Comment by rcarr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rcarr | Hacker News Reader

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Anyone who this article resonates with might want to check out the videos of Mark Lewis on YouTube. He was formally fat and depressed in his 30s and got himself into great shape (sub 20 minute 5ks, cat B on Zwift, winning age group at hyrox, completing ultra marathons). He speaks about his philosophy on life and training which is to be above average in whatever he wants to pursue which he describes as being somewhere to the right of the bell curve peak but not too far down. He says this is the sweet spot where you get the most fun and enjoyment; to the left of the peak and you feel bad that you’re not as good as everyone else, but trying to get too much better than average at something means you start having to sacrifice too much in order to achieve it which starts sucking away all the fun. Above average keeps you motivated to better yourself, is far more achievable and doesn’t require you to become crazy like a lot of high achievers. I think it’s a pretty good philosophy.

https://youtu.be/kViCSPXyU8U

Skills don't follow a bell curve or normal distribution. They follow a power law distribution with most people being terrible and a very small number of people being exceptional.

Today I learned:

> A few notable examples of power laws are Pareto's law of income distribution, structural self-similarity of fractals, and scaling laws in biological systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#Power-law_functions

An opinionated comparison of the bell-curve and Pareto distribution:

> (1) The power law is often an empirical fact (the way things are) but not necessarily the platonic idea (the way things ought to be); and

> (2) We can tame or mitigate at least some of the negative aspects of the power law by encouraging eclectic and diverse strategies.

Tyranny of the Power Law - http://econophysics.blogspot.com/2006/07/tyranny-of-power-la...

Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed the "Tyranny of the Power Law".

Is it really a power law or just that the right half of the bell curve could pass the interview?

I've never thought about it this way. Cut off the left side of the bell, rotate the graph by 90 degrees, and you can see that the high-sigma members of the distribution take all the reward and recognition in a limited attention economy.

I have adopted this approach (somewhat out of failure!), and what I have found is this: being significantly above average in a lot of unrelated domains is both far easier than being world-class in a single domain and often can make you even more effective than someone who is a savant in a single domain.

„being somewhere to the right of the bell curve peak but not too far down. He says this is the sweet spot where you get the most fun and enjoyment“

So true. So, so true.

Perhaps I would add also these distributions are high dimensional. Although being slightly above average is not difficult (unlikely to get paid doing it), if you can find a handful of non correlated features at which you are above average, you can be easily be the top few percent in your sub field (ie likely to be paid handsomely for your expertise)

I’m pretty sure you can be paid handsomely for being an above average accountant or plumber in a decent location (and mid sized or bigger city in the developed world for example)! Being above average at playing the guitar, not so much.

The point is more that above average multi-instrumentalist can outearn easily better (but single instrument) musicians.

Reminds me of this article from Derek Sivers: https://sive.rs/bronze

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