The world wants you to fit into a mould—standardized, optimized, and ultimately, expendable. They want to treat you like a lego brick.

Why? Because the world is optimizing for itself. It’s easier for companies, institutions, and even societal structures to deal with people who are predictable, who don’t disrupt the status quo, who follow templates and stick to the script.

The more standardized work you do, the easier it is to swap you out with someone else who can do the exact same job, think in the exact same way, or behave in the exact same manner.

Take resume templates, for example. People have been creating the same resume at least since I’ve graduated. They just copy paste resumes from other people. Every resume looks the same. Everyone has made the same projects, and done the same work in every company.

It’s comfortable, it’s safe, but it’s utterly forgettable.

Same with using AI tools. The world now wants you to lean heavily on these technologies because they make it easier to replace you with someone cheaper. It is still a great productivity tool when coupled with other skills, but when you mindlessly use it, it’s just bad for you. Mindlessly using it is how we find ourselves in a mess like this one:

Slowly but surely, LinkedIn is now in that uncanny valley where chatgpt is commenting on posts written by chatgpt. A beautiful cacophony of grammatically perfect, completely braindead takes. @spadjay Link

When you rely solely on AI to think for you, you’re handing over the very essence of what makes you unique. AI thrives on patterns and data, and the more you align yourself with those patterns, the less irreplaceable you become.

But here’s the truth: standing out is the only way to become irreplaceable.

Yes, breaking free from these patterns means you’ll have a harder time getting your foot in the door initially. The world resists what it can’t easily categorize.

When you bring your own flavour, when you resist the urge to be vanilla, you carve out a space that’s uniquely yours. A space where you’re not just another cog in the machine, but a vital, irreplaceable part of something bigger.

Sidenote: This is why developers were expensive till now. Many wrote the code that only they understand, and it made their jobs secure. 🤭

So, resist the urge to be vanilla. Embrace the difficulty of standing out, of being different, of breaking the mold. Be known for your quirks.