No One Needs Another Average Anything
In a world of infinite options, the only viable strategy is becoming the one person who does what you do.
Average is now invisible.
Not penalized. Not criticized. Just unseen.
You can spend years building something competent, something “pretty good,” and the market will look right through you.
This isn’t cruelty. It’s math. When everyone has access to the same tools, the same templates, the same AI, the floor rises.
Standing on the floor means standing where everyone else stands. Naval Ravikant put it plainly this week: “There is no demand for average.” Most people haven’t updated their strategy to reflect it.
The Jam Problem
The instinct, when faced with irrelevance, is to do more. Add another skill. Launch another product.
Enter another market. It all feels productive. It is the opposite.
In 2000, Sheena Iyengar at Columbia and Mark Lepper at Stanford ran a now-famous study. They set up a jam-tasting display in a grocery store.
Some days featured 24 varieties. Others featured 6.
The large display attracted more browsers. But only 3% purchased from the 24-jam table. From the 6-jam table, 30% bought.
A 10x difference. More options drew attention. Fewer options drove decisions.
This is what most careers look like now. People keep adding jams to their display. They attract some attention but convert almost nobody.
The Sushi Master in the Subway Station
Jiro Ono is 98 years old. He runs a 10-seat restaurant in the basement of a Tokyo subway station. He has held three Michelin stars since 2007.
He still wakes each morning to select fish personally at the market. His apprentices spend years learning to squeeze a hot towel correctly before they touch a single piece of fish.
His technique is simple on purpose. “Ultimate simplicity leads to purity,” he says.
Jiro has no interest in diversifying. He doesn’t run a chain. He doesn’t sell cookware or meal kits.
He has one thing, and that one thing made him the best on Earth.
His philosophy sounds almost religious: “You must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill.”
He dreams about sushi. Literally. He wakes at night with visions of new preparations.
This is not obsession in the clinical sense. This is what happens when the gap between a person and their work closes to zero. Jiro is Naval’s idea in edible form.
The Inversion: Subtract, Don’t Add
Naval has a line I think about constantly: “Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.”
He’s not saying grind harder at a broad thing. He’s saying narrow the definition until you own it completely.
The path to being world-class is not expansion. It is compression.
David Senra made this point on his latest Founders episode covering Bill Gurley. He quoted Charlie Munger running his whole life by “an inner clock,” trusting his own judgment, choosing his own scoreboard.
Not chasing what others valued. Being authentically himself.
Alex Hormozi said something this week that cuts deeper: “In a post-scarcity world, there will still be scarcity. People will still want scarce human stuff.”
Then he added: “We watch humans play chess even though computers could beat them.” The scarce thing is not information. It is the person who committed so fully that their identity and their craft became the same thing.
The Pearl Worth Everything
There’s an old parable about a merchant searching for fine pearls. He finds one of extraordinary value. He sells everything else he owns to buy it (Matthew 13:45-46).
His brilliance wasn’t in spotting the pearl. It was in his willingness to trade every other good pearl for the one great one.
Most people can’t do this. They cling to their decent pearls. They keep 24 jams on the table when the answer is to pick one jar and walk out the door.
George Mack wrote something that keeps circling back: “Those on the margins often come to control the center.” The person who narrows down while everyone else spreads out looks eccentric at first. Then they look inevitable.
How to Find Your One Thing
Audit your current spread. Write down every project, skill, and commitment you maintain. If the list is longer than five items, you are the 24-jam table.
Apply the Jiro test. Which of those could you do for 75 years and still find new depth? Not what pays best right now. What pulls you back when you try to leave. That’s your signal.
Redefine until you own it. Follow Naval’s formula. You can’t be the best in the world at “marketing.” You can be the best in the world at “long-form content marketing for bootstrapped developer tools.” Keep compressing until the statement is true.
Sell your other pearls. Drop the side projects that are “going okay.” Brian Armstrong’s advice is direct: “Pick the really big thing. You might as well work on the thing that will have a major impact.” One big thing. Not seven medium ones.
The Last Sentence To Remember
The world is not short on options. It is drowning in them.
What it has always lacked is people who chose one thing and refused to let go. Jiro made sushi. The merchant bought his pearl.
The rest is noise you can walk away from today.