You're not good at anything!
The title is clickbait.
I don’t know how the general populace works, but I have a deeply internal quest to become superiorly good at something. More concretely, the quest is for recognition. I believe recognition comes with being good at something (Too naive?). There have been many instances in life where I have been really good at something, but was not able to convert it into something I was greatly successful at. This has left me really disappointed at myself for a long time.
Currently, I’m in the field of tech. I try to build cool software, including the one you’re reading right now. For most of my journey in tech, I was always under the assumption that I was terrible at building or designing software. Implicitly, this helped me somehow source motivation to constantly work on it. I always read more, built more, experimented more and never got tired of what I was doing. I knew it wasn’t going to come to me easily.
And the result? I genuinely got better. More importantly, I was acknowledging to myself that I was indeed better. My friends noticed it. I was suddenly the one who everyone wanted on their hackathon team; the one who they could depend on to fix their merge conflicts, or maybe even help get arch linux setup on their machine. I have to admit that it was pretty cool to be in this spot. I knew I was doing something right. Can you guess what followed.
Complacency.
I was no longer working my ass off like I used to. I wasn’t trying to get to know more stuff. I was no longer interested in building, reading or experimenting. I knew I was doing something wrong, but the spark was not there to act on that thought. I had decided against my will that whatever I know so far is sufficient. I was not naturally motivated to do more. I genuinely think this is what differentiates people who go on to be extremely successful from the average Joe. They know when not to stop.
So, what’s the workaround?
There is no single way to fix this. You have to find something to make yourself subconsciously believe that you’re mid. Personally, I do this by exploring stuff I’ve never seen before. I am genuinely bad at building intuition for AI/ML-related research unless someone spoon-feeds me. So, I periodically read some really complex paper that makes me feel extremely stupid.
The result? I’m way more motivated to find more about these things and even the things I think I’m good at. I’m more interested to read books or articles, watch podcasts and even listen to random tech creators rambling on YouTube.
I know what you’re thinking. This sounds very much like Indian dad advice, where you’re eternally pushed towards more. That’s bad parenting. My advice is an internal way of training your mind to never be complacent. This only works if you consciously want to do more, but subconsciously find yourself uninterested to do so. It’s always about you thinking you’ve done enough for the time being, but successful people often push the goalpost even further before they’ve reached the current one.
Ultimately, the journey to mastery isn’t linear. Complacency will always creep in, and the ego will try to convince you that your current level of skill is enough. The key is to deliberately put yourself in situations that expose your ignorance, to feel small, and to let that discomfort drive you forward. It’s always you vs you.
Cheers!
— Arjhun