How to Become the Best in the World at Something

One nice thing to share here is that a statistical model for success under such conditions is for there to be a collection of independent random variables that multiply to form your overall success: people who lack any particular one of them, x_1 and x_2 = 1000 but x_3 = 0, see the product x_1 x_2 x_3 = 0, below people who have x_1 = 10, x_2 = 10, x_3 = 10.

Taking a logarithm, one gets a sum of independent identically-distributed variables, which then tend to sum to a normal distribution due to the Central Limit Theorem, meaning that success distributions produced by multiplication tend to be log-normal. This was argued by John D. Cook at [1]. Log-normal distributions are interesting because they have a long tail—usually the top people drawn are way, way better than you might have expected; normal populations stick within several standard deviations of the mean but long-tailed ones see remarkable achievers many tens of standard deviations above the mean. This result has been long known for things like wealth and income and other measures of external success. So there is a lot of truth to this idea that, say, if you are a programmer, your time is worse spent on building that extra expertise with things that you are good at, like programming, and better spent on building new expertise with things that you are not good at, like perhaps digital art or negotiation/persuasion or accounting.

[1] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/09/29/achievement-is-log...

An aside, but basketball is probably not the best example. A large amount of men 7ft tall or more have played in the NBA. over 17%. So basketball many of them have achieved elite height not skill.

http://www.truthaboutit.net/2012/05/true-or-false-half-of-al...

Sport is going this way. There's a growing body of evidence that early specialization produces less champions. Kids are encouraged to participate in other sports well into their teen years. Less burn out, lower injuries and this approach creates more athletes that can be described as "naturals". They have skills and abilities that seem magical and unexpected.

I think there is yet another path: hyper specialization in one ludicrously specific niche no one else cares about or has good reason for not getting into.

If you spend 10k hours perfecting something no one else even thought of trying, chances are you'll be the best in the world at it.

Two of my greatest loves are tennis and photography. I've been playing tennis for over 20 years (nearly a decade competitively) and I started taking photography seriously about 7 years ago. In both of these fields, especially tennis, I'm comfortable enough where I can teach it to just about anyone.

In the first few years of doing both, there were plenty of times where I was intimidated by better people, where I'd ask myself "why can't I be more like X?"

At some point, there came a time when I became comfortable enough in my abilities so that I no longer think that way. All in all I think I'm an excellent tennis player and that I take great photos. So what if Alice is a better tennis player than me? So what if Bob takes better photographs?

If anything, and this is especially true with photography, whenever I come across a better person I try to take away something from their skills that can use to improve myself.

This seems to be an elaboration/rediscovery/variant of something Scott Adams[1] said a while ago:

https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car...

Decent advice, imho.

[1] Note, this does not constitute an endorsement of Scott's political views.

I'm a fan of tennis, I'm not a very good player though, and never will be - I don't want to play 12 hours a day. I've watched Federer many times and a couple of take aways I've seen from watching him - practice every day, if you're losing, just keep going, the other guy will eventually give up or make a mistake, or you'll lose today, the other guy will eventually give up.

I really think this is the only way to be the best at something - do it every day, some days you'll fail, but if you keep going, eventually you'll have so much expertise you'll wake up one day and be the best, or close enough.

The trouble is no one really wants to do this, all Federer does is tennis, he must love it, every day he gets up and plays tennis. Most people will stop at good enough though.

If Federer played basketball, would he be the best? probably not, so thats the other thing - pick something your body and brain is built for, and do it every day.

If there were any short cuts then the best would use them any way and add them to their arsenal, so any short cuts will be short lived.

I think PG said something the same about start ups - they don't fail the founders just stop.

I think this ties in with why so many start ups are made by rich kids, they can afford not to stop, everyone else has to stop at some point and get a job.

If the goal is to be the best in the world for the sake of being the best in the world at something, just pick something really obscure.

I'm the best in the world a tactical boomerang juggling in Breath of the Wild. A gamer with pro-level skills could probably show me up with a few hours practice, but until someone decides to do that, I'm the best.

I know I'm not the best at anything I do, but when combined the overlap makes a niche for me that has so far worked out well. Pure luck frankly.

However that is only because the skills I'm thinking of aren't in themselves hugely common. I'm not mega skilled at them, but the relative rarity of some means the overlap really is quite small - fortunately!

It's not going to be good advice if your key skills are, say selling things and being super knowledgable about cars. Oh look, an obvious union but that combination is popular already. So I'd say start by becoming good at a couple niche skills and then see where you end up.

That sounds like a common idea the Dilbert author mentions from time to time.

He could draw a little, and he knew about the business world a little, but not many people could combine those things -- and be a business cartoonist.

