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Dating can be fun, but it's not easy. Meeting people is just one concern. Once you've met someone, then what? What do you build? Nothing, a simple friendship, or more? How do you set smart limits on physical involvement? Financial involvement? Individual responsibilities?
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Respected counselors, popular radio hosts, and bestselling authors Henry Cloud and John Townsend apply the principles described in their award-winning book Boundaries to matters of love and romance. Helping you bridge the pitfalls of dating, Boundaries in Dating unfolds a wise, biblical path to developing self-control, freedom, and intimacy in the dating process. Boundaries in Dating will help you to think, solve problems, and enjoy the journey of dating, increasing your abilities to find and commit to a marriage partner.
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Plus, check out Boundaries family collection of books dedicated to key areas of life — marriage, raising kids, parenting teens, and leadership. Workbooks and Spanish editions are also available.
Boundaries In Dating Book Pdf
Table of contents :
Table of Contents
New summaries (not in previous eBook editions) are highlighted in red
Introduction
Section 1: Success Mindset
Page Book
8 Mindset
9 Productivity Principle: Growth vs. Fixed Mindset
10 SuperBetter
11 One Small Step Can Change Your Life
12 The Compound Effect
13 Barking Up The Wrong Tree
14 Ego is the Enemy
15 12 Rules for Life
16 The ONE Thing
17 Essentialism
18 Productivity Principle: Positive ‘No’
19 Your One Word
20 The Dip
21 Grit
22 The Upside of Stress
23 Decisive
24 Smarter Faster Better
25 Principles
26 Designing Your Life
27 The Code of the Extraordinary Mind
28 Born for This
29 So Good They Can’t Ignore
30 Mastery
31 The Talent Code
32 Originals
33 Give & Take
34 How to Win Friends and Influence People
35 The Coaching Habit
36 Never Split the Difference
37 Productivity Principle: The Five‐Minute Favor
38 Extreme Ownership
Section 2: High Performance Habits
Page Book
38 Atomic Habits
39 High Performance Habits
40 The Rise of Superman
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41 Productivity Principle: The 4% Zone
42 Spark
43 Are You Fully Charged?
44 The Willpower Instinct
45 The Power of Full Engagement
46 Performing Under Pressure
47 10‐Minute Toughness
48 10% Happier
49 The Happiness Advantage
50 Drive
51 Rethinking Positive Thinking
52 The First 20 Hours
53 Make It Stick
54 A Mind for Numbers
55 Peak
56 The 4‐Hour Chef
57 How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
58 The Charisma Myth
59 Made to Stick
60 Presence
61 The 5 Second Rule
62 Hooked
63 Your Brain at Work
Section 3: Business Strategy
Page Book
64 The Personal MBA
65 Rework
66 Zero to One
67 Blue Ocean Strategy
68 Competing Against Luck
69 The Lean Startup
70 Sprint
71 Perennial Seller
72 To Sell Is Human
73 The E‐Myth Revisited
74 Anything you Want
Section 4: Execution
Page Book
76 The War of Art
77 Measure What Matters
78 Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
79 The 4 Disciplines of Execution
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80 When
81 Deep Work
82 Productivity Principle: Work = Intensity x Time
83 Productivity Principle: Predict to Perform
84 Productivity Principle: Process vs. Product
85 Little Bets
86 Eat That Frog!
87 Getting Things Done
88 The Checklist Manifesto
89 Productivity Principle: Batch Buckets
90 Tribe of Mentors
91 The 4‐Hour Workweek
92 How to Have a Good Day
Boundaries In Dating Workbook Pdf
Citation preview
Boundaries In Dating Workbook Free Pdf Downloads
Productivity Game PDF Package 75+ one‐page summaries of the best books on personal productivity By Nathan Lozeron www.ProductivityGame.com
Copyright © 2019 Lozeron Academy LLC All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.
eBook Edition: January 2019
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Table of Contents New summaries (not in previous eBook editions) are highlighted in red
Introduction Section 1: Success Mindset Page 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38
Book Mindset Productivity Principle: Growth vs. Fixed Mindset SuperBetter One Small Step Can Change Your Life The Compound Effect Barking Up The Wrong Tree Ego is the Enemy 12 Rules for Life The ONE Thing Essentialism Productivity Principle: Positive ‘No’ Your One Word The Dip Grit The Upside of Stress Decisive Smarter Faster Better Principles Designing Your Life The Code of the Extraordinary Mind Born for This So Good They Can’t Ignore Mastery The Talent Code Originals Give & Take How to Win Friends and Influence People The Coaching Habit Never Split the Difference Productivity Principle: The Five‐Minute Favor Extreme Ownership
Section 2: High Performance Habits Page 38 39 40
Book Atomic Habits High Performance Habits The Rise of Superman
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41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63
Productivity Principle: The 4% Zone Spark Are You Fully Charged? The Willpower Instinct The Power of Full Engagement Performing Under Pressure 10‐Minute Toughness 10% Happier The Happiness Advantage Drive Rethinking Positive Thinking The First 20 Hours Make It Stick A Mind for Numbers Peak The 4‐Hour Chef How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big The Charisma Myth Made to Stick Presence The 5 Second Rule Hooked Your Brain at Work
Section 3: Business Strategy Page 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74
Book The Personal MBA Rework Zero to One Blue Ocean Strategy Competing Against Luck The Lean Startup Sprint Perennial Seller To Sell Is Human The E‐Myth Revisited Anything you Want
Section 4: Execution Page 76 77 78 79
Book The War of Art Measure What Matters Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time The 4 Disciplines of Execution
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80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92
When Deep Work Productivity Principle: Work = Intensity x Time Productivity Principle: Predict to Perform Productivity Principle: Process vs. Product Little Bets Eat That Frog! Getting Things Done The Checklist Manifesto Productivity Principle: Batch Buckets Tribe of Mentors The 4‐Hour Workweek How to Have a Good Day
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Introduction “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” – Albert Einstein With a desire to thrive in a highly competitive marketplace, I’ve read dozens of books on personal productivity and distilled my insights into a series of one‐page PDF summaries. Each summary contains a list of proven principles and methods that you can use to reach your career goals. This Productivity Game PDF Package is a comprehensive guide on personal productivity that includes more than 75 one‐page PDF book summaries and productivity principles. The one‐page PDFs are organized into four sections: Success Mindset High Performance Habits Business Strategy Execution As you read through the various book summaries and productivity principles, you will gain a clear understanding of what it takes to thrive in today’s competitive marketplace. To aid the learning process, I’ve created a YouTube video playlist to match the sequence of book summaries presented in this package: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL38v62je9cXZuHv6WixrJr2zA2LJU0dYu (the YouTube playlist contains a video for each book summary, but not for each productivity principle – many productivity principles are exclusive to this package).
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Insights from Mindset by Carol Dweck Do you feel like you are constantly being judged? Do you go out of your way to ‘look smart’? If so, you’ve adopted what author Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset sees himself or herself and everyone around them as possessing a set amount of cognitive and physical ability. A fixed mindset thinks: “If I appear to be bad at something (school subject, sport, business skill, etc.), I’m haven’t been blessed with the gifts to do it well.” This belief seems innocent, but it ultimately leads to a life of fear, avoidance, and low interest for anything outside of your comfort zone. Why? If something is uncomfortable or hard, then you just don’t have the mental or physical capacity to do it. If it's hard and uncomfortable now, it will always be uncomfortable and hard for you. Luckily, you can change your mindset and learn to be more curious than afraid and sustain your interest and effort when things get hard. The first step to going from a fixed mindset (believing challenges are a threat) to a growth mindset (believing that challenges are a chance to grow your mental and physical abilities) is to realize the truth about your brain.
Over the past 40 years scientists have shown that we can change our brains and grow our cognitive abilities in three fundamental ways: You can physically grow sections of the brain Several years ago, before taxi drivers used GPS, brain researchers took brain imaging scans of experienced London taxi drivers. Researchers (Maguire, 2011) noticed that the more times a London taxi driver had spent driving a taxi in London, the larger a region of the brain associated with spatial awareness and memory (the hippocampus) had become. The brain scans revealed that the more demands London taxi drivers put on their brains (the more they had to navigate the challenging London road system), the more they were able to expand a region in the brain and do their job more effectively. You can speed up your brain circuits However, not all brain regions can physically expand, therefore, other brain regions need to make brain circuits faster. This is achieved through a process called 'myelination.' As I briefly touched on in my 'Deep Work' book summary, when you focus intensely on a single subject for a period of time, you start forming white sheathes on your brain cells call myelin. This myelin is like the insulation on the copper wires inside your home. A brain circuit with myelin can transmit information ten times faster than a brain circuit without myelin. You can re‐wire your brain One peer reviewed study (Taub, 1995) showed that when a person practices the guitar for thousands of hours, they activate more of their brain than novice players. When novice guitar players play the guitar, they only activate a region in their brain associated to a finger in their left hand (the hand they use to play different notes). However, when experienced guitar players play the guitar, they expand the activation of their brains to include regions associated with the fingers and palm of the left hand. It's like re‐wiring a house to make a light switch that used to only turn on a lamp in your living room, and now it turns on two or three additional lamps in the house.
Once you know the truth about your ability to grow, it makes sense to change the way you think about challenges:
When a fixed mindset person approaches a challenge, he or she thinks: “Will I look smart or stupid while doing this?” When a growth mindset person approaches a challenge, he or she thinks: “How might I learn and grow?” After a difficult challenge, a fixed mindset person will think, “I’m not smart enough to do this.” After a difficult challenge, a growth mindset person will think, “I’m not smart enough to do this, YET.”
By making the transition from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset your story goes from: 'I am who I am. My personality, my intelligence, and my talent are fixed.' To “I am a constant learner. My abilities are constantly evolving and growing.”
“Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.” ‐ Carol Dweck
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Productivity Principle: Growth vs. Fixed Mind-set Inspired by the book Little Bets by Peter Sims
When experiencing failure…
Fixed mind-set people believe: “I am who I am, no amount of effort will change that.” Growth mind-set people believe: “With enough focused effort I can learn anything. My ability and intelligence can grow.” We adopt a fixed mind-set when we identify with the praise that people give us (ex: “you’re so smart!”).
A Fixed Mind-set has 3 major downsides: “Those favouring a fixed mind-set believe that abilities and intelligence are set in stone, that we have an innate set of talents, which creates an urgency to repeatedly prove those abilities. They perceive failures or setbacks as threatening their sense of worth or their identity.”– Peter Sims.
When everything threatens to disprove our ability, we experience chronic stress. Psychologist Carol Dweck gave a group of fixed mind-set students and growth mind-set students the choice between an easy task and a challenging task. She discovered that 90% of growth mind-set students chose the difficult task and a majority of fixed mind-set students picked the easy task. When we adopt a fixed mindset, “we block ourselves psychologically and choke off a host of opportunities to learn. In placing so much emphasis on minimizing errors or the risk of any kind of failure, we shut off chances to identify the insights that drive creative progress.” – Peter Sims
Those who believe that ability and intelligence can improve with effort (growth mind-set) are less likely to experience these three side-effects because failure doesn’t mean they are doomed. It just means they need to improve.
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Re-label:
2.
Recall:
How to adopt a Growth Mind-set:
Science has proven that our intelligence and our ability are NOT fixed. With enough focused effort, we can dramatically change our brain. But it all starts by adopting growth mind-set.
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Insights from SuperBetter by Jane McGonigal “When we play a game, we volunteer to be challenged. No one forces us to try to solve a game’s puzzles, or defeat another team, or reach a certain score. Because we are fully in control of whether we accept a game’s challenge, we don’t experience anxiety or depression when we play— despite the very real possibility of loss or defeat. Our primary experience is of agency, not of threat.” – Jane McGonigal
4 steps to develop a ‘gameful’ mindset at work: Embark on a quest of self-efficacy
'Self-efficacy means having confidence in the concrete skills and abilities required to solve specific problems or achieve particular goals. It is usually context-specific: you might have high self-efficacy at work but low selfefficacy about public speaking or losing weight. Self-efficacy is the crucial difference between having lots of motivation but failing to follow through, and successfully converting motivation into consistent and effective action. With high self-efficacy, you are more likely to take actions that help you reach your goals, even if those actions are difficult or painful. You also engage with difficult problems longer, without giving up. But with low self-efficacy, no matter how motivated you are, you’re less likely to take positive action— because you lack belief in your ability to make a difference in your own life.” – Jane McGonigal To build you self-efficacy, seek out and complete quests - simple, daily actions that get you closer to reaching a bigger goal. Just like a hero in a video game, you can use each quest as an opportunity to gain experience points and develop new skills. These experience points (XP) give you the confidence to take on larger and larger quests.
Keep score
'Keeping score will highlight your progress …and to get a deeper understanding of your own play. This has been true of games as long as humans have played them. In fact, my favorite argument in favor of personal scorekeeping was written over one hundred years ago, in a 1914 issue of Baseball Magazine. “The Pleasure and Profit of Keeping Score” was an editorial that strongly encouraged baseball fans to fill out their own scorecards during professional games. Track every run, hit, and error, it argued, in order to better understand, remember, and enjoy the game: Most spectators watch a great play with an interest, which, however intense, is forgotten in the thriller of the next inning. They leave the grounds with a hazy idea of a rather enjoyable afternoon, whose main features are scarce refreshed by reading press accounts of them some hours later. Keeping score remedies all this. It burns the play into memory. It greatly increases the spectator’s knowledge of the game. . . . And, best of all, it is a pleasure in itself.” – Jane McGonigal Keep track of the experience points that you gain throughout the day (i.e. the relative difficulty of the tasks that you complete). For example, journal in the morning: 10XP, read 10 pages of a book: 12 XP, draft a proposal: 25 XP (XP = experience points).
Recruit allies
“Having social support makes it easier for us to achieve our goals. It’s not just that our friends and family help us directly by offering their time, advice, or resources. Medical research shows that our bodies respond to social support in dramatic ways, getting stronger and more resilient every time someone helps us.” – Jane McGonigal Call a co-worker to ask for help. Ask a friend to join you at a coffee shop to brainstorm ideas for your next project. Tell your spouse about the challenges you’re facing at work.
Search for power-ups: Examples of Power-ups: “Look out a window for thirty seconds (mental). Hold my husband’s hand for six seconds (social). Eat ten walnuts, because they’re good for my brain (physical). Send a text message to my mom (social). Listen to a song from one of my favorite Bollywood movies (mental). Do ten push-ups even if I’m exhausted (physical).” – Jane McGonigal
“You are stronger than you know. You are surrounded by potential allies. You are the hero of your own story.” - Jane McGonigal
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Insights from One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer Ph.D. “Kaizen is an effective, enjoyable way to achieve a specific goal, but it also extends a more profound challenge: to meet life’s constant demands for change by seeking out continual—but always small—improvement.” – Robert Maurer Ph.D. What is kaizen? A Japanese practice of taking small steps to continuously improve a process or product.
Why is kaizen an effective personal development strategy? 'Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.' – Robert Maurer Ph.D. Setting a big goal is exciting. But it’s also scary. The larger the change we want to make, the more fear we experience (fear of the unknown and fear of failure). When a region of the brain called the amygdala detects fear, it triggers our fight-or-flight response in the body. When our fight-or-flight response is active, we instinctively seek out comfort and find it hard to concentrate on our long-term goals. However, when we use kaizen and take embarrassingly small steps towards a goal, we tiptoe past the amygdala's fear detection system and avoid activating the flight-or-fight response. These small steps eliminate a fear of failure and remove the urge to distract ourselves. The smaller the steps we take, the quicker we lay new neural networks in the brain and develop positive habits. Dr. Maurer says with kaizen 'your resistance to change begins to weaken. Where once you might have been daunted by change, your new mental software will have you moving toward your ultimate goal at a pace that may well exceed your expectations.' Take large steps towards change --> Feel fear --> Activate fight-or-flight response --> Seek short-term relief/comfort --> Failure Take very small steps --> Bypass fear --> Reduce the urge for immediate comfort --> Take action and build constructive habits --> Success
Two counterintuitive ways to use Kaizen to achieve large goals Ask small questions “Your brain loves questions and won’t reject them . . . unless the question is so big it triggers fear. Questions such as ‘How am I going to get thin (or rich, or married) by the end of the year?’ or ‘What new product will bring in a million more dollars for the company?’ are awfully big and frightening.’” – Robert Maurer Ph.D. If you’ve ever tackled a big creative project, like writing a speech, you've experienced the destructive power of a BIG question. By asking: 'How can I write a speech that leaves my audience spellbound?' you start feeling the pressure to perform. You fidget, you check Facebook, you grab another cup of coffee...every time you attempt to start writing you draw a blank. Now imagine you asked yourself: 'What's one idea I could share?” or “What's one story I could share?” or “What's one thing I want my audience to do differently as a result of this speech?' After asking yourself these questions over and over again you’d come up with ideas. Soon the words would start pouring out! Without the fear of a big question your brain is eager to come up with creative ways to make progress. 'If you are trying to reach a specific goal, ask yourself every day: What is one small step I could take toward reaching my goal? Consider writing your question on a Post-it note and then sticking it onto your nightstand (or dashboard, or coffeepot).' – Robert Maurer Ph.D.
Focus on small intermediate rewards When Karan Pryor, author of 'Don't shoot the dog,' was attending graduate school, she found it hard to get to class after a long day of work. Going to class required a one hour commute, three hour lecture and another long hour back home in the cold. Thinking of going to school everyday to get her Ph.D. filled her with anxiety. 'Instead (of focusing on the entire trip), Pryor broke her journey down into a series of distinct segments—walking to the subway station, changing trains, taking the stairs to her classroom. Each time she completed a segment, she allowed herself a square of chocolate. In this way she was training herself to associate each segment of the journey with pleasure. 'In a few weeks,' she says, 'I was able to get all the way to class without either the chocolate or the internal struggle.'– Robert Maurer Ph.D. 'Small rewards are the perfect encouragement. Not only are they inexpensive and convenient, but they also stimulate the internal motivation required for lasting change.' – Robert Maurer Ph.D. To achieve an audacious goal simply focus on the smallest step you can take to make progress. While the steps you take may be small, the change you'll experience won't be.
