Typical Persons Are All Around

Here is a comment on an article at Hacker News:

The key is to hire rockstars—they produce more value in four days than a mediocre employee does given weeks. If you gave the typical person free food and time off. They’d stuff themselves until they got diabetes and spend the rest of their time watching reruns of ‘Room Raiders’ on MTV.

Jamis replies in the article Typical person? No such thing:

I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that not all of us excel at the same things, but I’m coming to believe more and more firmly that this whole “typical person” entity is a myth. I’ve never met a typical person. There are only people who are passionate about what they do, and people who aren’t. When the latter become the former, they become “atypical”, because suddenly they are self-motivated, insightful, excited, optimistic, and happy.

I have to disagree with Jamis here. There are typical persons all around.

Here is what Charlton commented on Jason’s article:

I think a more salient distinction is between people who get excited about what they do for work and people who do not.

This is a pattern I’ve noticed in myself: when I’m excited and involved and passionate about what I’m doing, I’m far more productive than when otherwise. I’ve had jobs where I was passionate and jobs where I was apathetic, and both states were a combination of internal and external factors.

The “typical person” is not excited about his job, probably for a combination of internal and external factors. Sometimes it seems as if work life and school life are designed to squash individuality, creativity, and passion. In this state, the person who is passionately involved with his job becomes atypical.

Read the rest of the comments for more thoughts on this.

There is another very strange thing that I have noted. We know that people are motivated by different things. For example great stories motivate us. Great movies motivate us. Great speeches inspires us to do things great. Great books give us bigger dreams. Then came the strange feeling to me. There are some people who never get inspired by anything. At least they do not get inspired by things by which I get inspired. Then came the real shock : Most of the people around me are like this. Typical Persons.

What is the rationale in telling that everyone should get inspiration from what I derive my motivation from? Why should someone get inspired by a book, a speech, a story, a movie, a work or even a proverb? Because these things are exactly meant for that. Every single person reads a great book to get something from that. I strongly believe that this thing is inspiration – the urge to do great things. Great proverbs are meant to make people better. If you don’t feel that urge to be great when you read a great book, watch a great movie or see a great piece of work, you are a typical person. I am sorry.