Getting to the Top 1%

What does it take to be in the top 1% in your field? A lot right? Well I think it depends how you look at it.

Let’s walk through a couple different examples.

Take LeBron James. Best basketball player in the world, maybe best ever (watch out MJ). However, when you start breaking down his skills to individual categories, he’s often not the best. Looking at a few of last years key stat categories, let’s see where he ranked:
– Steals: Top 15 (116)
– Assists: 2nd (9.1 per game)
– Rebounds: Top 15 (8.6 per game)
– 3 Point Field Goal %: Outside the top 20 (73%)
– Points Per Game: 3rd (27.5 per game)

He’s clearly not the best at a lot of things. But the key here is that he’s very good at A LOT of things. When you can develop a combination like LeBron has where he’s become a greater scorer, defender and facilitator, it provides him with a skill set that is tough to match throughout the rest of the league.

Another great example of this is Nate Silver. Nate’s first real claim to fame was helping to develop the PECOTA projection system for evaluating a baseball player’s performance. Following this, he became a published author, came close to nailing the 2012 election and started his own site, fivethirtyeight.com. What’s neat about Nate is that he’s become very good at sports statistics, predictions in US politics and being a writer. This means that he’s carved out this fascinating niche where he has become the expert in all of those areas but he also created a home in fivethirtyeightcom where you could find all of this great content. By combining these skills, he’s figured out how to be in his own top 1%.

Ultimately, it can be tough to be in the top 5% or even 10% at something. But if you can strive to be in the top 20% or the quarter of people in a given area and can look to combine that with other skills, you can figure out your own space where you can be a top performer.