“Improve by 1% a day, and in 70 days you’re twice as good.” – Alan Weiss, Ph.D.
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Insights from The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy “The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. What’s most interesting about this process to me is that, even though the results are massive, the steps, in the moment, don’t feel significant. Whether you’re using this strategy for improving your health, relationships, finances, or anything else for that matter, the changes are so subtle, they’re almost imperceptible. These small changes offer little or no immediate result, no big win, no obvious I-told-you-so payoff. So why bother?” – Darren Hardy Resist the urge to see immediate results and receive short-term payoffs. Instead, construct a daily habit of constant improvements to generate the compound effect in your life and produce incredible results.
3 Ways to Stay on the Compound Curve Choice Awareness: “Our choices can be our best friend or our worst enemy. They can deliver us to our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away. In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you. Every decision, no matter how slight, alters the trajectory of your life.” – Darren Hardy Most of us are sleepwalking through our daily choices. We make choices that align with the demands of others without realizing those choices don’t align with our ultimate goal. “The first step toward change is awareness. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination. Become very conscious of every choice you make today so you can begin to make smarter choices moving forward.” – Darren Hardy Be conscious of your choices by keeping a pad of paper and pen nearby to write down every choice you make in a particular area of life that you want to improve. At the end of the day, look at the list and ask yourself: Are these choices consistent with my core values? Are they in alignment with who I want to become? Cross out any choice that didn’t move you closer to where you ultimately want to be. Over time, you’ll gain awareness of your moment-to-moment choices and consistently make choices that move you towards your ultimate goal.
Why Power: Most of use wouldn't walk a plank between two high rise buildings for $20 dollars. But Darren says: 'If your child was on the opposite building, and that building was on fire, would you walk the length of the plank to save him? Without question and immediately—you’d do it, twenty dollars or not.' – Darren Hardy Your ‘WHY Power’ is the internal drive you need to get started and take massive action. Your WHY can take two forms: what you love and what you hate. Your why doesn't have to be noble, it just has to move you.
LOVE: I am doing this to provide a better future for ____________. HATE: I am doing this to prove ____________ wrong OR I am doing this to defeat ____________
'America had the British. Luke had Darth Vader. Rocky had Apollo Creed. Twenty-something’s have ‘The Man.’' – Darren Hardy
Bookend Routines: 'The key to becoming world-class in your endeavors is to build your performance around world-class routines. It can be difficult, even futile, to predict or control what will show up in the middle of your workday. But you can almost always control how your day starts and ends. I have routines for both.' – Darren Hardy The moments after we wake up and the moments before we go to bed are within our control – we must use these moments to direct our lives.
Morning Routine: Review your vision/mission, set the top priority for the day, read something positive and instructional, and do work to advance your most important project. Nighttime Routine: Reflect on the choices you’ve made throughout the day, be grateful for the wins you experienced, and get curious about how you can improve tomorrow by asking yourself: How could I have made today even better?
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” - Albert Einstein
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Insights from Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker “We all know the good life means more than money…but none of us is exactly sure what those other things are or how to get them…We all know love and friends and other stuff are important too…but they’re a heck of a lot more complicated and we can’t just have them delivered to our house by Amazon Prime. Evaluating life by one metric turns out to be a key problem. We can’t use just one yardstick to measure a successful life.” ‐ Eric Barker If money isn’t the only measurement of success, what else should we be measuring? 4 Subjective Measurements of Success Achievement: Do you feel like you’re winning? To feel like you’re winning you need to consistently accomplish meaningful goals. Start by setting and hitting small but meaningful goals each day. I find that writing 500 words for my next video script or reading three chapters of a book gives me a feeling of achievement and sense that I’m winning. Hitting small goals like this every day leads to a larger achievement (like writing a book or running a successful YouTube channel) that I can look back on and be proud of.
Legacy: Do you feel like you’re influencing others in a positive way? To feel like you’re influencing others in a positive way you need to pass on your values and help others find success. If you’re a parent, you might generate a feeling of influence by taking the time to teach and instill your values in your children, who go on to pass their values on to their children.
Significance: Do you feel like you’re needed by the people closest to you? To feel like you’re needed you need to be there for the people that matter most to you. You want to find a way to be valuable to the people around you so that you will be missed when you’re gone. I felt needed in my previous career when I refined my organization and presentation skills so that my team could rely on me to provide clarity on the project we were working on.
Happiness: Do you feel like you’re enjoying life? To feel like you’re enjoying life you need to find a way to enjoy the day‐to‐day experience of life and be grateful for what you have. Make a habit of stopping during the day and appreciating one small thing that’s going well. Be playful and listen to music during the day to experience happiness without the needing to attain specific results.
What can you do to consistently generate a feeling that you’re winning, influencing, needed, and enjoying life?
Put yourself in environments that leverage your intensifiers. Intensifiers are qualities that, on average, appear to be negative but become strengths in specific environments.
Winston Churchill’s paranoia and stubbornness are negative qualities in a peacetime environment, but signature strengths in wartime. Michael Phelps’s body is far from perfect. His short legs and long upper body make him an awkward runner on land. But in the pool, his awkward physical qualities enabled him to become the most successful swimmer of all time. Asperger’s is a typically a negative condition in most work settings, but a strength as a tech entrepreneur. A person with a mild form of Asperger’s is more likely to challenge social norms and not feel intimidated by other people, two qualities that every successful tech entrepreneur needs.
To identify your intensifiers, create a mind‐map of your so‐called flaws; a list of attributes that most people find odd and negative. After you've generated a collection of attributes, try to identify specific contexts where each attribute could be considered a strength. Some flaws, like chronic procrastination, won't be very useful in any situation. However, a few so‐called 'flaws' can become your signature strengths in the right environment. When you develop and leverage these signature strengths, you maximize the rate of progress you can make towards meaningful goals and will often feel like you're winning. By developing and leveraging your signature strengths, you'll stand out and have a better opportunity to influence others. Your signature strengths will make you uniquely valuable, which will ensure that you always feel needed. And according to a recent Gallup study, when you routinely leverage your signature strengths, you'll smile more often, be less stressed, and enjoy life. All of which leads to a satisfying and successful life. “What’s the most important thing to remember when it comes to success? One word: alignment. Success is not the result of any single quality; it’s about alignment between who you are and where you choose to be. The right skill in the right role. A good person surrounded by other good people.” – Eric Barker
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Insights from Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday What is Ego? “It’s that petulant child inside every person, the one that chooses getting his or her way over anything or anyone else. The need to be better than, more than, recognized for, far past any reasonable utility—that’s ego. It’s the sense of superiority and certainty that exceeds the bounds of confidence and talent.” – Ryan Holiday
The 3 Stages of Life Where Ego is the Enemy Aspiring
Succeeding
Failing
“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” - Lao Tzu Ego is the enemy because it prefers talking over doing.
“As success arrives, like it does for a team that has just won a championship, ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken the will that made us win in the first place.” – Ryan Holiday
“It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.
Ego is the enemy because it convinces us of our ‘greatness’ and erodes our will to work for continued success.
“If success is ego intoxication, then failure can be a devastating ego blow—turning slips into falls and little troubles into great unravelings. We have many names for these problems: Sabotage. Unfairness. Adversity. Trials. Tragedy.” – Ryan Holiday
Our inbox, our iPhones, the comments section on the bottom of the article you just read. Blank spaces, begging to be filled in with thoughts, with photos, with stories. With what we’re going to do, with what things should or could be like, what we hope will happen.” — Ryan Holiday
“We stop learning, we stop listening, and we lose our grasp on what matters. We become victims of ourselves and the competition. Sobriety, open-mindedness, organization, and purpose—these are the great stabilizers. They balance out the ego and pride that comes with achievement and recognition.” – Ryan Holiday
Ego is the enemy because it avoids responsibility and casts blame when experiencing failure. Ego erodes relationships and erases progress by trying to save face. “The way through, the way to rise again, requires a reorientation and increased selfawareness. We don’t need pity—our own or anyone else’s—we need purpose, poise, and patience.” – Ryan Holiday
How to Prevent Ego from Ruining Your Life FIND A PLUS: Who is better than me?
When you achieve noteworthy success, you need a dose of humility: Find people who have achieved greater success. Remind yourself of the ultimate goal in life: your greater purpose. Reflect on the immensity of the world around you (remember how small you are). There is always someone better than you in some way. Never forget that, and never stop learning.
FIND A MINUS: Who can I teach?
When you encounter failure, the ego wants to have a pity party and seek revenge, both of which slow your progress. Instead, identity how you can use the failure to teach others: Capture the lesson in a book or journal that you’ll share with your kids one day. Conduct a ‘lessons learned’ team meeting, and share three things you could have done differently. Write a blog post of your failure and share it on social media or online forum. When you force yourself to teach others about your failure, you’re forced to adopt an objective view of failure.
FIND AN EQUAL: Who do I want to be like?
When you aspire to do great things, you need to avoid being caught up in what everyone else does. Only be concerned with what a few people you respect and aspire to be like think. Find someone who challenges and inspires you. Spend your time around people with similar goals (your inner circle; your mastermind). Pay attention to the criticism within your circle, but ignore the criticism from outside of your circle. The ego prefers to talk about what it’s going to do, rather than actually do it. The pressure to keep up with people in your circle forces you to talk less and do more. Develop a strong peer group that keeps you accountable.
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Insights from 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson Over the course of my career, I've experienced long periods of uncertainty and self‐doubt. To prevent these chaotic periods in my work life, I picked up Jordan Peterson's book to find rules I can rely on to regain order and a sense of certainty. Here are two rules that I find to be the strongest antidotes to chaos:
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday You and I have an innate need to compare ourselves to other people. If you notice that you're more skilled and successful than others around you, your brain will release a hormone called serotonin. When you have serotonin in your blood, you feel confident and in control of your life. But the instant you mind notices someone who threatens your status in society and makes you look incompetent, your brain restricts serotonin. You start doubting yourself and feel a low sense of self‐worth. Now that you are connected to billions of people online, it doesn't take long for your brain to notice ways in which you compare unfavorably to other people. You think you're a good guitar player? There are dozens of exceptional guitar players on YouTube that will make you look completely incompetent...You're proud of graduating from that local college with a business degree? Your friend just posted a photo on Facebook of him graduating from Harvard with an MBA. When you're exposed to so many people that are better than you, and the gap between you and someone else is huge, you're more inclined to lose hope, stop taking action, and let your life slip into chaos. The best way to prevent this from happening is to stop comparing yourself to who someone else is today and start comparing yourself to who you were yesterday. I like to see every day that I've lived as a different version of myself (like a separate person living out each day), isolate who I was yesterday and ask myself: 'Was I the best possible version of myself yesterday?” I then rate yesterday's version of myself on a scale of 1‐10 (10 being my ideal self). If I'm slightly better than who I was yesterday, I'll know that I'm improving my skills and increasing my status in society. This realization will provide me with a steady dose of serotonin and stop my downward spiral into chaos.
Tell the truth ‐ or at least, don't lie The amount you can improve on yesterday will be limited by how truthful you are willing to be today. Until you face the truth, any improvement you make on who you were yesterday will be meaningless. Instead of moving forward, you'll just be moving sideways. To make forward progress you need to acknowledge what truth you're avoiding and what uncomfortable conversations you need to have with yourself and others. Author Tim Ferriss once said, 'A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.' Having an uncomfortable conversation is like having a controlled fire to burn off the deadwood in a forest so that the deadwood doesn't build up and lead to a larger fire that destroys all the trees in the forest and ruins the soil. After reading this chapter in Peterson's book, I now ask myself a second question when assessing who I was yesterday. Each morning I ask myself: 'Did I do my best to tell the truth yesterday?' If I agreed to do something just to avoid an uncomfortable conversation or pretended to know something when I, in fact, didn't know what I was talking about, I'll rate myself a 1 or a 2 on a scale of 1‐10. Enough 1’s or 2’s in a row provide me with the motivation to speak up, have uncomfortable conversations, and stop my downward spiral into chaos. “If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.” ‐ Jordan Peterson
“Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully...” ‐ Jordan Peterson
“So why not call this a book of “guidelines,” a far more relaxed, user‐friendly and less rigid sounding term than “rules”? Because these really are rules. And the foremost rule is that you must take responsibility for your own life. Period.” ‐ Dr. Norman Doidge, MD
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Insights from The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan “Success demands singleness of purpose. You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects. It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.” – Gary Keller (all quotes below are by Gary Keller)
3 Commitments that Reveal your ONE Thing “What ONE Thing can I do, such that by doing it, makes everything else easier or unnecessary?” To find the answer, remember your M.A.P.:
astery
What can I do to continuously improve? “When you can see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel accessible and attainable. Most assume mastery is an end result, but at its core, mastery is a way of thinking, a way of acting, and a journey you experience. When what you’ve chosen to master is the right thing, then pursuing mastery of it will make everything else you do either easier or no longer necessary.”
ccountability
What am I committed to? “Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success. As such, accountability is most likely the most important of the three commitments. Without it, your journey down the path of mastery will be cut short the moment you encounter a challenge. Without it, you won’t figure out how to break through the ceilings of achievement you’ll hit along the way.”
assion
What result would I do anything to achieve? “When you’re in search of extraordinary results, accepting an OK Plateau or any other ceiling of achievement isn’t okay when it applies to your ONE Thing.”
Recall what you’re trying to master, what you’re accountable for, and what big audacious goal drives you to identify your ONE thing amidst a sea of many ‘things.’
2 Beliefs that Distract you from your ONE Thing I just can’t say 'no'...
“Someone once told me that one ‘yes’ must be defended over time by 1,000 ‘nos.’” The road to doing too many things and spreading yourself thin is paved by saying ‘yes’ too quickly and ‘no’ not soon enough. “Peers will ask for your advice and help. Co-workers will want you on their team. Friends will request your assistance. Strangers will seek you out. Invitations and interruptions will come at you from everywhere imaginable. How you handle all of this determines the time you’re able to devote to your ONE Thing and the results you’re ultimately able to produce.”
After you establish your three commitments, embrace the discomfort of saying 'no' to people in order to say ‘yes’ to your ONE thing.
It all needs to get done (it's all equally important)...
When your to-do lists get long, you probably get the feeling that you’re falling behind. The fear of falling behind makes everything seems urgent AND important. “When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business. Long hours spent checking off a to-do list and ending the day with a full trash can and a clean desk are not virtuous and have nothing to do with success.” “A not-so-funny thing happens along the way to extraordinary results. Untidiness. Unrest. Disarray. Disorder. Messes are inevitable when you focus on just one thing. While you whittle away on your most important work, the world doesn’t sit and wait. It stays on fast forward and things just rack up and stack up while you bear down on a singular priority.”
After establishing your three commitments, embrace a little chaos, and stay true to your ONE thing. Remember what Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke once said: “The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.”
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Insights from Essentialism by Greg McKeown “Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying ‘yes’ too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” - Josh Billings Warren Buffett became the most successful investor of all time by being hyper selective. He owes 90% of his wealth to just 10 investments. For every 100 opportunities that comes his way, he says no to 99 of them. Peter Drucker, the greatest management consultant in the last 100 years, once said, “People are effective because they say ‘no,’ because they say, ‘this isn’t for me.’ ’’ We are all presented with ‘good opportunities’ during our lifetime, but which of those opportunities are truly essential to our lives? “A non-essentialist thinks almost everything is essential. An essentialist thinks almost everything is non-essential.” - Greg McKeown “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” - John Maxwell
Discern the essential from the non-essential (4 habits): Evaluate the trade-offs
To be one of the best airlines, CEO Herb Kelleher made deliberate trade-offs that allowed him to strategically say ‘yes’ to things that would differentiate Southwest from other airlines and secure its position on top. “We just say yes because it is an easy reward, we run the risk of having to later say no to a more meaningful one.” - Greg McKeown Each choice has a trade-off. When we say yes to one thing, we are saying no to another. The next time you want to say yes to an opportunity just remember what other opportunities you are saying no to. “We can try to avoid the reality of trade-offs, but we can’t escape them. Trade-offs are not something to be ignored or decried. They are something to be embraced and made deliberately, strategically, and thoughtfully.” - Greg McKeown
Set boundaries “Nonessentialists tend to think of boundaries as constraints or limits, things that get in the way of their hyperproductive life. To a Nonessentialist, setting boundaries is evidence of weakness. Essentialists, on the other hand, see boundaries as empowering. They recognize that boundaries protect their time from being hijacked and often free them from the burden of having to say no to things that further others’ objectives instead of their own.” - Greg McKeown Create black and white rules, like “I don’t take calls between 7-10am, sorry,” or “I don’t check email after 6pm. If it’s something urgent, you’ll need to call me.” People will initially challenge your boundaries, but overtime, people will respect your boundaries. With the right boundaries in place, you can prevent the non-essential from creeping into your life.
Dare to say ‘No’ “We feel guilty. We don’t want to let someone down. We are worried about damaging the relationship. But these emotions muddle our clarity. They distract us from the reality of the fact that either we can say no and regret it for a few minutes, or we can say yes and regret it for days, weeks, months, or even years…Since becoming an Essentialist I have found it almost universally true that people respect and admire those with the courage of conviction to say no.” - Greg McKeown Develop the courage to say ‘no’ by remembering what you are saying ‘yes’ to: “No, I don’t want to take on another project because I want to ensure my current project is a huge success.” “No, I don’t want to go out for drinks because I want to spend time with my family.”