And here I was, expecting to read a ‘hypothetical’ plan to assassinate all one’s competition... maybe it’s time to put The Prince down.

"The easiest way to be at the top of your field is to choose a very small field." - Simone Giertz, TED Talk, May 14, 2018 https://singjupost.com/why-you-should-make-useless-things-si...

That’s one of the questions i always wanted to ask the top people such as Bill Gates or someone like Dennis Ritchie. Being the top isn’t something easy, but i feel like people overestimate it quite a lot, to the point that they quit thinking they want to be the best. I can say , the world is much smaller than the concept we draw on our minds. So many stuff that i looked into, especially in the programming world, is simpler than what’s in my mind. The reason why we always think that it’s big and hard thing to achieve is due to how we were taught in schools. We get taught about stuff that on the next grade they say it’s more than we think. Take negative numbers for example, we start knowing that numbers are only positive and nothing such as 2-5 is possible, then we get taught that that idea is wrong.

Anyway, we tend to overestimate because of how we used to encounter. If we dedicate ourselves to something, it will pay off. If there is someone that’s world class on something, you shouldn’t focus on becoming him, but focus into further things. We are all alike at the end, it’s our enthusiasm that drive us into pursuing our goals. The only difference between you and the other top 1 is that he had more interest.

Basically to put it in simpler words, don’t think that there is a huge gap between you and your understanding of the world and your goal. It’s much less than you think

> You will not be the world’s greatest writer, nor the top chess player, nor the most masterful public speaker.

> It’s not about being great at any one thing — you just need to be pretty good at an array of useful skills that, when combined, make you truly one of a kind.

As somebody who was the world’s #2 chess player for my age as a kid (okay, not the “top” but close enough) - I’d like to say that the advice in this article is terrible for anyone who wants to reach their full potential.

The part I really have a problem with is this:

> There will always be someone working harder... [or] someone with greater genetic gifts, or more luck, or both.

The only way to get world-class at something is to work your ass off. To have discipline and apply yourself consistently to the practice, day in and day out, for years.

And yeah, even if you do that, you still might not be best in the world at that thing. But you know what? The relationship with yourself that you cultivated while mastering that discipline will 100% translate over to any other endeavor you wish to pursue.

Similarly, if you always give up on things because you always see there’s someone better than you, that pattern will hinder your ability to excel everywhere.

My competitive chess career was pretty brief in the end. I realized that staying at the top would require total dedication and no social life (home schooling etc), and yes, there were other up and coming kids who seemed to be at a level I couldn’t reach. So I gave up the dream of being world chess champion and went to school. But I cannot even express how much the experience of devoting myself to one discipline helped me later on in my life and career. Peak performance in any area ultimately depends on how you deal with challenge, setbacks, and motivation for the grind.

Don’t settle for being “pretty good”. Push yourself to be the best you can be, you might be surprised what you learn along the way.

[Edit] To the people commenting things like 'I think he is giving "regular" people who arent gifted a path to massive success by being "pretty good" at a few different things':

The whole "regular" people argument is BS. I was a "regular" kid who happened to become freakishly devoted to chess, at which point people started labeling me as a "prodigy". But the label is meaningless. Nobody calling me a prodigy saw the thousands of hours I spent playing and practicing.

I hate it when people draw arbitrary distinctions like "regular" vs "gifted". It makes the so-called gifted ones out to be freaks, or whatever the opposite of "normal" is, and it is demotivating to all the so-called normal kids who wonder if they could ever achieve greatness.

Quick example of skill stacking: You won't be the world's best chess player or boxer, but, hey, being the world champion in chess boxing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing)? That may well be within you reach.

Although I agree with the idea, getting good at a jack of trades might be equally difficult (e.g. depending on childhood influences or genetics). If A complements B and someone gets good at A, he/she probably HATES B to the point to avoid it as much as possible.

Author of the article gives one TedX talk, then goes on to proclaim that he's an "expert" at public speaking and ranks himself in the "90" percentile for public speaking. What a joke!

It has to be said that Steve Jobs great quality was learning from the best in a given field, what it is called now "modeling".

He had as a mentor, when he was kid, f*cking Robert Noyce: http://online.wsj.com/media/NoyceJobs_digits_D_2011100715195...

Noyce himself was a genius on its own.

And then Markkula, and then the president of Sony(that launched the Trinitron and walkman), and so on.

He learned how to learn.

Actually, getting to 90-th percentile of public speaking and self-presentation make you little bit of celebrity regardless of any other factors.

This should be taken to heart by every technologist, or to be precise, pure technologist. Being pure tech today is about as useful as being a typist during the type-writer era i.e. specialized skill that is in demand, but by itself (with few exceptions) is only secondary to the domain it is applied in.

