negatively, and usually we judge wrong.

On the other hand, lack of optimism considered a sign of poor mental health, seemingly regardless of the truth.

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=5...

The problem is how he defines 'smart'.

If you assume smart means you know more than an average person, it means you know a superset of the data/facts they know, and thus you gain nothing by asking them something.

However, if you assume smart means something different, like the ability to learn quickly for example, then it follows that an average person can know something useful that you don't already know, and thus you have something to gain by asking them something.

It pays to be able to flexibly switch my mindset in a way that is beneficial to myself. On the one hand, I want to always feel there is room for improvement. On the other, I don't want always be feeling inadequate compared to other members of my comparison group. It's easy to keep measuring yourself against an ever tighter, ever more elite group of people. The pressure is not always worth it.

"Most people are so worried about looking good that they never do anything great.

Most people are so worried about doing something great that they never do anything at all."

That was wow! Though, thinking you are below average outs constraints in some people making them believe that certain bigger things are "not for me". That can be devastating.

Always assuming you're above average is, of course, egotistical. You don't need to have a Phd in introspection to become mindful of this. Being egotistical is in most cultures regarded as a vice. It is easy to love oneself. Also you are being ungenerous with regards to the abilities of others around you.

Always assuming that you fall short of the median appears to be a conscious exercise in humility. Being humble is usually regarded as a virtue. Being humble is not so easy, cuz if it were the world would be a hell of a different place. The problem with this approach is that you are being ungenerous towards yourself and your own hard-won abilities.

But you know, there is a difference between assuming you are one thing or another and how you project yourself to the world. I would imagine that what is most difficult is accurately and generously assessing your own ability (in different situations) and also fairly and generously assessing the abilities of others. What is important then is that if you find that you are "better" than someone at whatever that you are humble about it and that if you are "worse" that you are not envious about it.

In short Derek I believe that you have swung from one extreme to another and shot past the more difficult happy mean.

I also believe that there are any number of false dichotomies at play here. I can assume (better yet, know) that I am above the average at something and still not act like others around me are dumb. Same with asking questions. Obviously if I think that I'm hot stuff it may appear that an instant consequence of this is that I'll stop asking questions and stop listening but it's very likely that these traits are needed to push you above the average in the first place and it would be _dumb_ to abandon them when you're out in front.

Those statistics appear to lack citations and are meaningless out of context as well, but that's another thing.

I'm sorry but I'm not impressed at all and I feel that these posts of Mr Siver's are framed in a superficial home-spun zen truths kind of way so as to drive traffic towards Mr Siver's site and the fact that he links to his book one of his comments below in this thread only serves to strengthen my belief in this respect. I would welcome any comments if anyone else has felt the same way or am I being in my own way ungenerous of Mr. Siver's motives. I don't know the guy and have no axe to grind and maybe I'm being too cynical but if someone wants to preach to such a wide audience I expect the bar to be set a little higher, that's all.

from the OA:

"To me, this was like finding out I'm a cylon, or this is the Matrix. Hard to accept facts."

That's because 95% of cylons don't think they are cylons.

While many of these are probably valid points, some such as the "better than average driver" one just doesn't seem valid personally. Unless you can demonstrate that I'm not average or better at driving, then just because everyone else also claims to be better than average doesn't mean that I'm incorrect. I've never had a speeding ticket or been in an automobile accident, and I've only been pulled over once (for a missing tail light in a truck I had purchased just hours earlier). Please try to convince me I'm average or worse—I think you'll fail.

Why would you assume that you're "below average", "average", or "above average" without any evidence? There's no sense in judging yourself with a shot in the dark especially if you're hoping to improve.

I like to think of myself as above average in my areas on strong interest. That being said though I love to meet people that are better than me, allows me to learn a lot.

I hate working with people and knowing that there is much point asking them a question because they will go through the same basic stuff I have already tried. Much prefer to be surrounded by really smart people and feel like a beginner than be the smartest person in the room and get some things done much more slowly.

