Top Performer – Waiting List

Imagine being one of the best at what you do for a living—a top performer. What would your life be like?

For starters, you would get paid more. The best in the field can out earn the average salary by orders of magnitude. Consider the case of Juan Diego Florez. An accomplished operatic tenor, he can command five-figure salaries for performances.

But Juan Diego Florez is not the best…

Luciano Pavarotti, on the other hand, was one of the best tenors of a generation. Objectively speaking, the gap between Pavarotti and Florez’s talent might be modest (to the untrained ear, they’re both great), but because he was at the top of his field, Pavarotti ended up with an estimated net worth between $275 to $475 million dollars.

Being better, even by a little bit, can pay a lot.

This doesn’t just apply to the rarefied world of opera singers. Programmers differ wildly in their personal productivity, with the best programmers producing up to ten times more productively than the average. As an employer or client, hiring a top performer programmer is literally ten times as valuable as an ordinary programmer.

This discrepancy in productivity means that the top performers in this field write their own ticket — trading their value for whatever combination of money, autonomy, and interesting projects strikes their fancy.

My friend Brad is one of these top-performing programmers. He earns over $200,000 per year, working from home, choosing his clients and projects, while living wherever he wants in the world. He recently told me that he didn’t need all the money he was capable of earning, so if he ever felt burnt out, he could easily work for just three months of the year, earning enough to support himself while taking the remaining nine months as a vacation.

The desire to be a top performer, however, isn’t just about money, vacation time or lifestyle perks. There’s something deeper here: as humans we’re wired to love the thrill of doing things well — continually improving and stretching our abilities.

In Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he debunked the myth that there is one magical “passion” out there for you to find. Instead, he found that when you look at people who actually love their jobs, they tend to have one thing in common: they’re really good at something the world values.

Imagine waking up every day, excited to start working on your next masterpiece. Imagine being singled out by your colleagues as one of the best people in the world at what you do. Imagine doing only the work that you find truly fulfilling, rejecting projects and job offers that don’t resonate with your vision.

This is the motivation behind my (Scott Young) and Cal Newport’s obsessive desire to figure out what makes people the best at what they do. We’d like to share the findings from our research with you, but first we want to share a bit of our own stories and how these ideas have personally impacted us.

The Feeling of Not Reaching Your Potential…

I started out, ten years ago, with no skills as a writer or entrepreneur. The longest thing I had ever written were lousy essays for English class, and the biggest business I had ever run was opening a stand selling interesting stones I found in my parent’s driveway.

(Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, what kid tries to sell bits of gravel? I guess I hadn’t done my research in figuring out that everyone didn’t share my love of feldspar and I probably should have stuck with a lemonade stand.)

When I started blogging, I was lucky enough to become friends with some other new bloggers who were just starting out: Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau and Ramit Sethi. In fact, I started even before some of them, so when we first met it was my blog that had a few hundred more subscribers than theirs did.

But eventually most of these people would pass by me in status. Leo Babauta built Zen Habits from a blog half the size of mine, to break the top 100 blogs ranking in the world, in just under a year. Chris Guillebeau wrote an ebook explaining how he went full time in less than a year, modestly titled 279 Days to Overnight Success. Except, I had been working at it for a lot longer than 279 days and I was still earning only pennies per day from advertisements.

In this moment, there were a lot of possible rationalizations I could make. I could tell myself that these people were just more innately talented than myself. That they possessed something I could never get, and not to concern myself with their success.

I could tell myself that these people were just lucky. That Leo and Chris superseded me because they had one or two posts go viral and their success became exponential. If I just waited for my lucky break, I could be successful too.

But in my heart, I knew these things weren’t true.

My best evidence was that both Leo Babauta and myself wrote for the same freelance publication (of course, Leo quickly outgrew the need to write for other websites for spare change). The same publication, the same opportunities for traffic and response, and Leo’s posts always vastly outperformed mine in comments, page views and popularity.

The hard truth, which I couldn’t spare myself from, was that these people were simply much better writers and entrepreneurs than I was.

