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<blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 5344514" data-attributes="member: 3448">I think professional athletes are a perfect example, but hardly unique.&nbsp; In the real world, min-maxing (at least in a conventional sense) involves identifying your natural advantages, and then focusing on them to the exclusion of everything else to develop them as far as possible.&nbsp; This can be an effective strategy at accomplishing goals.&nbsp; Professional athletes, professional musicians (esp. &quot;classical&quot; professional musicians, as opposed to pop stars), professional chess players, the lawyers, IBankers, doctors, and business people who work 100 hour weeks every week and spend their free time on professional networking, the scientists who never leave their labs, etc. all frequently pursue this sort of approach.&nbsp; Athletes, musicians, and similar categories stand out because it is very hard to succeed at all without a truly impressive (but not necessarily healthy) focus on one field of endeavor--there are just too many naturally good high school athletes, so to be truly exceptional almost requires a combination of good luck and extreme dedication.&nbsp; Conversely, there are plenty of very good lawyers who average 50 hours or 60 hours a week; relatively few of them reach the rarefied heights of the profession, but many of them do very well professionally.So yeah, I agree with the OP that min-maxing in the real world means intense dedication and focus to mastering one area of endeavor.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Cerebral Paladin, post: 5344514, member: 3448"] I think professional athletes are a perfect example, but hardly unique. In the real world, min-maxing (at least in a conventional sense) involves identifying your natural advantages, and then focusing on them to the exclusion of everything else to develop them as far as possible. This can be an effective strategy at accomplishing goals. Professional athletes, professional musicians (esp. "classical" professional musicians, as opposed to pop stars), professional chess players, the lawyers, IBankers, doctors, and business people who work 100 hour weeks every week and spend their free time on professional networking, the scientists who never leave their labs, etc. all frequently pursue this sort of approach. Athletes, musicians, and similar categories stand out because it is very hard to succeed at all without a truly impressive (but not necessarily healthy) focus on one field of endeavor--there are just too many naturally good high school athletes, so to be truly exceptional almost requires a combination of good luck and extreme dedication. Conversely, there are plenty of very good lawyers who average 50 hours or 60 hours a week; relatively few of them reach the rarefied heights of the profession, but many of them do very well professionally. So yeah, I agree with the OP that min-maxing in the real world means intense dedication and focus to mastering one area of endeavor. [/QUOTE]

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