LR: Sculpture by Jose Ismael Fernandez; album cover of Prince (1977)

I think it was Covey who wrote that it is better to be in the top 25% in any two areas rather than at the top 1% or 2% of one area. It’s very hard to be the best in one field, far more realistic to be very good in two. Extremely rare is one at the top 1% in several fields, like Prince (1958-2016) who was a virtuoso at multiple musical instruments and considered one of the best singer-composers of his time.

You can define these fields, but it could lead to bizarre results.

Sir Henry Wickham (1846-1928) was bad at business, but very good at adventure and at spinning tales. His only success was to smuggle a batch of rubber seeds out of Brazil. He quietly collected about 70,000 seeds from growers, falsely declared them “academic specimens”, then shipped them to London, The descendants of these seeds gave rise to industrial scale rubber production in British Asia, breaking the South American monopoly on rubber, a very valuable material in the Industrial Age. That he “stole” them and that he was “chased” by gunboats were added by himself 30 years after the events. Finally and grudgingly knighted at the age of 74, he died poor and separated from his wife, who had left him years before because of his obsession with rubber.

My guess is that one is more likely to achieve some success if one is good in two fields regardless of what these fields are. Though I said Wickham’s was a bizarre case, I give him credit for his achievement. That he died poor and unhappy does not detract from the fact that he did succeed at something.

Many will disagree. Many will say that true success makes one happy and makes others happy. Some would say that this is excellence rather than success.

I prefer to judge success this way. A sculptor makes a statue, that is success. The statue makes the sculptor a better artist, that is success. The sculptor’s work ethic then carries over into other areas of his life and in the life of others, that is excellence.

Now, a sculptor who was also a good guitarist without being a virtuoso with clay or notes produces art and is produced by his art, and carries over a creative and productive work ethic in a way that is unique to him.

Because people have unique combinations of talents, it makes little sense to compare one’s achievements with those of others. That is, outside of benchmarking, where one compares oneself with another on some aspect only. But parity is psychologically unhealth and sometimes physically dangerous: the frog who tried to be as big as the bull blew itself to pieces. Of course, parity can be reached on some measure, say on the size of one’s bank account. But that is never all there is. I would rather think of achievement as “contribution”, which I feel captures one’s unique role in the world of work.