
95th percentile isn't that hard to reach - janvdberg
https://danluu.com/p95-skill/
======
peripitea
This is a great post, and it's unfortunate that so many people are missing the
point. You may not like the writing, or the layout, or the title, and you may
be able to pick holes in the argument, but who cares? That's an easy, boring
game to play. Take it from a reformed cynic -- you will grow so much more from
trying to figure out what's right about someone's argument rather than what's
wrong.

The key insight in the article is: For many skills, becoming highly proficient
is easier than most people realize. That is both true and highly under-
appreciated, in my experience. Any time you can combine those two attributes,
you're writing something important. Keep the "ridiculable" posts coming Dan!

~~~
mathgladiator
Very good point and wise. I find this more applicable as a leader when
reviewing designs. It's so easy to poke holes and complain, but it is hard to
find the good and value that. It is worth it because I can then focus my
comments on what is essential and then drive accountability to get all the
details done well enough.

~~~
kbenson
Is there a review system (code, design, writing, whatever) that allows you to
color code chunks of what you're reviewing and has a well defined color
scheme? E. G. Shades of green for mildly to very good, shades of red for
mildly to very bad, and some other colors to denote confusion, etc.

It would be useful to see feedback of where you did stuff right, but allow you
to focus on where you did stuff wrong. Making sure you're aware of what you
did well is important both for being able to repeat it and psychologically,
and as a reviewer it can help you make sure you are providing that positive
feedback (a bunch of red with no green should be obvious).

Thats bit to say it shouldn't include specific comments, but sometimes there's
not a lot to say about a large chunk of what you're reviewing that you're
generally pleased with, but the person that produced it could definitely
benefit from knowing that.

~~~
mathgladiator
So, the best way to provide feedback is via good questions.

This is why tools like quip/gdocs can be great for design documents because I
can pinpoint a detail and then ask a good question.

Most junior engineers are bright, and they can solve the (or a) problem at
hand. However, the lack both experience in the field and within the domain.
Questions are a great way to express concern and share experience.

For software, if they can reasonable code, then it is not so much an issue of
right/wrong but "hey, what problem are you solving?" and then aligning on the
right problem via questions.

The power of good questions work at every level, and you can drive a lot of
good growth and progress via them.

~~~
kbenson
I'm not suggesting this in lieu of questions, but in _addition_ to. The
problem with questions by themselves is sometimes it's ambiguous if it applies
to a small portion or a larger portion. Also, questions are not always a good
way to indicate doing something _right_ , and any good review will also
highlight what was done well.

In the end, it's an additional channel of information, which may expose
miscommunication on either side. I don't think it's that uncommon to have a
comment next to something that the reviewer might think should cover a larger
portion of the work than the creator thinks, either because it's unclear, or
the creator slightly misinterpreted what the reviewer meant and didn't see how
it applied.

Providing structure that requires active categorization of all of a work (or
all of it that's being reviewed), even if it's just to mark it the equivalent
of "eh, no real comment" removes ambiguity. If for nothing else than because
different reviewers have different standards, and some will mark and question
everything, and you can assume anything left unmarked is good or better, and
some will only mark egregious stuff, and the rest can be considered to range
from mediocre to excellent, which isn't as useful if you goal is also to
foster improvement.

> The power of good questions work at every level, and you can drive a lot of
> good growth and progress via them.

Good questions means well defined questions, and I think anything that could
make those easier to output by default (or reduce the minimum quality) might
be extremely beneficial.

------
malisper
It seems like most of the top level responses are responding to the title and
not the actual argument. The argument Dan is making is that you can easily get
relatively good at most activities. This is because most of the people doing
those activities aren't actively trying to get to get better.

95th percentile is probably not the best way to put it since there are tons of
activities where nearly everyone is trying to actively get better such as
competitive sports. Dan's thesis doesn't hold true for those activities and he
knows that. That doesn't change the fact that there are a ton of activities
out there where you can easily get better than most people by practicing.

~~~
peripitea
There are plenty of sports for which I find this still holds true. A lot of it
comes down to how much the required skills to be great are around more innate
skills (e.g. speed, height, jumping ability) vs acquirable skills (technique,
flexibility, problem solving, mental fortitude). It's very hard to be a 95th
percentile soccer, basketball, or track athlete without a decent amount of
innate athleticism. But I've seen plenty of not-particularly-athletic people
get to 95th percentile in things like climbing, grappling, long-distance
running, etc.

~~~
bsder
> It's very hard to be a 95th percentile soccer, basketball, or track athlete
> without a decent amount of innate athleticism.

Completely not true.

Having absolute solid basics that you drill _every single day_ (dribble with
both hands or both feet, run your conditioning, shoot free throws, etc.) puts
you in the 95th percentile until probably Division 1-A college level (at which
point, yes, innate size and body type start to matter).

~~~
peripitea
Yeah I could be wrong on basketball. I don't play it much but now that I think
about it you can be a great shooter without being a great athlete, and that
alone can make you quite valuable.

~~~
bsder
I was talking about _all_ sports.

You have to have at least an average amount of athleticism for any sport.

After that, simply drilling the _fundamentals_ over and over and over and over
ad nauseam probably puts you into the 95th percentile. This also has the
advantage that it improves your endurance and athleticism _DRAMATICALLY_.

There are regularly articles about middle school teams that are ferociously
drilled on fundamentals beating significantly older and physically larger
teams that don't have the fundamentals down cold.

~~~
peripitea
I actually disagree in both directions. Have you played or coached many
sports? I have, and I'm not trying to be an asshole with the question, but it
just seems so clearly untrue to me that I wonder if you haven't or if we're
somehow talking about different things. For some sports/positions, you can
become 95th percentile even with below average athleticism, and for others
it's essentially impossible even if you have average or even slightly-above-
average athleticism. It's all on a spectrum depending on how reliant that
sport or position is on innate vs trainable attributes.

Let me know if you disagree with any of these, or if you think the examples
I'm choosing are not within the scope of your argument: -No matter how much
you drill, you will never be a 95th percentile center in basketball if you're
5'8" or whatever the average male height is. -Slightly further down the innate
vs. trainable spectrum, I have never seen an average athlete become even close
to a 95th percentile sprinter, long jumper, football wide receiver, or soccer
winger. Speed is too important for these, and speed is largely innate. -I
_have_ seen below-average athletes become 95th percentile power lifters,
football linemen, archers, grapplers, climbers, long distance swimmers, etc.
That's because these sports/positions depend on more trainable attributes like
strength, flexibility, endurance, technique, and mental focus/resilience.

~~~
oblio
\- No matter how much you drill, you will never be a 95th percentile center in
basketball if you're 5'8" or whatever the average male height is.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265197)

\- Slightly further down the innate vs. trainable spectrum, I have never seen
an average athlete become even close to a 95th percentile sprinter, long
jumper, football wide receiver, or soccer winger.

You're looking at this the wrong way. You're thinking about pro players. For
most sports, if you're paid to play, you're probably in the top 1% or even
0.5%. Top 5% is much, much bigger and it's usually semi-pros and even
amateurs. You can definitely be a half decent player in an amateur team for
almost any sport, as long as you're not actually disabled. And even then, it
depends on the disability.

------
krick
Yeah, no, that's just about lousy definitions. The premise suggests that it's
easy to become 95%-ile in anything, say, deadlifting among men who deadlift
and not just entire population of the planet Earth. Before I can suggest
author to try, he hastily corrects himself, that it doesn't mean "95%-ile
among people who practice regularly", so "men who deadlift" is invalid domain
after all. Rather, it should be... "people who lifted a thing from the ground
at any point of their lives"? Not that impressive. And, sure, just converting
yourself from "people who lifted a thing" to "people [of the same sex] who
actually go to the gym regularly and deadlift" will get you into 95%-ile of
the first, broader domain within a couple of years, because people who
regularly deadlift would already be less than 5% of the population.

The thing is, it isn't that easy to actually train for deadlifting for a
couple of years, it assumes dedication, some health requirements and basically
is the difference between people who do some sport and people who don't. This
is obviously ridiculous comparision to anyone talking about anything but
playing Overwatch.

