[sireat]

Regarding 1) thing I could do in my sleep and still amaze people.

It is a bit dangerous to be unconsciously good (ie in my sleep) at something and think that you can make money with it.

Let's take something like chess. Unless you are a TOP 10 player, you are not going to be making a good living from chess unless you go into secondary sources of income: teaching,writing, coaching. Source: as a master I know many poor grandmasters.

So there has to be a market demand for the skill that you have deliberately practiced to be unconsciously good at.

Like that guy who can skip a stone 88 times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0_hEvNOqGM

He certainly enjoys it and people are amazed by it. However there is a very limited demand for experienced stone skippers.

[themodelplumber]

Yes, this is a good example of what I consider the fundamental work to be done in the area of #1. A lot of career books and tools aim at this kind of approach as well. I also use a Role/Group/Reward model that makes it clear that even if you have an offer on the table where you'd be playing chess for great money, you still have inquiries to make.

[sh87]

Unfortunately, there is hardly any good measure for future market demand. There's just unproven heuristics, overarching anecdotes and random guesses.