Scott H Young – Top Performer 2023
Become the best at what you do—become a top performer
It’s an incredible experience to meet people who are at the top of their game. These people love what they do. Their work is interesting and creative. They pick their own projects. And, they often out earn their peers 2-10x.
Look at Ben. He isn’t one of those standard struggling programmers. Ben is a top performer.
Ben chooses his clients. He’s not hustling for his next job. Ben charges hundreds of dollars per hour, and people don’t haggle with him over his prices.
Ben can work from a far-away tropical beach, but he chooses not to. He told us that if he ever wanted to, he could work for three months of the year and take the remaining nine months off.
Ben works on his own terms.
BEN WORKS FULL TIME, NOT BECAUSE HE HAS TO, BUT BECAUSE HE LOVES THE CHALLENGES AND REWARDS THAT COME FROM BEING GREAT AT WHAT HE DOES.
A rewarding career comes from mastering rare and valuable skills
Luck won’t land you the perfect job. Knowing the right people isn’t enough. To have a great career, you need to excel at skills that are uncommon and in-demand.
Alex is a successful television scriptwriter profiled by Cal. Success in Alex’s industry is notoriously difficult. To make it, he committed to getting good at the one thing his research told him mattered: writing quality.
Like an athlete in training, Alex set up a sequence of opportunities that forced him to improve. After a few short years, he accomplished what most only dream of—becoming a staff writer and going on to co-create his own show.
Television writing may not be your line of work, but the laws of success are the same.
MASTER THE RARE AND VALUABLE SKILLS, AND SUCCESS WILL FOLLOW.
Success with rare and valuable skills isn’t linear—it’s exponential
Top performers get outsized rewards because they return 10x value compared to their mediocre peers. One study found that the most productive programmers weren’t just a little better—they were often 10x more valuable to a company than mediocre ones.
Consider the example of Juan Diego Florez. Florez is an operatic tenor, and he’s quite good. He can command five figures for a performance.
But just a little better, perhaps by an amount almost unnoticeable to an untrained ear, is Luciano Pavarotti—who at the time of his death was worth almost a half-billion dollars.
TOP PERFORMERS DON’T JUST EARN MORE MONEY. THEY ALSO GAIN RESPECT, AUTONOMY AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE AN IMPACT.
Getting good isn’t mysterious—there’s a scientific process anyone can follow
Scott and Cal have spent the last decade digging into why some people become top performers while others don’t. Why, in other words, do some ambitious people build rare and valuable skills, while others stagnate and end up stuck in a job they hate?
There’s a rich body of literature on the science of elite performance. It teaches that a major component of successful skill-building is what psychologists call “deliberate practice.” Elite performers spend more time in this rare state of accelerated improvement than do most people, and therefore they quickly surpass their peers’ abilities.
This state of deliberate practice doesn’t happen by accident. With the right system, you too can accelerate your growth.
BECOMING A TOP PERFORMER IS ABOUT STRATEGY, NOT LUCK, NOT MAGIC.
Building rare and valuable skills doesn’t happen automatically
While deliberate practice may not be magical, it is hard to do. Not only does most day-to-day work fail to meet the rigorous criteria of deliberate practice, but it’s easy to focus on improving skills that don’t matter.
When Scott first started writing, he obsessed over mastering the art of marketing his blog and deploying clever schemes to generate traffic. He was often puzzled when he encountered other writers who enjoyed explosive growth without spending nearly as much time.
It took him years to realize that the skill that mattered was the ability to write compelling content. Marketing wasn’t a bad skill—it just wasn’t what separated the best from the rest.
Scott changed his strategy, focusing instead on bold projects like The MIT Challenge and A Year Without English. This gave his writing a unique perspective and culminated with Scott publishing his bestselling book, Ultralearning.
THE CRUCIAL FIRST STEP IS DECIDING WHAT TO GET GOOD AT. CHOOSE POORLY AND YOU CAN WASTE YEARS MASTERING SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T MATTER.
Hard work isn’t enough—you need a strategy
Another popular myth about top performers is that they simply work harder than everyone else. This is damaging because it feeds the lie that if you just put your nose to the grindstone long enough, you’ll eventually come out on top.
The truth, however, is that even immense effort won’t get you very far if it’s aimed at the wrong target.
TOP PERFORMERS WORK HARD, BUT THEY ALSO HAVE A STRATEGY.
Cal sees this lesson play out in academia. Junior professors are notorious for grueling work schedules that keep them on the job until late at night.
You can’t blame them. It’s a stressful job. You’re told you have five years to become a star. If you don’t, you lose your job. (That is, you are denied tenure.)
Those who believe that hard work is the solution quickly succumb to exhaustion.
The reality is that the very best professors are often the least visibly “busy.” Their success comes instead from a ruthless focus on the small number of activities that matter most. These activities are hard in the moment—but don’t require 100 hour workweeks.
The Violinists’ Paradox: Why do some people become better without working more hours?
Research on deliberate practice confirms this idea that top performers don’t simply work harder. One study looked into the different career trajectories of violin players and separated them into two groups:[1]
1. Elite players. These are the top performers of the violin world. They were the players singled out by their teachers as likely to become symphony musicians.
