Be The Best At Being Average
Don’t sweat at making more, buying more or fucking more…
We are all scared at the idea of being average, being mediocre, being same as the rest of the people around. The day our friend, who was little behind in terms of career, starts making equal to what we were making we feel sad. We want to stay ahead of the curve. We want to win the race. We strive to be different.
But what is the equation of this curve we are trying to trump, what are the rules of this race we are trying to win or what do we mean by being different? Success for a person is how that person define it for himself. For Steve Jobs, it was building the most valuable company, for Sachin Tendulkar, it was being the best batsman and for Marilyn Monroe, it was winning the hearts of maximum number of people. But if we start looking at Steve Jobs’ success based on his parenting skills, or Sachin’s success based on his ability to completing graduation or Marilyn's success based on coping up with stress, they all would look below average. In short, they were amazing at doing one thing but sucked at others.
As some wise man said: You can’t have it all.
Research also suggest that of the three things — Career, Health and Relationship — it is not possible to focus on all at once. You would have to give up one in order to perform above average in other two areas. But what if you don’t want to give up something, what if you want to have it all!
Oprah Winfrey re-quotes the above mentioned saying as: You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.
Like Oprah, I believe the answer to having it all is Round Robin Scheduling.
Most of you must have read this term in your Operating Systems subject. It just tells how a processor slices the time for different tasks and processes each task in a circular manner.
Knowingly or unknowingly, we all must be applying this concept in our daily life. It’s just about rotating through your life’s priority in a circular manner. That means, for four months of the year you focus on career, four months on health and other four on relationship. And in months when you are focusing on career, you don’t completely leave the other areas but keep them at lower priority.
The idea is not to be the best in one area and suck at others. Let’s leave that for people having a persistence like Forrest Gump. We all would not have it in us to hit 100 golf balls on a rainy night like Tiger Woods, or code for endless hours like Mark Zuckerberg or pitch the novel to publisher even after being rejected 25 times like J. K. Rowling. We are not experts. We are not in Top 1% of the world population in one given area. We are all average.
However, that doesn’t make us unsuccessful. We need to make our own rules of success. Hell, we have to be the best at being average. Even if we reach among the top 25% of the people in all three areas, we would become the best average person. And that’s my vision. To be the best average person.
Pursuit to happiness is not about compromising, but about having it all.
