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Deliberate practice won't make you top 1% material in most things, since at higher levels everyone's working hard and genetically gifted. But it'll get you pret

Deliberate practice won't make you top 1% material in most things, since at higher levels everyone's working hard and genetically gifted. But it'll get you pretty far assuming you don't have any physical disadvantages (like being quadriplegic and wanting to be a kickboxer).

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I would guess that you can be top 1% of the general population in most things (and probably even like 5% of the field) just by trying really hard. I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. (1mil football players in HS, 15mil students; random Google numbers) I would guess with effort, and I mean a lot of effort, pretty much anyone could make top 20% of a high school team. That puts you in 1% land. The NFL has an average career length between 3 and 6 years, and has under 2000 players. So it's only 0.2% of high school players, or 0.01% of the population. (I just pretended average career length was 4 years, so it lines up with a translated HS cohort.) This sort of makes sense: you can make 5% relatively easily, and 1% with serious effort. But top of the top professionals are 1 in 10,000, and to be that good you have to make it your life's work (plus it helps to be genetically predisposed). Ed: Just wanted to add, to be top 1% of the NFL means, literally, you're one-in-a-million.
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  > I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. Not being from the US, I thought you were talking about soccer for a second, and your number did not make any sense at all. But that only confirms your point, in a way: if everyone does something, being part of the top would be much more difficult.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    From the rough numbers I could find in a FIFA document, if you even play soccer by their definition, you're in only 4% of global population. That includes schools, street football, and occasional players. If you drop the occasional part? About 2% of global population. That's still including schools and street games, corporate teams, etc. So, just playing with any seriousness puts you in the top 2% of global population for soccer. If you're a registered player, it cuts the number down to 1 in 4. So about 0.5% of global population. Im not sure registered players are, as a rule, better, but someone who is a serious player and registered stands a good chance of being top 1% globally -- something I think anyone with effort could do. Being a professional soccer player puts you at about 1 in 100,000 globally, and 1 in 1,000 of people who play more than occasionally. (And 1 in 2,000 of people who play at all.) I suspect that this is because I only looked at the NFL, which would be more like only top-tier teams, not all professionals. The point being: the numbers actually are pretty darn close, and soccer seems to confirm my point about top 5% being relatively doable and top 1% being just effort.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

I would guess that you can be top 1% of the general population in most things (and probably even like 5% of the field) just by trying really hard. I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. (1mil football players in HS, 15mil students; random Google numbers) I would guess with effort, and I mean a lot of effort, pretty much anyone could make top 20% of a high school team. That puts you in 1% land. The NFL has an average career length between 3 and 6 years, and has under 2000 players. So it's only 0.2% of high school players, or 0.01% of the population. (I just pretended average career length was 4 years, so it lines up with a translated HS cohort.) This sort of makes sense: you can make 5% relatively easily, and 1% with serious effort. But top of the top professionals are 1 in 10,000, and to be that good you have to make it your life's work (plus it helps to be genetically predisposed). Ed: Just wanted to add, to be top 1% of the NFL means, literally, you're one-in-a-million.

vanderZwan 10y ago
> I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. Not being from the US, I thought you were talking about soccer for a second, and your number did not make any sense at all. But that only confirms your point, in a way: if everyone does something, being part of the top would be much more difficult.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  From the rough numbers I could find in a FIFA document, if you even play soccer by their definition, you're in only 4% of global population. That includes schools, street football, and occasional players. If you drop the occasional part? About 2% of global population. That's still including schools and street games, corporate teams, etc. So, just playing with any seriousness puts you in the top 2% of global population for soccer. If you're a registered player, it cuts the number down to 1 in 4. So about 0.5% of global population. Im not sure registered players are, as a rule, better, but someone who is a serious player and registered stands a good chance of being top 1% globally -- something I think anyone with effort could do. Being a professional soccer player puts you at about 1 in 100,000 globally, and 1 in 1,000 of people who play more than occasionally. (And 1 in 2,000 of people who play at all.) I suspect that this is because I only looked at the NFL, which would be more like only top-tier teams, not all professionals. The point being: the numbers actually are pretty darn close, and soccer seems to confirm my point about top 5% being relatively doable and top 1% being just effort.