Good at 5 vs. Great at 1 - January 31, 2024

We're talking good at five versus great at one. What do you want when you're lost in the woods? How is good rewarded? When do you need it? Who in your life is good at five? All this and a good deal more after the break. Welcome all you beautiful people.

We're talking good at five versus great at one. As always, I'm Nick, that's Erick. We're the Get Good Guys.

And this is the Get Good Guide. It's a little early here in the grotto. A little bit, a little bit.

It's a dark and rainy morning. And we're getting our recording session in while we can. Indeed, indeed, we've made some life choices.

We have some families and some professional requirements. Yeah, yeah, the obligations make it so that we have to fit our time in when we can, even if maybe the brains are not fully booted up quite yet. Indeed, but we're excited to be here.

We're excited to be here. We are. Excited to be talking good at five versus great at one.

Yes, indeed, we're excited you're here as well. Thank you so much for taking the time and for joining us here. Good at five, great at one, what does that even mean? Well, we're talking being able to be good at a handful of skills is gonna be often much more beneficial and much more efficient than kind of chasing that very, very greatness at one skill.

Now, why is it five? Why is it five or maybe four or three? The old alley-oop, the audio alley-oop. As you will. Yeah, so it's five as opposed to four or six because that's roughly kind of how many things you can get good at in the same time and effort as it would take to be great at one thing.

And so when we talk about, okay, hey, look, if you had to choose, if you had X amount of time and X amount of resources and you had to choose, you can be good, right, better than 80% of the population at five things or great at one. And of course, those things kind of have to be of the same magnitude. Sure.

Right, you can't say, I wanna be great at making money, right, and you sort of go, okay, well, that's a lot of things that go into that. But the example that I think actually even kind of makes a brief appearance in the guide itself is the survivalist or the sort of lost in the woods. Yeah, and it's a good example because I would say very few people have actually been lost, lost in the woods, but everyone understands what that might look like and how dangerous that could be.

And if you're in that position, the person you'd wanna be or the person you'd want with you wouldn't be the person who could cut down the best tree. Yeah, you don't need a top 1% lumberjack in that circumstance or the top 1% fire starter, but rather a person who is better than 80% of the population at starting a fire, building a shelter, finding clean water, navigating. Yeah, reading a map, possibly, right.

Or even just having some background knowledge on what's good in a survival situation. It's a great example because it's one that most people can visualize very, very quickly and very easily. And the stakes are pretty high, right? Because unlike maybe something with in theory lower stakes of, oh, shipment doesn't go out on time, right? It could be life or death.

And it is, I think, a pretty stark example. But just because it is one example does not mean it is the only example. And we talked through before we started recording a few different examples.

There are a lot. There are a lot. And we talk a fair bit about sports.

There are a ton of examples in sports. We're not necessarily gonna talk about those here on the main feed. We may dip into it.

Yeah, we might touch on it on Patreon a little bit. We are recording on NFL Conference Sunday, so it's Conference Championship. So we talked about the four quarterbacks playing football today.

But we'll dip in that in Patreon. A more sort of close to home. I don't think there's a lot of NFL football players listening.

If there are. Who knows? Feel free to reach out. We'll have you on.

As a percentage of the population, not a lot of professional football players out there. But there are a lot of people who are maybe kind of what I would refer to as front line managers. The sort of like, they were doing a particular skill and now they are managing people who do that skill.

Sure. And that is a great example of moving from being kind of on the front lines to being a front lines manager oftentimes is a result of getting good at a bunch of different stuff that isn't just the thing that you do. Yeah.

Very often I think that's where a lot of people might even aspire to be. Right. Is, oh, I'm doing the work right now.

How nice would it be if I could manage the people doing the work? Or just thinking about, I would like to be one level up professionally. Yeah, correct. From where I am.

You know, even if you have even much loftier ideas. Aspirations. Sure, sure.

And so when you are kind of in that front line managerial role, you might think about, okay, what are some of these other skills that I'll need? Obviously, you know, communications is one that leaps to mind. And huge. Not a lot of people are good at, right? In fact, 79% of the population probably don't qualify as good at that.

And then things like intra and interpersonal skills. Are you a reflective practitioner? Are you a person who can understand what others are feeling and doing and going through? And these are things that you're just not called upon to do until you are in that position. Well, you are called upon to do those things.

But maybe it's more, your job doesn't rely on it. Maybe. Sure, sure.

You might be able to continue doing what you're doing without those skills. But in order to progress up that ladder, if you will, it is super, super beneficial. Yeah, well, that's a well-made point.