So, sure, this surprising life lesson will turn out to be true if you continue
to craft the domains you compare in such way that you match competitive ice
skaters vs people who were on the ice rink one or twice, MMA fighters vs guys
who were in a streetfight once back at school, etc.

And while I don't play Overwatch, I don't think it's actually different than
that, it's just that "people, who both can and want to waste significant
portions of their life time in a dedicated attempt to become better Overwatch
players" are less than 5% of people, who created an account on the Overwatch
server (or whatever).

~~~
j-c-hewitt
95th percentile of the Overwatch ladder is also not the same thing as 95th
percentile of competitive tournament players. This entire article is just full
of category fallacies to try to support a vague subjective assertion.

Gaming ladders with automated ELO systems are also not run like tournament ELO
systems in more controlled environments like competitive chess. Games like
Overwatch, WoW, Starcraft, Hearthstone, etc. will not dynamically update when
the player is inactive in order to not discourage players. You have to lose
games to lose your ELO category rank, although obviously you can go up and
down the leaderboard without playing games. There are some gaming rank systems
like CSGO that have some rank decay for inactivity but it is just at a flat
rate.

So, "95th percentile" in these systems is not actually indicative of that
unless it is based on the precise rank on the leaderboard. In many of these
seasonal games rank inflation happens towards the end of the season because of
this lack of passive decay. It means that at the beginning of the season, the
top rank is very competitive, but as people become less active as the season
goes on, it becomes easier to attain rank.

In a lot of domains, if you are 95th percentile, you are extremely
competitive. You may be noncompetitive with the 99%ile cohort and the bottom
of the 99%ile may be noncompetitive with the 0.1%ile, but to argue that that's
not "very good" is just goofy perfectionism. The fact that the author is using
goofy noncontrolled systems as an example to support his weakly-defined
subjective argument only undermines his own case.

~~~
cloverich
Last I played, overwatch does indeed drop your elo once you are diamond and
above (approx top 10%). Though I disagree with the author as one who climbed
from bottom 25% to top 10% - it was quite hard and took months of deliberate,
regular practice (~1000 matches). I found it nearly comparable to improving at
medical school. I think the author underestimated the complexity of being good
at overwatch.

~~~
Madmallard
It's all subjective based on how people vary in their natural competence at
the skills required for the game.

Some people play Overwatch and in their first 1000 games they get to
grandmaster. Others get to platinum.

People tend to assume it's easy to get to whatever level they got to,
regardless of where they are on the skill curve.

------
hardwaregeek
Much respect for Dan's minimalist site (can't say I've ever waited for it to
load) but this much CSS makes it so much more readable:

    
    
      html {
          display: flex;
          flex-direction: column;
          align-items: center;
          line-height: 1.2em;
          font-size: 1.1em;
      }
      
      body {
          width: 650px
      }
    

As for the actual content, I agree with it a lot. I suspect most people are
quite bad at learning. It's not something that's taught in schools, and when
it is, it's probably lost upon kids due to their lack of executive decision
making skills.

For instance, I tutor kids in math. I don't think I'm an amazing tutor. My
limited bag of tricks are stolen from my teachers. But what I do provide is a
fully concentrated hour long study time with feedback. Which is more effective
than 10 hours of slightly distracted studying with little to no feedback.

Basically, improvement is a combo of concentration and feedback. Sounds facile
but it does work.

There's a great Donald Glover^[1] quote about this:

> “I realized, if I want to be good at P.E., I have to be good at basketball.
> So I went home and shot baskets in our driveway for six hours, until my
> mother called me in. The next day, I was good enough that you wouldn’t
> notice I was bad. And I realized my superpower.”

[1]: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/donald-
glover-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/donald-glover-cant-
save-you)

~~~
pja
I always end up hitting Firefox’s readability mode button when reading Dan’s
site. Normal browser width is just too wide for wall-to-wall text.

~~~
tybit
Thanks for the reminder, reads much easier on mobile Safari reader mode.

------
tyingq
95th percentile for an SAT score is something like 1450. That's fairly
impressive to me. Feels like scoring higher might often have more to do with
effort than ability.

Is that excluded from the line of thought in the blog post because it's among
_" people who regularly practice?"_

Or is it that effort vs ability thing? Not impressive because you were born
smart?

In a totally "no effort" arena, 95th percentile height for a 19 year old US
male is 6 feet, 2 inches. Does that feel unusual/impressive or _" not that
good?"_ I imagine it brings plenty of life benefits.

~~~
bagacrap
First, no, it's not that amazing if it's something every 20th person has.
Second, height is not something you should fixate on. The benefits of being
tall are generally over reported. In certain arenas like basketball it helps.
In others, like running, pants shopping or air travel, it hurts. I think it's
probably about the 12th most important factor in person to person
interactions, after eye contact, body language, eloquence, voice, the elements
of physical presentation you can control, etc.

~~~
tyingq
_" Second, height is not something you should fixate on."_

I'm not convinced. Many studies illustrate the correlation to success. We are
still animals and not-merit factors still matter. Good looks, height, gender,
race, symmetry, smell, whatever, etc, are a real "thing". You can overcome it
all with mitigation, but it isn't imaginary. That stuff drives real outcomes.

~~~
LanceH
Height could be correlated with "thriving" from infancy through childhood.

Also, I have tall children and they are regularly treated as older than they
are, setting expectations higher for them in settings outside of school where
they aren't grouped by age.

~~~
tyingq
Me too. I have sons that are 6'4" and 6"2". I'm not _" short"_, but am 5 foot
whatever. Mostly my view is _" thankful for the genetic luck_" for the extra
benefit of the doubt they get. And those benefits are very clear, despite
other strengths both have.

------
pingyong
The distinction between "people who participate" and "people who practice" is
basically impossible to make, _even just in video games_.

Even the example he gave didn't really work: He says that the top 30% of
players in Overwatch can reasonable be expected to want to win. Which I agree
with (it's probably an underestimation) - but does this mean that the bottom
70% only "participate"? Because that would mean to get into the 95th
percentile of "people who practice", you would have to be in the 1.5th
percentile of Overwatch players.

Another layer of this problem exists when you look at people who play the game
regularly, but don't play ranked. On average, those players are probably worse
- but should they be included in the percentile?

Ultimately the percentile thing just doesn't make much sense, but I still
think the overall message of the blog post, that most people could improve at
something they do at a much faster rate if they were willing/able to really
focus on improving themselves and less on external factors that they can't
control, is absolutely true.

~~~
jvanderbot
I read it differently. My takeaway (and I think he says as much in the
article) was, _by being bad among those who practice, you can be 95%ile among
those who participate_.

"I'm also not referring to 95%-ile among people who practice regularly. The
"one weird trick" is that, for a lot of activities, being something like
10%-ile among people who practice can make you something like 90%-ile or
99%-ile among people who participate." In this case, "participate" should
include casuals, and "practice" should not. Thats not clear in TFA.

I have personally found this to be true in most arenas, esp casual adult
sports or music or hobbies like drawing. At one time some in my gym (wrongly)
thought I was a great boxer, but sure enough I was abysmal in competitions but
stellar compared to gym goers. Among practicing boxers I was mediocre to bad,
among participating non-fighters, I appeared much better. And after a very
small amount of actual participation, all those gym goers were downright
intimidating to non-participants / nonfighters. This is why I tell people to
try out self defense classes. A little practice elevates you above 90% of
those who might do violence against you in the world.

~~~
pingyong
Oh, I might have misread that - in that case, I completely agree. But I guess
"practice makes (almost) perfect!" isn't that controversial of an idea either,
lol.

------
jefftk
This has been exactly my experience. When I wrote
[https://www.jefftk.com/p/record-your-
playing](https://www.jefftk.com/p/record-your-playing) few people had heard of
my band. We kept recording our playing, listening back to it, and finding
places where we didn't sound like we wanted to. Two years after that post we
were one of the most booked contra dance bands in the country.

------
lordleft
I like that Dan acknowledges that he sometimes get ridiculed for his ideas,
but continues to post whatever is on his mind. I think that's admirable,
because he might be occasionally very right despite the opprobrium of the
world. I sometimes feel that my generation (Millenials and younger) are super
cagey and obscure their real views because of a fear of censure.

