95%-ile isn't that good | Dan Luu

Appreciation

Importance

Date Added

10.26.25

TLDR

Becoming 95%-ile isn't that hard because most people don't actually practice or deliberately improve. No, seriously! Have you ever recorded yourself coding and studied it to improve? What about actually track how you're spending your time?

2 Cents

(Appreciation originally a 6, and as time passes, I appreciate this post so much more!!) The best part is the section on programming, which made the earlier somewhat abstract/unrelatable points click. I had a hard time believing that such highly ranked Overwatch players would repeat such stupid mistakes, and then when he pointed out repeating the same coding mistakes, the whole thing made sense.

Tags

Personal note: when doing math, after correcting a wrong answer or getting help on a solution, write a short reflection. It's actually astounding how many stupid mistakes I repeat when coding or learning math.

For example, how many times have I been stuck just asking Claude to fix something without dedicating 5 minutes to reading and understanding the code? (The answer is pretty high, given I've coined it the "slot machine trap."

Track my own time better, with actual metrics.

One thing to note here is that it's important to actually track what you're doing and not just guess at what you're doing. When I've recorded what people do and compare it to what they think they're doing, these are often quite different. It would generally be considered absurd to operate a complex software system without metrics or tracing, but it's normal to operate yourself without metrics or tracing, even though you're much more complex and harder to understand than the software you work on.

Anyway, this is sort of an odd post for me to write since I think that culturally, we care a bit too much about productivity in the U.S., especially in places I've lived recently (NYC & SF). But at a personal level, higher productivity doing work or chores doesn't have to be converted into more work or chores, it can also be converted into more vacation time or more time doing whatever you value.

And an interesting footnote:

note that, here, a skilled coach is someone who is skilled at coaching, not necessarily someone who is skilled at the activity. People who are skilled at the activity but who haven't explicitly been taught how to teach or spent a lot of time working on teaching are generally poor coaches.

(Featured in Ben Kuhn's favorite essays of life advice .)