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Being OK with not being extraordinary

tiffanymatthe.com

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Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#31

Post by WhompingWindows »

ErikAugust wrote: post #13

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society does…

It's too easy for rich successful people who have made it to declare that you should follow your passion. We wouldn't hear a quote from the dozens of lesser-known physicists who struggled and wouldn't recommend the field, we just hear the quote from Feynman who was the lucky one.

For instance, I love painting and woodworking, but I suffer no illusions that I would do "well" in those fields, as even far more talented and experienced individuals that I know in those fields are struggling mightily and envy my hobbyist status.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#32

Post by ZainRiz »

> creators can get just as much value out of creating their original content and connecting with like-minded people.

Strong resonance here. I recently became more prolific about blogging, and this was the mindset that helps me stay consistent. I find that the mere act of writing an essay helps me clarify my own thoughts, and the essay often changes in the process.

As a recent example, I started writing out about how I struggled and got over impostor syndrome. But while writing it I realized: wait, I never actually get over it. Rather, I learned how to use it to my advantage [1]

How to do that became the message of the article.

If my writing never brings fame, I won’t care. It helped me understand myself and it will help me better advise the people I care about

[1] https://www.zainrizvi.io/blog/the-impostors-advantage/

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#33

Post by ZainRiz »

friday99 wrote: post #8
umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

I first heard that advice referenced from Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert. Where he notes that he is not a very good artist or very funny, but combining the two with his background in business is why he was successful. https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car...

+1

And as patio11 says, combining engineering with good writing skills makes it very easy to be one of the top with your combined skills

I’ve been trying to lean more into that advice the past couple months by publishing on my blog :)

Surprisingly enough, just this morning I woke up to realize someone had shared an article I wrote and it was on the HN front page!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251068#24262190

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#35

Post by rotexo »

shostack wrote: post #16
umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

I first encountered this notion playing D&D of all things. The concept of dual/multi-classing, and what later became prestige classes/archetypes in later editions was all about highlighting that the sum of the parts was greater than the whole. There was a trade-off of course, especially in the early/mid levels as other solo-class characters started coming into their stride with higher-tier abilities. If you made it p…

The benefits of multi-classing go beyond the combat mechanics of the game, as well. If you develop a character-driven reason for multi-classing, that's character growth in action. Great for role-playing as well as for driving the plot of the campaign forwards.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#38

Post by dmurray »

framecowbird wrote: post #28
rjsw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not very many people with defined Erdős–Bacon numbers [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_numbe...

> To have a defined Erdős–Bacon number, it is necessary to have both appeared in a film and co-authored an academic paper, although this in and of itself is not sufficient. This surprised me. I guess you could star in a tiny indie film completely closed off from the Bacon graph...

Probably easier to co-author a paper with another novice author.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#39

Post by hinkley »

jennasys wrote: post #15

I agree with the premise here in general. There have certainly been times when I've wanted to accomplish something, but then I see someone else being exceptional at that task and I stop wanting to do it because I know I'll never be that good at it. When you see someone doing something you do or want to do, and they are exceptional at it, it either becomes inspirational or discouraging based on just how extraordinary…

For some people this starts in childhood. People see a sibling excelling in an area and decide to cultivate other traits instead, so they are not living in their shadow.

I discovered at a young age that I am a parrot - that I find it fairly straightforward to repeat back complex sound patterns to people. There are a couple families of language in SE Asia and Africa that trip me up, but other than that my coordination is unusual. It made parts of music and foreign language classes a non-event, which made more time to perfect other parts.

What I didn't know until much later is that my brother also has this trait, but he got tired of being "hinkley's younger brother", and he completely burnt out on music (although that was due to pressure from our parents) and foreign language by high school. I had a sense of this by the time he was picking a foreign language in HS, and I gently encouraged him to try a different language. He didn't. Our teacher always found the parrot trait highly fascinating, to the point of bringing it up in class. It turned out this had only happened a couple times in his career and here were two brothers back to back. I kind of laughed it off, while my brother found it pretty cringe-worthy and he eventually dropped the class.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#40

Post by shostack »

rotexo wrote: post #35
shostack wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I first encountered this notion playing D&D of all things. The concept of dual/multi-classing, and what later became prestige classes/archetypes in later editions was all about highlighting that the sum of the parts was greater than the whole. There was a trade-off of course, especially in the early/mid levels as other solo-class characters started coming into their stride with higher-tier abilities. If you made it p…

The benefits of multi-classing go beyond the combat mechanics of the game, as well. If you develop a character-driven reason for multi-classing, that's character growth in action. Great for role-playing as well as for driving the plot of the campaign forwards.

Great point. This was one of my favorite aspects of it actually.

I started as a rogue and would gradually "harvest" some sort of arcane trophy from various monsters we defeated or quests we went on. I gradually cobbled together a spellbook as I grew my rogue, including some hacked together spells that had some wild magic type surprises at first as I was learning. These were the most fun levels by far.

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