How much better is "world class" at anything?
Or what this Lebron podcast reminded me about that 1000x PM or 1000x Engineer
I love playing pickup basketball… even though I’m pretty terrible. :-(:-)
I also like watching a lot of the NBA and listening to podcasts about… well, almost everything. So I was really curious about this podcast from JJ Redick and Lebron James (https://www.youtube.com/@MindTheGamePodcast). I just finished the third episode, and it made crystal clear what I already sort of knew. Forget the physical skills and athletic gifts and the sheer discipline - and Lebron is famous for spending over a million dollars a year on his training and conditioning every year - the amount of thought and planning that the best players in the world put into, being the best is so miles ahead of everyone else it’s absolutely staggering.
While both Lebron and I technically play basketball, I’m playing tic-tac-toe at best while Lebron is playing 3-D chess on 10 boards. Not just Lebron - even JJ Redick was. It’s not physical skills/ability to be clear (that part is obvious!), it’s how much and how hard they’re thinking while they play. Most casual fans can’t even comprehend the complexities of what’s going on on an NBA court, even if they enjoy the game itself. Check out the attached clip/preview, to see what I mean…
It made me think about how much that gap carries over to other professions - to Product Managers, Designers, Engineers, Operations folks, Sales, Marketings and even CEOs - just how much better are the very best from the rest, and how do they get there.
How much time and effort do they put into thinking about what they’re doing, getting better, and how much better are they at simply using the time they put in to make better decisions the next time. Assuming a similar distribution, you shouldn’t just have “10x Engineers”, you should have many “100X” and a few “1000X Engineers/PMs/UXers”.
I’ve been thinking about the many 10X, the very few 100X and the super-rare 1000X people that I’ve been around and how they do it, but I think it’s what all of us can aspire to. Most won’t get there, but the journey becomes a lot more fun when you try to.
More on that later, but have you worked with a few 1000X people?