Schedule time to journal
Rushing around all day trying to get things done causes us to lose perspective. The more stress we accumulate during the day, the more we mistake non-essential things as urgent and important. To prevent the non-essential from creeping into our lives, we need to schedule a time where we can disconnect and renew our outlook on life. A reliable way to regain perspective is journaling. Journaling allows us to get the petty stuff down on paper so we can start focusing on the bigger picture. By spending a few minutes journal each day, we increase our introspection and start to question why we do what we do. “Being a journalist of your own life will force you to stop hyper-focusing on all the minor details and see the bigger picture.” - Greg McKeown
“Our highest priority is to protect our ability to prioritize.” - Greg McKeown
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Productivity Principle: The Positive ‘No’
Inspired by the book Essentialism by Greg McKweon & the co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, William Ury
Why do we say ‘Yes’ when we want to say ‘No’? We forget our purpose “When we are unclear about our real purpose in life— in other words, when we don’t have a clear sense of our goals, our aspirations, and our values— we make up our own social games.” – Greg Mckeown. Without a clear purpose we’ll default to playing petty social games that provide little meaning to our life. We fear social awkwardness “The fact is, we as humans are wired to want to get along with others. After all, thousands of years ago when we all lived in tribes of hunter gatherers, our survival depended on it. And while conforming to what people in a group expect of us— what psychologists call normative conformity— is no longer a matter of life and death, the desire is still deeply ingrained in us.” – Greg Mckeown
How can we develop the courage to say ‘No’? We need to see ‘No’ in a new and empowering way: A. When we say ‘No,’ we’re actually saying ‘Yes’ to a life of meaning. Each external ‘No’ is an inward ‘Yes.’ Those inward ‘Yes’s’ strengthen our commitment to our purpose/priorities, defining who we are and what we stand for. B.
When we say ‘No,’ we’re actually saying ‘No’ to a request, not a person. “Everyone is selling something— an idea, a viewpoint, an opinion— in exchange for your time. Simply being aware of what is being sold allows us to be more deliberate in deciding whether we want to buy it…we forget that denying the request is not the same as denying the person. Only once we separate the decision from the relationship can we make a clear decision and then separately find the courage and compassion to communicate it.” – Greg Mckeown
C.
When we say ‘No,’ we’re trading short-term popularity for long-term respect. “(W)hen the initial annoyance or disappointment or anger wears off, the respect kicks in. When we push back effectively, it shows people that our time is highly valuable. It distinguishes the professional from the amateur... learn to say no firmly, resolutely, and yet gracefully. Because once we do, we find, not only that our fears of disappointing or angering others were exaggerated, but that people actually respect us more…I have found it almost universally true that people respect and admire those with the courage of conviction to say no.” – Greg Mckeown
What’s the best way we can say ‘No’ without damaging a relationship? We need to frame our ‘No’ as a ‘Positive No’: 1.
Start with a personal ‘Yes’ by stating a personal priority. “I’m currently working hard to finish ____” OR “I’ve set the ambitious goal of completing ____, within the next ____.”
2.
Continue by stating the conflict with our personal priority. “Because of that, I need to say no to all requests at this time.” OR “For that reason, I need to let go of a lot of things and devote my time and attention to doing the best to successful complete ____.”
3.
Finish by showing that we still care and offer to help out in a small way. “Here are a few resources that I found to help your ____ succeed.” OR “Although I can’t assist you with this project I can introduce you to someone who can.”
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Insights from Your One Word by Evan Carmichael 'There is one word that defines who you are, connects all the things in your life that make you come alive, and will help you escape the chains of mediocrity.' – Evan Carmichael Your One Word is what you stand for. It’s a core value that you use to make important decisions. Discovering your One Word is essential if you want to build a great company or product.
Why? Your One Word is a steady source of motivation Anytime you try doing something great, you'll encounter a dip. It’s a time when you feel like giving up because you're not getting the results you expected, and you’re no longer getting encouragement from others. What pulls you through these dips is remembering why you do what you do, the reason for your struggle. Your One Word is that reason. And because it's so short, it's easy to remember when times get tough.
Your One Word makes it easy for people to talk about you “It's a noisy world. We're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. And so, we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.' – Steve Jobs While Steve Job's was running Apple, his focus on 'elegance' was apparent. It made it easy for people to tell the difference between an Apple computer and every other computer on the market. When you build your business around One Word that is NOT ‘money’ or ‘profit’, you develop a competitive advantage by establishing an emotional connection with a select group of people who identify with your One Word. 'When you stand for something important, something people feel connected to, something people are proud to be a part of, and you make it easy for them to share because they only have to remember One Word, then referrals start to flow.' – Evan Carmichael
How do I find my One Word? Generate a list of answers to the following questions:
Constants
Favorite Things What are my favorite books and what do they have in common? ________________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________
What interest(s) have been a constant theme in my life? _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________
What are my favorite movies and what do they have in common? ________________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________
What do I never seem to never get bored of? _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________
Personality Traits Of the people I enjoy being around, what personality traits do they have in common? ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________
Your One Word: ______________
Of the people I dread being around, what traits do they share, and what is the opposite of that? ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ What words do each of the three areas have in common?
When you've narrowed it down to One Word, remind yourself of your One Word throughout the day, and observe what effect it has. Does it inspire you to take action? Does it allow you to make decisions easily? If not, keep searching for the One Word that does. 19
Insights from The Dip by Seth Godin “If You’re Not Going to Get to #1, You Might as Well Quit Now” - Seth Godin There is a high opportunity cost of not investing your time and effort in becoming the best . “We reward the product or the song or the organization or the employee that is number one. The rewards are heavily skewed, so much so that it’s typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the benefit of #100. WHY? People don’t have a lot of time and don’t want to take a lot of risks. If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer of the navel, you’re not going to mess around by going to a lot of doctors. You’re going to head straight for the “top guy,” the person who’s ranked the best in the world. Why screw around if you get only one chance?” - Seth Godin
Being the BEST in the WORLD is more accessible than you think. “Best as in: best for them (a customer or an employer), right now, based on what they believe and what they know. And in the world as in: their world, the world they have access to. So if I’m looking for a freelance copy editor, I want the best copy editor in English, who’s available, who can find a way to work with me at a price I can afford. That’s my best in the world. (And) the world is getting smaller because the categories are getting more specialized. I can now find the best gluten-free bialys available by overnight shipping. I can find the best clothing-optional resort in North America with six clicks of a mouse.” - Seth Godin
Now let's say you quit most things and focus your time on becoming the best in a niche field or micro-market. At first it’s exciting: you’re getting lots of positive feedback and seeing results. But eventually your “beginner” technique stops generating results and you’re forced to endure the long slog of learning “expert” techniques. Your results DIP and the excitement wears off. At this point you want to quit and try something else. “Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested...The people who set out to make it through the Dip—the people who invest the time and the energy and the effort to power through the Dip—those are the ones who become the best in the world.” - Seth Godin
3 Ways to Get Through a Dip ecide when you’ll quit, in advance
“Quitting when you’re panicked is dangerous and expensive. The best quitters are the ones who decide in advance when they’re going to quit.” – Seth Godin Before entering a Dip, ask yourself: “How much time and money am I willing to sacrifice? How much short-term discomfort am I willing to endure?” Based on these limits, are you likely to get through the Dip? If yes, proceed and only quit if you’re pre-defined quitting limits have been exceeded OR something fundamental has changed.
nfluence a market The odds of successfully influencing an individual (changing the mind of a manager or client) are quite low. After a few failed attempts at influencing an individual, persistence turns into pestering and the individual will resist all future influencing efforts. However, the odds of successfully influencing a market are quite high. Although some people will ignore you (or even reject you), there are still people in the market who haven’t heard of you. You can you use your failed attempts to improve your solution and influence another area of the market.
lace your focus on (small) progress “To succeed, to get to that light at the end of the tunnel, you’ve got to make some sort of forward progress, no matter how small…but it needs to be more than a mantra, more than just “surviving is succeeding.” The challenge, then, is to surface new milestones in areas where you have previously expected to find none.” – Seth Godin.
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Insights from Grit by Angela Duckworth What does it mean to be ‘Gritty’? “Grit is NOT at all about stubbornly pursuing—at all costs and ad infinitum—every single low-level goal on your list. Sure, you should try hard—even a little longer than you might think necessary. But don’t beat your head against the wall attempting to follow through on something that is, merely, a means to a more important end.” – Angela Duckworth
Gritty people are fixed on high-level pursuits but flexible on low-level goals, like the daily to-do list. Gritty people know the 'Why?' behind everything they do. Gritty live life as a marathon, not a sprint. Gritty are stubborn, but not stupid. Like a toddler learning to walk, gritty people don’t waste time being ashamed or feeling anxious because they are too busy seeking feedback and improving. When a gritty person gets a rejection slip, encounters a setback, or reaches a dead end, they are disappointed, even heartbroken. But not for long. Gritty people not only put in more hours than the next person, but they also fill their hours with intense undistracted focus. Gritty people embrace boredom and avoid environments of distraction.
How to Grow Your Grit 'Learning to stick to something is a life skill that we all have to develop.' – Angela Duckworth
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Insights from The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal “It turns out that how you think about stress is one of those core beliefs that can affect your health, happiness, and success. Your stress mind-set shapes everything from the emotions you feel during a stressful situation to the way you cope with stressful events. That, in turn, can determine whether you thrive under stress or end up burned out and depressed. The good news is, even if you are firmly convinced that stress is harmful, you can still cultivate a mind-set that helps you thrive.” – Kelly McGonigal
The Power of Mind-set Mind-sets are beliefs that transcend preferences, learned facts, or intellectual opinions. Adopting the right mind-set can dramatically alter the course of your life. Greg Walton, a psychologist at Stanford University, published a paper in Science magazine that showed the power of adopting a new mind-set. Greg had African American freshmen at Stanford University read the following message: ‘Everyone struggles with social belonging, but this changes over time’. Afterward, they were asked to write an essay on that message and develop a supportive message for next year’s freshmen.
“Walton tracked its effect on African American students, who have typically struggled the most with the feeling of not belonging. The results were astonishing. The one time intervention improved the students’ academic performance, physical health, and happiness over the next three years, compared with students who had not been randomly selected to receive the intervention. By graduation, their GPAs were significantly higher than the GPAs of African American students who hadn’t participated. In fact, their GPAs were so high that they had completely closed the typical GPA gap between minority and non-minority students at the school.” – Kelly McGonigal
How to Adopt a New Mind-set Steps to adopt a new mind-set: i. ii. iii.
Make the mind-set simple and concrete: “Thinking _____ will lead to _____” Allow yourself a trial period (1-2 weeks) to apply the new mind-set in the real world and determine its worth. Find an opportunity to share your experience with others.
The benefits of adopting a ‘stress is enhancing’ mind-set: Changing your interpretation of stress has been shown to release powerful chemicals in your body that boost performance. Based on saliva samples from a 2013 study at Yale, participants who adopted the mind-set that ‘the feeling of stress enhances performance’ released more DHEA and oxytocin into their body (natural chemicals that the body produces).
The benefits of DHEA
Accelerates learning Strengthens focus Increases pattern recognition Counter-acts the harmful effects of cortisol and adrenaline
The benefits of Oxytocin
Increases courage and confidence Increases empathy and compassion (enhanced ability to understand what others are thinking and feeling) Widens blood vessels and increases blood flow to the brain
“The best way to manage stress isn’t to reduce or avoid it, but rather to rethink and even embrace it. New science shows that changing your mind about stress can make you healthier and happier.” – Kelly McGonigal
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Insights from Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath “Sometimes we are given the advice to trust our guts when we make important decisions. Unfortunately, our guts are full of questionable advice.” – Chip & Dan Heath When we trust our gut when making decisions, we encounter three decision pitfalls:
We will rarely consider more than two options. In 1993, Ohio State University researcher Paul Nutt examined 168 decisions of big organizations. Nutt found that 69% of the decisions only had one alternative. These two options decisions led to an unfavorable result 52% of the time.
We will be blinded by short‐term emotion. Take a moment and look back on some of the worst decisions you’ve made. Any chance you sought short‐term pleasure over your long‐ term interests?
We will have a false sense of certainty. A study found that when Doctors feel “completely certain” about a diagnosis, they are wrong 40% of the time! In another study, when university students believed they had a 1% chance of being wrong, they turned out to be wrong 27% of the time.
To avoid these three pitfalls, we need to go to W.A.R. each time we need to make a significant decision. iden your options Pretend you rubbed a magic lamp, and instead of the beloved Genie in Aladdin, you got his evil brother. This evil genie takes your current options away. Authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath call this the 'Vanishing Options Test'. By running this test, you pretend there are no good options left on the table. Now you need to come up with a new set of options. When you take a moment to imagine a situation where both options you were considering are off the table, you will find other promising solutions.
ttain distance In a 1999 study, students were asked to choose between two jobs: job A would pay well but not be very fulfilling, and job B would pay less but make them feel very fulfilled. 66% of students said they would take job B. When the researchers asked the students to advise their best friend on their job choice, 83% recommended job B. Asking “What would I tell my best friend to do?” allowed the students to gain a clear perspective, attain distance from their short‐term emotions, and make a wise long‐term decision.
eality‐test It’s not wise to buy a new vehicle without test driving it. Why do we make other big decisions before giving them a test drive? Authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath recommend that we reality‐test every big decision we make. If you’re deciding to move to a new city, don’t make the decision based on online reviews and recommendations from friends. Take a two‐week vacation, rent an Airbnb in the city you want to move to, and pretend as though you are living there (do typical day‐to‐day activities). If you’re buying a new vacuum, buy three. Test them out for two weeks, and then return the two you least like. Only commit to a big decision after you’ve reality‐tested your assumptions by running a small trial. In the book, they use the acronym W.R.A.P., with the P standing for prepare to be wrong. Reality‐testing partially prepares you to be wrong by testing your assumptions before you leap. Here is a quick summary of the section ‘prepare to be wrong’: The future is uncertain, and we never know what the future will have in store. We must consider a plausible worst‐case scenario, take out insurance, install a tripwire (an early warning system), or a pre‐ established exit point (like a stop loss on a stock purchase).
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Insights from Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg “The choices that are most powerful in generating motivation are decisions that do two things: They convince us we’re in control and they endow our actions with larger meaning.” – Charles Duhigg Feel in control by choosing:
Where to work (office, conference room, coffee shop, etc.) How long to focus on a particular problem (work intensely for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 50 minutes?) What to do while working (listen to music, have a cup of coffee, drink a cup of tea, etc.)
Generate meaning by choosing to see the connection between what you do and how it:
Benefits other people Increases your skill level Leads to a result that you’ll be proud of
3 Choices that Increase Productivity: Increase Focus
Improve Decisions
Increase Team Performance
Before the day starts, CHOOSE to predict how the day will unfold.
When making decisions, CHOOSE to consider the desirable and undesirable outcomes. Then assign approximate probabilities to each possible outcome.
When leading a team, CHOOSE to give team members the authority to make decisions.
Your mind is a prediction machine. It loves to know whether it’s predictions are right or wrong. Envisioning tomorrow causes the brain to focus intently on what it failed to predict. 'We aid our focus by building mental models—telling ourselves stories—about what we expect to see.' – Charles Duhigg To stay focused during the day, make the following predictions at the start of the day: Given my current schedule, how much progress do I expect to make today? What distractions am I likely to encounter? How am I likely to handle those distractions? At the end of the day ask yourself: “What was I wrong about?”
“Making good decisions relies on forecasting the future, but forecasting is an imprecise, often terrifying, science because it forces us to confront how much we don’t know. The paradox of learning how to make better decisions is that it requires developing a comfort with doubt.' – Charles Duhigg By seeing decisions as a range of possible outcomes with approximate probabilities (i.e. there’s an 80% chance of getting into the college I want to), you’ll be less prone to seek absolute certainty before making a decision. This speeds up the decision process and leads to more action.
If you crave autonomy, so does your team. Empower others to make choices and provide them with a safe environment to do so. 'By pushing decision making to whoever is closest to a problem, managers take advantage of everyone’s expertise and unlock innovation. A sense of control can fuel motivation, but for that drive to produce insights and solutions, people need to know their suggestions won’t be ignored and that their mistakes won’t be held against them.' Charles Duhigg
'Learning to think probabilistically requires us to question our assumptions and live with uncertainty. To become better at predicting the future—at making good decisions—we need to know the difference between what we hope will happen and what is more and less likely to occur.' – Charles Duhigg
'Productivity is about recognizing choices that other people often overlook… Productive people and companies force themselves to make choices most other people are content to ignore. Productivity emerges when people push themselves to think differently.” – Charles Duhigg
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Insights from Principles by Ray Dalio
Ray Dalio’s philosophy in life and business, is PAIN + REFLECTION = PROGRESS. “Just as long‐distance runners push through pain to experience the pleasure of “runner’s high,” I have largely gotten past the pain of my mistake making and instead enjoy the pleasure that comes with learning from it.” ‐ Ray Dalio Pain is the signal that there is a gap in your knowledge, and you have the opportunity to learn a principle to solve similar problems and avoid similar failures. Don’t run from pain. It’s nature’s way of telling you it’s time to learn, grow, and be prepared for the future. “Whatever success I’ve had in life has had more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know. The most important thing I learned is an approach to life based on principles that helps me find out what’s true and what to do about it.” ‐ Ray Dalio
Here is a 3‐Part Process for adopting a principled approach to life: PART ONE: Be Radically Open‐minded “If you can recognize that you have blind spots and open‐mindedly consider the possibility that others might see something better than you—and that the threats and opportunities they are trying to point out really exist— you are more likely to make good decisions.” – Ray Dalio When you adopt a mindset of radical open‐mindedness, you genuinely want to hear others’ honest opinions of you. You want to know how badly you’re failing, how flawed your thinking is, or how weak your skills are. You ask questions like “How might I be wrong?” and “How can I get more honest feedback?” Opening yourself up to critical feedback is painful. But by letting the pain pass and putting your ego aside, you can find truth in people’s opinions and use it to get better. “Learning to be radically transparent is like learning to speak in public: While it’s initially awkward, the more you do it, the more comfortable you will be with it.” – Ray Dalio
PART TWO: Find the Root Cause “Distinguish proximate causes from root causes. Proximate causes are typically the actions (or lack of actions) that lead to problems, so they are described with verbs (I missed the train because I didn’t check the train schedule). Root causes run much deeper and they are typically described with adjectives (I didn’t check the train schedule because I am forgetful).” – Ray Dalio I often experience the pain of failing to show up on time for important events. While I frequently blame external factors like traffic, the truth is I lose track of time. I don’t properly factor in the time to get to my appointments. Finding the root cause often leads to a personal weakness. However, you don’t need to feel ashamed and surrender to your weaknesses – you can find principles to overcome them. You can find principles to build a system that works around your weakness (ex: I developed a system of putting every event in my calendar with two default alerts so I am less likely to lose track of time), learn principles to build a new skill and eliminate the weakness, or outsource the weakness in one area of your life to someone who has a strength in that area.