Despite the difficult realization that it’s not just luck or talent that separates top performers from the mediocre, but actual skill, I went to work.

I worked part-time, often writing 8000-10000 words per week trying to get better at writing. I wrote thousands of articles and several books. I also practiced my business skills, trying again and again with different money-making projects: advertising, affiliates, sponsorship, ebooks, membership subscriptions, courses and so on.

Eventually, nearly seven years after I began my quest to earn enough money to make a living online, I surpassed my bare minimum I had decided I needed to survive— $20,000 per year.

To be honest with you, I would consider that story a happy ending if it ended there. I love my work as a writer and small business owner, and I’d do it happily for the rest of my life if it meant earning only a very small salary to live off.

But it didn’t end there. You see, once I figured out the process for growth, how to identify the professional skills I was missing and develop them deliberately, going further was actually quite easy.

I went on to do projects like the MIT Challenge and year without English. I built my audience from a few thousand to over fifty thousand subscribers. I went from earning just above the poverty line, to earning a healthy six figures, even when I only had time to spend a handful of hours each week for my actual job.

What’s the lesson from my story? That you should go out and start an online business?

Starting an online business was my dream, but it is just an example. The truth is, you could have replaced my story with almost any profession: programmer, manager, lawyer or songwriter. The difference in starting and ending income might be less extreme in some professions like academics or teachers, but the difference in skill and accomplishment can often be just as vast.

I learned two things from my experience:

1. First, that there is a systematic process for getting really good at what you do.
2. Second, if you’re not careful it can end up taking you years and years to figure things out by trial and error.

How do you compete with the best in the world?

Cal has a similar story. As a graduate student studying theoretical computer science at MIT, he was exposed to some of the world’s best thinkers in the field. He soon learned that it wasn’t raw intellectual horsepower that separated the good from the great – everyone at MIT had smarts to spare. It also wasn’t effort – in many cases, the very best students worked fewer hours than their less stellar peers.

What mattered was how you spent your time.

The top performers discovered that the key to getting better in this particular academic field was to struggle to understand as many relevant existing results as possible. An average student would be content to learn what important new papers had proved, while a top performer would work with that new paper until he or she could recreate the result from scratch. This type of effort is hard, but for those who invested in it, the rewards were substantial.

The academic path is littered with promising smart young people who burn out in a flurry of undirected energy. The few who figured out how to get better, by contrast, enjoyed a rapid rise.

We don’t want you to make our mistakes with your career

I’m proud of my progress, but I made a ton of mistakes. Not just bad articles or failed products, but learning mistakes. Errors in the process for professional development that had me chasing dead-ends for years which I could have avoided in just a few days, had I been applying the right methodology. Cal has written often about his own mistakes of this type: months wasted building elaborate productivity systems, or seeking the “perfect” research topic, when all along he should have been investing that effort in decoding results that matter.

We don’t want you to make the same mistakes we did. Instead, we want to give you the benefit of our personal experience, the research we’ve uncovered on the science of how people develop expertise, and the experience of hundreds of other participants of our pilot programs, who allowed us to see the ideas of career mastery applied in dozens of different professions, stages of life and career situations.

Introducing Top Performer

Three years ago, Cal and I had the idea to come together and create a curriculum that would teach the strategies we personally used to become entrepreneurs, authors, and academics.

During that time, we ran pilot courses with hundreds of students, testing out different curricula. Although the broad strokes of the philosophy were correct, we had to learn to adjust the teachings to fit the many different students we had: from country music songwriters to database programmers, CEOs to product managers.

Through these pilot courses, we learned a lot. Importantly, we found that:

1. There is a process for deliberate improvement that transcends your job title or industry. While obviously the road to becoming a better country-music songwriter and database programmer is different in a lot of details, there are many, rarely-used methods that apply to virtually all professional contexts which can make you better at what you do.
2. The people who need this course the most are also extremely busy. Therefore, any techniques that we would advise would have to fit into an already tight schedule. Anything that required more than a handful of hours per week was scrapped.
3. Most people aren’t improving rapidly from their day-to-day work. The research on this one was clear—people often get stuck in ruts where they fail to see any meaningful improvement in their skills even after years of practice. Even ambitious people can get stuck on a plateau of performance if they aren’t careful.

