Yesterday, I had dinner with three people who, unlike me, don’t speak German as their first language. One friend’s comment struck me: “My Finanzamt-German is pretty good. I can read my tax return and ask them questions about it. So is my restaurant-German. My Metzgerei-German, however…I still can’t call the butcher’s shop and tell them I want very thinly sliced meat for my hotpot.”
We tend to judge our skills on absolute scales. “I’m bad at math.” “I’m decent at golf.” The truth is usually more granular. I, for example, am better at mental math than most people yet totally suck at advanced calculus. I’m also a pretty good minigolf player, but I’ve only ever had a handful of proper golf lessons.
I could never work as a designer, but I can design decent Youtube thumbnails. My thumbnail-design is decent, but my logo- and font-design leaves a lot to be desired. Judging your skills by category is a much more interesting, informative, and, most importantly, accurate way of describing them.
We’re all below average in most activities by definition—but each of us also holds special talents that appear as soon as we dig one level deeper. Don’t compare your abilities against someone who performs them for a living. Single out your skills with respect to the different arenas in which you might use them, and you’ll realize you’re better than you think—even at speaking a language you didn’t learn while growing up.