~~~
gizmo
He literally says the opposite:

> I have about 20 other posts on stupid sounding ideas queued up in my head,
> but I mostly try to avoid writing things that are controversial, so I don't
> know that I'll write many of those up.

~~~
eshyong
I don't think the fact that Dan posts the least controversial ideas detracts
from his point; publishing one of them is admirable in itself. Putting
yourself out there is better than not posting anything at all.

------
cdoxsey
On the flip side. Sometimes you're just not that good at stuff despite your
best efforts.

In college I really struggled with math. Which was a challenge because
computer science has you take a lot of math classes. In my calculus class I
studied so hard for the final. Did every problem in the book. And I still just
got a B in the class.

At the same time my programming classes were really easy. I didn't study at
all and the homework was trivial.

Based on my interviewing history I'm not in the 95th percentile of programmers
- I'm routinely outright rejected and don't even land the on-site interview.
And this is basically my best skill for which I've invested an enormous amount
of time and energy.

The movie Amadeus really nails this idea. Salieri has one goal in life: to
create beautiful music. And he achieved some success, but then he meets Mozart
- " a boastful, lustful, smutty infantile boy..." \- yet he creates the most
amazing music he's ever heard.

> All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me
> mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why
> implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?

I've experienced that frustration many times in my life.

Salieri is a tragic figure though - his response is one of contempt and
hostility to the injustice of his life. But he's missed the point. All success
and talent in life is a gift.

Maybe your frustrations in life are an opportunity to teach you humility and
to be gracious to others.

~~~
SkyBelow
>Based on my interviewing history I'm not in the 95th percentile of
programmers - I'm routinely outright rejected and don't even land the on-site
interview. And this is basically my best skill for which I've invested an
enormous amount of time and energy.

This means you aren't high in the 'programming interview' skill set. While
related, I consider it distinctly different than the 'programming' skill set.
I think it shares more in common with other interview skill sets than it does
with programming. I suggest not using this to judge your proficiency in
programming, and if you want to improve this (say you plan to be job hunting
soon), I would focus more on interviewing skills than programming skills.
Especially if you aren't landing on-site interviews.

For starters, improving your resume to have a good UX and working on how to
answer interview questions, especially the non-technical ones, would likely
help. Things like how to 'correctly' answer "What is your biggest weakness?"
or "Why are you looking for a job?". A lot of it comes down to learning how to
lie without appearing dishonest (personally I hate how much honesty during
interviews is treated as a bad thing, but I have to play the game by the rules
that already exist).

~~~
scottLobster
Why lie?

Ultimately an interview is about convincing the interviewer that you can solve
their problems (and extracting information to determine whether you want to
solve them in the first place). Assuming you have the ability to solve their
problems, it's a pure exercise in communication.

Take the "Why are you looking for a job?" question. The meme response is
"because I need money duh!", but if you look at in a less literal context, you
probably have long term goals of some type. Talk about those and how working
for the interviewer will help you achieve those. If you don't actually have
long term goals and are just in it for an immediate pay-day, well that makes
you 1\. A person who doesn't plan long-term, and will probably bring that same
lack of planning to the job. 2\. A less secure investment that will leave the
moment they can get a 10% raise elsewhere. and possibly 3\. Someone who
doesn't really want the job and would just be miserable all the time/not be a
good fit

The non-technical parts of an interview are about unifying stories and themes,
and too many engineers seem to think it's "lying" to ignore individual data
points. If instead of an interview you were trying to convince someone who
knew nothing about the S&P500 to invest in the S&P500, you wouldn't talk about
2008 except maybe in passing as a minor risk. You'd say in the long term it's
had an upward trend despite occasional drops and that trend is likely to
continue due to reasons X, Y and Z. Assuming the person is looking for a long
term investment then nothing about that is a lie.

~~~
irishcoffee
If I didn’t need a paycheck I wouldn’t be at the interview, or working at all.
Getting a consistent paycheck is “planning long term” for 99% of people. Hell,
half my social circle probably doesn’t even know what the S&P500 is.

~~~
scottLobster
So your long term goal is stability, and you'll be reliable and consistent in
addition to the talent they've clearly already noticed by bringing you in for
an interview. From a thematic perspective you're a sturdy foundation they can
build their company on.

See how much better that sounds? And there are probably better ways of putting
it. Granted if an interviewer isn't looking for that mentality it could be an
issue, but that's a big sign you probably wouldn't want that job anyway.

~~~
irishcoffee
I don’t think I’d be able to pass/stomach an interview where I need to justify
the need for a consistent paycheck.

~~~
scottLobster
Then I'm not sure how you've stomached any interview with a private company.
Companies don't give you a consistent paycheck because you have a natural
right to one. They give you one because you wouldn't produce value for them if
they didn't.

The S&P500 analogy is truly apt, because as a private employee you are by
definition a financial investment for the company. They pay you on the
condition you make more money/produce more value for them than you take. Every
day at work is you justifying the existence of your paycheck. If you want a
bigger paycheck you need to prove a higher valuation to justify it (either by
producing more internally or getting a higher external offer). If you become a
bad investment you will be treated the same way as an under-performing stock
in a portfolio. Maybe held onto in the hopes that you'll improve, maybe held
onto for legal reasons (they can't legally fire you due to X law) but
eventually losses are cut.

Most interviewers expect you to at least be average so they're not going to
insult you by asking you to work for free (that would make you less likely to
work for them), but if you walked in and could convince them that you would
produce quality work 70 hours a week, for free, until the day you were too
medically infirm to work, and that you weren't too good to be true, they'd
have no reason not to take you up on that offer.

~~~
clarry
> Then I'm not sure how you've stomached any interview with a private company.

Here's how: companies look for a professional to perform a job. You, as a
professional, offer your skillset in exchange for paycheck. It really is that
simple. There's no need to justify or excuse wanting to participate in such a
mutually beneficial trade. Likewise, there is no need for the company to
excuse or justify their need for a new employee.

Believe it or not, there are some companies out there that just look for
someone who can do the job. They don't ask you why you want a job (or, _gasp_
, that job in particular!), because it doesn't matter (and is mostly obvious
anyway).

Stop paying salaries and you'll see how many of your employees aren't in it
for the paycheck. Made-up stories about long term planning don't change that
they're in it for the paycheck.

------
yurlungur
Unimpressed with the argument. Different people play competitive games with
completely different mindsets and you are also not just competing against your
peers, for example, you may be playing someone with much less free time to
dedicate to the game. Same goes for some real life hobbies.

That's significantly different than getting to the top 5% in your class, where
everyone is supposed to be peers and dedicated.

I think this really comes down to the level of competition for each particular
activity. Getting "Legend" in Hearthstone for example means pretty much
nothing (can be achieved while playing quite casually), while getting top 5%
in a cellular biology class with 80% premed students is very impressive.

~~~
salixrosa
I strongly disagree with your opinions on premed students, but that's based
off my experience as a Biochemistry major at a large state school. So much
partying, so little reading of assigned materials.

------
zubspace
It's funny, because I started to play Spelunky again after a long absence,
which is arguably one of the hardest games to master on your own. I'm not
particularly good, played for about 28 hours and have not yet finished the
game. (I rarely reach the ice caves...)

The thing with this game is: It needs a lot of awareness, patience and you
need to know all different kinds of game mechanics. It's not terribly
complicated, but uncovering everything by yourself is madness. I was so
frustrated that I started to watch videos and was enlightened by some of the
tactics (yeah, around the shopkeeper...)

So the blog post has some correct points: To improve, you need to inform
yourself and maybe try to get feedback. But is it fun? Is it fun to read
everything about the game, potentially spoiling it, simply to own? I'm not
sure. I believe you can have a lot of fun without being the best for quite
some time, but I have to admit that there's a point, where it starts to hurt
your ego..

So then you start to read everything about it and then what? I think, there
are personal and environmental limits, which learning cannot fix. You cannot
simply fix the patience you need to play the same level again and again just
to improve. In FPS games, you cannot get to the 95% without investing in your
hardware. And you simply cannot compete with people having too much time on
their hand, while you juggle your job, family and household.

The thing is, maybe going for the 95%-tile is futile? But who cares? Simply
enjoy to be average. Support your teammates as good as you can. Have fun
walking into that spike trap for the 100th time. Don't take everything too
serious.

