though the narrative is about becoming great at something but sacrificing a lot to do so—I’m not sure how true that is.
Every person who is notable for being the best at what they do who I’ve heard talk about this emphasizes the importance of focus, specifically not doing other things so that they can do the thing they’re the best at. I get the sense that’s a very true lesson which is very hard for people to accept.
The contradiction isn’t clear to me. Given two people with formidable intellects, the one who focuses all their attention on X will go much further at X than the person who dabbles among twenty things.
Significantly diminishing returns in terms of, say, “piano skill per hour invested,” but “dollars earned per piano skill” can be such that “dollars earned per hour invested” has increasing returns, rather than decreasing returns, especially when considering world-class abilities.
Every person who is notable for being the best at what they do who I’ve heard talk about this emphasizes the importance of focus, specifically not doing other things so that they can do the thing they’re the best at. I get the sense that’s a very true lesson which is very hard for people to accept.
That’s my experience too, but it seems to be contradicted by e.g. http://lesswrong.com/lw/ub/competent_elites/
The contradiction isn’t clear to me. Given two people with formidable intellects, the one who focuses all their attention on X will go much further at X than the person who dabbles among twenty things.
If X has significantly diminishing returns at the high end, the pure-Xer will have improved only slightly, at the expense of the twenty other things.
Significantly diminishing returns in terms of, say, “piano skill per hour invested,” but “dollars earned per piano skill” can be such that “dollars earned per hour invested” has increasing returns, rather than decreasing returns, especially when considering world-class abilities.