That's a well-made point, to be sure. A place where it's even higher stakes to be good at a lot of stuff and not necessarily burn a lot of resources at being great at one thing is in the realm of entrepreneurship. Sure.

Right? The eat what you kill set, as it were, the people who are out there saying, okay, hey, look, I have an enterprise or several enterprises. We're recording in a building where the owner, the building's owner is an entrepreneur and has six or seven enterprises that he sort of oversees. And really, his skill set is very, very broad.

Because of that, he's good at a lot. And if we had him sitting here, I don't know that Chad would say that he's great at any particular thing. Yeah, and I think that's another great example because it's one that many people can maybe have a touch on, right? And especially in this kind of, we've talked about this term of modernity a little bit, but this more modern times, this is more and more prevalent, right? You see a lot of people in this entrepreneurial kind of role.

And I think it's intriguing to a lot of people as well. Yeah, the opportunity, especially in the United States where we reside, but in the developed world generally, there's a ton of opportunity if you want to go this route and be good at a bunch of different stuff. And another kind of similar example that is just currently leaping to mind is maybe sales.

Yeah. Which could be considered in the similar realm, but often any type of sales runs this gamut of the more good you can be, the more people you can relate with, the more avenues you can go down and seek for creating that income or that sale. Well, and in particular with sales, because we have a mutual friend named Mike who is a brilliant high value sales guy.

And when he talks about it, he sort of says like sales people sometimes shy away from because they think it's kind of like scuzzy. But in actuality, good sales is about helping people solve problems. And I think generally speaking, being a problem solving person means that you have to have this perspective of, I understand a lot about a lot.

And that's the sort of get good model. There gotta be some counter examples though. Yeah, there are, right? There are, of course.

We talked about a few like high stakes ones, right? The two we kind of put down immediately was cardiac surgeons and pilots. Yeah, yeah. If you have someone flying an airplane in which you are also flying, I think you probably want that person to be great at a very specific thing.

Now, could you make an argument though? Okay, you can break down being a pilot and the different skills, et cetera. Sure. But it is a pretty specialized thing.

You're a surgeon, you hold a scalpel and stand over a person. You probably have a pretty specialized skillset. And there's not a lot of room for error in those.

And so we talked about if a profession or if something does not lend itself to the continuous improvement or iterative process, chances are, yeah, you kind of just wanna be great at it. Yeah, and that's interesting. It's something kind of leaping to mind now is once you've made it to that point, that is more and more true.

But leading up to that, you may find yourself getting more bang for your buck being good at multiple things, right? No pilot comes out being, begins being a pilot, right? They have to learn things before that. And those opportunities to become a pilot might become more prevalent if you can be good at some things and a wider range of things, array of things to allow yourself to open that road. Yeah, well, and it's interesting too, once you are dedicated to being great at one thing, it doesn't mean that you've stopped learning, right? It's not as though in your entire life, you're either good at five things or great at one thing, right, those numbers are there as a ratio, not as a sum total.

And so it may well be that there are cardiac surgeons who are great cardiac surgeons, but they also really work hard to be in the top 20% of reading x-rays or looking at CAT scans. Yeah, or like bedside manner or whatever it might be. Of course, of course.

One final thought, think about your own life, think about the people in your own life and ask who is it that's good at five, right? Who is it that's obviously, either intentionally or unintentionally, found themselves with a variety of skills as a sort of generalist who's kind of good at a lot of stuff. We've referred to this in the past as, man, they're just good at everything. And of course, no one's good at everything, but usually it's because they're good at five things that you're watching them be good at.

It creates this almost illusion of they can do anything. And who doesn't wanna be that person? Well, thank you for taking the time and we will see you in the outro. Well, gee, thanks everybody.

We appreciate you taking the time. For us, it's a rainy, early Sunday morning. For you, it may well be a Wednesday when this releases on January 31st.

If you'd like a little bit more, a little bit of that sweet, sweet, Get Good Gold, you know where to find it, but I'll tell you one more time, that's Patreon, patreon.com slash getgoodguide. And you may well already have your guide in hand, clutched like a string of pearls. If you have not, go check it out, getgood.guide. You can find a downloadable version in full color or grayscale or even one with a fill-inable PDF.

Oh, it's so good. As always, I'm Erick, that's Nick. We're the Get Good Guys.

And this is the Get Good Guide. Oh man, you're dropping all kinds of F-bombs. It's early.

It's early, there's profanity. I get all my profanity out before 7 a.m. And then I don't cuss the rest of the day. It's brilliant, it's brilliant.

As everyone knows, there's only so many swears.