The Age of Mediocrity

Before we get started - some personal news!

After having the pleasure of holding a lecture at the University of Toronto Scarborough (Laura Visan is an awesome human being and I’m humbled she invited me to speak there), I realized I should share more of my experience with people still in the early stages of their career.

That being said, I’m opening up 10 slots per month for 30 minute chats with people who feel the need for (ugh, I hate this word) mentorship.

It’s available for people in the first 5 years of their career or for entrepreneurs in their first 2 years of starting their first business.

Completely free, pick up a slot here if you’re interested.

Now back to the main course.

The age of mediocrity

Let’s head into the weekend with some enthusiasm for the future.

First of all - I fuckin’ love mediocrity. I don’t say this sarcastically or with a note of superiority. I genuinely think more people should strive to be mediocre at more things.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to admit you’re content with mediocrity. Despite numerous studies that being content is essentially the key to happiness, we are constantly being pushed to do bigger things, be better, want more.

Unfortunately, mediocrity is about to be taken away from us. And unless we accept that, people are going to continue to struggle to find peace.

If you read a single thing this weekend, please read this. The Age of Average is what inspired me to write this (which is very average thing to say, now that I think about it).

Believe it or not, this is a piece about AI. For me, at its current stage, AI is the definition of mediocrity.

I’m no expert, although I did watch Lex Friedman’s episode with Sam Altman (which is a criteria that many people might take into consideration when defining what an expert is) so I won’t deep dive into AGI, the future of mankind, the threat of artificial intelligence or anything like that.

A lot of it is speculation and wishful thinking, anyway.

I will talk, however, about how I feel about what’s coming.

If anything, I’m thrilled. 

In its current trajectory, AI will take away mediocrity from us. It will take away many of the worthless self-help gurus, the generic advice about business and life.

It will take away the majority of braindead Twitter threads, the “how I made my first $1M" LinkedIn posts and a lot of the motivational Instagram content.

Producing average content will be taken away from us. I can now create a generic post or thread about almost anything I want in a click of a button. In time, this will only become easier.

While some are horrified about this idea, I find it liberating.

This only means we’ll have to become truly knowledgeable again. We’ll have to understand information and not just consume it.

We’ll have to think again! 

Creativity, true creativity, will find its way out of the clutter.

We’ll have to hit rock bottom before getting there, that’s true. Disinformation will be rampant and people will fall pray to a lot of bad actors in the space.

But it is a way forward towards not celebrating mediocrity. Which should be appreciated, but not celebrated.

The game right now is to put out as much content as you can. Just “post anything” a VC once told me. The algorithms will do the rest for you. That made me sick to my stomach.

I don’t want to post anything. I want to be able to take time to think and find truly new ways of looking at things. To truly inspire and get people to look at things from new angles.

Everybody can now find generic information and advice. The value of experience and true knowledge (knowledge, not information) will only increase in time.

I want to take my time, the way I do it with this newsletter, and only put my thoughts to paper when I feel they can create value. Is this a blocker to getting a million or more readers? Definitely! But that’s fine. In order to get there I’d have to post average content in order to cater to the algorithm and that’s not what I want to do.

I hope you’re as excited as I am.