2. Average players. These players were good, but not the best. They were the players that couldn’t compete at the elite symphony level and were more likely to become music teachers.
Elite players did not spend more time practicing than the average players.
Both groups invested about the same number of hours each day playing music. The difference is how they played. Elite players dedicated much more of their time to deliberate practice.
The path to becoming a top performer has two steps
1 Figure out what actually matters in your career.
2 Become insanely good at those skills.
Most top performers do this implicitly. Alex figured out that the key in his career is producing television-quality scripts. Ben mastered the skill of putting his client’s vision into code. Cal isolated citation counts—not the number of articles published—as the driving force behind success in academia.
Once you figure out what matters, be relentless in mastering those few skills. This means scheduling more time for deliberate practice and picking the projects that will accelerate your growth.
What matters isn’t always obvious
Unfortunately, figuring out which skills are critical to your career is easier said than done.
This is especially true in knowledge work. If your career has a clearly defined skill—say being a musician or athlete—you know what matters. But it can be harder to answer this same question when you work in an office, spending your days filing reports and going to meetings.
No one wants to spend years honing skills that don’t turn out to be valuable.
Navigating a career can feel like a maze. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of skills that you could potentially master. Which matter most? All of them seem like they might help your career. However, it’s impossible to become world-class in hundreds of different things.
Choose poorly and you get left behind.
Top Performer deals with this confusion by giving you tools for effective research.
FOLLOWING THE SYSTEM WE TEACH, YOU CAN IDENTIFY WHICH SKILLS SET TOP PERFORMERS APART IN YOUR FIELD.
Don’t get stuck below your potential
Even once you’ve figured out which skills are worth mastering, you’re still left with the task of getting really good at them. This is far from easy.
Just doing your job isn’t enough. Most daily work activities don’t meet the criteria for deliberate practice. This means that most knowledge workers will soon hit a plateau—they stop getting better. This can continue for months, years, sometimes even forever.
Applying deliberate practice to knowledge work is tricky. Basketball players do layup drills, and musicians strain themselves to master tricky pieces, but there are no such obvious practice routines for programmers, writers, managers or professors.
Becoming a top performer is simple: Figure out what matters and get really good at it. But these two steps are often very hard to apply.
WE CREATED TOP PERFORMER TO HELP YOU BECOME WORLD-CLASS AT WHAT YOU DO.
WHO WE ARE
Cal Newport…
Cal is a professor, author of seven bestselling books, and a father of three. His interest in the science of career improvement began as a quest to understand how people succeed in academia. This research eventually led to his bestselling books, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Deep Work and Digital Minimalism.
Scott Young…
Scott is the author of Wall Street Journal bestselling book Ultralearning. Scott built a successful business while still in college. After graduation, he pursued aggressive, self-directed projects including completing MIT’s four-year computer science program in 12 months and learning four languages in one year.
Since 2013, we’ve helped thousands of people from diverse career backgrounds become top performers. AFTER THIS LONG PROCESS OF FINE-TUNING, WE’RE HAPPY TO SHARE THIS SYSTEM WITH YOU.
INTRODUCING
TOP PERFORMER
We created Top Performer because we know how hard it is to build meaningful, rewarding careers. We’ve worked with over five thousand students to develop the techniques that make the daunting process of excelling in your career straightforward.
1. There are no magic bullets. If you want to have a great career, you’ll have to put in the work.
2. Working hard isn’t enough—you need a system. It’s easy to waste your time and energy chasing dead ends. A system can make sure the energy you invest is spent wisely.
We’ll teach you proven methods for understanding how success works in your field. Then we’ll show you how to get good at what matters—quickly.
We know you’re working hard to build the career you deserve. We will help you focus that energy on the targeted efforts that will yield results.
Top Performer is divided
into four phases
PHASE ONE: RESEARCH
We will teach you research techniques that can save you years of wasted effort. Knowing exactly what matters—and what doesn’t—is the first step to becoming a top performer. We’ll also guide you away from common pitfalls that plague amateur efforts.
In this phase you’ll learn:
- The number one mistake most people make when making career decisions
- How to become an expert in how your career works
- What to do if you have no clue where you should go with your career
- Who you should talk to—and who you should avoid—when trying to understand your career
- The two styles for researching your career, and why most people choose the wrong one
You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:
- Differential Analysis: Learn how to scientifically test which attributes matter for your career and which don’t
- Choose the Lifestyle, Not the Person: How to design your career so you can live the life you want
- The Colored Folder Fallacy: Understand why you’ll often get lousy career advice and how to fix it
- And much more…
Mark J.“Top performer gave me a template that I can lay at any stage of my career and be confident that I am applying myself at my best”
Diep T.”As a recent college graduate and new mother, it was important for me to find out what direction I wanted to go with my career.”
Ellen K.“The main result I have from this course is a much more concrete understanding of what career capital means and how to use that idea to select what kind of professional development projects to work on.”