~~~
shorts_theory
Spelunky is an absolutely terrific and soul-crushing game. Though I'm not sure
if it's a good example here because most of the mechanics (apart from the
absolutely ridiculously arcane series of things you need to do to go Hell) are
designed around being amenable to self-discovery. The shortcuts system for
each world is very useful for learning all the weird situations which can
result in death.

~~~
zubspace
It's the same with every kind of roguelike game:

a) Either you try to go for as long as you can, enjoy dying and discover the
endless amount of content and interactions.

b) You bite the bullet, start to read everything there is in forums, wikis or
on youtube and see yourself progress further.

To decide, which way to take, there are two questions: Can you play the game
just for fun and accept losing a lot? Or do you want to compete with other
players?

You can play each game both ways and I think, there must be a place for simply
playing for fun. But if you really want to get into the 95%th percentile,
there is no other way than go for b) I believe. You won't discover everything
there is to know simply on your own. And this is the same for a game like
Overwatch as it is for Spelunky or most other deep games. You cannot compete
against a community of players.

And even if you know everything there is to know: you could soon learn, that
the highscore table is a lot higher than you first thought... Maybe a) was the
better way to play the game after all?...

------
ErikAugust
Overwatch is a mass participation activity that is casual for most.
Performance at the 95% is a joke to a professional. Just like a marathon. 95%
of all runners is something like 3:15. That’s more than an hour slower than a
decent pro.

It really means nothing and people aren’t competing with each other in this
way. A pro doesn’t care about a recreational participant. Usually the people
who are pretty good at least have awareness of how good the best are and may
be fans but that’s kind of it.

~~~
papreclip
OP is also being really misled by survivorship bias, ie. the bias that since
he was able to accomplish this by what felt like "putting in the time to fix
his mistakes", so must others be. There is such a thing as natural talent in
gaming and it accounts for a huge portion of success. It's talent specific to
that game or genre of games, it's not "the ability to learn" or "the ability
to effectively review one's mistakes" or some other broad skill

I had this discussion with a former pro-gamer who didn't believe that someone
with high intelligence (e.g. successful professor, lawyer, etc) could be
skill-capped at an average level in his video game. This was a guy who found
himself dead in the water after his gaming career died and ended up working in
a call center

~~~
ErikAugust
To your second point, I find that people who have a "natural" knack for
something have a very hard time understanding it's not easy or even physically
possible for others to do what they do.

------
mynegation
It might be a useful approximation but I think some other very important
factors are churn, compounding, and natural ability. By churn I mean: take
Overwatch. Sure there are people who stay with the game for a long time but
many many players play for some time and drop off as they move on to different
games or other things in life. In a high churn environment just staying for a
long time gives you advantage by practicing, almost automatically. On the
other hand, it is much harder to do in things that people practice for
decades, like making money or being a doctor.

By compounding I mean that having some amount of something makes it easier to
obtain more of it. Money and capital in general is the prime example of it.
Fame maybe a subtler example but explain a lot of boom or bust success in
industries like acting or pop music. Outside of your own motivation you don’t
get much compounding from Overwatch skill.

Natural ability also plays a role in certain occupations. Being “mere” 6 ft
tall requires an insane amount of work and dedication to make it in NBA (go
Kyle Lowry), and anything under that is basically zero chance. Eye-hand
coordination and explosive velocity in baseball. Being big in American
football or handsome in acting etc.

------
mntmoss
I think the post is both accurate and easily ignored, because it lives from
within its own wisdom. Of course you can do better if you work at it - but,
why aren't you?

And that's not even a question of personal responsibility and virtue and
utilitarian maximization preference. That's - what on Earth is the world doing
to discourage you, to make you grind at Overwatch in an ineffective way, then
try to compete without appropriate prep? How did your ego get into such a
fragile state that asking questions and getting advice feels so difficult?

And with at least some of these questions, the answer is that the intent of
the person is different from a genuine competitor in a way that keeps them in
a state of self-sabotage. They may be turning to the game as a way of gambling
for a dopamine rush, in which case they can't believe in their skill(or anyone
else's) - since they want fate to do the work.

But then you probe further and it gets more nuanced. Many people have trauma
getting in the way, a whole bunch of stereotypes and expectations beat into
them from an early age, which prevent them from reaching out and grasping at
the prize. Many are trying not to get too deep into their hobby, because they
have a lot of other stuff going on. And so on.

And so the question of why there is a 95% is related to our tendencies around
resource allocation as a society and what skills and beliefs go along with
that, which creates preferences, which then acts to enable or limit people.

It's never quite as simple as "you could just practice." Finding the way in
which practice works for you, lets you set goals you can agree with - that's
the trick.

------
huac
The Overwatch example reminds me of Playing to Win
([http://www.sirlin.net/ptw](http://www.sirlin.net/ptw)), and in particular,
"the scrub" section ([http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-
scrub](http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub)). "A scrub is a
player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing
about. A scrub does not play to win."

~~~
the_af
I always liked the Scrub post by Sirlin, but I think it's too confrontational
and likely to generate a negative reaction in the person you're mentioning it
to. Nobody wants to be called a scrub.

I'm not into card or videogames, but I like tabletop miniatures wargames (like
Warhammer et al) and if you're familiar with them, you'll know there is this
stereotype of a gamer derisively called a "WAAC" \-- a "Win At All Costs"
competitive gamer who will crush you and play in an unsportsmanlike manner and
laugh while you lose, because he only cares about winning while you tried to
play "thematically" and with honor. _If_ you exclude outright cheaters (which
this WAAC thing confusingly includes, even though I think that's a different
thing), I think this falls well within the Scrub phenomenon Sirlin mentioned.
Non-cheating WAAC players are playing the actual game, "thematic" players are
playing a different game under self-imposed limitations not prescribed by the
actual rules, and this mismatch results in a lot of grief.

The few times I mentioned Sirlin.net to Warhammer players, it was not well
received though. So don't try it...

As a final word, I don't think the Overwatch example fits this phenomenon. The
Overwatch thing is players who don't know they are playing badly because they
don't get feedback, not players willingly playing under self-imposed
limitations and complaining about others playing the actual game ;)

~~~
h2odragon
If you're part of a community that expects newbies to adhere to rules that
aren't published or articulated... where's the blame really lie? I have social
handicaps, I could join your group and never realize that I upset people by
failing to adhere to unwritten rules (its the story of my life, really)...

I can't really tell when the "unwritten rules" are unwritten so that they may
apply to some but not others, and when they're unwritten because everybody
actually did agree they're good ideas, but prefers not to share that
revelation.

~~~
the_af
To be clear -- and I see maybe my post wasn't -- I think many Warhammer*
players are too trigger-happy about labeling other players "WAAC" simply
because they don't follow the unwritten rules of what they consider
"sportsmanlike" behavior. In the extreme case, they'll call WAAC anyone who
plays to win using the actual written rules instead of playing thematically
rich but underperforming armies or strategies, which they consider The Right
Way To Play (but which is not what the actual rules dictate). That is, they
are playing an arbitrarily different game where the objective is not to win,
and dislike people who play to win.

* I say Warhammer but I mean Warhammer, Age of Sigmar, Warhammer 40K and the whole family of games.

------
bretpiatt
This entirely depends on the population you sample from and the competition
level of the activity.

Looking at high school football in the United States, the top ~5% get a
scholarship to play in college[1].

The author's example of Overwatch is one where very few people playing have
joined paid leagues, hold regular practices, have paid coaching staff, have
training facilities, etc. versus kids playing football.

