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This is interesting. Because one thing is to be an outlier and in the top 1% or 0.1% in skills, let's say programming, and another one is to achieve outlier status economically, sometimes they are disconnected. It comes to mind the idea that Corporate Machiavelli expressed in one of his tweets, that the difference between the middle and upper class is IQ, but the difference between the upper class and the rich is that the latter is more cunning and risk aggressive. Just think about those who bought crypto early on, the truth is that they didn't have a special skill, they just were more risk aggressive. Another example is the guys working several remote programming junior jobs, around 4-5 at the same time, they have average or above-average coding skills but they are making 700k+ a year only because they took the risk and are more cunning than the average programmer. This means that if you're not capable of getting to the top by raw skills alone you can still get there by optimizing those 2 factors in any way possible inside your professional domain or even outside of it. What do you think?

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1. Based on my brief experience of CM on Twitter before I unfollowed, he is a certified midwit. In this case he’s accidentally kind of right but not exactly.

It is true that skill and wealth do not correlate across domains but they do correlate almost 1:1 within domains. The former is just because of supply and demand relative to temperament. eg being autistic is rare while being helpful is common but programming and nursing have similar overall demand, resulting in programmers making way more than nurses. Make it so all the ISFJ girls can program and this difference goes away.

2. Yes most super wealthy people who were not born that way took risk and were really aggressive. But so did all the people who went bankrupt, became alcoholics, and killed themselves or ended up in jail. CM would understand this crucial factor if he had read Incerto series (highly recommend btw).

To become fabulously wealthy (top 1%) you do need to take risk. But calculated risk. and calculated risk only comes when you have area expertise.

And you dont need or want to become fabulously wealthy (top 1% has $10M or more in assets). And there is nothing you can do to guarantee it even if you did.

BUT there is a lot you can do to almost guarantee you end up on the top 10% (assuming your IQ is at least 120 which in this case it obv is) which is more than enough for most. And it will also improve your life a lot.

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I made some injustice to my old pal CM in my previous post, because, as you can see in his article: https://corporatemachiavelli.com/law-23-how-to-get-rich/

he does take into account skills. From what I understand, he's saying that:

middle class (50th-80th percentile in wealth or income) = skills (correlated with time used on the skill and iq)

upper-middle (80th-99th) = more skills (so more time and more iq)

rich (99th+), = also skills but now instead of more time cunning (social skills) and risk aggressiveness (calculated risks) make the difference to get to that top 1% and up

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Sounds reasonable enough.

Point remains that cunning and risk alone are not sufficient and if anything are, like hard work, exponents applied to the base of skills, passions, and interest.

If you arent interested and passionate about a domain—if the work doesnt feel like play—it is impossible to take calculated risk because you just wont develop enough domain specific knowledge for your calculation to be anywhere near reflective of reality.

Some people can get lucky, hurling themselves blindly into the abyss and coming out on top. But the people who do this by definition did not calculate and are unlikely to even be calculative people (ie the type of person who reads blogs about self improvement)

also do note that I mention the importance of socials skills within this article and part three (four? whatever it says at the top of article) will be specifically about this topic of taking calculated risks.

TLDR he and I dont disagree in any meaningful way.

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"If you arent interested and passionate about a domain—if the work doesnt feel like play it is impossible to take calculated risk because you just wont develop enough domain specific knowledge for your calculation to be anywhere near reflective of reality. "

About passion...

Do you think it's possible to consciously develop passion for a domain? To which degree? Enough to be in the top 10%? Enough to get to the 1%? In my case I'm working as a SE, and I realized that my most productive times is when it feels like play, when I'm completely immersed in the activity, so much that I forget to do other basic things like eating, this is similar to when I'd get addicted to videogames when I was younger. But when it doesn't, it's very very difficult to concentrate and get into it, I feel like my work is 40% play 40% tedious 20% normal, and I've come to the conclusion that the most time you spend in the 'play' category, the more you get done, the more energized you feel, and then the more successful you become. I've been thinking about ways to optimize this. What do you think about this?

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well one, if you have to ask, you

already have your answer. when you find “your thing” you will have no doubts, outside of minor ones. i have zero doubt at this point that working on AH and MD is what I want to do for the next four decades. questions are just around like should I add audio or video or start a podcast or create paid video courses, etc.

but to answer your q directly:

>Do you think it's possible to consciously develop passion for a domain? To which degree? Enough to be in the top 10%? Enough to get to the 1%?

yes and no.

