I know lots of people who are incredibly impactful and are parents and/or work in academia
This doesn’t seem like much evidence one way or the other unless you can directly observe or infer the counterfactual.
If you take OP at face value, you’re traversing at least 6-7 OOMs within choices that can be made by the same individual, so it seems very plausible that someone can be observed to be extremely impactful on an absolute scale while still operating at only 10% of their personal best, or less. (also there is variance in impact across people for hard-to-control reasons, for example intelligence or nationality).
This doesn’t seem like much evidence one way or the other unless you can directly observe or infer the counterfactual.
If you take OP at face value, you’re traversing at least 6-7 OOMs within choices that can be made by the same individual, so it seems very plausible that someone can be observed to be extremely impactful on an absolute scale while still operating at only 10% of their personal best, or less. (also there is variance in impact across people for hard-to-control reasons, for example intelligence or nationality).