PART THREE: Write Your Principles Down 'To be principled means to consistently operate with principles that can be clearly explained.' – Ray Dalio The easiest way to develop principles you can clearly explain is to write them down and refine them. I often refer to my set of ‘book summary principles’ – a Google Doc of the most effective methods for deconstructing a book and creating these summaries. I’ve found that having my principles written down has allowed the process of summarizing a book to get progressively smoother. “My hope is that reading this book will prompt you and others to discover your own principles from wherever you think is best and ideally write them down. Doing that will allow you and others to be clear about what your principles are and understand each other better. It will allow you to refine them as you encounter more experiences and to reflect on them, which will help you make better decisions and be better understood.” – Ray Dalio
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Insights from Designing Your Life by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett “In America, two‐thirds of workers are unhappy with their jobs. And 15 percent actually hate their work.” ‐ Dave Evans and Bill Burnett How can you be one of the rare few who is happy at work? Step #1: Design Your Lives “We know you’ve got at least three viable and substantially different possibilities in you. We all do. Every single one of the thousands of people we’ve worked with has proved us correct in this. We all have lots of lives within us. Of course, we can only live out one at a time, but we want to ideate multiple variations in order to choose creatively and generatively.” ‐ Dave Evans and Bill Burnett Life #1: Your Optimized Life In your ‘Optimized Life’ you find a way to optimize your current career path so that you are doing more activities that make you feel engaged and energized, and fewer activities that make you feel bored and exhausted. To find the building blocks for this life you need to start a “Good Time Journal.” The goal of your “Good Time Journal” is to uncover the (A.E.I.O.U.) activities, environments, interactions, objects (i.e., tools you use to perform tasks), and users (i.e., people you help) that make you feel engaged while working. At the end of the day for the next three weeks, reflect on the times you were focused and lost track of time. Write down the A.E.I.O.U. components of those experiences. Then, next to each item, rate the energy you felt afterward on a scale of ‐5 to 5. For example, a client meeting might be engaging but it drains your energy and makes you feel exhausted afterwards. After three weeks you'll start to see a consistent set of experiences that make feel engaged and energized. How could you craft your current career so that you can have more of these experiences (more training, new assignment, remote work arrangement, etc.)? Take out a piece of paper, draw five boxes to represent the next five years, and do simple sketches for each year (use stick‐men, basic objects, and keywords to illustrate what each of the next five years might look like). Live #2: Your Alternate Life
Live #3: Your Fascinated Life
In your “Alternate Life,” the career path you were on vanishes. Either your market collapsed (ex: the phonebook market in the 90's), or Artificial Intelligence can do your job better than you.
In your “Fascinated Life,” you are doing what you would do if money and image were no object.
What industry would you transfer your skills to? Go back to your 'Good Time Journal' and see what engaging and energizing experiences you could experience while working in another industry. Complete a five‐year sketch for this life.
Is there something that you're fascinated with and always wanted to do but were afraid you wouldn't make enough money or people would laugh at you for doing it? Take out a piece of paper and sketch out the next five years of 'Your Fascinated Life.' It's OK if it seems a bit crazy. The more you design it, the more realistic it will appear.
Step #2: Sample Your Lives After you've sketched out your three lives, you might discover a life you want to commit to. Don’t! Hold back and test your assumptions first. Most common assumption: “You’ll enjoy the day‐to‐day experience of your future life.” The most efficient way to test your assumptions and have a sample experience of a future life is to conduct prototype conversations. Prototype conversations include reaching out to people on LinkedIn or finding someone at a conference which is doing what you want to do and asking them if you could buy them coffee or have a 15‐minute Skype call so that you can hear their story. There are hundreds of people online who are living a life similar to the life you're considering. If you can get them to meet for a 15‐minute video call or a 15‐minute coffee, ask about their story, and absorb the good and bad parts of their life, you're far less likely to commit to a life that you’ll later regret. The most important principle to remember when 'designing your life' is that you don't know what you want until you experience it.
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.' – Steve Jobs
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Insights from The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani “Have big goals—but don’t tie your happiness to your goals. You must be happy before you attain them.” ‐ Vishen Lakhiani In the book “The Code of the Extraordinary Mind”, author Vishen Lakhiani outlines a goal setting method to maximize personal growth and fearlessly pursue big goals.
PART 1: Set Self‐Fueled Goals Self‐fueled goals are entirely within your control, and you can achieve them at any time during the day to experience a reliable burst of happiness. To establish a set of self‐fueled goals, identify 2‐3 goals that you need to feel joy in your life consistently. Then identify the base experience you seek from each of those goals. Reframe the base experience so it is entirely within your control. Author Vishen Lakhiani identified three goals that consistently gave him joy: being loved by his wife, reading a book a week, and experiencing new adventures. Then he distilled those three goals into base experiences he could control: being surrounded by love, always learning and growing, and having amazing human experiences. 'They are all directly within my own power. No one can take these away from me. This means no failure can stunt me. I could be homeless and alone, sleeping on the streets of New York City—but I can still be surrounded by love because my love comes from within. I can learn and grow as long as I can find an old newspaper or a thrown‐away book to read. I can even have beautiful human experiences because I can see the joy in everyday life, even just walking through Central Park.” ‐ Vishen Lakhiani Take a moment to think of small ways you can internally generate feelings of love, growth, and amazing experiences in your life. To feel loved, I can: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ To feel a sense of growth, I can: ________________________________________________________________________________________ To have an amazing experience, I just need to: ____________________________________________________________________________ By having a set of self‐fueled goals to generate happiness reliably, you reduce your fear of failure and free yourself to set big, bold goals that will stretch your abilities and lead to extraordinary results.
PART 2: Ask Three Important Questions By asking these three questions, you can set your sights on goals that are exciting, maximize personal growth, and lead to extraordinary results. If time and money were no object, and I didn't have to seek anyone’s permission, what experiences would I want to have? See the environment you want to live in, the adventures you want to have, and the things you want to experience with your friends and family.
How will I need to grow to have those experiences? See yourself growing physically, intellectually, and spiritually to become your best self. See the skills you need to develop to have the experiences you desire.
As a result of growing, how will I be able to give back to the world? See yourself having an impact on your family, your company, and your community. See the ways you are able to share your creative self with the world.
Example: You want to speak on the TED conference stage (prestigious event with world leaders). To speak on the TED stage, you need to push yourself to have remarkable life experiences and extract valuable lessons worth sharing. After hearing your speech, people will be inspired by your message and use your lessons to achieve success in their life.
“Safety is overrated; taking risks is much less likely to kill us than ever before, and that means that playing it safe is more likely just holding us back from the thrills of a life filled with meaning and discovery.”‐ Vishen Lakhiani 27
Insights from Born for This by Chris Guillebeau “Work isn’t everything in life, but we spend a great deal of our lives at work. Some people, it seems, really do have it all. These people take to their working roles as if it’s the absolute best possible fit for them—it’s as though they were born to fulfill a certain role. If you’ve ever worked on something you took great pleasure in, yet you also got paid for it, you know what this is about. And if you haven’t experienced this career bliss yourself, you may have observed it in others.” – Chris Guillebeau “People who are most successful have found the perfect combination of joy, money, and flow. They’ve won the career lottery—and they don’t have to choose between their money and their life. Above all else, finding the work you were meant to do should be your number one career goal.” - Chris Guillebeau
How to Win the Career Lottery Work on Your Side Hustle
“Think you’re too busy for another project? Whether busy or not, ask yourself, “Do I have the right balance of joy, money, and flow in my life?” If you want an outcome different from the one your current path is leading to, somehow you’ll have to find the time. Being too busy may be the new social currency, but the real winners find time to do what matters to them.” - Chris Guillebeau. Start your search for the career lottery ticket by using your spare time to focus on side projects. Select side projects that allow you to expand your skillset and your social network. Use your spare time to develop your ‘soft’ skills: writing (blogging), public speaking (Toastmasters) , conflict management, and follow-up (volunteer for leadership positions).
Actively Listen
While working on your side hustle and developing soft skills, you’ll come across specific problems people need help solving. Identify these problems by searching for common questions in your email inbox, social media feed, and during daily interactions. Ask yourself: “How might I address these questions using my unique skill set?” The best questions to solve are questions related to specific problems people struggle with on a daily basis. “Here’s the core principle: when you’re not sure what your “thing” is—when you don’t know quite where to look to find that job or career that brings you joy, flow, and a good income—the people you talk to every day can help you find it. “ - Chris Guillebeau If you can’t find a question worth devoting your time to answering, start interviewing and surveying people. Set up 15 minutes Skype calls with 100 people and find out what they’re struggling with that relates to your current skill set.
Resign Every Year
Sometimes quitting is the smartest thing you can do. “Once a year, on the date of your choosing, commit to yourself that you will quit your job unless staying put is the best possible choice for you at this time. If it is, that’s great—you can proceed with confidence, knowing that you’re on the right track. If not, immediately begin looking for something different.” - Chris Guillebeau Don’t let sunken costs keep you in a dead-end job! If you were waiting in line at a store for 20 minutes and another register opens up, would you switch lines to check out faster? Most people know the right thing to do in a grocery store, but not in our careers. Once a year, ask yourself: “Is this the best opportunity for me to at time moment?” If so, stay committed no matter how hard it is. If not, take the leap.
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Insights from So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport In 2010, author Cal Newport received a PhD in Computer Science from MIT. Before starting his career, he became obsessed with the question: “Why do some people end up loving what they do (for a living), while so many others fail at this goal?” Cal Newport interviewed people who loved their work to find out how they got there. The people who loved what they did for a living had a craftsman mindset, not a passion mindset.
The Passion Mindset: The passionate mindset thinks: “What can the world offer me? What job can sustain my pre‐existing passion?” “First, when you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry‐level positions, which, by definition, are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy—these come later. When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you’re assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle. Second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the passion mindset—“Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?”—are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?” and “Do I love this?” rarely reduce to clear yes‐or‐no responses. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused.” – Cal Newport
The Craftsman Mindset: The craftsman mindset thinks: “How can I improve and have something uniquely valuable to offer the world? Am I willing to stick with this, despite how boring and tedious the process may be?” “It (the craftsman mindset) asks you to leave behind self‐centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy.” ‐ Cal Newport “Regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopting the craftsman mindset will be the foundation on which you’ll build a compelling career. This is why I reject the “argument from pre‐existing passion,” because it gets things backward. In reality, as I’ll demonstrate, you adopt the craftsman mindset first and then the passion follows.” ‐ Cal Newport
Why a ‘Craftsman Mindset’ is prerequisite for passion People who love what they do for a living consistently experience these three work traits:
Impact: the quality of your work has a noticeable and positive impact on people you care about (teammate, customer, etc.). Creativity: you have an opportunity to improvise your work and implement your ideas. Control: you have some say over how, when, where you work.
“The things that make great work great (creativity, impact, and control), are rare and valuable. If you want them in your career, you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return.” ‐ Cal Newport The process of developing rare and valuable skills is hard, and this is why having a craftsman mindset is so critical. Unless you find a way to stick to the process of improvement, despite how much your passion dips, you’ll fail to develop skills that are rare and valuable, and you won’t have enough leverage to demand these rare and valuable work traits.
How to become rare and valuable Start volunteering for challenging projects at work, and start initiating challenging projects at home. Select your projects based on the skills they force you to develop. Here are three questions to find the rare and valuable skills you need to develop:
What particular skill does my team, company, or industry lack at the moment (ex: specific domain knowledge, software program, etc.)? What technologic expertise is in high demand in my industry (ex: SQL programming, Facebook advertising, etc.)? What skills do the people at the top of my profession seem to have (ex: clear business writing, public speaking, time management, etc.)?
When you’ve found a skill you want to develop, use the principles of deliberate practice to develop that skill:
Carve out periods of undistracted focus. Push yourself to the edge of your ability; cycle between comfort and discomfort. Seek immediate feedback and mentorship.
Always be asking: Am I becoming increasingly rare (how long would it take me to train a college graduate to do what I do) and incredibly valuable (how badly would people miss my contribution if I quit)?
“If you’re not putting in the effort to become, as Steve Martin put it, “so good they can’t ignore you,” you’re not likely to end up loving your work—regardless of whether or not you believe it’s your true calling.” – Cal Newport
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Insights from Mastery by Robert Greene How can we hope to survive in today's harshly competitive, technology centered, globalized marketplace? Companies are outsourcing work to people thousands of miles away, who produce high quality work for a fraction of the cost. Soon artificial intelligence will be powerful enough to replace all truck drivers, bank tellers, and language translators. Eventually AI will do all work that doesn't require a great deal of creativity. To become irreplaceable in this harsh marketplace, we need to attain Mastery. If we can attain Mastery, we will unlock a higher intelligence and creative ability that will be hard to outsource and difficult to automate.
Three essential mindsets to Mastery: Primal Curiosity When Albert Einstein was five, his father gave him a compass. As he examined the compass, he was completely mesmerized by the invisible force that moved the needle. It made him wonder “What other undiscovered or less understood forces exist in the world?” This early experience hinted at a primal curiosity for Einstein that would fuel his obsessive drive for the remaining decades of his life. The first mindset we must adopt is to re‐discover and stay connected to our primal curiosity as we navigate our career decisions. Spend a few weeks journaling 20 minutes a day to better understand and reconnect with your primal curiosity. Remove yourself from distraction and write fast and freely for twenty minutes. Repeat the question “What did I naturally gravitate to before social pressure?” “Your primal curiosities are like your DNA, they are unique to you. But we lose touch with it as we get older. Many schools and universities kill curiosity. We forget what once captivated us.” – Robert Greene
Learning Above Everything Else The master boxing coach, Freddie Roach, started a coaching apprenticeship at night while working as a telemarketer in Las Vegas during the day. Without being asked, he began to hang around a boxing gym every night and show the young boxers some tips he picked up as a boxer in his late teens and early twenties. Roach gave up common comforts and balance to maximize his learning. Eventually, with enough 1‐on‐1 personalized training at the gym, he had sufficient skill and trust from young boxers to set up his own business. He became a renowned boxing coach and would go on to work with and train great boxing champions, like Manny Pacquiao. The second mindset of Mastery is learning above all else even if it means taking lower pay, getting zero recognition for your work, facing harsh criticism, and enduring long hours of tedious work. “Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful. Instead, you must value learning above everything else. This will lead you to all of the right choices.”‐ Robert Greene
Unique Combination Robotics engineer Yoky Matusoka reconnected with her fascination of the human hand. With a base level of skill and the help of her robotics professor, she could manifest her primal curiosity. After years of work, Matsuoka designed the most advanced robotic hand of its kind. But she didn’t stop there. Connected to her primal curiosity, she was eager to understand how the brain commanded the hand to move. Matsuoka turned her attention to getting a doctorate in neuroscience. Having advanced knowledge, skill, and experience in two fields: robotics and neuroscience, she combined the two and created a new field in the science community called neurobotics. This is the third essential mindset to Mastery. By combining seemingly different skills and experiences in a unique way, you can carve out a niche field where you are considered a one of kind. “Ultimately you create a field that is uniquely your own...you have found a niche that is not crowded with competitors. You have freedom to roam, to pursue particular questions that interest you. You set your own agenda and command the resources available to this niche. Unburdened by overwhelming competition and politicking, you have time and space to bring to flower your Life’s Task (your primal curiosity)' – Robert Greene
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Insights from The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle In 2008, Author Daniel Coyle traveled the world to understand how a select few places on Earth seem to produce an extraordinary amount of talent.
How can one tiny indoor tennis court in Moscow (Spartak tennis club) produce more top‐ranked women tennis players than the entire United States between 2005 and 2007? How does one school system in the United States send 400% more low‐income minority students to college than any other school system in the United States?
Coyle calls these mysterious pools of talent: “talent hotbeds.” When he visited talent hotbeds around the world, he saw students operating on the edge of their ability and frequently making mistakes. Every human being on the planet, however, instinctually hates struggling and making mistakes. Why are people in talent hotbeds enthusiastic about putting in the thousands of hours of struggle necessary to build extraordinary talent?
