I see a similar sentiment all the time where people say things along the lines of "Nobody really feels like an adult, we are all just muddling through" etc etc.
Actually no, some of us actually have our shit sorted out and are actual adults.
If fact, 50% of people perform below average! 50% of the population also have below average IQ.
> Actually no, some of us actually have our shit sorted out
> and are actual adults.
I believe that everybody has an "inner child", but most functioning adults have built layers around that inner self to enhance their behaviour to that of what we externally perceive as an "adult".
Proof that most people still have that inner child can be observed in some edge cases, such as under the influence of drugs, sleep/energy deprived, some mental deterioration conditions such as dementia - and many others. I think sometimes we see this too in viral videos where people behave strangely when presented in an unusual scenario. The mind just seems to go into a "default" mode.
I think for the most part, people generally run on auto-pilot. Like the so-called "muscle memory" for athletes, I believe something similar exists for most tasks a person completes day-to-day. Human behaviour more generally is likely doing this.
To that extent, is this seeming lack of adult-like behaviour simply a person that needs to relearn this "outer shell"? (Assuming they are also capable of doing so.)
Nitpick but it's "median" not "average".
> everybody has an "inner child", but most functioning adults have built layers
And that's the point where I'm scratching my head. What do people even mean by that? As I observe the "inner child" in others and then apply the new theory to myself it's freaking obvious that the adult part is doing all the reading, all the predicting, all the planning, all the outwitting of the child, all the building, all the self-updating, all the $dayjob. Who is writing this text? I am - the adult part. I am who has 99% of control of the communication at this moment. (At a different time the show can be 50% mine. Or 1%. But when writing, the inner child is mostly shunned, I think he cannot even write too well at all.)
And so I protest calling me "an outer shell" that you think you can just simply "re-learn". I am no shell. And I'm definitely not outside! I am the first class citizen, I just happen to have a very silent/weird/energetic/stupid/shy roommate. If I try less, he will have more control. If I try harder, he will have less. Balance. But the balance that is maintained solely by me, i.e. by the adult part - the inner child is not able to do that!
I largely agree with the essence of what you are saying, which is that there is no "inner child", although some people may be more capable of "reinventing the wheel" internally, which may allow for some new optimization for the overall structure.
“average
noun 1. a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.“
the result you get by adding two or more amounts together and dividing the total by the number of amounts
Saying "literally" in place of "figuratively" and then referencing the Oxford dictionary (meaning C, look no further) is a cool way to troll, and to make a fool of oneself.
You're wrong, and you can see this by looking at any number of published news articles where more often than not, average is used to mean median. You can see this from the way that we use average to mean typical. 'Typical' features are more likely to be median or mode than arithmetic mean.
'Average' is itself a colloquialism, so the colloquial use is what's important.
¹ This makes "average" a particularly weird "false friend" vocable, because the average recipient might well take it to mean what you think it means, but might also understand it as a very closely related, but subtly different thing.
That's not necessarily true and for IQ I think it's only true because IQ measures are normalized to an average of 100 and a normal distribution with a set standard deviation.
For example if out of ten people nine perform at 100 %, and one performs at 95 %, then the average performance would be 99.5 % and 90 % of people would perform above average.
If you swap average for median, then these are true by definition which doesn't really tell us anything about the distributions (so the people by way of measurement) involved.
The question then is whether there's a correlation between professional confidence and job performance.
Job performance may be easy to quantify depending on the job role. For students, it's trivial.
Most people who I have encountered that are really really bad at their job do not suffer from impostor syndrome, because the whole point of impostor syndrome is that you are open to your own vulnerability and your own incompetence.
The people that are exceedingly and amazingly bad at their jobs are often bad because they refuse to learn, because they don't feel they need to. They don't practice humility, they don't ask open questions to learn and they don't improve their processes over time.
So while it's easy to kick in an open door and say "everybody can't be smart so some 'impostors' must actually be bad at their jobs" I think it's more useful to take a step back and try to focus on what behaviors and mindsets lead to development and growth, and which do not. I strongly believe that having impostor syndrome rarely correlates with refusing to learn due to one being convinced of one's own brilliance.
Humble impostors can "evolve" into arrogant incompetents. If you're praised for something you don't really understand it can lead to all kinds of unpleasant psychological dissonance.
Money + power + embracing that everyone is a fraud who is just "faking it to make it" and you end up with people who are defensively and openly hostile about their knowledge.
To me, when I used to feel like this a few years ago, it was not about the fact that I didn’t have my stuff sorted (which is also true that I hadn’t), but rather that it turned out that what I thought adult life was about when I was little turned out to not be true.
Since then I have been able to reconcile that, and to work out a direction that I am pursuing.