Now we are ready to open the first public version of our course, Top Performer. Through this course, you’ll learn a process for:

1. Conducting careful research of your field, so you can figure out what matters and ignore what doesn’t.

 

• Turning that research into concrete actions that require only a few hours per week to see real improvements in your abilities.

 

 

• Leveraging the productivity techniques that Cal and I use to produce at a high level without unnecessary stress or grinding workloads.

 

 

 

What You’ll Learn in Top Performer

The course itself is divided into eight weeks, covering four distinct phases which improve on an under-appreciated part of career mastery:

1. Weeks 1 & 2. Research. In this phase, Cal will share his experience doing book research for how to dig into the truth of what really matters for your career. If you feel like there are a million things you should be doing to improve your career, but you’re not sure which things to focus on, this phase will cut through the clutter and give you exactly the insights you need. Even better, if you’re not sure of what career you want, this will give you the tools to explore it scientifically, so you’re not just guessing.

 

• Weeks 3 & 4. Project Design. In this phase, I will share my experience designing and executing part-time projects to improve a particular skill. The art of creating, executing and finishing small projects which require only a few hours per week is how you take the insights from your research as to what matters and turn them into concrete improvements in your skill.

 

 

• Weeks 5 & 6. Deep Work. This phase will have Cal and I teaching you about the importance of deep work—a type of effort that will enable you to achieve multiples of your normal productivity and see significant improvements in your professional skills. We’ll coach you on how to implement these ideas as well as walk you through the exact productivity systems Cal and I use to get things done.

 

 

• Weeks 7 & 8. Mastery. Beyond a technique, Cal and I will share what it takes to make improvements in the long run. We’ll teach you how to sustain your improvement over years and decades, so that you’ll get even better long-term results. Becoming a top performer isn’t something you do once and forget it, but a lifelong process of mastery.

 

 

What Do You Get When You Sign Up?

We have made the format as accessible as possible. Every lesson you take in the course is available in three formats: video (HD and SD), audio and text. The original lessons are all video, but if you prefer to listen to your lessons during your morning commute or read them in text, you can do that too. Each week of the course is a separate module, with a main lesson, introducing the big idea and key homework assignment. These main lessons are short videos (5-10 minutes) that give you all you need to know to get started. In addition to the main lesson, every week includes 5-10 supplementary lessons. These are longer presentations (15-25 minutes) that Cal and myself give to deal with specific trouble points and nuances with the main idea. We’ve split the course this way so the amount of material you need to keep up the course isn’t time consuming, but that there is always deeper content if you need more instruction. Beyond the course materials, Cal and I have also set up a private community where you can interact with other members. Once signed in, you’ll be able to communicate with other people following the course, including people who are from the same profession as you, so you can share research, ideas and encouragement.

Descriptions are nice, but sometimes the best way to understand what you’ll get is to see for yourself. Above is brief video tour of the course website, so you can see exactly what it will look like when you sign up.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What kind of results can you expect to get after joining Top Performer?

Obviously we can’t promise you’ll become a millionaire overnight, or instantly become a star in your field. If anyone does promise that, they’re lying to you. Instead, what we’d like to offer you is a road map. If you’ve ever felt confused at how to go from where you are to becoming one of the best in your field, if you’ve ever felt like people were breezing past you in terms of professional accomplishment, this course will give you a step-by-step strategy for becoming the best at what you do. The best we can do is share examples of successful case studies: such as the database programmer who, through only a few hours per week, got his dream job and bumped his salary by 20%. Or the videogame artist who went from creating art that garnered mediocre reviews to gaining five stars and professional success. Or the songwriter who broke the code to writing top country-music hits. What you will accomplish depends on you, but we hope to show that you have more potential than you previously thought possible.

How much time per week does Top Performer require?

