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How to Become the Best in the World at Something

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Re: How to Become the Best in the World at Something

#141

Post by fuzzfactor »

AWildC182 wrote: post #14
qubex wrote: post #8

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.

That's how masters (old timers) rowing seems to work. You just wait for whoever is faster to die of old age and if you die first it's not your problem anymore.

Start early.

Benchmark with the leaders.

Be prepared to work as hard as them, and actually do it for enough years to make a difference.

Outlive them. This is what you were planning to do when you started early.

For a pursuit where skill building is a function of effort over a lifetime.

In sports I guess that would be your athletic lifetime.

Re: How to Become the Best in the World at Something

#142

Post by spiderfarmer »

codingslave wrote: post #21
spiderfarmer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a generalist and it works for me in my one man company. In my previous company I hired specialists, not generalists, because the specialists did not suffer from distractions as much as generalists did. They also didn’t question everything a specialist in another area did. It’s also easier to build teams that way.

True, but is your level of success similar to the level of success of someone who is the best in the world at something?

Probably not, but the author thinks that as a generalist your changes of succes are higher, not the level of success.

Re: How to Become the Best in the World at Something

#143

Post by chadcmulligan »

pbulises wrote: post #135
chadcmulligan wrote: post #116

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…

Author here. Actually Federer does not do tennis. In fact, he's famous for trying lots of different sports before settling on tennis.

Hi, interesting article. I'm pretty sure he does do tennis :-), but I see your point. Ash Barty also credits her current position with the year she took off to play cricket. There was a study just recently I saw about this - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181108110020.h... its about hockey players.

Re: How to Become the Best in the World at Something

#144

Post by [deleted] »

joecot wrote: post #22
codingslave wrote: post #9

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 abili…

> 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? The only overlap they really gave in the examples was "They're good at X skill.... and marketing themselves." Literally, the example people were good at both a skill and then marketing themselves as being good at that skill. Gary Vaynerchuk is both a good writer and good at m…

[deleted]

Re: How to Become the Best in the World at Something

#146

Post by forgotmypw »

CedarMadness wrote: post #93
forgotmypw wrote: post #87

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 gr…

I've been using an extension to avoid this common annoyance. https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox also for Chrome: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

I use neither Chrome nor Firefox, nor am I installing extra software to access a website that doesn't want me.

Re: How to Become the Best in the World at Something

#147

Post by themeiguoren »

joecot wrote: post #22
codingslave wrote: post #9

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 abili…

> 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? The only overlap they really gave in the examples was "They're good at X skill.... and marketing themselves." Literally, the example people were good at both a skill and then marketing themselves as being good at that skill. Gary Vaynerchuk is both a good writer and good at m…

I don’t think this is the right takeaway - the examples all had marketing as the second skill because the author wanted them to be people that the reader would recognize. This means that they needed people with a public persona, which lends to self marketing being the shared skill. A person with a skill set that doesn’t include marketing could be just as successful, but you as a reader aren’t going to connect to the example of the author’s second cousin Sam.

Re: How to Become the Best in the World at Something

#148

Post by MacroChip »

pbulises wrote: post #105
msluyter wrote: post #75

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.

Yep, I quote him in the article as such! "The solution is skill stacking, a concept popularized by Scott Adams."

I loved the article. I'll be sharing it. The visualizations make it much more digestable and inspirational. Also, the link you posted to Adams' blog has a messed up cert or something. I'm on Firefox on Android. I'll reach out to him as well.
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