Be average, be boring

We are constantly told that we need to be extraordinary. That being an average person is somehow dull, uninspiring, and boring.

You open your phone, and you are bombarded by 10x performers, influencers, and coaches. You are sold the lie that “average” is an insult and that you need to hack your way to the top one percent.

I disagree. In the current landscape, being average is a massive achievement. But what does being average mean?

Think about what has happened to our social baseline. We live in an era of fractured attention spans, dopamine addiction, and severe emotional volatility;  always seeking external validations. The bar has been lowered so significantly that a person who can simply sit in a chair and focus on a single task without their mind wandering, work out regularly, eat healthy, meditate daily, and know how to regulate their emotions is looked at as supernatural.

They are not supernatural. They are just functional.

We have confused basic stability with supernatural ability.

RESEARCH by Dr. Gloria Mark at the University of California confirms that the average human attention span on a screen has plummeted to just 47 seconds. Due to digital culture, basic sustained attention is no longer normal—it is a statistical outlier.

In 2004: The average attention span on a screen was 2.5 minutes (150 seconds).

In 2012: It dropped to 75 seconds.

TODAY: It has bottomed out at 47 seconds.

In The Second Motive, I wrote:

“In today’s world, being average is an achievement. Being focused, resilient, not falling into digital distractions, being stable, and being a dreamer of improving at life are mostly categorized as supernatural, and they are not. That’s the bare minimum.”

If you want to win in your career and your life, stop trying to be a superhero. Stop trying to find a shortcut. Just try to be a functional, boring human being first.

Start with the intensely boring.

Exercise at the same time. Eat at the same time. Sleep at the same time. Get up at the same time. It sounds dull, uninspiring, and almost lifeless. But the irony is, the more predictable your routine, the more control you have over your mind and your guilt.

Can you go an hour without your phone?

Can you finish what you started?

Can you regulate your mood without needing external validation?

If you can do these things, you aren’t “average” in the statistical sense. You are an outlier. Stop overcomplicating your life. Master the bare minimum. That is where the real gap lies.