Top 1%

Dear valued reader,

It's Tuesday night. I'm at my desk staring down a blank Google Doc. This is how I've spent most of my Tuesdays (and often my Mondays, and Wednesdays) for the past year. Somewhere in the next 24 hours, I have to find something worth saying to the 322 of you.

Thursdays have been coming faster and faster lately.

Today is the 52nd issue of Inbox Hero. It's also my last weekly one, at least for now.

Here I am, re-evaluating.

A few numbers from the year:

By every reasonable metric, Inbox Hero has been a very time-consuming hobby. Still, it has been one of the best creative undertakings of my adult life.

When I first started, I told myself I was writing as a creative outlet. Along the way, I realized that writing was forcing me to do something I have always struggled with: commit to an idea.

I am, by nature, a hedger. I see the exception and respect the counterpoint. In a debate, I will instinctively argue the contrarian perspective. Depending on your tolerance, this makes me either an interesting dinner guest or a deeply frustrating person to work with.

Public writing kills that disposition. It's simply not interesting to publish a waffling perspective. You cannot send 1,200 words of "on the other hand" to a few hundred inboxes and call it a take. Eventually, you have to plant a flag.

For 52 weeks, I've planted flags. Some I'm still proud of and some I'm rethinking. The act of shipping was always the point.

Strengthening that flag-planting muscle has been the gift: the act of saying this is what I think and shipping it before I had time to talk myself out of it.

The most successful people in any field are the ones who figured out what they could be top 1% in the world at and concentrated their effort there with unrelenting intensity. Everything else got cut, delegated, or ignored. They are not balanced and they are not well-rounded. They are obsessed.

Becoming top 1% at anything is hard. It requires the kind of work most people will not do, applied to a thing they cannot help but want to do. This works when three variables line up:

When all three line up, the work pulls you forward. You stop noticing the hours. When even one is missing, the work becomes a grind. Grinders almost never reach top 1%. They burn out at top 5%.

There's a fourth variable, which is of course luck. You cannot control it. But the people who get lucky are almost always the ones who have been consistently stacking reps in their lane for long enough that when the moment shows up, they're ready.

Now to me. Could I become a top 1% writer if I poured everything into it? Honestly, I think I could. Sorry if that sounds narcissistic, but what are we doing here if we don't believe we could be great at something?

But I don't love writing the way you have to love something to chase top 1% at it. Some weeks I enjoy it. Some weeks it's pulling teeth. And it doesn't come as naturally as I'd like. I have to work harder per page than I do at almost anything else I touch.

There are other things in my life where the natural pull is stronger. Building SparkPlug is the obvious one (I actually do love my job!). Beyond that, I see opportunities everywhere right now, projects still in formation that I haven't given enough oxygen to know if any of them are real.

That's the search I want to spend my hours on.

I have been distributing my hours democratically across things I care about. Democratic allocation is a great way to lose to people who allocate ruthlessly.

From the start, my tagline for Inbox Hero has been for the aimless and ambitious. Most of the aimlessly ambitious people I know are spread across four or five pursuits, each one a little starved. The day job, the side projects, the fitness goals, and the hobbies.

We tell ourselves the variety keeps us sharp, but in reality, that variety is what's keeping us from breakthrough.

The exciting move is the search itself. Run your portfolio against the three variables. Which of your pursuits actually sits at the intersection of natural ability, real love, and willingness to put in years of work?

The hardest move in ambition is admitting where you're merely good. The more interesting move comes right after: figuring out where you could be great.

I am writing this mid-search.

So Inbox Hero is going monthly starting in June.

I still enjoy writing, and I'm not ready to walk away from it. The new format will be longer and slower-cooked. Less reactive, more intentional. I'll need a few weeks to figure out exactly what any of that means.

What you're losing: my weekly diary or rushed POV on the latest news cycle.

What you're gaining:

Don't worry Mom and Dad, I'll be back in your inbox before you know it.

To the 322 of you: thank you.

Each week I was surprised by how many of you took the time to read and reply, and it has been touching to see which of my newsletters actually moved someone. A friend's mom emailed me about the Thanksgiving piece. A college acquaintance I hadn't spoken to in years sent a long, thoughtful note about Earners and Owners. Several of you have argued with me, and only a handful unsubscribed.

None of those interactions show up in any analytics dashboard, but all of them are why I kept going.

I wrote this newsletter for me, but I've kept at it because of you!

Without an audience, even a small one, Inbox Hero would have been a folder of half-finished drafts in iCloud. With you on the other end, it became 52 small acts of commitment. These reps have taught me how to do whatever I do next, and I'd like to keep you posted on the search.

So this isn't an ending, just an iteration.

I'll see you in June.

Up and to the right.