PHASE TWO: PROJECT
Choosing the right project can be the difference between rapid advancement and stagnation. We’ll teach you how to craft a deliberate practice project to quickly build key skills.
In this phase you’ll learn:
- The quickest way to get good at complex skills like programming, research, or business
- The Business Plan Method: A tool for procrastination-proofing your projects
- Ways to measure your progress, so you can actually see yourself getting better
- How to integrate deliberate practice into your existing job, see faster results without more work
- The ingredient shared by all successful opportunities for skill improvement
You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:
- How to Build Soft Skills: Learn how to deliberately practice soft skills like selling, negotiating, speaking, or leadership
- How to Design Projects You’ll Actually Finish: Procrastination-proof your projects so that you can confidently get them done
- From Insight to Action: How to generate project ideas for improving the skills that matter
And much more…
Chris S.Chris S. was a database designer. He liked his job, but wanted more. After joining one of the pilot programs for Top Performer, he was able to identify which skills really mattered and develop a minimal project to improve it. The result? A new job offer with a 20% raise.
Ariel S.“We live in an age of instant gratification and constant distraction. Too few of us take the harder road. Top Performer gave me a useful map for that journey.”
Johann H.“I have improved on all key measures regarding assessment and conceptualization, presumably due to my independent project.”
PHASE THREE: DEEP WORK
How can you cut through busyness to get important work done? We’ll show you the strategies behind the world’s most productive people, so you can get results without burning out.
In this phase you’ll learn:
- How to control how much busyness you have in your life, rather than letting it be dictated to you
- How to work more deeply, making use of your limited time to get greater improvement
- Strategies for managing your energy so you can prevent subtle drains on your productivity
- Techniques to improve your ability to concentrate and focus on tasks
You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:
- The Artifact Method: Avoid falling into pseudowork with this proven technique for increasing your deep work
- The Power of Single-Projecting: How to increase your ability to get meaningful work done—while reducing your busyness
- Fixed-Schedule Productivity: The productivity system Cal used to publish five books while completing a PhD at MIT and raising two kids
- And much more…
JacobJacob was a struggling artist for independent games. After taking an early version of Top Performer, he was able to figure out what mattered to improving his art. Following this, his latest game has gotten stellar reviews and is on track to be his most successful.
Kittie Y.“I managed to successfully implement a writing schedule that required 3-4 hours of undistracted deep work. It helped me finish a short story that I probably would’ve abandoned half way, if not for the rule of forcing myself to finish a project despite the imperfections.”
James H.“Now, I can easily look at my notebook and visualize my day based on the block scheduling and side notes.”
PHASE FOUR: MASTERY
Finally, we’ll teach you how you can apply the lessons of research and deliberate practice to your entire career.
In this phase you’ll learn:
- Why some feedback can actually hurt your progress
- What “Desk Drawer Syndrome” is and why it holds you back from improving
- How to cultivate a circle of mentors to guide your career into the future
- The strategy for making smart long-term career investments
- A system for monitoring your career progress so you can avoid worrying too much (or too little) about your goals
- How to repeat the processes in Top Performer for continuous improvement
You’ll also get access to over a dozen bonus lessons, including:
- Time Auditing: Figure out where your time is going so you can focus it on what matters
- How to Combat Perfectionism: Figure out the good—and bad—kinds of perfectionism to prevent them from holding you back
- Career Capital Analysis: Learn to assess what skills and assets you bring to the table, so you can spot areas you might be able to leverage or strengthen
- And much more…
Colby D.Colby is a recent college graduate at a web development firm. Taking what she learned in Top Performer, she quickly leveled up her copywriting skills. Showing her progress to her boss, she was able to translate it into a promotion.
Logan Y.”If you’re considering this course, you get that our economy demands challenging, often hard-to-identify skills that enable valuable new contributions. Not only did the course give me tools for seeing and building those types of skills, it fundamentally changed how I think about building a meaningful career.”
Anthony L.”In the past, I’d base my projects around learning the latest cool thing. The expert perspective encouraged me to learn more fundamental skills.”
What’s New in Top Performer 2.0
In addition to the 60 lessons from the original program, Cal and Scott have added eight new lessons for Top Performer 2.0. You’ll find:
- Skill vs Signal
Combine objective performance with legible signals to boost career success. - Environment Matters
Why choosing where to work shapes your career. - End-User Analysis
Analyze the upstream and downstream value of your work. - Drilldown vs Benchmark Projects
Learn how to integrate your projects within your work. - Ways to Be Better
The 6 different dimensions of your work you can improve. - Wicked Problems at Work
Learn to tackle problems which have no definite solution. - Timelogging
Why it works and how to do it. - Overcoming Uncertainty in Making Plans
How to take charge and act in situations where you are not sure what to do.
Top Performer 2.0 has also expanded with interactive worksheets. These video-guided exercises will take you through the process step-by-step.
WHAT IF THE COURSE DOESN’T WORK FOR ME?
We’ve worked hard to test Top Performer with thousands of students from every profession, industry, and career stage. We strongly believe this course can help you too.
Get Scott H Young – Top Performer 2023 at Tradersoffer.forex
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