"Local man attempts 700 piece puzzle."
If being average was a matter of pride, your Instagram feed would be filled with average-looking bodies, haphazard oragami, ugly pets, struggling businesses, and poorly lit photos.
But it's not. No one wants to be average, and it's making us miserable.
Drowning in sensationalism, we miss out the mental clarity, productivity, motivation, and freedom that mediocrity affords.
We avoid mediocrity in favor of excellence, which is like avoiding pools in favor of becoming an olympic swimmer.
In his article "In Praise of Mediocrity", Columbia law professor Tim Wu says,
"We seem to have forgotten the importance of doing things solely because we enjoy them."
If the promise of enjoyment isn't enough to convince you to love mediocrity, you're not alone.
Here's nine more ways mediocrity can change your life:
1. Boost energy
Mediocrity leaves something to be desired, and leaving something to be desired is a good thing.
Desire is energizing. It's motivating to saving up for a fun vacation or aim for a promotion at work. "Wanting" is how roads get built, new ideas form, and innovation hums along.
The physical sensation of wanting might feel like an itch you can't scratch, but we secretly like itch. People who successfully scratch their itch quickly find another one just out of reach.
Wanting - as long as it's paired with self-compassion and non-judgement - is a source of energy and a catalyst for action.
Being mediocre guarantees you'll always have a higher level to strive for.
2. Save time, money, and effort
Mediocrity saves hours of time and effort.
Your effort is a limited resource. It should be spent carefully on your top priorities - friends, family, and purpose - with only enough scraps remaining to be "meh" at everything else.
Striving for excellence in everything is noble in sentiment but wildly inefficient in practice. If Einstein had worried about being a amazing chef, musician, comedian, and magician, we wouldn't have the theory of relativity.
Writer Nate Soares calls such inefficiency "wasted motion":
"If you're trying to pass the class, then pass it with minimum effort. Anything else is wasted motion. If you're trying to ace the class, then ace it with minimum effort. Anything else is wasted motion. If you're trying to learn the material to the fullest, then mine the assignment for all its knowledge, and don't fret about your grade. Anything else is wasted motion."
Being deliberately mediocre is how you avoid wasted motion and live an efficient life aligned with your priorities.
3. Fix all-or-nothing thinking
"Black and white" (or "All-or-nothing") thinking is a cognitive distortion in which we interpret the world as binary: success or failure, either/or, everything or nothing.
If you eat a cookie, your diet is blown.
If you make a mistake, you're stupid.
Either you win X award, or you fail.
A world with no middle ground leads to anxiety, depression, and overwhelm.
Deliberately engaging in mediocrity is like exposure therapy for all-or-nothing thinking. Being an average cook turns you into living proof of a middle ground. When your beef lasagna is neither "all" nor "nothing", it counters the all-or-nothing paradigm.
Engaging in mediocre thinking is another way to counter to all-or-nothing thinking.
If you are worried about something in the future - a conversation with a loved one, a presentation at work, or a first date - there's great comfort in asking yourself what a mediocre outcome might look like.
4. Experience pure joy
Kids are mediocre at almost everything.
Lacking our incessant need to "move the needle" and "boost productivity", they can find an afternoon of joy from a cardboard box. When we drop our need to excel, we can find similar joy being "just okay" at painting, surfing, coding, singing, or dancing.
As professor Tim Wu puts it: "...demanding excellence in all that we do... steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards — the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy."
Being mediocre is fun.
And for the staunch "productivity boosters", some playful mediocrity offers new perspective, creative stimulation, and stress relief.
I can't imagine a more fun way to "move the needle".
5. Freedom from attachment
"The root of all suffering is attachment." - The Buddha
Our strongest attachment is with our identity.
I don't draw because I'm not an artist. I don't dance because I don't like dancing. Trapped in our identities, it's easy to forget that no one was "a writer" before they put pen to paper and wrote something mediocre.
Then, suddenly, they were.
Accepting mediocrity dilutes your identity by spreading it around like dandelion wisps in the wind. I can be a juggler today, a python coder tomorrow, and a ballerina on Wednesday. It doesn't matter if I'm bad at them because none of them fully define me.
In mediocrity, you are free from the weight of identity. Free to explore. Free to be bad at things.
6. Overcome procrastination
Being mediocre is the cure to procrastination.
In one of my favorite pieces on procrastination, Oliver Burkeman details two types of procrastination, The Importance Trap and the Consistency Trap.
The Importance Trap: "The Importance Trap refers to the way that, the more an activity really matters to you, the more you start to believe you need focus, energy and long stretches of uninterrupted time in which to do it – things that, you tell yourself, you currently lack. And so the less likely you are to do it."
I'll sometimes convince myself I need to organize my desk, vacuum, dust, and wash the dishes before getting to work on something important.
By prioritizing trivial to-dos, I delay the big, hairy tasks that might involve coming face to face with mediocrity.
Accepting mediocrity removes friction from starting and gets you out of the importance trap.
The Consistency Trap: "The assumption that something’s not worth doing until your life’s arranged to do it regularly. No point going on a protest march, or rekindling a neglected friendship, unless you can turn yourself into the kind of person who does that all the time."
I'm especially guilty of this one. My obsession with habits makes me forget that not everything needs to become one.
The mediocre aren't concerned with consistency. They don't hesitate to do meaningful work, even if it can only be done once. Even if it isn't perfect.
Done once is better than not done at all.
7. Increase self compassion
Being okay with being "just okay" grows your self-compassion.
Our inner critics are shortsighted - wanting excellence now, they forget that mediocrity is the precursor to excellence.
But we shouldn't ignore our inner critic. Self compassion expert, Dr. Kristin Neff says "we cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time."
When you engage in mediocrity, your inner critic is invited out in the open so you can practicing meeting it with kindness. "This isn't going to work - you suck at this" can be met with "Thank you for trying to save me from pain, I see you, and I'm going to do this anyway."
Engaging in mediocrity offers fertile ground for these inner dialogues. And each time you have one, your self compassion grows.
8. Upgrade your hobbies
Everyone's a pro at watching Netflix and scrolling social media.
More fulfilling hobbies come with a chance of failure. An element of "I might suck at this".
As Tim Wu puts it, "...'the pursuit of excellence' [has] crept into and corrupted what was once the realm of leisure, leaving little room for the true amateur."
A need for excellence will keep you from sculpting, video editing, gardening, writing, learning a language, or starting a business.
Don't demand excellence from your hobbies.
Be mediocre and let your hobbies demand excellence from you.
9. Find success and fulfillment
Outcomes are sexy, processes are boring.
Running a marathon is sexy, jogging a mile is mediocre.
But sexy marathons only happen when you endure 100s of mediocre jogs:
Lost in this obsession with outcome is the truth that outcomes are the results of process.
"Good processes, repeated over time, lead to good outcomes..." -Seth Godin, The Practice
Embracing mediocre processes day after day leads to better outcomes and more fun along the way.
In the book Tribe of Mentors, Amelia Boone says "...fulfillment comes from love of the process. Look for something where you love the process, and the results will follow."
Finding something you enjoy being mediocre at might just be that the key to success and fulfillment.
Go be "okay"
Tim Wu says when we demand excellence, we are "trapped in a cage whose bars are not steel but self-judgment."
When we learn to be okay with "just okay", a world of opportunity comes into focus.
No longer burdened by the weight of "great", we revel in the lightness of mediocrity.