Strategy in Percentiles

I had a good call today with Milan today, and he showed me something.

I was asking his help around a 9-month strategy I was building, and he asked me, after listening for a while, a few questions.

What actions would put you in the 50th percentile of candiates?

What actions would put you in the 20th percentile of candidates?

Top 10?

Top 5?

Top 2?

If there were choices between you, and one other person, what would the differentiating criteria be?

---

I really liked this set of questions. I was surprised that I had answers to all of them — that is, I was surprised that I had enough of a world model to actually know what the differentiating metrics were.

On sitting down to write this blogpost, I thought about how this set of questions can probably apply to a lot of different scenarios.

What would it take to be a 50th percentile cook?

What would it take to be 50th percentile at money?

What I like about these questions is that it requires clarifying the world models around you, and also if you are willing to do certain things or not.

The ratio of “needing to really care about the outcome” and “being able to do it” is low. You don’t have to have to care that much. You can “care about the identity of being on top” and that basically carries you quite far.

It’s not surprising to me that given how smart Milan is, he came up with mentioning this to me after I was talking to him about “riding a wave” as the main metaphor for my strategy. Waves can carry things pretty far, as one of their main features and their main excitements and their main dangers!

And so with this set of questions about percentiles, it really helps you identify exactly what actions are relevant, and what kind of actions are not going to be relevant.

And then if you are stuck on the question of “what” you want to do, you can lean into some of these. For example, you might not be “sure” what you want to do with your life as a 15 year old, but you might decide you want to be a 10th percentile cook, and then you go do the steps needed to achieve that.

I’d met people in my life who were neurodivergent and highly competent at a number of areas, and when I asked them what their process was, they say that they were doing something like this. They saw that certain things that were cool or high status, and instead of rejecting it or rejecting the people who did that, they instead embraced it, and sought themselves to get really good at it. So you’d have a guy who’s a pro programmer, which is his passion, who also is an excellent skiier and an excellent runner and an excellent cook.

And when I ask them, “how did you do all that!” they have a pretty similar story of finding something pretty interesting, “wanting to be good at it,” and then taking the steps to be good at it. The specific people would have passion, but they would lack a certain intensity and also a certain perfectionism or neuroticism about the fact of the wanting. They would see “becoming good” as the locus of identity that is serving as their inspiration, rather than something like “being good” or “wanting to be good.” It would not have the same texture as an obsession, though these people might indeed have other things they are obsessed about.

I am curious if I start using this more, what would happen.