How To Become The Best In Your Field
Lessons on elite performance from Top Gun School.
Big Trouble In Vietnam
The year was 1968. The Vietnam War was in full swing. US fighter pilots were regularly engaging in dogfights with Vietnamese airmen. But the US wasn’t doing well.
The US was losing one of its own jets for every Vietnamese pilot it took down.
The Navy finally said “enough is enough”, and established the now famous Top Gun school (yes, that Top Gun school) to teach pilots how to fight more effectively and increase their success rate in dogfights.1
Compete With The Best In Your Field To Maximize Improvement
The navy picked its best pilots to act as the enemy during mock dog fights. Instead of missiles and bullets, their aircrafts were equipped with cameras to record each encounter.
Being the best in the Navy, the trainers usually won. And they became better over time because every few weeks a new class of students would enter Top Gun academy. After a few cohorts, the trainers became even better than when they started.
In kind, trainees were expected to push themselves to the edge of failure to learn what the planes were capable of.
Because Top Gun’s instructors were so skilled, it posed a big challenge, but also more opportunity for improvement.2
Your capacity for improvement is higher when you’re competing with the best in your field.
Do More Of What Works And Less Of What Doesn’t
But the real action occurred once the pilots landed, in what the navy called "after-action reports." During these sessions the trainers would grill the students:
What actions did you take?
Why did you choose to do that?
What were your mistakes?
What could you have done differently?
Over time the students learned to ask themselves the questions, since they preferred to address it upfront rather than getting grilled by their instructor with the same questions.
There’s two ways to improve your overall performance. By doing more of what works. And doing less of what doesn’t work.3
Each day they would take the previous session's lessons with them as they flew, internalizing what they learned until it became automatic.
Top Gun School’s Results
The results of Top Gun school’s method of training were remarkable.
US Navy pilots shot down 12.5x the number of Vietnamese fighter planes for every US Navy plane lost.
US fighters downed enemy jets in just over 100% of encounters, up from only 20% just a few years prior.
Post-Vietnam War, the US rolled out similar training exercises and US pilots became arguably the best in world.
How To Be The Best
If you want to be the best:
Compete with the best.
Reflect on how things are going.
Do more of what’s working well. And less of what doesn’t.
Perhaps you’re trying to become a better writer, like I am. Or you want to get better at sales.
Whatever your goal, you’ll continually reach new levels of performance with this formula.
The remarkable results of the US Navy’s Top Gun school speaks for itself. You can take these principles and apply them to your own life to maximize your growth.
—Grant Varner
The story of the Top Gun program is discussed in Peak (pp. 130–151).
Chart inspired by a post on Bramble’s blog: Improve Your Tutoring Through Deliberate Practice.
This chart is adapted from a visual originally shared on James Clear’s blog: Subtraction.