zlacker

>>schmuc+(OP)
"If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things."

I'm certain at least some small part of my own success can be attributed to my exposure to this idea, and for that I give my respects to Adams. As far as Adam's character (or lack thereof) is concerned, that's already being discussed elsewhere in this thread by others more eloquent than myself, so I'll leave that to them.

>>twalla+2g
> 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

Is this idea that top 25% is "very good" at something innumeracy, or a subtle insight I'm missing? There's got to be a million skills that you could assess rank at -- writing embedded C code, playing basketball, identifying flora, PacMan, archery, bouldering… I can't imagine ever being able to not continue this list -- and you should expect to be in the top 25% of roughly a quarter of those skills, obviously heavily biased towards the ones you've tried, and even more biased towards the ones you care about. It's hard to imagine anyone who's not in the top 25% of skill assessment in a dozen things, let alone two or more…

>>addaon+ds
It's (obviously) a random number pulled out from someone's ass. However, I think top 25% isn't that off. It means top 25% of people who actually tried.

If it still sounds easy, try to reach top 25% rank of a video game that you are not familiar with (diamond in Starcraft II or whatever). You'll find it's literally the workload of a full-time job.