Here are three “talent boosters” that talent hotbeds leverage to fuel students: Talent booster #1: Revelatory moment. At KIPP schools, where more low‐income students go to college than any other school in America, students start visiting college campuses as soon as they’re enrolled. A set of new fifth graders students at KIPP school in California will go to USC, Stanford, and UCLA and talk with KIPP alumni who look like them and have a similar background. After the trip, young KIPP students believe that even though no one in their family has attended college, they can be the first ones to go to college. Create revelatory moments for your children. Expose your child to amazing performances and help the see the similarities between themselves and their heroes. The goal is to leverage moments that make your children believe they can do great things. Talent booster #2: Environmental reinforcement. KIPP teachers know that a child’s dream of going to college can fade. Therefore, KIPP teachers remind every child that they are going to college 100 times a day. One KIPP English teacher says, 'We say college as often as people in other schools say um.' “Each homeroom is named after the college the teacher attended: math classes are in Berkeley; social studies in USC; special education at Cornell Graduate School. KIPP teachers are skilled at slipping references to college into conversation, always with the presumption that all the students are destined for those golden shores… Even the lettering above the classroom mirrors inquires, ‘Where will YOU go to college?’” – Daniel Coyle Create an environment around your children that constantly reminds and reinforces what’s important and what’s possible. Talent booster #3: Primal cue to belong. When looking back at the fastest runners in history, Coyle found that the fastest runners in the world were either the youngest or second youngest in their family. On average, Olympic champion sprinters were fourth in families of 4.6 children. 'Speed is not purely a gift, but a skill that grows through deep practice, and that is ignited by the primal cue that ‘you're behind, keep up.’' – Daniel Coyle We all receive primal cues to catch up and belong to a desirable group, like an older group or a prestigious club. Talent hotbeds purposely inject primal cues to belong to fuel students. In the 1980s, the Spartak tennis school in Moscow took primal cues to the extreme. Spartak invited a class of 25 seven‐year‐olds to join the Spartak team and then cut one kid from the group every two weeks. When you focus on these “talent boosters,” you create an inner drive for your child/student to routinely push themselves to the edge of their ability and put in hours of deep, difficult practice that is necessary to becoming exceptionally talented.
“Carol Dweck, the psychologist who studies motivation, likes to say that all the world's parenting advice can be distilled to two simple rules: pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort.” – Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code
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Insights from Originals by Adam Grant “Ultimately, the people who choose to champion originality are the ones who propel us forward. After spending years studying them and interacting with them, I am struck that their inner experiences are not any different from our own. They feel the same fear, the same doubt, as the rest of us. What sets them apart is that they take action anyway. They know in their hearts that failing would yield less regret than failing to try.” – Adam Grant
5 Ways to Increase ‘Originality’ Question the default “The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. I’ve spent more than a decade studying this, and it turns out to be far less difficult than I expected. The starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place.” – Adam Grant A study containing 30,000 customer service agents showed that those who rejected the default browser (Internet Explorer & Safari) and installed Chrome or Firefox were found to be better at solving customer issues. Those who questioned default options came up with more creative solutions to customer issues and increased their job satisfaction. You can boost your creativity/originality by questioning default options and experimenting with other alternatives. “When you remember that rules and systems were created by people, it becomes clear that they’re not set in stone—and you begin to consider how they can be improved.” – Adam Grant
Protect your downside Two of the most original entrepreneurs of our time - Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the automotive pioneer Henry Ford - were NOT huge risk takers. Bill Gates made sure he could go back to Harvard if his software company didn’t take off. Ford worked for Thomas Edison two years after building the carburetor that revolutionized the auto industry. Endeavor co-founder and CEO Linda Rottenberg has trained many entrepreneurs over the span of several decades and she says “the best entrepreneurs take the risk out of risk-taking.” “Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another. By covering our bases financially, we escape the pressure to publish half-baked books, sell shoddy art, or launch untested businesses.” – Adam Grant Protect your downside before diving into a creative pursuit (i.e. don’t quit your day job if you want to start a business). Working without a sense of security limits your originality.
Broaden you interests Based on a Michigan State University study, scientists with a broad range of interests are more likely to make original discoveries and win the Nobel Prize: Musical Interest (playing an instrument, composing, conducting) = 2x greater chance of winning Nobel Art Interest (drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpting) = 7x greater chance of winning Nobel Writing Interest (poetry, plays, essays) = 12x greater chance of winning Nobel Performing Arts Interest (amateur actor, dancer, magician) = 22x greater chance of winning Nobel
Generate more bad ideas You need to generate more ideas (and produce more shitty work) to generate original ideas: Shakespeare produced 37 plays & 154 sonnets over his lifetime Mozart composed 600 pieces before he was 35 Einstein published 248 papers Highly creative people throughout history simply produce more work. “When it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality. ‘Original thinkers,’ Stanford professor Robert Sutton notes, ‘(Originals) will come up with many ideas that are strange mutations, dead ends, and utter failures. The cost is worthwhile because they also generate a larger pool of ideas—especially novel ideas.’” – Adam Grant
Procrastinate on purpose Adam and his team conducted a study to determine which participants could come up with a creative solution to a complex problem: those who started and finished a task in a single sitting or those who started a task then procrastinated and completed it later. The reason our creativity increases when we procrastinate on purpose is due to the ‘Ziegarnik Effect’: “Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it. But when it is interrupted and left undone, it stays active in our minds.” – Adam Grant
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Insights from Give & Take by Adam Grant There are three reciprocating styles you can adopt when interacting with other people:
Taker (give only when you expect to receive more in return) Matcher (give only as much as you expect to receive) Giver (give more than you expect to receive)
What’s the big deal?
'The vast majority of people develop a primary reciprocity style, which captures how they approach most of the people most of the time. And this primary style can play as much of a role in our success as hard work, talent, and luck.' - Adam Grant
What can I do about it?
According to a study of 160 Engineers: “the engineers with the lowest productivity are mostly givers. But when we look at the engineers with the highest productivity, the evidence shows that they’re givers too. The California engineers with the best objective scores for quantity and quality of results are those who consistently give more to their colleagues than they get. The worst performers and the best performers are givers; takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle.' – Adam Grant Study after study reveals that Givers finish on top because Givers have stronger networks (people trust and are eager help them), and they inspire highly collaborative teams (team’s success = individual success).
To increase your odds of long-term career success, you must approach most personal interactions with a Givers mindset: be willing to give more than you expect to receive.
However, you’ll fall to the bottom of the success ladder if you fail to never say ‘no’. Givers who never say ‘no’ are taken advantage of and eventually burnout. Therefore, a successful Giver routinely asks himself/herself three core questions before giving freely.
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Insights from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie “Talk to people about themselves and they will listen for hours.” – Benjamin Disraeli The tools you need to build robust friendships, strengthen your network, and make people eager to help you succeed can be found in an 80‐year‐old book called 'How to Win Friends and Influence People.' The principles in 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' are as applicable today as they were when the book was published in 1936 and will continue to be relevant for centuries. The principles in this book can be distilled down to two fundamental behaviors.
Be Genuinely Interested in Others “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” – Dale Carnegie When you meet someone your mission is to discover what subject fascinates them and then find a way to be equally fascinated. For example, if someone is interested in collecting stamps (a subject that you might think is boring), research stamp collecting. In your research, you could discover a fascinating fact about stamps, like the most valuable stamp in the world is worth $9.5 million. When possible, ask people for advice on a topic that interests them. For example, “If I were to start a stamp collection, how do you recommend I get started?' When you give someone the opportunity to share their interest and expertise on a subject they enjoy, they will associate their joy with your presence.
Give Frequent Praise Think of a person who has recently praised your work. What was your opinion of that person after receiving praise? Think back to a teacher or boss who regularly praised your work. How does that teacher or that boss compare to other teachers and bosses? 'In our interpersonal relations, we should never forget that all our associates are human beings and hunger for appreciation. It is the legal tender that all souls enjoy.' ‐ Dale Carnegie “I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my appreciation and lavish in my praise” ‐ Charles Schwab Like Schwab, live in a spirit of acknowledgment and be eager to praise others for their effort. When you notice a co‐worker putting in extra effort on a project, walk over to them and praise their commitment to the team. If your child or partner helps around the house in a small way, praise them for their effort. “The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.” ‐ Dale Carnegie To build your praise and appreciation muscle, make praise and appreciation a daily habit. Take two minutes at the start of every day to write an email to praise a friend or co‐worker for any progress they've recently made on a personal goal or professional project. Make it personal and specific; tell them what impresses you most.
“William James said: ‘The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.’ He didn’t speak, mind you, of the ‘wish’ or the ‘desire’ or the ‘longing’ to be appreciated. He said the ‘craving’ to be appreciated. Here is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand and ‘even the undertaker will be sorry when he dies.’” ‐ Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
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Insights from The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier When a friend is in a stressful situation and asks you for help, do you offer advice? Author and world‐renowned performance coach Michael Bungay Stanier says, “Your advice is not as good as you think it is.” To be a great coach (and a great friend), spend less time telling someone what to do and more time asking questions. There are four excellent questions in The Coaching Habit that you can use to help your friends, teammates, or employees find their way out of an overwhelming and stressful situation. Side note: These four questions are a great way to start a journaling/self‐coaching session.
What’s on your mind? When you ask, 'What's on your mind?' you invite the person you're coaching to skip the small talk and get to what matters. 'Rather than talk about the weather or how their sports team's doing, or any other superficial boring and simply useless chitchat, get to what matters...what's provoking anxiety, what's all‐consuming, what's waking them up at 4:00 AM.' When you ask, “What’s on your mind?” You’re saying, “I’m here for you and ready to help you work through whatever is bothering you.”
What else? Asking 'What else?' acts as a pressure relief valve. You permit the person you’re coaching to open up and allow important but uncomfortable issues to flow out of their mouth. 'Asking, 'what else?' creates more wisdom, more insights, more self‐awareness and more possibilities out of thin air…When you use ‘And what else?’ you’ll get more options and often better options. Better options lead to better decisions. Better decisions lead to greater success.”
What's the real challenge here for you? It's tempting to pick the most critical problem and start offering advice. If you prioritize for them; however, you'll raise your status and lower theirs (because you’re saying 'I have all the answers and you don't'). When you lower someone's status, you strip the confidence they need to make their own decisions. Therefore, instead of deciding what they should focus on, get them to think for themselves by asking them, 'What's the real challenge here for you?' When someone is stressed and overwhelmed, everything will feel like a challenge. But when you ask someone, 'What's the real challenge here?' you get the person you're coaching to pause, look inward, and determine what one challenge, if resolved, would provide the greatest relief. When you include “for you” at the end of the question, you make the question easier to answer. In a 1997 study, researchers found that when the word “you” was presented in a math question, students came to a solution faster and more accurately than if “you” was left out of the math question. To get someone to prioritize quickly, ask them, 'What's the real challenge here for you?' You’ll often find that their “real challenge” is the challenge they’re avoiding most.
If you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to? Saying 'yes' to overcoming a real challenge will require more time and energy than the person you're coaching may think. If the person you're coaching doesn't systematically eliminate distractions from their life, they'll fall back on old habits (like compulsively checking email) and be too tired or too busy to focus on their REAL challenge. Are they willing to ‘yes’ to focusing on what matters by saying 'no' to distractions and delete Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram off their phone? Are they willing to say ‘no’ to watching TV at night or going out with friends on the weekend? Are they willing to saying ‘yes’ to doing great work by saying ‘no’ to useless meetings (even if saying no might upset their boss or coworkers)? By asking 'If you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?' You're getting them to think strategically. As business coach Michael Porter says, 'The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.'
'The change of behavior at the heart of what this book is about is this: a little more asking people questions and a little less telling people what to do.' 35 Bold quotes shown above are by Michael Bungay Stanier
Insights from Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss “A woman wants her husband to wear black shoes with his suit. But her husband doesn’t want to; he prefers brown shoes. So what do they do? They compromise, they meet halfway. And, you guessed it, he wears one black and one brown shoe. Is this the best outcome? No! In fact, that’s the worst possible outcome. Either of the two other outcomes—black or brown—would be better than the compromise. Next time you want to compromise, remind yourself of those mismatched shoes.”‐ Chris Voss How can you get what you want in a negotiation without compromising? Author Chris Voss was the lead hostage negotiator for the FBI. After dozens of high‐stakes negotiations with kidnappers around the world (and later with business people around the world as a consultant), Chris Voss has learned that getting what he wants, avoiding compromises, and making the other side feel like they were treated fairly requires tactical empathy. Tactical empathy is the act of sincerely empathizing with your counterpart’s situation and then getting them to empathize with your situation.
Be Empathetic During a psychotherapy session, a psychiatrist encourages a patient to talk while he or she listens intensely. Psychiatrists know that a patient will be defensive and oppositional to change until they feel heard. The same is true for a negotiation. During a negotiation, your counterpart will resist any offer you make until you prove to them that you understand what they’re saying and how they’re feeling. That’s why the first goal of a negotiation is to listen closely to the cares and concerns your counterpart has, and then summarize their cares and concerns with a statement that starts with 'it seems like...' or 'it sounds like...' 'It seems like you’re really concerned about ______________.' OR 'It sounds like ______________ is really important to you.' The beauty of these statements is if you’re wrong you won’t damage the conversation, since you can follow‐up your statement with “I didn’t say that how it was, it just seems that way.” However, if your counterpart affirms your summary statement with 'that's right,' then you’ll know that you you’ve made them feel heard. After you hear a “that’s right”, your counterpart will be open to what you have to say and willing to move off their initial position.
Ask for Empathy Now that you’ve built rapport with your counterpart by being empathic to their situation, ask them to return the favor. Get them thinking about your challenges and coming up with solutions to your problem. The best way to get your counterpart thinking about and solving one of your problems is to counter their proposals by asking 'How am I supposed to do that?' Let's say you were renting an apartment, and your landlord tells you he is going to increase the rent from $1200/month to $1500/month. In this situation, you could respond with, 'It seems like you’re concerned that your apartment unit is under‐valued, and you want what's fair, but how am I supposed to pay $1500/month when I only make enough at work to afford $1200/month?' The key is to say, 'How am I supposed to do that?' the same way you would say, 'I value your intelligence, can you please help me solve my problem?” If you've made your counterpart feel heard and built rapport with them, then ask your counterpart the calibrated question, 'How am I supposed to do that?' Your counterpart will most likely do one of two things: 1. Generate a creative solution so that both of you can get what you value most. 2. Raise or lower their initial demand to accommodate you. If they counter with an offer that doesn't meet your needs, you simply respond with a slightly different calibrated question. Back to the rental example, if your landlord but reduced his rent to $1400/month, you would respond with 'that's very generous of you and that's probably the lowest you can go, but I'm sorry, I just don't see how I'm supposed to pay $1400/month to stay here when can I rent a similar apartment nearby for less than $1200/month.'
“He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.” – Chris Voss 36
Productivity Principle: The Five-Minute Favor Inspired by the book Give & Take by Adam Grant
“You should be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less for anybody.” - Adam Rifkin In 2011, Fortune named Adam Rifkin the world’s greatest networker. Rifkin is a shy Silicon Valley entrepreneur with more connections to Fortune’s top ‘movers and shakers’ (CEOs, rising stars, and influential figures) than anyone else on earth. Rifkin’s networking success is due to a simple daily habit: offering a five-minute favor to anyone, without expecting anything in return. “It takes him no time to raise funding for his start-ups. He has such a great reputation; people know he’s a good guy. That’s a dividend that gets paid because of who he is.” – Raymond Rouf, fellow Silicon Valley entrepreneur
The three benefits of consistently giving five-minute favors Create more opportunities for giving Adam Rifkin will sacrifice five minutes of his free time to help you any way he can. Rifkin only asks that you pay the favor forward. If Rifkin introduces you to someone in his network and that introduction leads to a job offer, you may get an email from Rifkin a year later asking you to help someone else looking for a job. When Rifkin can help one person, he increases the chances of helping the next person. “Rifkin doesn’t think about what any of the people he helps will contribute back to him. Whereas takers accumulate large networks to look important and gain access to powerful people, and matchers do it to get favors, Rifkin does it to create more opportunities for giving.” – Adam Grant Develop weak ties quickly In 1973, Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter surveyed professionals who recently changed jobs and discovered that ‘weak ties’ (people they knew casually) were nearly twice as likely to help them find a job as strong ties (close friends and colleagues). According to Rifkin, a five minute favor is the most efficient way to establish a new ‘weak tie.’ By selflessly offering five minutes of your time to help someone you open the door for future opportunity. With a five-minute sacrifice you can create a new connection that could change your life. “Strong ties provide bonds, but weak ties serve as bridges: they provide more efficient access to new information. Our strong ties tend to travel in the same social circles and know about the same opportunities as we do. Weak ties are more likely to open up access to a different network, facilitating the discovery of original leads.” - Adam Grant Inspire others to give In a 2008 psychology study titled ‘Suckers or Saviors?’ researchers assigned four strangers to a group but made sure they could not communicate with one another. Each stranger was made two offers: take $3 or take $2 and allow the rest of the group to receive $2 ($8 being shared evenly among the four strangers). The researchers made this offer for six consecutive rounds. If you were a stranger and chose to sacrifice $1 on each of the six rounds, you could be leaving with just $12, instead of $18. There is no guarantee that the other strangers in your group would return the favor. However, the study revealed that those who consistently gave for six rounds took home an average of 26% more money than people in groups without a consistent giver. “When the groups included one consistent giver, the other members contributed more. The presence of a single giver was enough to establish a norm of giving…Even though they earned less from each contribution, because they inspired others to give, they made a larger total sum available to all participants. The givers raised the bar and expanded the pie for the whole group. In this experiment, the consistent givers were doing the equivalent of a five-minute favor when they contributed their money every round. They were making small sacrifices to benefit each member of the group, and it inspired the group members to do the same.” – Adam Grant
Three ways to start giving five-minute favors
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Insights from Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin “There are only two types of leaders: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders that lead successful, highperformance teams exhibit Extreme Ownership. Anything else is simply ineffective. Anything else is bad leadership.” - Leif Babin Jocko and Leif create high performing Navy Seal teams and corporate business teams by teaching ‘decentralized command’ – allowing a smaller team (4-6) to make decisions within a larger team without being told explicitly what to do. To allow independent decision making, leaders must issue a Commander’s Intent: “My leaders learned they must rely on their subordinate leaders to take charge of their smaller teams within the team and allow them to execute based on a good understanding of the broader mission (known as Commander’s Intent), and standard operating procedures. That was effective Decentralized Command.” – Jocko Willink If Jocko instructed a group of Navy Seals snipers to go to the rooftop of a building, they might get to the rooftop and discover there is little cover. At that point, they might set up on the rooftop anyways (because they were ordered to) and risk being killed, or simply disobey orders. However, if Jocko issues a Commander’s Intent: “We need covering fire on this street to help these ground troops advance to position bravo. Find the best position to apply this cover. I would suggest starting with that rooftop.” At this point, the Navy Seals would get to the rooftop, notice that it has poor cover, and quickly decide to go to the 3 rd floor to provide covering fire. “Those leaders must understand the overall mission, and the ultimate goal of that mission—the Commander’s Intent. Junior leaders must be empowered to make decisions on key tasks necessary to accomplish that mission in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Teams (of 4-6) within (larger) teams are organized for maximum effectiveness for a particular mission, with leaders who have clearly delineated responsibilities. Every tactical-level team leader must understand not just what to do but why they are doing it. If frontline leaders do not understand why, they must ask their boss to clarify the why. Decentralized Command does not mean junior leaders or team members operate on their own program; that results in chaos. Instead, junior leaders must fully understand what is within their decision-making authority—the “left and right limits” of their responsibility.” - Jocko Willink
Issue intents, not commands. The next time you need help, explain the mission’s intent and the desired outcome. Provide suggestions, but let them decide ‘how’ they will meet the intent within clear “left and right limits” of the mission’s intent. If something changes, they can make decisions without having to rely on you. Letting other people make decisions in situations you’re ultimately responsible for seems to contradict the concept of ‘Extreme Ownership’. How can you have extreme ownership if you are not in direct control? “Every leader must walk a fine line. That’s what makes leadership so challenging. Leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another. The simple recognition of this is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. With this in mind, a leader can more easily balance the opposing forces and lead with maximum effectiveness.” Jocko Willink Taking extreme ownership but giving away control is just one of the many contradictions leaders must live moment to moment:
The Dichotomy of Great Leadership • • • • • • • • •
quiet not silent; humble not passive; a leader and follower; confident not cocky; aggressive not overbearing; courageous not foolhardy; competitive not a gracious loser; attentive to details not obsessed by them; calm not robotic, logical not devoid of emotions
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Insights from Atomic Habits by James Clear If you’ve failed to adopt a healthy or productive habit you either failed to make your new behavior obvious, easy, attractive, or satisfying. These are what author James Clear calls ‘The Four Laws of Behavior Change’. Failing to abide by any one of these laws means you'll fail to adopt a new behavior.