Most so-called "tech" companies are not really tech, but more in (tele)communications, media, advertising, surveillance data businesses.

It is easy to see the time when everyone can do technology. This surely happened to typing, it would be ludicrous trying to get a job as a typist today. Same can happen to the pure tech: a) due to technology itself e.g. web-site builders, etc. b) education,- everybody learns to type today, its a bit of a stretch, but maybe everybody can learn to program.

Aside from job security argument, the value creation is happening in the domain where business is focused, not necessarily knowledge of technology. Technologists who understand the domain can deliver much more value, and command higher premiums.

This seems kind of pointless, most people already are the best in the world at some specific combination of skills - knowledge of local geography, ability to cook a certain set of meals, etc.

Anyway, a related thought that I find interesting: Becoming a "polymath" i.e. learning a wide range of topics to reasonable depth requires less effort than most people expect. For example, let's say you want to learn mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and economics. I think that achieving 80% of undergrad knowledge would take much less than 80% of the time that people need to complete an undergrad degree. So let's say it could take a year to acquire a good foundation in each of these topics if you try to optimize the process by focusing on fundamentals and core principles, choosing the best books, etc.

I don’t know if Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, was the first person to really write about this concept, but he originally wrote about the concept he called the “talent stack” with the same exact arguments in his books years ago. I think this idea is really important: it’s smart to combine different skills. Additionally, having experience in different domains like economics and design and business and technology and more gives you a lens to see the world through that not everybody has. If you combine a few of these lenses, you’re able to make connections and understand things that most people wouldn’t see.

It's pretty simple

Don't be the first at what you're doing. You need the accomplishments of others to build on.

Have competition. You need to have someone else to keep your skills developing.

Have a supernatural amount of talent. It takes an amount of innate skill to truly be the best at something.

Spend WAY more than 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

A good example is Feliks Zemdegs, the on-and-off Rubik's cube world champion. He's got the above skills, and keeps getting overtaken by various people, but so far, has redefined his skillset every time and risen back to the top, breaking even more barriers.

Isn’t it strange that comments on medium are all very positive whereas on HN all are very negative towards this article. What I want to say is that there might be a bias?

"I'm the best in the world at something. I guess I'll write a Medium article."

Interesting way to discover the curse of dimensionality.

the graphs in this medium post make my head spin, but at least the 2nd one has words describing what the author purportedly means.

Beware of low perskill grade, stacking would just be a new word for 'jack of all trades'

many managers and directors at tech companies are like this, they have good skill at coding/understanding tech stacks, managing, marketing, writing, speaking, and understanding the business aspects

Selling it helps too.

looks like market segmentation - finding your niche.

find your niche by being top 10% in three areas and you will be top .1% in one niche that is combination of the three

Is this why we go to colleges?

I'm pretty sure I'm the best person in the world at combined Scrabble and coding.

Medium forces a login. Is there a non-Medium link?

I think this is a fallacy, its true that becoming 90th% in a few different fields would render you quite the unicorn. The issue is that its common for there to be very low demand for such an overlap of skill sets. Also, how would you leverage such an overlap? These positions and opportunities do not just appear as you are qualified, the job market is extremely inefficient, and not very good at correctly pricing ability. Whats more, being the best in the world at something generally makes that skill very recognizable to others. You are a standout and ascend extremely quickly. I would argue the true best strategy is to shoot for best in your city or country/world at some nascent niche skill.

As an addition, this kind of article is part of a group of articles aimed at seeming to be a "novel" or "clever" approach to life, somehow holding the key to outsmart others. Most likely it a complete waste of your five minutes. Its similar to thinking about the Dunning Kruger effect, a complete waste of time.

Why is it acceptable to submit an article which is selectively inaccessible to the majority of users?

All I see is:

How to Become the Best in the World at Something With skill stacking, you don’t need to be at the top to be extraordinary Tomas Pueyo Oct 17 · 7 min read

It’s better to have three okay tools than a single, perfect one. The axe is great at breaking obstacles, but not that useful to jump over pits. The grapple is great to jump over ice or pits, but not amazing for slaying dragons. The only way to win is by having both tools. Illustrations: Tomas Pueyo.

CConsider what it takes to become an NBA player. Most of them have been honing their skills on the basketball court practically since infancy. Years of countless practices, camps, and games have helped each player develop a skill set based around shooting…

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Flagged.

This is really incorrect advice in the world of software engineering. At least in FAANG companies and big name startups, no one cares if you read How to Win Friends and Influence people and have "social skills". If you can't pass the engineering interviews, you're fucked.