You cannot create sustainable passion that doesn't come naturally. What you can do is slowly over time remove the parts of your job that feel like work and add more of the ones that feel like play until you reach 90%+ play.

I’d need more info to say for sure but maybe you can get into top 10% with your current ratio and a lot of hard work but not top 1%.

If you had a million dollars rn would you still be programming? if not, then its probably more of a “thing that makes money that is kind of tangential to my passions but not my true passion” or “thing which would otherwise be a hobby i do occasionally if it weren’t for the fact that everyone wants to pay a lot of money for it and I need to pay my bills”.

For example, I probably had a similar ratio when I was doing IT/project management. But then I’d go home and read books and listen to podcasts or youtube about sociology, history, philosophy, psychology, etc. learning about those things was fun and what i’d procrastinate other stuff with. I wouldnt go home and read about servers and SCRUM for fun. I had to consciously force myself to do those things. Sometimes they ended up being fun because once you get into flow anything can become fun, but I certainly wouldnt have gotten over the hump into flow if I didnt feel like I had to.

Writing “diary” posts feels a lot like play (i’d written 10,000 pages of journalling before I started AH/MD/OF not because i tried but just because i had to to sort my brain out), while writing “effort posts” was definitely work for the first year, but now that im finally learning how to do it well, its more frequently feeling like play. Coaching definitely was work at the start but started getting more playful and I think after another year it will be very play.

So my research has probably been 90%+ play for over a decade, and there was a little bit of work to make something of it (clear writing and coaching) but their trajectory toward fun was always increasing (with lots of set backs of course, but trending up).

If you dont go home and build apps and read about math and data structures and new languages and listen to podcasts on computer science for fun in your free time, no, you will never become top 1% in the domain of SE.

On the bright side, being even top 20% in SE will get you near top 1% in income. The question is just whether the trade off is smart. Would it be better for you to pivot into a domain that will feel like play 90% of the time? In the 3-5 years it’d take you to improve 10% in SE field would it not be best for you to find the true thing you’re meant for? Do you even have strands for what that other thing would look like?

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>You cannot create sustainable passion that doesn't come naturally. What you can do is slowly over time remove the parts of your job that feel like work and add more of the ones that feel like play until you reach 90%+ play.

>I’d need more info to say for sure but maybe you can get into top 10% with your current ratio and a lot of hard work but not top 1%.

Yeah, I agree. That's what I'm focusing right now, how to increase the 'play' ratio.

>If you had a million dollars rn would you still be programming? if not, then its probably more of a “thing that makes money that is kind of tangential to my passions but not my true passion” or “thing which would otherwise be a hobby i do occasionally if it

weren’t for the fact that everyone wants to pay a lot of money for it and I need to pay my bills”.

Maybe I would still program, but because I prefer having deadlines and work compared to too much free time, I think even I had $10M I would still be working, just not obsessively. But I get your point, I started programming mostly because of the money.

>For example, I probably had a similar ratio when I was doing IT/project management. But then I’d go home and read books and listen to podcasts or youtube about sociology, history, philosophy, psychology, etc. learning about those things was fun and what i’d procrastinate other stuff with. I wouldnt go home and read about servers and SCRUM for fun. I had to consciously force myself to do those things. Sometimes they ended up being fun because once you get into flow anything can become fun, but I certainly wouldnt have gotten over the hump into flow if I didnt feel like I had to.

yes, this summarizes my experience pretty well, I also get very immersed in those topics.

>On the bright side, being even top 20% in SE will get you near top 1% in income. The question is just whether the trade off is smart. Would it be better for you to pivot into a domain that will feel like play 90% of the time?

At this point in my life I think it's the smart decision to make, It's a more secure path to achieve my financial milestones. Maybe after a few years I will need to reevaluate. The problem with going all in your passion is the risk, specially if your passion is not

profitable per se. SE is profitable even if I don't love it, so I feel like it's the 'safest' approach. At least right now in my life what I need the most is money, so I'm not in a situation where I could change course like you're doing right now (from what I understand you had a lot of money saved up, and you also made a lot with crypto before going on this 'passion' route).

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