1:
[http://scholarshipstats.com/football.html](http://scholarshipstats.com/football.html)

~~~
mvc
I think the author's point was that you don't need to have exceptional talent
to get into that 5% range. Basically that consistent hard work will get you
there.

I think this actually would apply to football scholarships. Remember not all
people who win a scholarship are going to become professional players. I
suspect that is probably <1% for which exceptional talent _is_ required (in
addition to consistent hard work).

Of course it is easier to put in that hard work when the support structures
are in place at home/school.

~~~
inerte
A quick search shows there's ~1M high school players, and only 7.1% become
college players [https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/football-
proba...](https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/football-probability-
competing-beyond-high-school) and then from these ~73k college players, only
1.6% become professionals
[https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/estimated-
prob...](https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/estimated-probability-
competing-professional-athletics)

I think high school and college players work really, really hard. Getting
ahead of 92.9% of other hard working players, followed by beating 98.5% of
this already small group, is certainly a feat. Sure, it's "basically
consistent hard work", but distilling years of practice, coaching, diet,
personal life sacrifices, into just "so really all it takes is working hard"
is an oversimplification that doesn't do justice to the actual reality
involved.

------
juped
You can become a 95th percentile commenter on this post by reading the article
for comprehension. (A link to the article is provided near the top of this
page; clicking it yourself is a helpful deliberate practice activity, so I
won't reproduce it here.)

~~~
rconti
It doesn't help that he seems to mix up practice, participate, and try. I got
lost trying to re-read it for comprehension, then just closed the window when
he went off about video games.

------
thrower123
This might be one of those things that only seems true if you live in a world
where the bottom quartile or half of people has been chopped off. There are a
lot of people out there who are very limited in what they are able to do.

It's maybe not very hard for you or I or Dan Luu to work at something and
practice it and reach a level where we are competent or better. But I've seen
so many cases of normal people that work incredibly hard at things, and they
just never get to that mediocre level. It's frustrating if you are trying to
teach or coach or mentor them up, because you can see where things would have
to click for them to get over the hump, but there's no keyhole for that key.

------
Traster
I find it really very frustrating that the author talks about the "95%"
percentile and then does _very_ little to actually justify why he's talking
about the 95% percentile and how he's measured it. He's got some anecdata
about what he views in overwatch, but you actually need some statistical
techniques if you want to justify a statistical number. Of the players in the
top 5% how many times was it observed that they committed obvious game losing
gaffes? How did he screen the reported rankings for the arbitrary subset of
players that he considered real competitors.

I don't think the person who wrote this understands statistics because they're
not playing a game where randomness is a large influence in the game. If you
talk to top poker players about their game they're not going to talk to you
about individual mistakes, they're going to talk to you about constructing
ranges. A top 5% poker player isn't just going to beat a top 10% player in a
single game or single hand, they're going to have a higher expected return
over a long period of time. THe point is to come up with strategies that are
successful against a large range of opponents. So whilst you can look at a
single event and identify whether it was effective in that particular
situation, what you're optimizing for is to get the best return over time. So
to take the Overwatch example - whilst you may constantly see game losing
mistakes at that level, you _won 't_ see the same people making the same
mistakes constantly.

So basically - for an article that constantly talks about "95 percentile" or
"99 percentile" or "moving from 10%-ile to 40%-ile". I just don't even
comprehend how you can title something "95%-ile isn't that good" and then not
make any effort to actually evaluate how you're measuring 95%-ile. Which,
given this is an article about how people generally do things very badly for
stupid reasons, I think is rather ironic.

~~~
nemothekid
Overwatch has a competitive ladder which ranks players on a ELO-based rating
system. The percentiles were published, by the game developers, at one point
and are assumed to be stable.

I play(ed) a lot of Overwatch, enough to get into the top 1% (Grandmaster).
The rank he derides on, 90-95%, is Diamond, which is quite famously "ELO
Hell", because that is where a lot of naturally talented players end up before
deciding that blaming their teammates was the issue instead of reviewing their
own gameplay. What irks me is, the top 4% of that game, Masters, I would
actually consider "good". Sure there is a gap between the top 4%, top 1% and
top .1%, but the mistakes you see between those groups are less about "missing
fundamental gameplay mechanics" and more flawless execution, awareness and
inference. (For anyone that plays the game I would consider 4250 the top .1%,
which is almost entirely pros and very talented streamers).

In other words, while I agree the top 10% of the community isn't all that
good, the top 5% of that very game is respectable. My beef is less with the
ranking and more with his "definition" of good.

Many of the top 1% of Overwatch do regular scrims in semi-pro leagues.
Comparing this to basketball, does this mean the bar for "good" is the NCAA,
d-league and NBA?

~~~
ryandrake
There seems to be something fundamentally wrong (with the game or with the
measurement or with something else) when the top 10% is considered “not good”
and the top 5% is “respectable”. I can’t really think of anything where this
is true. Games, job performance, educational testing, income & wealth... Top
10% is kind of by definition great!

~~~
nemothekid
The game's distribution is a normal distribution - and I think the problem may
be with perception. What is the definition of "good"? Personally, I wouldn't
claim to be very good at the game despite my past ranking - there are a number
of players who would wipe the floor with me where it feels like I'm giving my
all and they are barely even trying. At the same time I could probably do the
same thing if I dropped down on the ranking. If you watch streams, you
commonly hear top players complaining about having to play with "braindead
masters players" who are the top 5%. All of this shapes the perception of what
good means.

------
spdionis
You can look at the rank distribution of every competitive game and this
concept becomes obvious.

I've played Dota for many years. Managed to reach the Divine rank last year
which at the time iirc started at the 95th percentile (maybe 98th?).

Any player who has played Dota for some time knows that while Divine players
are good for average player standards, compared to any semi-pro or top 1000
player (not even pro) they are god-awful. To the point where they basically
cannot compete in any aspect of the game.

------
tzone
As they say: "there are levels to this shit". It is very noticeable in most
individual games and sports that as you go to the top the difference between
skill level is huge, even between top 5 percentile of people or between top 1
percentile of people. So in a way not only 95 percentile is no good, a lot of
times even 99th percentile may not be that good either in grand scheme of
things.

If we take two examples of chess and boxing. In boxing there is huge
difference between top 5 level fighter in a weight class, compared to top 20
level fighter, and huge difference between top 20 and top 100, and another
huge difference between top 100 and regular pro boxers. And there can be 1000s
of pro boxers for a weight class. And there is another huge difference between
a pro boxer and random guy who trains boxing in a gym, and another huge
difference between random guy who trains boxing and just a random Joe from the
street.

The level differences are so huge that, if a top 5 fighter is fighting someone
from top 20 it is generally considered a one sided beat down and a mismatch,
with 10:1 odds for a favourite.

There is very similar situation in chess. A Fide Master can crush people who
have studied chess and play as a hobby while just playing blind folded. (Not
even talking about average Joe, even I can beat most average people playing
blind folded, and I am not any kind of Master). International masters (IM)
crush Fide Masters like its nobodies business. At next level, Grand Masters
are a level above most IMs. Being a Grand Master is considered a huge
accomplishment, not just top 1% but probably top 0.001%. No matter how hard
you work and how dedicated you are, unless you are also an exceptional talent,
you can't become a GM in chess. However top 10 players will crush below
average GMs with ease. That is how crazy the level difference is in this
sport.

I think this type of phenomenon is more prevalent in individual sports/games
compared to team sports. (Especially larger team sports). I think that is
another reason why this phenomenon is not always as visible in "real life"
situations, because most of the real work is done in groups and sometimes in
very large groups which averages out potential huge differences between
individual abilities. In a team/group environment there are faster diminishing
returns on how much more a single individual can do as part of a group. Of
course there are still big differences but in that case top 95th percentile is
probably good enough to get you in the top team, especially if you have other
skills to complement your abilities (like better communication, better team
work, etc)

------
lpolovets
I fully agree with this. I wrote a related post a few years ago called The
100-Hour Rule (in contrast to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour Rule). It's at
[https://www.codingvc.com/the-100-hour-
rule/](https://www.codingvc.com/the-100-hour-rule/).

It takes tons and tons of time to be world class at something, but very little
time to go from newbie to better than almost everyone else. The key is wanting
to get better and then pursuing that in a deliberate, thoughtful way. A
hundred hours of tennis lessons or of reading books on negotiation will
quickly place you in the top 5-10% of the general population in those things
-- and possibly even the top 1%.

