I am having trouble thinking of situations where the only good outcome is being the top 1%. There are, to be sure, often power-law benefits to being exceptionally good, but to use your own example, being in the top 5% or 10% of wealth is nothing to sneeze at. It's all a spectrum.
With that said, I think you make some good points about the perspective people should have about competitive goals. Most contests are not strict meritocracies, and you are in for a lot of frustration if you assume that only effort matters when other slide by on their structural advantages. I would prefer to reframe the goal as 'work hard on what you have control over, as long as it provides some amount of benefit, and as long as you still care about the outcome.'
This wasn't to mean that ending up in the top percentile of whatever metric is a good outcome, simply that those who advocate the game and its rules will generally tell what is supposed to be valuable and praised as part of the game framing. My point wasn't to tell that taking blindly this or that outcome as a desirable one is advisable.
For the second paragraph, we seem really aligned on the developed points.
Yes. An interesting corollary is that we should pay close attention to what games we have an inherent advantage in, and double down. Much higher chances of reaping those power-law benefits. I speak, frankly, mostly to myself here: I am naturally pretty bad at almost all human skills (although I’ve of course worked hard to build up at the competencies required to be a functioning adult and partner.) But for the one or two things I am naturally good at, it all comes so very easily, it’s effortless and free and I have built my life around them.
With that said, I think you make some good points about the perspective people should have about competitive goals. Most contests are not strict meritocracies, and you are in for a lot of frustration if you assume that only effort matters when other slide by on their structural advantages. I would prefer to reframe the goal as 'work hard on what you have control over, as long as it provides some amount of benefit, and as long as you still care about the outcome.'