To be perfectly honest, most people are average. And that’s not a bad thing.
If you start getting better then the average goes up just a little bit. The more people move from being average to being better, the more the average creeps upward.
So, even if we collectively become “fucking awesome” there’ll still be people deemed average based on the new distribution of whatever it is we’re measuring.
That’s not to say that you can’t be better than you were before. Depending on what it is you want to get better at, I’d say that you can do it with the following principles.
- Specify what it is you want to get better at. Generalities can point you in the right direction but they aren’t what you want to focus on. If you want to become a better basketball player you need to understand whether you need to improve your shot, your dribbling, your defense, your speed, etc. Isolating the pieces and working on them will yield better results.
- Work on only a few things at a time. That way you’ll be better able to measure your improvements and identify when it’s starting to yield diminishing returns. If you’re spending countless hours on your speed without any measureable improvement, you’ve hit a plateau. It’s time to change the tactic or start improving another aspect of your game.
- Study the masters. Watch, read, listen, and analyze what they’re doing differently than you. Learn from the greats but also study those that are slightly above your skill level. Often their experience of being where you’re at right now is fresher and they can share more insightful things than those that did it 20 years earlier.
Those are just a few basic principles, but I think they might give you jump thinking about what it is you really want to accomplish.
Have a kick-ass ₢eative day! =)