How good do you think you are at your job?
How good do you think the best person at your company is at their job?
How good do you think the best person you’ve ever worked with is at their job?
Chances are, none of you are very good. Not relative to what’s possible.
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A good friend of mine recently told me he got into cycling. (I told him it was okay and that we could still be friends.) I soon discovered that when he said he “got into cycling,” he really got into it. He has the $10,000 bike. The fancy skintight clothing. He’s getting out there five days a week and knocking out a cheeky 75 miles before breakfast like it’s no big deal.
It seems like he is a good cyclist. You might describe him that way. And in some ways, he is. If he gives it his all, his absolute maximum effort, he can hit 350 watts for about 5 minutes.
(Watts is a measure of power output in cycling.)
His 350 watts for 5 minutes is more than most people, for sure. But what if we compared him to Tadej Pogacar, who is currently the best cyclist in the world? Pogacar can do 350 watts for 5 hours straight. Five hours! And he can do it with a Zone 2 heartrate.
Pogacar is 60x better at cycling than my friend. And that reframes things a bit. Is my friend good? Maybe. Within the world of amateur cycling, he might be good. But in the grand scheme of things, I don’t know. Tadej Pogacar is good. If the best possible outcome for a thing is 60x better than what my friend is doing, I’m not sure if I can say my friend is really that good.
And if my friend had never asked around, he could have gone his whole life thinking that the upper limit for sustaining 350 watts would be about 20 minutes. When it’s actually 5 hours.1
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This same thing happens in people’s careers, in their passions, in their relationships, in their hobbies. They construct a false ceiling. They convince themselves that the tallest building in the world is four stories when in reality it soars above the clouds.
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1It could even be more. Pogacar might not be humanity’s best forever.