Keep Mediocrity at Bay

Writing, motivation, and the relentless fight against the blank page

A while back, I saw Jerry Seinfeld giving an interview. He said,

“There’s no writer’s block. There’s no writer’s block! There’s lazy. There’s scared. But there’s no writer’s block. Just sit down and realize you’re mediocre and you’re gonna have to put a lot of effort into this to make it good. That’s what writing is.”

I’ve changed some things up in my life. I now write every day. Daily emails from BrianDOLeary.com if you aren’t getting them already.

This Substack will be a place for a semi-traditional newspaper-style column—twice per week—and will also feature our podcasts and other media appearances when they happen. It will be a different tone here than our daily BrianDOLeary.com emails, but the same me writing all of it.

My latest contract calls for a Tuesday and Saturday column here at Substack. It’s a contract with myself.

The problem with today’s column is that I’ve been trying to make it perfect over the last two weeks after I signed that contract. Perfect is often the enemy of the good. I started sulking a bit this afternoon when I looked at a blank screen.

“I can’t do it.” But then I looked at those words from Seinfeld that are literally inches from my eyes as I write this.

“…realize that you’re mediocre and you’re gonna have to put a lot of effort into this…”

Thanks, Jerry.

I am also reminded of a song I like from Van Morrison from 2005’s Magic Time — “Keep Mediocrity at Bay.” It starts like this:

You gotta fight every day
To keep mediocrity at bay
Gotta fight every day
To keep mediocrity at bay
Got to fight with all your might
Not to get in the bleeding heart's way

You do just have to fight to keep from being mediocre. Keep from being average. It starts by just showing up.

I came across another piece of wisdom over the last few days that says, “Everything above zero compounds.” So, if you do show up, keep showing up and things will start developing.

Things might not go as fast as you’d like. They rarely do. But if your pace is “lightning speed,” as my pal Carl Solomon often suggests, then the compounding happens faster.

Occasionally, I’ll get somebody writing me to thank me for “the motivation.” But I do not motivate. No matter what you hear about “motivating speeches” and so forth, true motivation does not come from an external source like a sports coach or a politician.

At its core, motivation is internal. It comes when you are accountable to yourself. By accepting accountability, you’ve created a powerful internal dynamic.

I do use coaching strategies in my emails at BrianDOLeary.com. What I do is coach attitude, effort, behavior, and performance. I do not motivate. That’s for you to do.

Another one of my good pals—who also regularly challenges my ideas for which I am grateful—was talking earlier this week about “manufacturing looming deadlines” for himself so he could get things done. A technique to motivate himself. Simple and effective.

Sometimes that blank page is intimidating but realize that it is only a page or a computer screen that we’re dealing with. There’s no hungry lion next to your desk. That’s real intimidation. If you gamify it, however, and tell yourself that a lion will take a bite of your flesh if you don’t get your task done, that’ll work, too.

As I mentioned, this is the type of stuff I get into in my BrianDOLeary.com emails, but going forward, I’ll have more essays on the state of the culture, politics, economics, and I may mix in sports or pop culture on occasion.

Today, I just needed to write.

There’s a tranquilizer dart under that lion’s mane and that serum is bound to wear off by Monday afternoon, so until then have a great weekend.