As someone going into NSGY, I have asked myself this same 'sacrifice' question 100 times. It really depends on what exactly you want to be great at. I want to be an extremely competent surgeon and one of the go to guys in my country, so there's the clinical 'god'. The other side of it is the academic publication pusher, where you'll basically need to make insane contacts at an Ivy league residency to really boost your career.

So your first decision is picking between the clinical god or the academic god.

I want exactly what you want and i've realised that almost all of the extremely successful people sacrifice their personal time. It's either your with your family or you're at work, there's no sitting at home reading the newspaper, it's playing sports with the kids in the backyard or whatever.

So the real question is, are you prepared to give up all of your personal time for a large majority of your life? Also assuming you want to be a procedural god have any of your attendings said that you've got 'it'? I've been told i've got 'it' during several procedures and while in the OR which i've found mostly means reading what's going on and anticipating things or being in the right place at the right time. I know a lot of students struggle with being in the way etc.