One footnote to that though, is that I am still not an adult in the traditional sense of having financial security and a spouse. But I am working towards that.
One competent person can cover for at least 2 or 3 below average people, maybe more.
1. Your skill
2. The skill required to do your job well
3. (Implicitly) The skill of your peers
The third one is what gets a lot of people who don't directly work with peers. In that case, one can only go by what one hears. And people who blog are self-selected and biased toward having high skills. The non-self-promoting experts are famous for doing great work, so they're even more likely to have high skills.
But I think #2 needs to taken into account. You may not be an expert in your field. But if everyone you work with comes to you for help with a task, and you're able to help them, then you're the in-house expert. Unless you want to be a expert among experts, that's not bad.
There’s more to getting out of debt than just basic math. I’ve been trying to keep track of my expenses for more than 20 years but no success so far. I do have online banking and a list of contracts but there’s no way for me to figure out how much money I actually have left. Because for example, that yearly medical copay may be around the corner. I have no idea how to account for it, or how to spread it over the months while still keeping track of how much disposable income I actually have at any given time. And that’s just one example.
Please be aware that not everyone is financially literate.
Many of my friends are like this, especially the ones I lived with: they come to you and ask how much money they owe you thinking that you’ve got this magical ability to count money while it just doesn’t fit in their head that I actually did spend my (considerable amount of) time on doing the maths (including learning how to do the maths).
My parents from Lithuania know exactly how to go around relevant tax law in the country (and everyone they know also know how to do that). They know that because they earn so little that it actually makes a huge difference. And to make it clear I come from a background where having any sorts of education is rare so it’s not like they are privileged enough to know it.
What I recommend is to focus on the big expenses, those are what gets you. That is, housing, transportation, medical (if you live in the US, but there's maybe not much you can do here). Don't go for the most expensive house or apartment that you can afford. If every house is expensive in your area, then settle for an apartment. If you're not willing to, then that's the root of the problem. Go car free if you can. If you can't, get a cheap reliable used car (mine was $4k, worked like a charm). Don't eat and drink out very often. Cut expenses until you're saving 30-50% of your paycheck. If you're in tech, that's very easy, otherwise it's difficult but still doable. Then, if you start earning more money, you can perhaps allow yourself to spend more.
The problem is the expectations that people have of life. Your parents have a big house so you deserve one as well. You're having a baby, so you need a 3 bedroom house and a yard, otherwise that's baby torture! All your friends are buying new cars so naturally you need one too, right?
If you're earning below median income, I'm willing to cut you some slack, but I think for most people on HN, that is not the case.
The salary of your first job can hold down your income for a decade, you might not even realize how underpaid you are.
Why is that?
Here's some relatively easy exercises (just arithmetic and basic excel):
1.) Export your last 12/24/48 months of bank transactions (money in, money out) and calculate how much money you spent in that period, and how much money you made in that period. Is it positive or negative?
Tip: If you have a row of + and - entries, you can just sum up the entire column for a quick idea. Still ,it's good to break it down by period, maybe you had a rough year that offsets the others.
If positive: You're making money. This is good, but it's still a good idea to find out how much of your money goes to what. Try grouping your expenses (negatives) per year into things you have to pay (rent, medical etc) and things you don't (restaurants, pubs, gadgets).
If negative: Urgently figure out what's making you bleed the most money. Group your expenses into detailed categories and figure out what you spend the most money on.
"Grouping" is as easy as copying and pasting into different parts of the document. As you start grouping, you'll encounter new expenses that you can't fit into a category, so you can create a new one and improve your overall categorization.
Sure, this takes time, and some patience. But you can definitely do it if you just sit down and spend an hour or so.
Also, remember that while income is important, what makes your poor is your expenses. I would argue that most people in financial trouble can almost ignore their incomes and focus solely on picking apart their expenses, because like my friend's grandma once said: it's not the large income that makes you rich, it's the small expense. Also, most people kind of know their expenses, because they're so much simpler. Expenses are usually complex.
This is a good example of a statistic where the average is meaningless if you don't also know the median.
Also, which specific statistic are you referring to?
Now there's a reason the savings rate is high in China: there is practically no social safety net, and borrowing for school or housing is not common I believe. But my point is that we in the west could save more if we tried, it's just that in our culture we feel like, or we're pressured to, spend. To keep up with the Joneses, or because we feel we deserve certain things, maybe the same standard of living as our parents etc.
I've only ever observed mediocre people talk about imposter syndrome. Seems like the author is trying, politely, to express a similar idea.
you are the one who has shit figured out
how arrogant to think you know anything in this vastly complex world. you don't have anything figured out. you're just arrogant and have a narrow view of the world.