I'm not exactly ambitious as much as I have a very good realization of what I am and what I am capable of.
- Henry Rollins
We think of education as a process of gaining knowledge and information. Education is portrayed as an increase of knowledge. We go to college or do a seminar, and we add to our stacks of “stuff known.” Throughout our lives, we add more and more information to our stacks, until we end you with something the size of Tower Records.
That’s the idea, right? We keep cramming data and info and knowledge into our brains, all the time. More, more, more, stretching our brains, expanding our experiences, and building on our edifice of wisdom.
There is more to learning than gaining information. Just as important is unlearning information, shifting information. My life has been a dual process of continuing education and continual unlearning. Sometimes I run across something that shifts everything.
I. Superhuman
About fifteen years ago, I was listening to radio station KKUP in my car back when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. KKUP is a listener-funded radio station, and its programming is all over the map. They have Blue Grass and Jazz and African music shows, lectures and interview shows, some that were recorded, and some that are live. This evening, they were airing an interview.
The gentleman spoke about his teenage years when he played baseball. He loved baseball and he practiced all the time, and played all the time, and he was doing all he could to be the best baseball player he could be, across all positions. He practiced pitching, and fielding, and catching, hitting, base stealing. He got better, but he was frustrated that he could not be great across the board. He could hit, but he couldn’t pitch worth a damn. He was great as a short stop, but lousy at first base. This unevenness frustrated him. He focused on improving the things he was not good at, because they were his weaknesses these were the areas that needed improvement. Try as he might, he could not become a great pitcher.
He started looking at who the best baseball players were, and he realized, none of them were great across all positions. The best pitchers in the league were so lousy at hitting that the American League decided, screw it, we’ll just put in place Designated Hitters so that pitchers don’t have to hit at all. Some of the best hitters, hitters batting in the .300s, could not play infield to save their lives. Specialization. A baseball team is made up of players with different strengths, working together to win the game.
He played baseball well, but realized that he was wasting his time trying to be the best pitcher when he was already great at something else. He realized, don’t obsess about improving your bad areas, but hone and improve on the areas in which you already excel. Do that, and you could become great.
But, how do you know the areas in which you already excel? What am I good at? How do I determine what my unique gifts are?
We all have areas that we struggle with, and others that we do with no problem, almost without thinking. Say Chris is really good at wedding and event planning. Chris has a knack for finding the right venue, timing the day, getting the invitations printed and sent, finding the right vendors, ensuring they get there on time, arranging seating so that the divorced parents aren’t sitting near each other, and ensuring the couple has nothing to worry about except to say “I do.” Ask Chris how they do it. Chris will say, it’s nothing! Anyone can do it.
But when Chris sees other people’s weddings and events, ones that have hiccups and problems and what Chris considers to be stupid, amateurish mistakes, Chris can’t understand how they missed. This is easy! Any human can do this. This event planner must somehow be subhuman.
This is what struck me in that interview aired so long ago on KKUP. Those things that we find second nature, that we do with no hiccups, that come naturally to us, and those things that when we see others try to do and miss, they seem subhuman because it’s just too easy, it is that area that is our strength. The folks that can’t do it are not subhuman. No, they are normal humans. It’s you that is superhuman in this area. This is your strength. This is the area to focus on, because this is your greatness.
This was a revelation to me because we are always trying to fix the areas we are terrible at, and take for granted our good areas. “Anyone can sell! I want to be an engineer!” or “My little poems are fun and all, but man, my calculus is awful! I must focus on math!” It really stuck in my brain that the areas at which others seem subhuman are really the areas at which we are superhuman.
And we don’t necessarily know it. We don’t necessarily see this in ourselves, our unique excellence. We can become frustrated: why can’t others do this? Why can’t they see what I can see? One great example is someone who is a natural at organization wondering why in the hell the kitchen is always in such a mess! Or, “Lord have mercy, it’s the freaking order of operations! You always multiply before you add!”
Or we expect that everyone can do it, not just us, and so we undervalue our capabilities. “Sure, I have an eye for numbers, but really, anyone can do this.” As if anyone can look at a sea of digits on a budget spreadsheet and find the exact number that is out of place because it seems to blink at them from the screen.
This information, that we should focus on improving what we are good at, and that what we are good at are the things that others seem subhuman at, was a distillation of concepts that were dawning on me as I lived my life.
Yes, we should all have a baseline of information, but instead of trying to be great in all things, we need to truly shine by strengthening our unique gifts. And everyone has different unique gifts. People who are great at sales, or great at math and science, or great at organization and planning, or great at cooking, art, or music. These people have greatness different from each other, and different from me.
I learned not to be frustrated at people who were not good at what I do, and more, to expect and accept the fact that not only are some people not good at it, they may not care to be. It can be frustrating to run across someone who doesn’t give a damn about something about which you are passionate.
The Information Technology field is notorious for condescending tech support jerks who mock people who have a hard time logging into their system, or applying an upgrade. I took a job years ago running an IT shop that had two such tech support guys - always guys. They’d bitch that the dumb sales guy had to be told, again, that he needed to press “send” when he wanted an email to be sent. How dumb! I reminded them that that “dumb sales guy” brought in several millions in booked revenue every year and that their paychecks depended on making this “dumb sales guy” happy and effective. Unless, of course, they could close deals like he could…
I learned to be understanding with people who who could not see what I could, and more importantly, to recognize in others greatness and skills I did not have, and could never have.
I learned that diversity is strength. I learned that there is no single standard for greatness. There is no single scale you can use to measure capability. The idea of single number “Intelligence Quotient” became ludicrous to me.
This expanded to the erroneous idea that “merit” is a single value. That you can rank, for example, all judges, or all executives, on a single scale of “merit.” And that there is a single, best person in the entire corpus of lawyers, or judges, or managers, or whatever. This is impossible. There is no single best anything. There is no best hamburger. There is no best barbecue. There is no best person who should be selected as the CEO of a company or as a Supreme Court justice, as if every other person in the universe is inferior and second-rate. There are grades of excellence, but there is no best.
And this meant to me that we want a team with diverse talent. We want a humanity with diverse people with diverse points of view and diverse strengths. We want people who can see what we can’t see, and can do what we can’t do. We want to encourage greatness by recognizing that greatness is a spectrum, not a spike.
All this from an interview on KKUP some fifteen-odd years ago. The kicker is, I have no idea who the person is who was being interviewed. I would love to cite him. That interview was a catalyst for me.
We need to encourage diversity, not try to mold people into economic units of homogeneous skills. How can we ever learn anything new if no one looks at the world in a new way? Or if no one listens to them?
Celebrate the uniqueness of humans, and revel in their gifts. Find your own gifts and share them with the world.
Thank you for reading “Things to Realize.” Please like, share, and subscribe, and comment! Let me know what you think. And keep an eye out for Substack’s new Notes feature.