[rp3]

More interesting is that reaching the 99.99th percentile is very difficult, and yet completely unremarkable. I love David Foster Wallace’s essay on this subject: “ Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness.” He follows a top 200 and is impressed by how absolutely amazing he is at tennis, but ultimately knows the player will know neither fame nor fortune.

[lostdog]

It's important to choose the right thing to be in the top 0.01 percent of.

Being the 200th best bobsledder probably sucks. Being in the top 200 lawyers is probably pretty awesome.

[thetallstick]

And if you’re in the top, say 1/3, of engineers you’ll make a good living. If you’re in the top 1% of say, chess players, you probably won’t even get tournament invites.

[eru]

Though you might be able to make a living with teaching chess.

Similarly for musicians: teaching music is a reasonably stable income stream.

[ghaff]

Tournament jobs is even a term. Look for any field that has unpaid or very lowly paid internships (or would-be actors waiting tables) because so many people will work for nothing to get a foot in the door hoping for a big break.

[coatmatter]

Or, one could be like Elizabeth Swaney or "Eric the Eel", or "Eddie the Eagle" and be the top competitor from their represented country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Swaney

Compared to the best in the world, they were all still not very good. But on the metric of being able to make it to the Olympics, they were all geniuses.

And meanwhile, there's Steven Bradbury who 20 years ago, legitimately won a gold medal in short track speed skating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury

It seems to me that that "top" is often a nebulous term.

[ipaddr]

Pool sizes and opportunity vary. Once you are part of a bobsledder team you are in a limited group where bobsled track time is available. You could already be in the top 200. To be in a top 200 lawyer you would need to beat out a huge pool.

[ghaff]

>Being in the top 200 lawyers is probably pretty awesome.

And assuming that money is the relevant metric (which it may or may not be), working at a big city law firm. You can be a top 200 lawyer (whatever that means exactly) but if you're practicing family law in a small town, you're probably not making a lot.