...until other people I trust to be objective tell me otherwise.

Inspiring stuff, but I don't think you have to necessarily assume you are below average. You can assume you're great and create this state of mind naturally if you strive to surround yourself with exceptional people. It naturally creates a condition of student / teacher when the people around you are experts. I guess it's just another way of looking at finding motivation to learn. Great reminder regardless.

I think it's better to learn how to make a realistic empirical estimation of whether you're "above or below average" whatever that means in context, and recognize when it doesn't matter at all-- like with driving skill-- than it is to just assume you're below average. You can assume you're a bad driver or assume you're a good driver and it won't likely make any difference at all in your life.

I think that is better to know exactly where you are at, rather than to assume one way or another. That way, when it comes time to use your skill (or lack thereof), you know exactly how far you can go.

The assuming that you're below average thing - it is just a reminder to be humble and to constantly work on your basics - having a beginner's mind.

If you read the book "Learned Optimism," you'll see that the research shows this to be a bad strategy. All things being equal, you're more likely to succeed if you have an optimistic or best case view of things, unless the consequences of being wrong are dire. Pessimistic views tend to be more accurate, but also less successful.

This is a great mindset to have. For his next achievement, Mr. Sivers should try to combine sentences in paragraphs.

I believe its about attitude. One need consider him/herself to be below average to be attentive to what others say and not consider others stupid. Considering myself below average has not really worked for me, this has actually hit my confidence and made me apprehensive about sharing my views

Suppose there are three people, each of whom hold an opinion on some topic which contradicts the other two. So two out of three think they are right, yet at most one out of three actually is.

This is expected, when people disagree about the world. There is no need to bring psychological biases into it.

It's best not to worry about whether you're average or above average or below average. Instead, winners focus on setting personal goals and incrementally improving their performance against objective standards. Let others do the comparisons.

It is matter of opinion. Someone who always drives the speed limit may believe they are better than all the people driving over the speed limit. And someone who drives over the limit my scoff at the parking ability of the slow driver.

Sources? It's nice to just throw out percentages but where is the data to back this up?

If current trends continue soon everyone will be above average. Go education system!

If you're overly confident, assume you're just average. If you lack confidence, assume you're better than everyone else.

I think it's a matter of knowing where you stand in the range of low to high confidence, and then trying to balance it out.

There's a great David Bowie song about this:

'Don't believe in yourself, Don't deceive with Belief. Knowledge comes with Death's release'

I think he was trying to say: Don't assume anything, just be!

I really enjoyed reading this submission, thanks!

Average is seldom the right measuring stick. For example, I, having two legs, actually have more than the average number of legs. (I've seen a few humans with only one leg, but never three.)

So you're assume that you're above average in the category of assumptions about one's averages.

One the one hand, I don't want to call someone falsely modest, but on the other, that tag fits awfully well.

Thinking that you're smarter than average can also hurt your social life in more ways than imaginable.

Is it even possible to assume that, or is it ultimately a subconscious thing?

This guy always comes up with insightful yet humble posts.

Seriously, though, I'm above average.

It seems to me that the benefit that the author describes comes from listening and seeking to learn, rather than by viewing oneself as inferior. I have a particularly hard time believing that you can sustain a successful career if you're not able to sell yourself, something you can't do effectively with a negative self image.

I would often assume people I met were smarter than I was. I was proven wrong time and time again.

The smarter you are the higher up you go in perspective the more you realize how much more information and work you need. But I wager this is not always a good or healthy frame.

Some days I feel unhappy because I beat myself up for failing my own standards. Some people live in the moment and they're happy, some people aren't. In the end it's finding a balance in life.

Like Derek Sivers, I can only be sure of being more humble than average.

could we go one day on this site without a blog that contains the epiphany that being less egotistical results in better social skills?

not to mention the condescending, lecturing tone in the post makes me want to vomit