Discussion thread #2: Your best examples of the "leaden mean"?

Image generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E

Hello, dear readers! I had a lot of fun unpacking the term “psychological safety” with you in our first discussion thread, so today I want to get your input on another term that’s been percolating in my head—only this time it’s a term of my own invention.

Recently I was telling a friend about my halfhearted efforts to teach my toddler Russian (which happens to be my native language, and about which I’ve been even more than the usual amount of ambivalent in recent years). In telling the story, I realized I would’ve been better off either taking the more serious “only Russian with mommy” approach or just letting go of the whole campaign, rather than the maximally costly and minimally effective “middle ground” I’d landed on.

And then my friend and I started recalling other instances in our lives where we’d gotte…