The average
I had this shower thought the other day — am I above average or a below average in terms of general fitness? I started pondering this question and found it harder to answer than I expected. This exercise requires two things: an accurate assessment of the average and an honest self-reflection of my own abilities.
To get the average, I started with government-provided data on physical activity. In 2018, 54% of adults engaged in 150 minutes or more of moderate activity per week, and 28% engaged in 2 or more muscle-strengthening activities per week. Based on activity, I am just about average for an American adult. Activity is different from fitness, so I looked at guidelines for the Army Combat Fitness Test to see how I ranked. There are some exercises that I’ve never done before like the sprint, drag and carry, but overall, I think I have a good chance of passing the minimum standard. Given that those who join the Army are a self-selecting group, I am somewhat confident that I am above average.
I believe that it’s super important to understand if we are below average or above average in a subject area, because it dictates what we can do to improve. For instance, I am a horrible artist. Anything I draw looks like shit. The best way for me to improve is to start tracing shapes with pencil and paper. After a few months, maybe I will graduate to learning how to draw from a beginner’s book. It would be an absolute waste of time for me to enroll in a masterclass with a famed local artist. Yet, I see people make this mistake all the time. If you are a below average runner, like I am, the way to improve is not by buying fancy shoes or getting a running coach, it’s just to run more. Similarly, if you think you are below average product manager, the best way to improve is by getting more experience, reading more books, and talking to other PMs.
But, who really thinks they are a below average PM? This reminds me of that statistic, where 80% of drivers think they are above average at driving. Product managers suffer from the similar levels of delusion because, as mentioned prior, it is difficult to measure the average and PMs tend to have higher than average egos. It is also hard to gauge the average because we all work within a local maxima. While it is awesome to learn from other PMs, we can be limited by the abilities of those around us. What if a PM at Facebook is 10x better at managing sprints than anyone at Homebase? To make it harder, the average changes constantly. I believe in the efficiency of skill-based job markets, which means that the moment someone publishes content about product or make a slight improvement in the way they do things, the bar for being an average product manager is ever so slightly raised.
This effect is unobservable day-to-day, but unmistakeable over a period of years. 10 years ago, if you used Jira, read Lean Startup, and knew how to run a scrum, you would be in the top 10 percentile of PMs. Today, these are table stakes. An interesting corollary from this market-efficiency view is that to be above average, you can’t just do what everyone else is doing. If you read the same books, use the same tools, copy the same designs, the best you can be is average. If we look at examples of pure product improvements like agile, the whole thing started off as this quirky, weird process. Like, what the hell are scrum masters and story points? We’ve normalized it since, but agile was downright cult-y, but that’s what made it effective.
I am going to make a detour here and talk briefly about happiness. Happiness is a non-average outcome. If you observe people at work, at home, or during your commutes, you would see that this is true. That’s why we are so fascinated by kids at play, people dancing out on the streets, and that one super positive person at work who must be on something. Yet, in our pursuit of happiness, we keep doing things that everyone else is doing. But, because happiness is a non-average outcome, if you are generally a happy person now, more money, possessions, or power probably wouldn’t make you any happier.
Throughout history, people have tried to solve this puzzle through meditation, fasting, drugs, polygamy, etc, all of which deviates from the norm. This is why I think that SF has its own particular subculture, because everyone here is generally quite wealthy, but still unhappy.