------
empath75
Aside from all the other things he said, at least for games — 1 out of 20
people get there, and the vast majority of people who play a game play very
casually. So if you put a reasonable amount of effort at all into getting good
at a game, you’re likely to make the top 5% of players or close to it.

I play hearthstone about, I dunno, an hour a day or so, while I’m on the
train. I’ve never made it to the legend rank, but I make it to rank 5 easily
most months, which puts me in the top 6%. A lot of months I’ll end up rank 2
or 1, which puts me in the top 3 or even 1%

I don’t think I’m particularly good at the game, I just play good decks and
pay attention to the meta game so I know what to expect from the other decks.
I don’t tend to plan multiple turns ahead, I don’t try and figure out what’s
in my opponents hand, sometimes I’m barely paying attention to the game at
all, and sometimes make just obvious mistakes like missing lethal.

But none of that really matters up until you get to rank 2 or 1, where you
start playing against people that basically don’t make mistakes.

In fact one of the hardest transitions for me to make in the game was
understanding that when my opponent appeared to be doing something stupid in a
higher ranked game, they were probably not, and that I need to spend time
thinking about what it meant, rather than just assuming they were bad at the
game. That doesn’t happen until you’re already in the top 5%, though.

~~~
hearthstonebad
this is because improving your rank at hearthstone is a matter of playing as
many viable games as possible. the outcome of most matches is mostly dependent
on randomness as opposed to player error. The largest source of randomness
being the order of card draw, which can turn around a highly favorable or
unfavorable matchup between decks.

the actions of players have very little impact in hearthstone. in a typical
game, the player is presented with somewhere about 2-7 choices every round
(increasing in the late-game as the board becomes more full) and most of them
are obviously good or obviously bad.

my point is that while being top 95% in most tasks is a matter of
practice/repetition in new situations to build skill, achieving legend in
hearthstone- while it might require you to build some minimal amount of skill
in guessing what cards your opponent has, or estimate the odds of drawing a
given card in the next few rounds the difficulty of the game will quickly drop
off due to it's low "skill ceiling"\- is mostly about repetition for the sake
of reaching 15,10,and 5 rank level checkmarks.

hearthstone is a card game played by blizzard, the objective of the game being
to make as much money as possible over the course of it's lifespan. the
current meta in collectable card games is to make players believe that their
actions have consequences over a randomized card game, and that their
invaluable collections will continue to exist when blizz unplugs the servers
after it stops making money for them.

~~~
__s
1) naming yourself "hearthstonebad" isn't conducive to good discussion

2) the commenter stated his time budget: an hour a day. This doesn't seem
excessive to make the argument "rank is merely a function of game time"

3) 2-7 choices is an under estimate. Past MtG pros have observed that attack
ordering has more tree breadth than MtG attack phases. Saying the choices are
straight forward is misguided when top players will consistently make the
better choice that weaker top players miss

4) a high amount of randomness doesn't necessarily negate skill. See Poker

~~~
AstralStorm
Indeed, the skill is designing a deck to be less sensitive to such randomness,
adapting a side deck, reading the opponent's tactics to counter them or
exploit them and responding correctly to the challenges if things go wrong.

Essentially, making your own luck. Tree depth in card games is about the same
as the deepest card combo times hand size, and for every card you can also
hold it or get it burned.

------
jammygit
Speaking of gaming, I passed the 95th percentile in 2 games. It takes a lot of
work. You don’t feel that good when you do it because you have learned about
all the weaknesses in your own play. However, put yourself in a team with some
60th percentile players and you can carry pretty hard.

It felt like the 80-85th group (diamond) is where people actually start
knowing how to play properly. Lots of mechanics to practice before then though
- you only get to that point by automating the lower level skills

------
defertoreptar
I pulled the Fide player database for standard play ratings. The set of
ratings had a minimum of 1001, maximum of 2862 (Carlsen), an average of 1663,
and a standard deviation of 349. The 25th percentile had a rating of 1428,
50th percentile: 1663, 95th percentile: 2237, and top percentile: 2862.

Given those ratings, the 95th percentile has a ~100% chance of beating the
25th percentile, a 96.75% chance of beating the 50th percentile, and a 0.38%
chance of beating Magnus Carlsen.

I think 1 in 20 is fairly rare. It's just that something being rare and
something being hard to reach aren't always the same thing. It's likely just a
matter of "trying hard to reach x" is the fairly rare thing. That doesn't mean
it's not a worthwhile accomplishment. Sure, only having a 0.38% chance of
beating Carlsen doesn't look great, but then you're comparing yourself only to
the top players and not looking at the whole picture.

------
esch89
There's such a focus on being proficient in our society... but being bad at
stuff is not all bad. It's only bad if you don't accept it and move forward
more strategically.

The ability to recognize and admit the areas where we struggle / are mediocre
actually allows us to better accomplish our goals.

It took me a long time to realize this... I don't need to be good at anything
to make and sell an app, for example. I can outsource the app development,
outsource the website design, outsource the marketing... basically - hire
people to do all of the work for me. You might say - that takes money! I don't
even need to have the money or know how to write a business plan. All I need
is an idea - then I outsource the writing of the business plan and use that
business plan to attract investors.

There are a lot of very skilled people out there - why not just borrow their
skills to accomplish what you want to accomplish?

~~~
AstralStorm
You mean being a VC? But angel investment is a skilled job.

Even more so if you are trying to sell people on some idea.

------
killjoywashere
There's a stringency to the barrier to participation that's missing here. To
be in the 95%-ile of heart surgeons, may still mean that you make seemingly
obvious mistakes, but I kind of doubt it. To be in the 95%-ile of machine-
learning engineers ... what does it even mean?

In addition to the stringency of the barrier to participation, there's a
stringency of the barrier to opportunity for practice. If you take a brilliant
heart surgeon out of New York City, and plop them in the middle of Wichita,
Kansas, she's going to find a hard upper limit on the number of mitral valve
repairs she can do on any given weekend.

Similarly, if you take a machine learning engineer who spent the last 10 years
at Google and give him a a few thousand data points from a heart health study,
his main challenge will be staying busy and his skills will surely degrade
without other work.

------
lmilcin
I have played couple of games competitively. I have been somewhere in top ten
to top three in the world in some of them (we are talking small communities
with large number of accidental players, nothing really to brag about).

My observation is it is critical to somehow get a feeling what it is/means to
be good at the game. This means identifying where is the focus of a good
player.

Having been playing competitively I have noticed ALMOST ALL of people being
intent on playing the game well are completely misplacing there focus,
effectively wasting their time on stuff that does not matter.

They are stuck being mediocre to good (but not best) players because they dug
themselves in their own holes:

\- polishing endlessly skills that give diminishing results but are
comfortable to the player but avoiding tackling problems that the player is
not comfortable with

\- repeating the same routine all the time instead of constantly switching up
stuff they are training. If you are training well after some time you have
trained a skill enough that you should switch to another that now gives best
ROI.

\- repeating and acting on falsehoods/myths about the game

\- complaining about the unfairness of the game which means they would like to
play some different game which is governed by their idealized rules instead of
trying to understand the real rules of the real game

\- not being ruthlessly critical about their abilities which is necessary step
to identifying what to work on to progress,

\- not being able to spend a moment to consciously reflect on ones progress to
identify why it is they are stuck (instead of blaming everybody)

\- being focused on winning instead of getting better. Many players play to
get a short term kick out of winning the game instead of playing to get some
kind of knowledge/skill that will help them get better. Think Starcraft
players who find that they can get consistent wins cannon rushing their
enemies but are not willing to fail to try other strategies.

etc.

An example would be rookie players on iRacing (I'm nowhere near the top).
iRacing requires you to get minimum amount of games but also, more
importantly, minimum safety rating to be able to progress from rookies.

Players who are stuck but would want to leave rookies in iRacing are
constantly complaining at other players constantly hitting them, effectively
ruining their safety raiting.