 

Cal and I recommend taking at least 5 hours per week for the course. This includes 2-3 hours to cover the material given each week and another 2-3 hours to do the exercises. Obviously working more hours on the course will have greater benefit, but we’ve done our best to ensure that five hours is sufficient to complete the course. If, on the other hand, you can’t set aside five hours per week for the course, we recommend that you don’t join the course.

What if I’m too busy right now, but I don’t want to miss the sign-up window?

Cal and I aren’t sure when we’ll be offering this course again. Once this session closes registration, we can’t take any new students. However, if you’re too busy right now, remember that you’ll retain lifetime access to the program, so you can start the materials when you do have five hours per week to devote to it.

Why are Cal and Scott teaching this course together?

 

We decided to join forces in teaching this course because we both have different, but complementary backgrounds we believe enhance the advice we can provide. I (Scott) have experience setting up learning projects which can rapidly build skills (See: MIT Challenge, Year Without English). Cal has deep research experience from writing popular advice books and subject-level knowledge from his research with his best-selling book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You.

Will I be able to get one-on-one access to Cal or Scott in the course?

Cal and I wanted to be able to offer this course to a larger audience this time, so we cannot guarantee one-on-one access. However, we will be active in the community along with some of our handpicked community tutors, so if you have questions that aren’t addressed by the lessons, you’ll be able to get answers.

How is this different from the free material available on Scott and Cal’s blogs, or the ideas in Cal’s’ books?

 

Cal and I discuss a lot of ideas in our blogs, although it’s usually unstructured and at quite a high-level. This course will take a lot of the general themes we’ve had in our writing and make them a lot more actionable and specific. The content in this course has been tested on hundreds of professionals on different backgrounds and fine- tuned for impact. Cal’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, laid the foundation for why becoming a top performer matters, and in many ways we believe this is the sequel: step-by-step instructions for actually achieving it.

Which careers will this course work for?

We have tested this course on hundreds of students in dozens of different professions. From artists to architects, programmers to philosophy professors. We believe that the principles of this course apply to almost all professions. We are not teaching how to succeed at a specific profession, say telling you what programming tools to learn as a programmer or which journals to submit to as an academic. Instead, we’re giving you a structure so that you have a step-by-step approach for developing skill in any profession.

What if you’re not actually in the career you want to work in yet? What if you don’t know which career you want?

 

The materials of this course work for all stages of your career. If you’re already quite advanced, the research, project and execution steps will help you refine your skills and move to the next level of what you do. However, if you’re just starting or don’t even know where to start, those same tools can help you explore and identify opportunities in other careers. You’ll know how to succeed at careers you haven’t even started yet, so you won’t have to waste years trying to learn by trial-and-error.

Who shouldn’t get this course?

This course is not for everyone. In particular, you should skip this course if:

1. You want a quick fix or shortcut to success. We believe success comes from being really good at rare and valuable skills. There are no shortcuts or gimmicks.
2. You want to passively consume information. Even if you can only invest a small amount of time, we expect you to do the work–not just sit and listen.
3. You don’t care about becoming excellent in your work. This course is designed for people who want to stretch themselves and fulfill their potential talent.

Age, profession and stage of career are not obstacles to using the principles of this course. But a willingness to rethink your old habits and put in the effort to become great are necessary if you plan to sign-up.

What if the course doesn’t work for me? What if I change my mind?

We believe strongly in the power of the ideas we’re going to share with you, but we know that it just might not be the right fit for some people. We also know that paying for an online course can be a little scary, so we are going to remove those fears right now.

Cal and I are offering an unconditional, 60-day money back guarantee. That means you can sign up, take as much as the entire course, and then decide whether you want to keep your purchase. There’s no risk to you for signing up, although there is a risk of missing out once we close registration.

Join Top Performer Today, Before We Close Registration

Both Cal and I are excited to finally be offering a session of Top Performer to a general audience. We’ll keep registration open until October 23rd, 11:59pm PST. After that, we need to close the sign-up page so we can get everything ready for the students when the course officially begins on October 25th.

Once you sign up, you should receive an email within the first ten minutes which has access instructions for the course. In the rare chance that you don’t get this email, please don’t hesitate to contact us so we can make sure you get access to the course.