I have spent a significant portion of my life being pretty good at things.

Not great. Not exceptional. Not the kind of good that gets you a scholarship or a trophy or a moment where someone pulls you aside and says you really have something special here. Just pretty good. Solidly, reliably, underwhelming-to-no-one-but-also-surprising-to-no-one pretty good.

Take basketball. I played for years. I loved it. And I was, by any honest assessment, the fifth best starter on every team I was ever on.

I want to let that land for a second.

There are five starters on a basketball team. I was the fifth one. Not on the bench, which would have been its own kind of clarity. I was in the starting lineup, contributing (technically) as a part of the first unit, and also very much the player the other team was least worried about. But I wanted more. I wanted to be the kid to get to take the last shot, or be handed the tournament MVP trophy.

Writing was also a dream. I always loved it. Words came naturally, stories made sense to me, and somewhere in the back of my head was a version of my life where I made a living doing this and recognized for it. Then the more practical part of my brain, the part that understood rent and groceries and the general cost of existing, had a quiet word with the dreaming part and suggested we consider other options.

Human resources, said the practical part.

Sure, said the dreaming part, deflating slightly.

And so I fell into HR, which is where a lot of people in HR will tell you they ended up, because HR is not typically the thing you dream about becoming as a child. It's the thing that makes sense of your skills and your personality and your inexplicable ability to sit in difficult conversations without losing your mind. I've been good at it. Better than average, probably. Not exceptional.

The theme, you may have noticed, is consistent.

For a long time this felt like a problem. Like there was a version of my life where I was supposed to be exceptional at something and I had somehow missed the exit. I kept looking for the thing that would make me stand out, the skill or the achievement or the moment where it all clicked into something remarkable.

And then, gradually but still not completely, I started to wonder if I had been looking in the wrong direction the whole time.

Because here is what I am pretty good at that I don't put on the list. Being a husband. Being a father. Showing up for the people in my life in the ordinary, consistent, unglamorous way that actually matters. Being a decent human being on the days when it's easy and also on the days when it isn't.

Nobody gives you a trophy for that. There's no starting lineup for being reliably present in your own life.

But I'm starting to think it might be the whole point.

And I want to be clear about something before we go any further. This newsletter is not about settling. It's not about putting your dreams on a shelf or convincing yourself that wanting more is wrong. If you have something you're chasing, chase it. I am genuinely, wholeheartedly rooting for every single one of you to find the most success and fulfillment that life has to offer.

This is about something different. It's about what happens in the meantime. The 98% of life that passes while we're waiting to become exceptional. The relationships being built in the Tuesday evenings we're rushing through. The ordinary moments that turn out, according to 80 years of research, to be where the actual good stuff lives.

You can chase your dreams and still be present for the ordinary. You can want more and still find genuine happiness in what's already here. Those two things are not in conflict. I'd kind of argue that learning to appreciate the ordinary is what gives you the energy to keep chasing the extraordinary.

So, this week we're talking about ordinary. What it actually means, why the need to be exceptional is often the thing standing between us and genuine happiness, and why being pretty good at being human might be the most important thing any of us ever manage to do.

Ordinary gets a bad reputation but there’s research out there that shows it may be just the place happiness lives.

98% of your life is Tuesday.

Peak experiences, the moments that feel genuinely extraordinary - the promotions, the milestones, the highlight reel moments - make up roughly 2% of our lives. The other 98% is Tuesday. Commuting. Drinking coffee. Folding laundry. Sitting in a meeting that could have been an email. Feeding the dogs. Watching something comfortable on television before bed. Research on happiness and daily experience consistently shows that wellbeing isn't determined by how extraordinary your peak moments are. It's determined by your ability to be fully present in the ordinary ones without spending them wishing you were somewhere more impressive. The 98% isn’t the waiting room for the 2%. Learning to find genuine satisfaction is the goal.

The need to stand out is the problem, not the solution.

Ichiro Kishimi, the author of The Courage to Be Ordinary, argues that the relentless need to be exceptional, to stand out, to be better than others as a measure of your own worth, is not ambition. It's anxiety wearing ambition's clothes. There’s the belief that the need to prove superiority comes from a deep seated feeling that you only matter if you are measurably better than someone else, which is an exhausting and unwinnable game because there will always be someone better at something. Opting out of that game entirely, choosing to be ordinary on purpose, can be freedom. The fifth best starter on the team is still on the team. And the team still needs him.

What actually predicts happiness over a lifetime.

There’s a Harvard Study of Adult Development that is one of the longest running studies on human happiness ever conducted, tracking participants for over 80 years across generations. Its findings are remarkably consistent and remarkably simple. Health and happiness over a lifetime are not predicted by wealth, status, achievement, or exceptional talent. They are predicted by the quality of close relationships. The ordinary, consistent, unremarkable interactions between people who genuinely care about each other. The Tuesday evening conversations. The showing up when it's inconvenient. The being reliably present in someone else's life in the unglamorous way that doesn't make anyone's highlight reel but makes all the difference to the person on the receiving end. Extraordinary achievements don't build that. Ordinary consistency does.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development spent over 80 years and tracked thousands of people to figure out what actually makes a good life. The answer wasn't exceptional achievement or extraordinary experiences. It was the quality of close relationships, built on ordinary, consistent, unremarkable moments with people who matter to you.

So this week, invest in one ordinary relationship moment. Not a grand gesture. Not a special occasion. Just an evening conversation where you're actually present. A text that says you were thinking about someone. A small, unremarkable act of showing up for someone you love.

That's the assignment. That's also, according to 80 years of research, most of what a good life is made of.

Reflection questions:

What's one ordinary thing in your life that's actually pretty great when you stop to look at it? And what would change if you let that be enough?

What's one ordinary thing in your life that's actually pretty great when you stop rushing past it? I’d love to hear it.

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If this made you realize you've been auditioning for exceptional while your actual life has been happening in the ordinary moments you keep rushing through, slow down this week and look around. Then send this to someone who needs permission to stop being the fifth best starter and start just enjoying the game.

That's Volume 067. Here's to the fifth best starters, the swimmers who made it to the wall without assistance, the writers who fell into HR, and the ordinary human beings who show up consistently for the people they love and call that a life well lived.

Until next time: breathe deep, embrace the Tuesday, and chill the duck out.

Jason

Research on happiness and daily experience shows that peak experiences make up approximately 2% of life, with wellbeing determined primarily by presence and satisfaction in ordinary daily moments. Ichiro Kishimi's work popularizing Alfred Adler's teachings argues that the need to stand out stems from a belief that worth is contingent on being better than others, and that choosing ordinary brings genuine psychological freedom. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest running happiness studies ever conducted, consistently found that quality of close relationships predicts health and happiness over a lifetime more reliably than wealth, status, or achievement. Research on mindfulness and present moment awareness shows that the ability to be fully present in routine moments significantly predicts life satisfaction. Studies on relationship quality consistently identify ordinary consistent interactions as the foundation of meaningful connection.