While it is true that the state of the game in rookies is such that you get
hit frequently, there are people who are quickly sailing through rookies. To
do that you just need to notice that the critical skill is not hitting other
players and avoid getting hit. Instead of focusing on getting to best place,
focus on not hitting anything. Yet, so many people do not understand this and
are destined to stay in rookies for a long time.

~~~
AllegedAlec
> They are stuck being mediocre to good (but not best) players because they
> dug themselves in their own holes

Also: they fall into a pit where their current behaviour works at the skill
level that they are at, but is detrimental when that behaviour is performed at
a higher skill level.

~~~
lmilcin
That is true. One way this happens is when somebody tries to progress very
quickly, emulating best players, without putting time to understand the basic
mechanics of the game.

A good player will be able to adapt their gameplay because they can more or
less predict what will happen when they alter the gameplay and/or they can
evaluate how their change influenced the result.

A stuck player who skipped basic training may be able to imitate a complicated
strategy to some extent but will fail miserably when they change anything and
won't be able to evaluate results. They are effectively trained to do one
thing from a subset of skills of a pro player and not being able to transition
through a valley of failure from their local maximum.

~~~
Mary-Jane
A similar analogy: talented musicians who can only read music but completely
lack the ability to improvise.

------
pixelperfect
It's not that difficult to get to the 95th percentile in Overwatch or Bridge
because no one at the 95th percentile receives much compensation, monetary or
otherwise.

When significant compensation is awarded to the 95th percentile of some field,
attaining the 95th percentile is much more difficult.

~~~
disease
In the case of Overwatch no awards are given to the 95th percentile. The
99.9999th percentile though at least have an opportunity to get paid for
playing the game.

------
libria
Relevant to the article, but more on the tooling side, a question (especially
for you consultants):

What tool do you use to track where your time is spent?

This can either be for the "film study" of how I work or for billing clients
in 15 minute increments. I've tried apps that take screenshots every 60s and
others that track accumulated time on foreground application.

The end result being, same as Dan's friend, I'd like to know where I'm wasting
time and how to improve. Forget the 95/99% numbers, I just want +10% this
week, +8% next week, etc.

------
disease
For me, learning art has broken all of the rules I thought I knew about how to
correctly go about getting better. I've made several serious efforts to get
better at it with VERY limited results. Either my brain is not wired for it
somehow, or my approach to learning it has been incorrect in some way.

And just FYI my attempts included slowly going through all of 'Drawing on the
Right Side of the Brain'.

~~~
astrieanna
Have you tried taking classes or otherwise getting 1:1 coaching?

~~~
disease
Not yet, but I am planning on re-visiting learning how to draw. I've been
looking at some different approaches and the one that seems to address my
weaknesses the best is an online course named 'Draw a Box'.

------
itronitron
I like most of danluu's posts but I abandoned this one early on. Mining
Overwatch rankings for general truths seems like a basic mistake.

------
LeifCarrotson
One other area where this is true and might be similarly easy to analyze is
competitive running.

A local road race 5k might have a thousand entrants. You might feel bad about
occasionally walking and finishing in 500th place, but that's just in the
subset of the population that participates in those events. The biggest race
in our 1,000,000-person metro area draws about 20,000 entrants (many from
outside that area), so the 50th percentile in the race is 99th percentile in
the population.

Similarly, there's a big difference between people who participate and people
who practice. Every high-school cross-country team will likely have several
kids who can run under 18 minutes in the 5k, just because they practice 5 or 6
days a week. Elites peak at about age 28-30 in the 5k, so these 16-year-olds
aren't as fast as they could be, but they will likely never run faster than
they do in high school because they won't practice as effectively as adults as
they do when coached on a school team.

~~~
datashow
It is true that regular practice can easily put you on very high percentile
among participants. So it is easy to be on 95% in one or two things.

On the other hand, for the same reason, it is very hard to be on 95% in
multiple things at the same time, because you won't have time to regularly
practice on multiple things.

For the same reason, I would also argue that for regular people it is also
hard to be on 95% in just one thing outside of work, because people need to
take care of their family.

------
hachibu
> An example of something my editor helped us with was giving us a vocabulary
> we could use to discuss structural problems.

Does anyone know what he's referring to when he mentions the vocabulary for
structural problems? Is there a book/blog to learn about this?

I have the same problem. I feel like something is off with my writing but I
can't describe it.

~~~
hyperpallium
Consider the purpose of one of your essays. Pretend you are a member of the
target audience. Read it.

Your experience of your essay will tell you a lot, and is all the guidance you
need to become the best according to your judgment/taste.

Though it will not enable you to improve beyond... For that, you need to read
expert writing, and perhaps an expert-coach of some kind.

------
eslaught
> It's known that having laypeople try to figure out how to improve among
> themselves is among the worst possible ways to learn something, direct
> instruction is more effective and having a skilled coach or teacher give
> one-on-one instruction is more effective still.

Is this actually true? Does anyone have citations for this?

------
jonplackett
This blog is in the bottom 5%-ile for readability and layout.

~~~
jefftk
At least on mobile I find it much easier to read and faster than almost
anything else I see on the web. Plain HTML with a bit of CSS goes a long way!

~~~
jonplackett
On desktop the type is sooooo tiny!

~~~
jefftk
You're right: on desktop it would benefit from a narrower column width and
somewhat larger text

~~~
tzs
For articles like this, that are just simple text with nothing fancier than
some headers and some lists, would something simple like this be a good way to
deal with this?

    
    
      body {
        font-size: calc(0.5rem + 2vw);
      }
    

That sets a font size that gets bigger as you make the viewport wider, so that
you keep about the same number of characters per line regardless of viewport
size.

I'm just a dabbler with CSS. Is there a better way to say "the font size that
gives me about N characters per line of random text"?

(It's 0.5rem + 2vw instead of just some multiple of vw so that if you make the
viewport narrow the font doesn't get too small. Better would be something like
max(0.5rem, 2.5vw) but max() is experimental and not supported well outside of
chrome. I found the calc(fixed + variable) hack on Stack Overflow).

~~~
jefftk
I usually stick in some css like:

    
    
        body {
           max-width: 45em;
        }
    

Viewport size isn't a great clue to the ideal font size: someone can have a
large monitor that they're close to, or a small one that they're father from.

------
knzhou
The question is always, 95th percentile of what? I'm involved with a series of
physics competitions, that winnows ~5 million high schoolers down to 5.

\- 10% of high schoolers learn calculus well in high school

\- 10% of those also learn calculus-based physics well in high school

\- 10% of those sign up for the first round competition

\- top 10% of those qualify for the second round

\- top 5% of those qualify for the final round

\- top 20% of those end up on the final five

Which of these stages is supposed to be "easy"? Because the conjunction of all
six certainly isn't.

------
leftyted
I think this is true. I think it's because we intuitively understand "being
good at something" to be relative to "the people who are the absolute best at
it," not on the total set of people who do it.

I disagree when the post claims that "advice works". If someone gives you good
advice and you manage to take it, you're still missing something. You're
mising the intuition that led them to be able to give you that advice, which
is the really valuable thing. This is why self-help is so worthless, even if
it's good advice.

------
m3kw9
Yeah where you sample matters. In over watch you sample everyone from casuals,
first timers etc to pro competitors. It if you just sample all pro competitors
it will be much harder to reach 95%.

------
Psyladine
>Within the game, the goal of the game is to win.

This might be a case of ludonarrative conflict, though I hadn't considered it
outside of narrative-driven games. Blizzard wants both mainstream low-entry
play, and highly-competitive e-sport bait. And in that way lies madness[0]

[0][https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft...](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft_2_will_be_dead_before_legacy_of_the/)

~~~
Brave-Steak
Man, I remember reading this back then and agreeing with everything he said.
And he was largely right. SC2 never really became relevant. By the time they
fixed the arcade and implemented coop, both features that were absolutely
necessary to capture the casual audience, it was way too late. I love the coop
mode, but it's clear that the whole game is getting little investment from
Blizzard because they themselves realize it wouldn't be worth the time, money
and effort.

