Putting your all into something you care about can be a rewarding experience, but it can also be a devastating way to find out that you’re not very good at it at all. A safer and healthier option is to never fully apply yourself so you can live your whole life in a liminal space of unfulfilled potential. Here’s how to just kind of coast so you’ll never know for sure:
Procrastinate.
This step could not be more important! It is vital that you always procrastinate every task so much that you leave yourself with an amount of time in which no one could feasibly do a great job. Got a research paper that’s worth 30% of your grade? Write it the night before! That way if you get a B you can think, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive. And just imagine how well I could have done if I wrote it over multiple weeks as my professor urged.” You’re a powder keg of untapped potential!
Introduce drugs, but not the helpful kind.
If simply procrastinating isn’t enough to widen the gulf between execution and imagined potential, try introducing some drugs into the situation. Obviously, we’re not talking about Adderall here. A performance-enhancing drug would have literally the opposite effect of what you’re going for. They say write drunk, edit sober, but what about write drunk, edit never, and then think “Hey, not bad given I was drunk!” You’re killing it! (Well not really, but you totally could be).
Live badly.
A great way to ensure you never brush up against the ceiling of your potential is to just live badly. Never get enough sleep, wear shoes with poor arch support, categorically refuse to eat fruit – you get it. This will preserve your self-image in a perpetually unopened box of Schrödinger’s ability, in which you’d maybe be really awesome at shit if you actually tried! But you will never truly know, and that is beautiful.
So take a vow today to never try your best, and live the rest of your life in the blissful illusion of unfulfilled potential. Now get out there and give it 25-50%!