Don’t have an obvious daily cue to exercise? You’ll forget about your new healthy habit and stick to your old daily routine. Don’t have an easy exercise routine? You’ll perform an easy and familiar routine instead (like watching TV). Don’t find exercise appealing (i.e. exercise isn’t attractive)? You’ll resist exercise enough to avoid doing it consistently. Don’t get immediate satisfaction after exercise? You’ll lack the motivation to exercise it consistently.
Here are two strategies to make every new healthy and productive behavior (i.e. exercising, cooking, writing, reading, etc.) obvious, easy, attractive, and satisfying so that it may turn into a daily habit.
Stacking & Starting You’ve probably used ‘habit stacking’ to build new hygiene habits without realizing it. As a child, you stacked the habit of flushing the toilet with the habit of washing your hands. Flushing the toilet became the cue for your hand washing habit. Habit stacking involves using an old and reliable daily habit as the trigger for a new habit. When you stack a new habit on an existing habit, you use the momentum of the old habit to make the new habit easier to initiate. I think of it as riding a bike down a hill to build up enough speed to get up the next hill with minimal peddling. But if the hill of your new habit is too daunting, the momentum of the old habit won't be enough. That's why you need to reduce your new habit to an easy two‐minute ‘starting ritual’. James Clear: “Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big. When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon. The most effective way I know to counteract this tendency is to use the Two‐Minute Rule, which states, ‘When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.’”
“Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page.” “Do thirty minutes of yoga” becomes “Take out my yoga mat.” “Study for class” becomes “Open my notes.” “Fold the laundry” becomes “Fold one pair of socks.” “Run three miles” becomes “Tie my running shoes.”
Syncing & Scoring Ronan Byrne, an electrical engineering student in Dublin, Ireland knew that he should exercise more, so he used his engineering skills to synchronize his stationary bike with his laptop. He wrote a program on his laptop to play his favorite Netflix shows on the TV in front of the stationary bike when he cycled at a certain speed. If he slowed down, Netflix would pause, and he’d need to cycle harder to finish the episode he was watching ‐ binge‐watching Netflix meant burning calories. Like Byrne, if you only allow yourself to enjoy your favorite experiences while executing a healthy and productive new habit, you’ll find the new habit is something you look forward to doing.
Entrepreneur Kevin Rose only allows himself to play his favorite video game on the treadmill. I only allow myself to enjoy my favorite protein cookie if I'm at the gym. I only allow myself to listen to my favorite DJ (Deadmau5) while I’m writing the scripts for my videos.
When you synchronize an experience you crave with a new habit you dread doing, the craving will counteract the resistance to executing the new habit and allow you to get started. Synchronizing is a great tool for building a new habit, but to make a habit stick the habit must become inherently satisfying. And to make a habit inherently satisfying you must keep score. Imagine on January 30th you look up at your wall and see 27 red check marks, on 27 of the last 30 days. Each check‐mark represents a successful workout. That calendar is visual proof that you are someone who cares about their health. You should take pride in that fact! If you take time to score the completion of a habit in a habit tracker (ex: calendar on your wall, app on your phone, or physical habit tracking notebook), you’ll start to see a pattern of behavior that proves you’re becoming the type of person you’ve dreamed of being. The immediate pride you experience after using a habit tracker provides the satisfaction you need to return to the habit over and over until the habit sticks.
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Insights from High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard Three key habits to improve performance and productivity: Habit #1: Tension to Intention Most high performers know they have the power to generate whatever feelings they want in any situation. High performers know they don't have to carry around the emotions of the day. They don't have sit back and hope to feel the way they want to feel. Brendon says 'It’s so thoroughly obvious that high performers are generating the feelings they want more often than taking the emotions that land on them.' Each transition during the day (work to home, school to gym, etc) is a chance to build the habit of releasing the tension and then setting an intention of the feeling you want to bring to the next situation. Habit Sequence: When you transition from one situation to the next (or one work mode to the next), close your eyes and release the tension in your face, neck and shoulders. Then set an intention for how you want to feel by asking yourself: “What is the primary feeling I want to bring into this situation?”
Habit #2: Necessity through Identity The feeling of necessity might be the most powerful feeling high performers choose to generate. Musician Bob Marley once said, “You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” High performers don’t hope they perform well. High performers create situations and mindsets where they must perform well. They do this by creating a sense of identity around their goals and processes. When Brendon asks high performers why they work so hard or how they stay so focused, their responses often sound something like this, “It’s just who I am. I can’t imagine doing anything else.” Whatever your important goals (running a marathon, writing a best‐selling book, etc) are, form your identity around them. You’ll make progress a must, not a nice to have. Habit Sequence: When you feel unmotivated to work, repeat the following statement to yourself, “This is who I am. This is what I do.” Cultivate a feeling of identity around your work process.
Habit #3: Bringing my ‘A’ Game Our culture tells us that sense of purpose comes from 'helping millions' or 'changing the world.' However, Brendon Burchard has found that most high performers develop a sense of purpose by focusing on one person. Not millions, not even a group of people, just one person. To find the person who will give meaning and purpose to your work, ask yourself, 'Who needs my A game?' Brendon Burchard says: “This question gets you looking beyond your individual performance or feelings, and it connects you with a reason to be your best for others. It helps you find somebody worth fighting for. By asking this question, you stoke the necessity to be your best in order to help others, which allows you to hit high performance faster and stay there longer.' When you ask, “Who needs my A game”, you might think of a family member, a boss you like, a teammate in need, or a customer you want to help. Whoever it is, see their face in your mind’s eye. By doing so, you will tap into a reserve you didn’t know you had. Habit Sequence: When feeling stressed at work, or you find yourself losing focus, ask yourself, “Who needs my ‘A’ game right now?” Think of a person worth pushing yourself for.
By committing to develop high performance habits we are committing to a life of excellence. “The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” ‐ Vince Lombardi
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Insights from The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler “Flow is an optimal state of consciousness, a peak state where we both feel our best and perform our best. It is a transformation available to anyone, anywhere, provided that certain initial conditions are met. Everyone from assembly-line workers in Detroit to jazz musicians in Algeria to software designers in Mumbai rely on flow to drive performance and accelerate innovation.” – Steven Kotler (all quotes in bold are by Steven Kotler) Flow is the feeling of being totally immersed in what you are doing. “In flow, every action, each decision, leads effortlessly, fluidly, seamlessly to the next. It’s high-speed problem solving; it’s being swept away by the river of ultimate performance.” According to Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Ned Hallowell: “Everything you do, you do better in flow, from baking a chocolate cake to planning a vacation to solving a differential equation to writing a business plan to playing tennis to making love. Flow is the doorway to the ‘more’ most of us seek. Rather than telling ourselves to get used to it, that’s all there is, instead learn how to enter into flow. There you will find, in manageable doses, all the ‘more’ you need.”
How to Experience More Flow at Work (4 flow triggers): lear goal with high consequences
First, you need to know exactly what you are trying to do (know the pass-fail requirements) and why you are doing it (clear goal). Your goals should always be just beyond your current skill level, forcing you to operate in the space between boredom and anxiety. Then you need to put something on the line and heighten your attention (consequence). As human beings, our fear of social consequences is similar to our fear of death (when we lived in tribes, being alienated meant surviving as an outcast alone in the wild). Therefore, you don’t need to put your life on the line to experience high consequence, just give people your word and stick to it (public accountability).
ich sensory experience
Being mindful of your five senses and experiencing rich sensory input that is complex and novel will trigger flow. The more complex and unpredictable the experience, the deeper the flow state. “If you’ve ever stood before a vast canyon and felt awe—well, awe is a state of total absorption and the front end of flow. When sucked in by the incomprehensible complexity of geologic timescales and epic beauty, reality pauses, if only for a moment. And in this moment, we taste the pinpoint focus, loss of self-consciousness, and time dilation that are deep zone companions.” In the context of work: tea/coffee = taste + smell, music = auditory, novel space = sight, and typing/sketching = tactile.
mmediate feedback
When your experience includes an immediate cycle of action-reaction-improvement, you’ll have a better chance of experiencing flow. “The smaller the gap between input and output, the more we know how we’re doing and how to do it better. If we can’t course correct in real time, we start looking for clues to better performance— things we did in the past, things we’ve seen other people do, things that can pull us out of the moment. “ In the context of your work, externalize thoughts so you can immediately improve upon them – sketch out ideas, type out sentences, draw on the whiteboard.
ay “Yes! And…”
Whatever comes up, accept it and add to it. “Interactions should be additive more than argumentative. The goal here is the momentum, togetherness, and innovation that comes from ceaselessly amplifying each other’s ideas and actions. It’s a trigger based on the first rule of improv comedy. If I open a sketch with, “Hey, there’s a blue elephant in the bathroom,” then “No, there’s not”…the scene goes nowhere. But if the reply is affirmative instead—“Yeah, sorry, there was no more space in the cereal cupboard”—well then that story goes someplace interesting.”
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Productivity Principle: The 4% Zone
Inspired by the book The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler
Optimal Challenge = Optimal Experience “Attention is most engaged (i.e., in the now) when there’s a very specific relationship between the difficulty of a task and our ability to perform that task. If the challenge is too great, fear swamps the system (anxiety). If the challenge is too easy, we stop paying attention (boredom). Flow (the optimal state of consciousness) appears near the emotional midpoint between boredom and anxiety, in what scientists call the flow channel—the spot where the task is hard enough to make us stretch but not hard enough to make us snap.' – Steven Kotler
One reason adventure sport athletes improve much faster than most athletes is that their environmental conditions force them to stay within 4% of their current ability and remain completely focused on the task at hand. If they pushed themselves too hard, they would encounter a situation far beyond their current skill level that could kill them (ex: a big wave surfer trying to surf a wave 50% larger than any wave he’s ever surfed will get overwhelmed, lose focus, and be crushed by the wave). By continually tackling challenges just beyond their CURRENT ability, adventure sport athletes enjoy the process of improvement and end up doing the impossible (like surfing 100 foot waves). “If we want to achieve the kinds of accelerated performance we’re seeing in action and adventure sports, then it’s 4 percent plus 4 percent plus 4 percent, day after day, week after week, months into years into careers. This is the road to real magic. Follow this path long enough, and not only does impossible becomes possible, it becomes what’s next— like eating breakfast, like another a day at the office.' – Steven Kotler If you want to accelerate skill development AND enjoy the process…ASK YOURSELF: 1.
What is my current ability? Note: Current ability depends on current state of mind. When tired you don't have the same ability as when you are fully rested. Your current skill level moves up and down the flow channel throughout the day. Moment-to-moment self-awareness of your current ability is the key to finding the sweet spot.
2.
How can I adjust the challenge to be ‘just beyond’ my currently ability (roughly 4%)?
When Executing Repetitive/Mundane Tasks: do it slightly faster OR with slightly less effort. When Doing Creative Work: improve your existing work by 4% (i.e. make the next revision slightly better) OR impose creative constraints (ex: condense the length of your speech slightly).
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Insights from Spark by John Ratey MD “Right now the front of your brain is firing signals about what you’re reading, and how much of it you soak up has a lot to do with whether there is a proper balance of neurochemicals and growth factors to bind neurons together. Exercise has a documented, dramatic effect on these essential ingredients.” ‐ John Ratey MD Exercise accelerates learning When you exercise, your body naturally releases a protein called ‘brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)’ into the bloodstream and up to the brain. In the 1990s, scientists discovered BDNF rapidly accelerates brain cell growth and increases the ability to learn. “Researchers found that if they sprinkled BDNF onto neurons in a petri dish, the cells automatically sprouted new branches, producing the same structural growth required for learning—and causing me to think of BDNF as Miracle‐Gro for the brain…BDNF gathers in reserve pools near the synapses and is unleashed when we get our blood pumping.” ‐ John Ratey MD “Exercise sparks the master molecule of the learning process” ‐ John Ratey MD
Exercise enhances creativity During exercise, the hippocampus brain region receives a large amount of BDNF growth factor. The hippocampus acts like a cartographer for the brain ‐ linking new information to existing memories. “A memory, scientists believe, is a collection of information fragments dispersed throughout the brain. The hippocampus serves as a way station, receiving the fragments from the cortex, and then bundling them together and sending them back up as a map of a unique new pattern of connections.” – John Ratey MD Exercise sparks growth in the hippocampus, helping you create new connections between existing ideas and allowing you to come up with novel solutions to complex problems. “If you have an important afternoon brainstorming session scheduled, going for a short, intense run during lunchtime is a smart idea.” ‐ John Ratey MD
What’s the most ‘productive’ way to exercise? Largest cognitive benefits in the least amount time, done sustainably
Type: The most effective form of exercise for increasing mental performance is aerobic exercise (also known as cardio). Aerobic exercise includes any activity that pushes your heart and lungs for a sustained period. Examples include running, biking, and swimming. Although weight training is essential for physical health, it won’t provide the cognitive benefits aerobic exercise does.
Timing: Schedule your aerobic exercise before learning a difficult subject, tackling a complex project, or conducting a brainstorming.
Duration: Exercise for 20‐30 minutes with at sustained heart rate of 60‐70% of your maximum heart rate (max heart rate = 208 ‐ (0.7)*current age). If you exceed 70% of your maximum heart rate, you’ll start burning reserve fuel (glycogen) and releasing large amounts of lactic acid, which breaks down muscle. The more time you spend above 70% of your maximum heart rate, the more recovery time you’ll need between exercises, and the less often you’ll reap the cognitive benefits of exercise. If you don’t have a heart rate monitor, don’t worry. Iowa State University kinesiologist Panteleimon Ekkekakis has found moving at a pace which feels “somewhat hard” is a good indication you are exercising near 70% of your maximum heart rate. You experience the largest mental gains when you combine aerobic exercise with an activity that requires advanced motor skills: “Choose a sport that simultaneously taxes the cardiovascular system and the brain—tennis is a good example—or do a ten‐minute aerobic warm‐up before something nonaerobic and skill‐based, such as rock climbing or balance drills. While aerobic exercise elevates neurotransmitters, creates new blood vessels that pipe in growth factors, and spawns new cells, complex activities put all that material to use by strengthening and expanding networks. The more complex the movements, the more complex the synaptic connections.” ‐ John Ratey MD
“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these two means, man can attain perfection.” ‐ Plato
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Insights from Are You Fully Charged? by Tom Rath “We identified and catalogued more than 2,600 ideas for improving daily experience. As we narrowed down the concepts to the most proven and practical strategies, underlying patterns continued to surface. Three key conditions differentiate days when you have a full charge from typical days” – Tom Rath
Meaning: making the connection between what you do and how it benefits another person Interactions: creating far more positive than negative moments Physical Health: making choices that improve your mental and physical health.
Meaning
“Until you understand how your efforts contribute to the world, you are simply going through the motions each day.” – Tom Rath According to a 2008 study by the Radiological Society of North America, when a patient’s photo was attached to an MRI scan, the accuracy of the radiologists’ diagnosis improved by 46%! Therefore, get in the habit of making a connection between what you are working on and who it is impacting. Place a picture of who your work is impacting on your desk or on the wallpaper of your computer desktop.
Interaction
“We need at least three to five positive interactions to outweigh every one negative exchange. Bad moments simply outweigh good ones. Whether you’re having a one-on-one conversation with a colleague or a group discussion, keep this simple shortcut in mind: At least 80 percent of your conversations should be focused on what’s going right.” – Tom Rath What's ‘right’ includes: focusing on a strength, recent accomplishment, or an experience you can look forward to. At end of each day, as you lay in bed, reflect upon the positive interactions you had during the day. Reflecting on positive interactions will focus your mind to form more positive interactions tomorrow.
