Something you're interested in that's completely unrelated to programming. Let's be honest, you're almost certainly not going to become a top 1% developer with

Something you're interested in that's completely unrelated to programming. Let's be honest, you're almost certainly not going to become a top 1% developer with just 5 years of experience. However you could easily become one of the best programmers who's also an expert within a certain niche of botany for example. There will always be a niche demand for people that really understand X and can program, for almost any value of X.