We've been talking about making decisions on Developer Tearecently and in today's episode we're going to continue this discussion specifically in today's episode. We're going to talk about the status quo. My name is Jonathan Cutrell, you're listening to Developer Tea and my goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective and purpose in their careers. Humans are an incredible species. And you're included in that. And what makes us incredible is many of the things that we share, many of the characteristics of humans, for example, especially our brains. But something happens to each of us when we think about other people. And more specifically, when we think about ourselves with relation to other people. We are much more likely to imagine that we are better than average than to imagine that we are worse than average, certainly, but even to imagine that we are on par with average. Now this doesn't make a lot of sense and it reaches across multiple subjects, even the most mundane things like driving, for example. We imagine ourselves to be more competent than the average person. Even when we don't have good evidence, as to why. And how we measure this, well, we don't really know how to measure that. How can you measure the competency of a driver? Even when we don't know how to measure it, we still believe that we would measure above average. And this affects our decision making. It makes us feel like we are some kind of anomaly, like we're special, that we'll stick out of the crowd in a positive way. And this can be incredibly dangerous. We very often make decisions based on this idea that we are an exception to this rule. We actually talked about this recently on Developer Tea. We're going to take a little bit of a different spin and give you more practical advice in this episode about what to do about this perspective. But I want you to walk through this exercise, and then we're going to go to a sponsor break, and then we're going to come back and talk about what you can do to kind of combat this. But the exercise that I want you to do is to try to think of one thing that you are the best in the world at. Now, here's the thing. You're very likely, if you're like most people, to say, well, I'm not really the best in the world at anything. Because it's statistically nearly impossible for you to count yourself in that group, unless it's something esoteric, like the best at being yourself. This is intentionally trying to give you an upper bound. So if you're not the best in the world, then where do you fall on that particular skill? And I want you to imagine a specific number, a specific percentile. And then I want you to give that percentile some range. So let's say you think you're maybe in the 70th percentile. That means that you're better than 69% of other people in the world at that particular thing, and you're on par with 1% or whatever that 70th percentile is. And then another 29% is better than you at that particular thing. Or I guess that we another 30% is better than you. Obviously, math is not something I'm in the top 1% at. So this will illuminate something for you. So also create that range. So you have some level of confidence that you're at the 70th percentile. But maybe you could go down to the 60th or up to the 80th. So you have a range confidence interval here, where it's 60 to 80, but you think you're right in the middle at 70. And there is a good reason to do these kinds of exercises, where you have to get very explicit with what you're saying and what you're thinking. We're going to talk about that reason and how to combat this kind of problem, this idea of using our own perspective on ourselves that is warped and overly positive. How we can combat that. But first I want to talk about today's incredible sponsor, Lynn Ode. Whether you're working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. You can simplify your cloud infrastructure with Lynn Ode's Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy and scale your modern applications faster and easier. And as a listener of Developer Tea, Lynn Ode is going to give you $100 worth of credit. That's $100 in free credit. For listeners of Developer Tea, you can find all the details at linod.com slash Developer Tea. Lynn Ode has 11 global data centers and it provides 24, 7, 365 human support with no tears or handoffs. So you know you are going to be taken care of regardless of how much money you are bringing to Lynn Ode, including that $100 in credit. So that $100 in credit can buy beyond just doing compute instances like you're probably used to, you can also use that $100 of credit on S3 compatible object storage, manage Kubernetes and more. You can host your website, build your app store or backup media. It is up to you and it's all free with $100 in Lynn Ode credit. Once again, Lynn Ode.com slash Developer Tea makes sure you click on the create free account button to get started. Thanks again to Lynn Ode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. So we have this warped perspective of ourselves, of ourselves as the person that's above average. But what's interesting is that we very rarely believe we are the best in the world at something. So we can easily warp upward, but something in us keeps us from going all the way to the top of that range. So it makes sense to imagine what that range is. Where do we think that we fall on that range? But I want you to think about it rather than thinking about it in terms of zero to 100%. You're almost certainly likely to fall somewhere around 70% by the way if you're thinking about that range. I want you to think about how much better you are than average. And this is an antidote. How much do you differ from the average? This is an antidote because it allows you to anchor, anchor yourself off of some external truth. The external truth here is that for large populations, especially the average is the most likely place for you to fall. Anything that deviates significantly from the average is a much less likely position to be in this normal distribution of basically everything we encounter is a guiding principle for you to imagine where you fall. And this is important not just when you're trying to imagine how good you are at something by the way, but when you're making any kind of decision, any kind of decision at all, you can imagine the base rate, the kind of either the median or the mode depending on what the situation is, but something that establishes a level of normalcy, what is expected, what is the most likely, statistically speaking, most likely, if we were talking about any other person. And here's the key. How do I differ from that most likely scenario? In what way and to what magnitude am I better or worse than that middle of the road person? And this is an incredibly important way of thinking for a lot of things. As we've already mentioned, kind of finding yourself on the skill spectrum. You can certainly do this on the opposite side by the way. Imagine that you are struggling like most developers do with some level of imposter syndrome. You may feel like you are in that bottom 10%, which is contrary to that first kind of distortion that we have that we believe that we're better than average. You may feel like you're in the bottom 10%. But if you do this exercise, how much different am I than the normal person or in what ways do I differ from the normal person? Not only do you get a clearer picture that you're probably closer to the average, but you also may find some instructional guidance by just doing this exercise. Or you say, okay, well, if I differ in these particular ways, perhaps that is the direction I can go in order to grow. So in any kind of decision making process that you have, if there is a way to understand something that you are trying to predict the quality of something your future satisfaction level, whatever it is that you're trying to imagine or forecast into the future, start by trying to find an external perspective. By the way, there's some heavy inspiration for this episode from Annie Duke's new book, How to Decide. I highly recommend you go and check that out. This is certainly not a paid advertisement or endorsement or anything like that. Annie doesn't even know that I'm talking about her book right now. She's been on the show before. We're hoping to have her on again soon to talk about this book, but it's really helping me think through how we make decisions even more thoroughly. And this is certainly one of the lessons that you would learn in the book. Try to find that external base rate perspective before you make a guess about where you or your situation lies on that perspective. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again. Of course, to today's sponsor, Leonard, head over to linnow.com slash Developer Tea. And click on the Create Free Account button to get started with your $100 worth of free credit today. Today's episode was produced by Sarah Jackson. And as always, you can find the episode and the show notes. It's spec.fm. My name is Jonathan Cutrell. And until next time, enjoy your tea.