Physical Health
“There is absolutely no dietary need for any added sugar - a toxin that fuels diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Eliminate as much added sugar as possible…Drink more water, tea, and coffee instead of soda or other sweetened drinks.” – Tom Rath Look at the label of everything you are about to purchase and eat. If it contains more than 10 grams of sugar, don’t buy it. Aim for zero added sugar (naturally sweetened foods only) throughout the day to keep you blood sugar stable and remain fully charged. At a minimum, avoid these sugary foods: soda, candy, pastries, fruit juice, and most dressings. “Being active throughout the day is the key to staying energized. Even 30–60 minutes of exercise a day will not cut it if you spend the rest of your day sitting around. Moving around and getting more activity every hour is what will keep you fully charged” – Tom Rath A study of over 200,000 people found that even if you exercise more than 7 hours each week you still had a 50% greater risk of death if you sit the majority of the time each day. “When you sit down, the electrical activity in your leg muscles shuts off quickly. Your rate of burning calories drops to just one per minute. The enzymes that help break down fat fall by 90 percent. After sitting for two hours, your good cholesterol drops by 20 percent.” – Tom Rath Set hourly reminders to move around. Make standing the default position (get a stand-up desk if you work in an office). “The best performers in these studies slept for 8 hours and 36 minutes per night on average. The average American, in contrast, gets just 6 hours and 51 minutes of sleep on weeknights…One study suggests that losing 90 minutes of sleep can reduce daytime alertness by nearly one-third.” – Tom Rath Sleep is essential to our daily performance. Here is how to get more of it: Reduce your exposure to light at night (turn off electronic devices 1 hour before a scheduled bed time). Lower the room temperature (reduced temperature prevents your natural body clock from waking you up in the middle of the night). Reduce exposure to noise while sleeping by wearing ear plugs or playing a white-noise soundtrack while sleeping (use an app on your smartphone).
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Insights from The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal “People who use their willpower seem to run out of it. In study after study: Controlling emotions didn’t just lead to emotional outbursts; it made people more willing to spend money on something they didn’t need. Resisting tempting sweets didn’t just trigger cravings for chocolate; it prompted procrastination. It was as if every act of willpower was drawing from the same source of strength, leaving people weaker with each successful act of self-control.” – Kelly McGonigal Neuroscientists have found that self-control resides in an area of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex. Each time you use the pre-frontal cortex to make decisions, think through problems, or resist temptations, you deplete your limited willpower reserves. In the modern age, you face an onslaught of self-control challenges. If you aren’t careful, you will quickly use up your limited self-control reserves, which leads to excessive procrastination on our biggest projects. Therefore, you need to have a large willpower reserve to avoid becoming defenseless against temptation and distraction later in the day. In addition to the two strategies detailed in my animated summary video (increasing heart rate variability by slowing your breathing to five breaths per minute and forgiving yourself for past willpower failures), here are four daily habits to strengthen your willpower:
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Insights from The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz Dr. Jim Loehr, co‐founder of the Human Performance Institute and author of “The Power of Full Engagement”, has dedicated his professional life to improving the performance of elite athletes and executives. When Loehr started working with elite athletes, he couldn’t understand the performance gap between his low‐ranked athletes and his high‐ranked athletes. Both athletes had incredible talent and work ethic. Then, one day, he noticed his high‐performing tennis players doing something strange. Between points the high‐performing players seemed to zone out. In the middle of a match, they appeared to be completely relaxed and in a Zen‐like state. Days later he had his tennis players wear heart rate monitors and observed their heart rates during a tennis match. During the match the high‐ranking, high‐performing tennis players frequently engaged in short rituals of recovery and relaxed their heart rates by as much as 20 beats per minute between points. The low‐ranking, low‐performing tennis players had no rituals of recovery and maintained an elevated heart rate throughout the match. In the last half of these tennis matches, these low‐ranked tennis players made errors that ultimately cost them the match. Loehr found that high‐performing athletes can consistently perform at a high level because they’ve developed the habit of going through rapid cycles of intense focus and relaxation. “The richest, happiest and most productive lives are characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand, but also to disengage periodically and seek renewal.” – Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz “Sadly, the need for recovery is often viewed as evidence of weakness rather than as an integral aspect of sustained performance. The result is that we give almost no attention to renewing and expanding our energy reserves, individually or organizationally.” – Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz “We must learn to establish stopping points in our days, inviolable times when we step off the track, cease processing information and shift our attention from achievement to restoration. Moore‐Ede calls this a ‘time cocoon.’” – Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz The key is to build a set of rapid recovery rituals into your day to restore your energy sources. You can execute the rituals in two scenarios: 1. 2.
After 90 minutes of continuous focus on a task. Any time you start to feel slightly irritable.
The four energy sources you need to restore are physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, and spiritual energy. To help you build your rapid recovery rituals, here is a list of rapid recovery rituals I practice every day to spark your thinking. To quickly restore my physical energy, I walk up a flight of stairs, go for a jog around the block, or do a set of push‐ups. I do these exercises just long enough to intensify my breathing, but not enough to break a sweet and require a change of clothes. By doing these brief exercises, I oxygenate my cells and rejuvenate my brain. Then I drink cold glass of water. Drinking water has a profound impact on your physical energy because your brain and heart are made of almost 75% water. To quickly restore my emotional energy, I text someone I enjoy spending time with to make plans for that evening (ex: going out for dinner with my wife). Planning events with others creates a sense of anticipation and excitement I can carry into my work session. Another emotional boost is to give praise to others around me. “Gallup found that the key drivers of productivity for employees include whether they feel cared for by a supervisor or someone at work; whether they have received recognition or praise during the past seven days; and whether someone at work regularly encourages their development.” – Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz To quickly restore my mental energy, I go for a walk, listen to music, let go of what I was working on, and let my mind wander. By letting my mind wander, I let ideas related to my work incubate in my sub‐conscious. When I return to work 10‐15 minutes later, I have a burst of creative energy. “The highest form of creativity depends on a rhythmic movement between engagement and disengagement, thinking and letting go, activity and rest. Both sides of the equation are necessary, but neither is sufficient by itself.” – Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz To quickly restore my spiritual energy, I take out a piece of paper and write down answers to the questions: ‘How I want to be remembered?’ and ‘Who I want to help?’. Spiritual energy comes from thinking of things bigger than yourself. The greatest spiritual energy gains come from tapping into a sense of purpose. To tap into a sense of purpose: “We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—hourly and daily. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.” – Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz
Take a few minutes to write out your own rapid recovery rituals. Include physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual recovery components.
“Physical capacity is defined by quantity of energy. Emotional capacity is defined by quality of energy. Mental capacity is defined by focus of energy. Spiritual capacity is defined by force of energy.” – Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz 47
Insights from Performing Under Pressure by Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw‐Fry “In a stressful situation, reduction is the goal. In a pressure moment, success is the goal. Thinking that you have to be successful all the time means you are under pressure all the time.” How does pressure affect your performance? “In a pressure moment, your heart rate starts to zoom (and) your thinking is apt to become rigid and distorted.” Everyone is negatively affected by pressure. No one can perform their best under pressure, not even so‐called ‘clutch performers’ like superstar athletes LeBron James and Tom Brady. “People who handle pressure better than others do not ‘rise to the occasion’ or perform statistically better than they do in non‐pressure situations. If you are a sports fan, you’ve been fed a myth by the media that some athletes are ‘clutch’ performers who do better under pressure. Or maybe you’ve heard that some people at work do more creative work, are more productive, work better as a team, or add more value to a client under pressure. But it’s not true.” “In our multiyear study of individuals under pressure who were able to perform in the top 10 percent of the twelve thousand people we studied, and who statistically received more promotions that advanced their careers, we found that each of them was doing the same thing as basketball star LeBron James or New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady: allowing themselves to be affected less by pressure than those around them.”
3 Ways to be Less Affected by Pressure When psychologist Adam Grant told students to get excited when they felt nervous, they delivered speeches that were rated seventeen percent more persuasive and fifteen percent more confident than students who were told to calm down. In another experiment, when students were told to get excited before a big exam they scored twenty‐two percent higher than students who were instructed to stay calm. The next time you feel pressure, interpret your anxiety as excitement. Tell yourself “I’m excited for the upcoming challenge.” “Before you go into a high‐pressure situation, convince yourself it is a challenge or an opportunity…Think of your tasks and responsibilities as daily challenges to strut your stuff. If you are a project manager, tell your team, ‘I challenge you to make this your best work ever.’ A sales manager might tell his sales force, ‘Here’s the challenge—let’s see if we are up to it.’ Or ‘Hey, it’s great that we get opportunities like this to show how good we are!’”
“Track sprinters have more false starts when told their time is important and will be recorded as opposed to being discarded and used for training purposes.” Research shows that sales reps who are told to simply ‘shoot the breeze’ when presenting a new product make significantly less mistakes than sales reps who are told their product presentation is ‘very important.’ The next time you feel pressure, downplay the situation by equating it to something familiar, easy, and less important. For example, when you feel nervous before a big exam, tell yourself “it’s just like a practice test.”
“When you focus on ‘uncontrollables,’ you intensify the pressure; it boosts your anxiety to the point of disturbing your physiology, creating distracting thoughts that undermine your confidence.” The next time you feel pressure focus entirely on what you can control. Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Greg Maddux judged his performances by how many pitches left his hand the way he intended (whether the batter hit his pitch was irrelevant). Before delivering a speech, I fixate on my breathing, posture, and how I’m going to deliver my opening sentence. In high pressure situations, professional golfers focus on executing their pre‐shot routine (a series of actions taken before they hit the golf ball). The authors recommend performing the following exercise: 1. 2. 3.
Visualize the high‐pressure moment; think about the things you can control, and imagine those going well. Now think about the things you can’t control. Visualize your performance going astray. Bring your mind back into focus on what you can control, and visualize yourself getting back on track.
“Very few think about how to handle pressure moments better—until it’s too late. Few have strategies grounded in the latest science of the brain or in psychology.” 48 All bold‐italic quotes are by authors Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw‐Fry
Insights from 10-Minute Toughness by Jason Selk 'A considerable body of research validates that each of these five tools is highly effective for improving an individual's ability to perform…Give it a try. Complete the mental workout for two weeks, and judge for yourself if it helps you to improve focus, ability, and consistency.' – Jason Selk 15-Second Centered Breath
When you feel performance pressure, your heart rate naturally increases. If you don’t take steps to control your heart rate, you’ll impair your ability to think clearly (shutdown down executive functioning in the brain) and activate your fight-orflight response. “An effective way to control heart rate is to use a 'centering breath' before and during competition. The centering breath is a fifteen-second breath in which you breathe in for six seconds, hold for two, and then breathe out for seven. In doing so, you will biologically control your heart rate so as to better control your arousal state and ability to think under pressure.' – Jason Selk Jason Selk has found that when elite athletes and top business executives slow their breathing to 15-second intervals before going on stage, they get enough air into the diaphragm to trigger a relaxation response and steady their heart rates.
Performance Statement
'After taking your centering breath, repeat to yourself the statement that most effectively focuses you on what it takes for you to be successful in competition. Repeating the performance statement in your mental workout will help remind you of the most helpful thought necessary for success.' – Jason Selk Without a performance statement, your mind will naturally fill up with thoughts of worry and self-doubt. Repeating a performance statement is an excellent tool to reduce negative self-talk during performances. A cyclist’s performance statement is: 'Weight back and breathe easy.' A business executive’s performance statement is: 'Listen first; then decide; be swift and confident.” Discover your performance statement: 'Imagine that you are about to compete in the biggest game of your life, and the best coach you have ever had is standing right next to you. Sixty seconds before the competition begins, your coach looks you in the eye and tells you that if you stay focused on this one thing or these two things, you will be successful today. What one or two things would the coach name? (Be as specific as possible, and avoid using the word don't)' – Jason Selk
Visualizations
After reciting your performance statement, spend one minute visualizing past success (seeing highlights from past performances), one minute visualizing ultimate success (seeing yourself performing well on the biggest stage you can imagine, ex: a stadium full of people), and one minute visualizing a successful upcoming performance.
Visualization Guidelines: A. Rapidly replay a scene in your mind until it feels right. B. Ensure your final visualization is at 'game speed' (how you expect to experience the upcoming performance in real time). C. End each successful visualization by congratulating yourself on an excellent performance. Questions to ask yourself while visualizing (answer with as much detail as possible): 1. What do I see? ________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. What do I hear? _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. What do I feel? ________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Emotionally, what does it feel like to be successful? __________________________________________________________________
Identity Statement
'Upon completing your personal highlight reel, repeat to yourself your identity statement to help mold your self-image. The identity statement is a proven tool for boosting self-confidence, which is the single most helpful mental variable in improving performance.' – Jason Selk Complete the following statement: “I am incredibly: (a key strength of yours – ex: passionate, thoughtful, creative, etc.); I am the: (what you want to be known for – ex: best speaker at this conference, most effective salesperson at this tradeshow, etc.). Jason Selk’s identity statement: 'I am more motivated than my competition; I am the most effective sports psychology consultant in the world.'
15-Second Centered Breath
'The mental workout ends the way it begins, with a fifteen-second deep breath. This breath resets your heart rate to a level of controlled arousal and increased mental focus.' – Jason Selk
'The 10-MT workout is designed to help athletes control arousal (through centering breaths), create a precise and effective focus (through the performance statement and personal highlight reel), and improve self-image (through the identity statement).' – Jason Selk 49
Insights from 10% Happier by Dan Harris “There’s a reason why business people, lawyers, and marines have embraced meditation. There’s no magic or mysticism required—it’s just exercise. If you do the right amount of reps, certain things will happen, reliably and predictably.”– Dan Harris
What happens when I start meditating? Less reactionary “What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, ‘respond’ rather than simply ‘react…A successful dotcom friend of mine said that once he started meditating he noticed he was always the calmest person in the room during heated meetings. He called it a “superpower.” – Dan Harris Meditation gives you the ability to detach and observe a situation, without impulsively reacting to it. This creates a temperament that is essential for leadership. It can also prevent you from saying something to your boss that you’ll later regret.
More resilient “I had long assumed that the only route to success was harsh self-criticism. However, research shows that ‘firm but kind’ is the smarter play. People trained in self-compassion meditation are more likely to quit smoking and stick to a diet. They are better able to bounce back from missteps. All successful people fail. If you can create an inner environment where your mistakes are forgiven and flaws are candidly confronted, your resilience expands exponentially.” – Dan Harris
Less fearful “Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray.” – Dan Harris
More present “Many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress…When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.” – Dan Harris 'We spend almost every waking moment lost in thought. This is what mindfulness is cutting through. The enemy of mindfulness is to be distracted by thought – thinking without knowing that you're thinking.' – Sam Harris, author and neuroscientist “When you see that there’s something better than what we have then it’s just a matter of time before your brain is like, ‘Why the fuck am I doing that? I’ve been holding on to a hot coal.’ ” – Dr. Jud Brewer, mindfulness researcher at Yale
3 Ways to Start Meditating: 1. 2. 3.
Download a guided meditation (I suggest using a smartphone app like ‘Calm,’ ‘Headspace’, or ‘10% Happier’). Go for a walk every morning and pay attention to the sights and sounds around you. When you notice yourself thinking (labeling, ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future), just bring your attention back to the sights and sounds. Sit upright in a chair, set a timer for 7 minutes, and close your eyes. Feel your breath moving and naturally flowing in and out of your nose. When you notice yourself thinking, gradually return your focus back to your breath.
“Every time you get lost in thought—which you will, thousands of times—gently return to the breath. I cannot stress strongly enough that forgiving yourself and starting over is the whole game. As my friend and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has written, ‘Beginning again and again is the actual practice, not a problem to overcome so that one day we can come to the ‘real’ meditation.’” – Dan Harris
“If you give your brain enough of a taste of mindfulness, it will eventually create a self-reinforcing spiral—a retreat from greed and hatred” – Dan Harris
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Insights from The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor “We become more successful when we are happier and more positive.” – Shawn Achor Why it’s important to be happy before and during work:
Doctors primed with positive emotions perform an accurate diagnosis 19% faster (Estrada 1997). Optimistic sales people outperform their counterparts by 56% (Seligman, 2006). A 2005 meta-study looked at over 200 studies on 275,000 people worldwide and found that happiness led to success in nearly every domain, including work, health, friendship, sociability, and creativity (Lyubomirsky, 2005).
“Happiness gives us a real chemical edge on the competition. How? Positive emotions flood our brains with dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that not only make us feel good, but dial up the learning centers of our brains to higher levels. They help us organize new information, keep that information in the brain longer, and retrieve it faster later on. And they enable us to make and sustain more neural connections, which allows us to think more quickly and creatively, become more skilled at complex analysis and problem solving, and see and invent new ways of doing things.” – Shawn Achor (all bold italic quotes shown below are by Shawn Achor)
5 Ways to Build Your 'Happiness Advantage' This Week elp someone by using a signature strength
“Each time we use a skill, whatever it is, we experience a burst of positivity. If you find yourself in need of a happiness booster, revisit a talent you haven’t used in a while.” My signature strength is learning. I exercise my signature strength by reading books, learning new ideas, and sharing those ideas with others. Finding one great idea provides a happiness boost that lasts the entire day. Your signature strength might be giving advice on a specific topic. Determine what you’re particularly good at and enjoy doing. Each night, before you go to bed, think about how you’re going to use your signature strength to make a small difference in someone’s life.
rrange something to look forward to
“One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27 percent. Often, the most enjoyable part of an activity is the anticipation. If you can’t take the time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar—even if it’s a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it.” Schedule 3 exciting experiences this week. These experience might include: Watching a movie you've been dying to see, playing a round of golf with a friend, or watching a local concert or comedy show.
ractice gratitude
“When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience fewer headaches than control groups. Countless other studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and less likely to be depressed, anxious, or lonely.” Keep a journal near your bed. Before going to sleep at night OR before getting out of bed in the morning, write down 3 things you’re grateful for.
erform deliberate acts of kindness
“Sonja Lyubomirsky, a leading researcher and author of The How of Happiness, has found that individuals told to complete five acts of kindness over the course of a day report feeling much happier than control groups and that the feeling lasts for many subsequent days, far after the exercise is over.” Make a conscious decision to help 3 people today: Buy someone a cup of coffee, offer your time to simply listen to someone’s struggles, or send a message of encouragement to a friend or family member.
earn for social support
“In the midst of challenges and stress, some people choose to hunker down and retreat within themselves. But the most successful people invest in their friends, peers, and family members to propel themselves forward. This principle teaches us how to invest more in one of the greatest predictors of success and excellence—our social support network.” As an introvert, I could go weeks without talking to friends. This behavior is destructive to my happiness and my work performance. I've learned to make plans with friends at the start of each week to ensure my social support bucket stays full. I often schedule: Coffee dates, dinners, and game nights (card games, board games, etc.)