------
dyeje
Was really pleasantly surprised to see this included a section about
Overwatch. I have watched my Overwatch gameplaye to improve, but never my
programming. I'll give it a try.

~~~
hyperpallium

        asciinema

------
j7ake
The definition of 95th percentile is confusing. I think if you scored top 95th
at a National exam in high school you would be competitive to choose the
university you want. That is impressive.

Being 95 percentile in college sports would probably allow you play the sport
professionally.

Having a website in the 95th percentile in terms of traffic would probably be
extremely impressive.

Having a 95 percentile restaurant quality in the world would probably result
in Michelin stars

~~~
PNT510
You're totally off with your numbers. I don't know anything about college
entrance exams so I won't comment on them.

If you play football in the NCAA you need to be closer to the 98th percentile
to have a shot in the NFL. And to even got a shot in the NCAA you needed to be
in the 95th percentile of high school players. In the NFL even the never gonna
make it cut from the practice squad guys are in the 99th percentile of all
people playing football.

There are over 600,000 restaurants in the US alone and less than 3000 Michelin
star restaurants world wide. So we're definitely in the well over 99th
percentile there.

As for websites. There are an estimated 1.5 billion websites in existence.
That means to be in the 95th percentile you only need to be in the top 750
million websites.

So yeah, the example you give are a actually a pretty strong case for the 95th
percentile not being that impressive.

------
kaffee
This blog is excellent. But there's no RSS feed.

What do other people who rely on feed readers do in these scenarios? Is there
a good service (which will not disappear) which will either convert the thing
into rss or alert you when there's a new post?

edit: It has an RSS feed, just no link to it in the index.html.
[https://danluu.com/atom.xml](https://danluu.com/atom.xml)

------
ericmcer
His main example is video game playing, which is something many people do at
an extremely casual level because engaging in it is so easy (turning on your
computer). Reaching the 95th percentile in activities where just showing up
requires a level of effort (team-sports, rock climbing, etc) is way more
difficult, as people who just want to be entertained for 30 minutes are not
present.

------
troughway
Where did the goal of 95 percentile come from?

------
hyperpallium
Main point is it's common to _practice wrong_.

It's hard for non-experts to assess expertise, needed to find a coach to give
feedback.

Though, probably for a beginner in many fields, an even minimally credentialed
"expert" will be extremely helpful.

(This is apart from fields lacking agreement on advice, like the article's
public speaking example).

------
sinuhe69
The main message is becoming 95%-ile is EASY. I disagree. It’s not. One of the
most common discipline is (school) math. You have everything to help you
improve: constant feedback, guided resources, a unlimited mass of problems to
practice and arguably plenty of time but to reach the 95%-ile is still hard.

------
vkaku
Cut back to 10 years from now, insert "99.99th% percentile isn't that good"
article on Hacker News. Someone tag me then.

No percentiles are good IMO. Often, the overall shape matters, in some cases,
like in latency.

And in many other cases, it often becomes the way to go, due to practical
challenges in sourcing.

------
pavlov
Get better at something if it feels good to you, but gamification of life is
poison.

Competitiveness is a mental trap that keeps you in a box where someone else
defines the rules. If you’re doing something new, the questions of “winning”
and percentiles and whatnot become meaningless.

------
arendtio
'Practice makes perfect' is certainly true for the 95th percentile.

In the 99th percentile, on the other side, talent and determination are more
important (since everybody is practicing regularly already).

------
bigbadgoose
If you’re actually trying to do anything, and you are diligent, you’re really
only competing with 10% of the pool. Now, you just have to beat 50% of your
real competitors.

------
QuantumGood
You can do this...only if you compare yourself to _everyone_. If you compare
yourself to those who are actively trying to get good, it's much, much harder.

------
aj7
Once my ass was saved by my Korean immigrant optical coating technician, who
fixed an electron beam power supply loaded with MSI IC’s using a multimeter,
after the manafacturer couldn’t. (He put two kids through college, owns a dry
cleaner shop with packed racks now, and drives a Mercedes.) I initially got
him cheap because he could barely speak English.

I wonder what percentile he was?

------
stjo
Everyone's talking about his arguments and ideas (which is great, love you
all), but it just made me want to play some overwatch.

------
coding123
Here's my read of this. It's pool because I've done some league. Your typical
7 level player (in APA) typically wins most matches. In fact the ranking
system is basically how much you win, even with handicaps. Here's a good list
of things to think about when playing each and every shot.

[https://supremebilliards.com/51-pool-tips-every-player-
must-...](https://supremebilliards.com/51-pool-tips-every-player-must-know/)

The top level players keep all of that in mind automatically. It's practically
part of their training data at this point. They barely lose even when a level
2 player needs to just win 2 matches and they need to win like 7 matches.

The "equalizer" system of the APA says that's roughly a fair fight. But it's
not. When playing a 7, you know that not only are they going to get pretty
much every easy shot, when they don't have a more than 90% chance of making a
shot, they leave the 2 a bad bad bad shot, like something the 2 will have a 1%
chance of making. They also put the cue ball in a special place - a place
where either the 7 will get a ball in hand OR strategically a good shot on
their next run.

It's all extremely interesting to watch a true 7 play anyone else. The only
fair match-up against a 7 is anyone of rank 4 or above, mostly because they
know the tricks. They still make rookie mistakes all the time though, hence
the 4.

You're probably in the 95% if you're a 5 or above in APA. People that are six
hate being a six. They get kicked off teams because of skill caps in favor of
keeping a bunch of 2,3,4 players and their 7.

I was a 4, played in the bay area, south bay APA. Represent. I moved.

[http://www.southbayapa.com/bapl_hostlocations.htm](http://www.southbayapa.com/bapl_hostlocations.htm)

That list used to have like 8 places when I played. Sad. Good to see lucky
shots is still around my home team from there.

Anyway, your typical 4 thinks he's a 7 inside - but doesn't say it out loud
because of the inevitable laughs. They have honed every pool stance. Bridge is
near perfect. A decent 4 can hit the cue ball from one side of the 8-foot
table to a ball that needs exactly a 30 degree. These crazy 4s think they have
a 80% chance of hitting a ball across that table into a pocket (a long shot,
with or without angle). Either the cue is travelling a long way to the ball or
the hit ball will. Unless the target is "in the pocket", like giving the
player a huge degree of error and still make it in. No I'm talking more of a
looks hard, is hard, but the 4 is so HONED on these shots they nearly always
forget their defense, so silly. The major difference between a 7 and a 4 here
is the 7 will try 30% making the ball in, and 70% leaving the cue in a
disastrously bad place for the other player (maybe even 10/90). And the funny
shit is, the 4 probably is better at hitting the ball in, even if they both
put in 80% effort to do so... but that's not the game for a long shot. The
game for a long shot is to leave it bad. There are lots of calculations, but
that's the gist. The top players win because they get ball in hand, typically
planned of course, but you won't even see the smirk on the face when it
worked.

What does this have to do with 95%, I don't know it's somewhere in there.

Ok now you're pumped up, go contact APA and get on a team. Start with 8-ball.
Meet your future spouse and have fun.

------
5cott0
There is something so depressingly robotic about the obsession with being the
best at everything all the time. Career, income, diet, exercise, lifestyle,
hobbies; can't even have fun anymore without spending days holed-up
researching esoteric hyper-optimizations. Some of you need to relax and stop
sucking the fun out of everything.

~~~
libria
He leaves room for that.

> And for games like Overwatch, I don't think improving is a moral imperative;
> there's nothing wrong with having fun at 50%-ile or 10%-ile or any rank.

~~~
blackearl
I've gravitated to more random modes in multiplayer games. OW has mystery
heroes where hero selection is random. Hostility is almost always met with
"dude it's mystery heroes".

------
techslave
well, i don’t buy from sellers with under 98% rating from amazon or ebay. 95%
is atrocious if true. for sellers with lower absolute number of feedback
responses, i quality it by reading negative feedback because many times it’s
the customers that are atrocious. but if you have thousands of responses and
only 95%, forget it.

this means almost all amazon marketplace sellers are disqualified for me. it’s
gone downhill fast over the last 5 years.

~~~
robjan
This is not related. 95th percentile means the top 5% of a group compared with
everything else in the group.