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Insights from Drive by Daniel Pink What is the best way to motive yourself and others to do cognitively demanding work? External rewards like cash bonuses are great for straight‐forward tasks: getting kids to do their chores, convincing yourself to do repetitive data entry work, or motivating an employee to do assembly line work. However, these ‘if you do this, I’ll reward you with that’ types of external incentives are horrible for motiving yourself and others to learn a difficult subject or come up with creative solutions to complex problems. According to scientific research (studies: 1,2,3,4), if you use external incentives like money, grades, or social status, you will do significant harm to one’s long‐term motivation to do cognitively demanding work. The best way to motive yourself and others is to spark three intrinsic drivers:
UTONOMY When Atlassian, an Australian software company, allowed their programmers to have a complete day of freedom (they were paid to work on whatever code they wanted with whomever they wanted), they came up with several new product ideas and dozens of creative solutions to existing problems. Atlassian co‐founder Mike Cannon‐Brookes told author Daniel Pink, “If you don’t pay enough, you can lose people. But beyond that, money is not a motivator.” What motivates people beyond equal pay is work autonomy. By giving yourself and others a degree of flexibility within a rigid framework with a choice of tasks, free time to work on side projects, choice of technique, and the opportunity to pick team members, you will spark the intrinsic drive of autonomy. Author Daniel Pink calls these the four T’s of autonomy: freedom to pick the task, the time, the technique, and the team. “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.” ‐ Daniel Pink
ASTERY When Swedish shipping company, Green Cargo, wanted to overhaul their performance review process, they implemented a key finding by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: when workers are given tasks slightly above their current skill level and stay in a state between boredom and anxiety, they are more engaged, more motivated to work, and more creative. Green Cargo implemented Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s findings by changing the way they conducted performance reviews. During each performance review, managers now needed to determine if their employees were overwhelmed or underwhelmed with their current work assignments. Then the managers needed to work with each employee to craft Goldilocks work assignments: work assignments that weren’t too hard, not too easy, but just right above their current skill level. What effect did Green Cargo's new performance review system have? Employees were more engaged and reported feelings of mastery over their work. After two years of these new performance reviews, Green Cargo became profitable for the first time in 125 years. “One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. But when the match is just right, the results can be glorious.” ‐ Daniel Pink
URPOSE 'You have to repeat your mission and your purpose...over and over and over. And sometimes you're like, doesn't everyone already know this? It doesn't matter. Starting out the meetings with This is Facebook's mission, This is Instagram's mission, and This is why Whatsapp exists (is critical).' – Sheryl Sandberg When Sheryl Sandburg starts her meetings by stating the mission, she's sparking the third intrinsic driver: a sense of purpose. Purpose is the reason organizations like ‘Doctors Without Borders’ can get highly skilled doctors to willingly travel to poor villages around the world, live in harsh conditions, and get paid very little money to do so. These doctors are motivated to work because they are fueled by a sense of purpose they get from helping others. Ask: How will learning this topic allow you to help the people you care about? How will solving this problem serve the greater good?
“Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self‐determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” ‐ Daniel Pink
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Insights from Rethinking Positive Thinking by Gabriele Oettingen “Positive fantasies led to lower energy levels, which in turn predicted lower accomplishment' ‐ Gabriele Oettingen Gabriele Oettingen has studied the effect of positive visualization for several decades, and she’s uncovered some surprising findings:
College students who visualized themselves receiving a good grade on a psychology 101 midterm received a lower grade than students who didn’t participate in the positive visualization exercise. College graduates who visualized themselves getting a high paying job received fewer job offers and earned less money than graduates who didn’t complete the positive visualization exercise.
When you allow yourself to fantasize about a positive result in the future, you fool your mind into thinking that you’ve already achieved that result. If the mind thinks you’ve already reached your goal, it won’t be motivated to take action towards attaining that goal. Author Gabriele Oettingen has found that women who participate in a six‐minute visualization exercise lower their blood pressure by 3‐5 points (mimicking the calming effects of smoking half a cigarette). 'Positive fantasies might make us feel electrified for an instant, but at the very least, this feeling does not correspond to what is going on in our bodies.” – Garbriele Oettingen However, positive fantasies are helpful if you want to decide which goal to pursue. By fantasying you can rapidly simulate several future experiences and select the future that is most worth struggling for. Therefore, you should not scrap the practice of positive thinking. Here is how you can use positive thinking to envision the future you want and RAISE your motivation to attain that vision:
ish: 'What do I want, and why is it reasonable?' ‐‐> allow yourself to see it Visualize yourself making progress in one of the following areas of your life: physical health, financial security, key relationships, or the problem you are most concerned with now. Then focus on one action you could take today to move you closer to that vision. Make sure the action is feasible and completely within your control. Examples: go for a run after work, eat one serving of vegetables with every meal, cook dinner for my partner, etc.
utcome: “What powerful emotion do I associate with getting it? ‐‐> allow yourself to feel it Focus on the greatest benefit that will flow from completing your wish today. Allow yourself to feel a peak emotion associated with completion your intended action. Examples: balanced, proud, relieved, connected, energized, satisfied, etc.
bstacle: “Why is it going to be hard?” ‐‐> see yourself struggling to get it Focus on the biggest internal obstacle you need to overcome today to fulfill your wish. If your goal is feasible, then the only thing that can hold you back from achieving is an internal limitation. This means being honest you’re yourself and preempting the excuses that you’ll come up with during the day to avoid taking action. Examples: got distracted, too busy, too tired, procrastinated too much, couldn’t resist, etc.
lan: “How do I know I can still do it?” ‐‐> see yourself overcoming a struggle to achieve it Focus on your response to this obstacle. Consider what has worked in the past, or what you think could work based on advice from a credible resource. Then think: “If I notice the obstacle, then I will…[the action you will take to move past the obstacle]” Examples: “If I come home tired from work, then I will put on my running shoes and walk outside.” OR “If I experience cravings for junk food, then I will go for a walk and drink a large glass of water.” Instead of fantasizing about a future goal, start WOOPing your goals. Start by visualizing what you want, then anticipate what might hold you back, and come up with an if‐then plan to neutralize those internal struggles. By WOOPing your goal you'll remain motivated to take action, and be more likely to actually experience your optimistic vision of the future.
“Participants in our studies show important, long‐term changes in their behavior—such as eating more vegetables, exercising more, drinking less—after as little as a single WOOP session…It’s a living tool that you can use in your everyday life. Practiced daily over an extended period of time, WOOP enables you to not only solve specific problems or wishes, but live a life that is balanced, meaningful, and generally happy.” ‐ Gabriele Oettingen
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Insights from The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman “This book is about my personal quest to test the art and science of rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. The purpose of this book is to help you acquire new skills in record time. In my experience, it takes around twenty hours of practice to break through the frustration barrier: to go from knowing absolutely nothing about what you’re trying to do to performing noticeably well.” – Josh Kaufman Here is a systemic way to become competent in any skill (mental or physical) as quickly as possible: Deconstruct a skill into the smallest possible sub-skills
'Deconstructing the skill before you begin also allows you to identify the parts of the skill that aren’t important for beginning practitioners. By eliminating the noncritical sub-skills or techniques early in the process, you’ll be able to invest more of your time and energy mastering the critical sub-skills first.' – Josh Kaufman One way to deconstruct a skill: imagine the opposite of what you want. Picture a situation where you’ll need to use your desired skill. With that situation in mind, imagine the worst-case scenario. For example, if you wanted to learn to white-water kayak, it would be helpful to imagine going down a river in your kayak and encountering a dangerous white-water rapid. As you hit the rapid, your kayak flips, and you’re underwater, unable to flip the kayak over and about to hit your head on a rock. To prevent this worst-cast scenario from unfolding, you’ll need to know the following skills: how to roll a kayak right-side up when underwater, how to navigate a river and spot dangerous rapids, and how to control a kayak to avoid dangerous sections of the river. Each of these skills are ‘sub-skills’ of ‘kayaking.’ Thinking of a disastrous performance with your desired skill allows you to come up with an inventory of important sub-skills to initially focus on. By breaking down your desired skill into a set of sub-skills, acquiring the skill seems less overwhelming.
Learn just enough to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice
'Learning helps you plan, edit, and correct yourself as you practice. That’s why learning is valuable. The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough.” – Josh Kaufman Spend less time studying how to practice and more time actually practicing. Gather a collection of trusted resources (ex: three or more top-rated books on Amazon) and quickly scan those resources for ways to practice certain sub-skills and to self-correct while you practice. Find a consensus of best practice methods from several resources. The moment you devise a practice plan and a way to self-correct, you should put down the books, turn off the lesson videos, and go practice. “Instead of trying to be perfect, focus on practicing as much as you can as quickly as you can, while maintaining ‘good enough’ form.” - Josh Kaufman
Remove physical, mental, and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice
'There are many things that can get in the way of practice, which makes it much more difficult to acquire any skill.' – Josh Kaufman
Here are three barriers to rapid skill development to consider and eliminate prior to practicing a new skill: 1. Limited access: If it's too hard to get started, or it takes too long to get started, you'll find an excuse not to start. If you want to learn to play the guitar, place your guitar in the middle of the living room with a sheet of music next to it. Doing so will make it easy and effortless to pick up the guitar and start practicing. 2. Distractions: Skill development requires your undivided attention while you practice. Practice in areas that you consider boring while you are free from distractions: no television, ringing phones, or incoming e-mails. 3. Self-consciousness: The fear of looking incompetent is the largest barrier to skill development. Adjust external expectations and laugh at yourself for the first 20 hours (without losing enthusiasm for learning the skill).
Practice the most important sub-skills (with feedback), for at least twenty hours
'Once you start, you must keep practicing until you hit the twenty-hour mark. If you get stuck, keep pushing: you can’t stop until you reach your target performance level or invest twenty hours. If you’re not willing to invest at least twenty hours up front, choose another skill to acquire. The reason for this is simple: the early parts of the skill acquisition process usually feel harder than they really are. You’re often confused, and you’ll run into unexpected problems and barriers. Instead of giving up when you experience the slightest difficulty, precommitting to twenty hours makes it easier to persist.” – Josh Kaufman
An easy and effective way to reach 20 hours of practice is to devote 1 month, 40 minutes a day, to practicing your desired skill (one skill at a time). I suggest practicing for 20 minutes after you wake up and 20 minutes before you go to bed. Before each practice session, set a timer for 20 minutes and push yourself to improve (struggle is ok, in fact struggle is essential to learning process). Seek instant feedback while you practice – use coaches, mentors, software programs, and video capture devices when possible. After 20 hours of practice, you’ll be in a better position to decide if you want to continue developing the skill.
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Insights from Make It Stick by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger & Mark McDaniel “People commonly believe that if you expose yourself to something enough times— say, a textbook passage or a set of terms from an eighth grade biology class— you can burn it into memory. Not so.” “The hours immersed in rereading can seem like due diligence, but the amount of study time is no measure of mastery.” Rereading is a terrible study strategy. Mass repetition is an unproductive skill development strategy. Why? They’re too easy. “The more you repeat in a single session, the more familiar it is and the less you struggle to remember it, therefore the less you learn. Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.” Here are three learning techniques (backed by peer‐reviewed science) that actually increase information retention, skill acquisition, and lead to mastery.
Self‐Quizzing Pause an Audiobook every 30 minutes or put down a book every 15 minutes and ask yourself:
What were the key ideas? Which of those ideas were new to me? How can I use these ideas in my life?
WARNING: It’s hard to recall the details you’ve just read/heard! According to empirical evidence, you forget roughly 70% of what you read and hear shortly after you learn it. Your minds are in a constant state of forgetting. Self‐quizzing forces you to use the limited information you recall to navigate your way back to the information you’ve forgotten. If learning is like exploring a new land, then self‐quizzing is like retracing your steps back to a lake of knowledge. When you put in the effort to find a path back to the information you want to retain, you slow your rate of forgetting. “The harder it is for you to recall new learning from memory, the greater the benefit of doing so…the effort of retrieving knowledge or skills strengthens its staying power.”
Interleaving Instead of practicing one specific skill over and over, shift between three or more similar skills. “A baseball player who practices batting by swinging at fifteen fastballs, then at fifteen curveballs, and then at fifteen changeups will perform better in practice than the player who (goes between the three pitch types in random order). But the player who asks for random pitches during practice builds his ability to decipher and respond to each pitch…and he becomes the better hitter.” If you want to learn graphic design and master software programs Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects, don’t master one program at a time. Instead, get good at all three simultaneously. Do Photoshop on Monday and Friday, Illustrator on Tuesday and Thursday, and After Effects on Wednesday and Saturday. When learning to cook, don’t master one meal at a time. Instead, master five similar meals at a time, and never cook the same meal twice in a row.
Spacing “Lots of practice works, but only if it’s spaced.” Mass repetition relies heavily on short‐term memory. Spaced repetition, however, requires you to use your long‐term memory to recover the information you’ve partially forgotten. “The increased effort required to retrieve the learning after a little forgetting has the effect of retriggering consolidation (brain’s method of encoding information), further strengthening memory.” If you only have two hours to practice a new skill this week, don’t do all two hours in one day. Instead, practice for an hour today and an hour at the end of the week.
Why are self‐quizzing, interleaving, and spacing effective learning techniques? They’re hard. The harder you work to retrieve information, the more likely that information will stick. Effort = Retention
55 All bold quotes are from the book Make It Stick
Insights from A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
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Insights from Peak by Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool “The most effective (improvement) method of all: deliberate practice. It is the gold standard, the ideal to which anyone learning a skill should aspire.” - Anders Ericsson
Turn your practice sessions into deliberate practice sessions by adding S.P.I.C.E.: pecific performance target
If you have vague performance targets like ‘get better’ or ‘succeed,’ you’re simply wasting your time. To improve performance, you need specific performance goals. Steve Faloon was able to recite 82 digits by having clear goals the entire way. If he could successfully recite 39 digits, his sole focus was getting to 40 digits. “Deliberate practice involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance; it is not aimed at some vague overall improvement.” - Anders Ericsson
eriods of intense undistracted focus
Before Steve attempted 39 digits, he gave himself an exciting pep talk (“You got this Steve!”) before concentrating intently on the numbers Anders gave him. For those 1 hour sessions all that mattered was hitting his targets. “Deliberate practice is deliberate, that is, it requires a person’s full attention and conscious actions. You seldom improve much without giving the task your full attention. It isn’t enough to simply follow a teacher’s or coach’s directions.” - Anders Ericsson
mmediate feedback
To discover a mental representation that works, you’ll need to test various mental representations during each practice. In order to verify if a representation is effective or not, you’ll need to receive accurate and immediate feedback. The quicker the feedback, the faster you’ll improve your mental representation. Steve knew if his approach was working after each attempt. Imagine if he had to wait 10 minutes before knowing whether the last six attempts were correct… “Without feedback— either from yourself or from outside observers— you cannot figure out what you need to improve on or how close you are to achieving your goals.” - Anders Ericsson
ycling between comfort and discomfort
Approach skill development the same way you’d approach bodybuilding: a period of discomfort (lift weights slightly heavier than what you can currently lift) followed by a period of ease and comfort (recovery phase) to grow new muscles and lift larger weights next week. Improvement only comes from a willingness to push yourself beyond your comfort zone followed by a willingness to fully rest and recover (expert performers sleep on average 8.5 hr / night). “Deliberate practice takes place outside one’s comfort zone and requires a student to constantly try things that are just beyond his or her current abilities. Thus it demands near-maximal effort, which is generally not enjoyable.” Anders Ericsson
xpert coaching from proven performers
Expert coaches provide effective mental representations to jump start your progress. Expert coaching also heightens each aspect of the deliberate practice method by: Ensuring you know the path to excellence and providing intermediate goals along the way. Using social pressure to hold you accountable and raise the intensity of practice. Providing accurate and immediate feedback because they know exactly what to look for. Pushing you harder than you want, but not pushing you too far. “Deliberate practice develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do and for which effective training techniques have been established. The practice regimen should be designed and overseen by a teacher or coach who is familiar with the abilities of expert performers and with how those abilities can best be developed.” - Anders Ericsson
The Ultimate Goal: “Deliberate practice both produces and depends on effective mental representations. Improving performance goes hand in hand with improving mental representations; as one’s performance improves, the representations become more detailed and effective, in turn making it possible to improve even more.” - Anders Ericsson
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Insights from The 4‐Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss “It is possible to become world‐class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6– 12 months, or even 6– 12 weeks. There is a recipe, the real recipe in this book, and that is DiSSS.” – Tim Ferriss
“Deconstruction is best thought of as exploration. This is where we throw a lot on the wall to see what sticks…it is where we answer the question: how do I break this amorphous “skill” into small, manageable pieces?” – Tim Ferriss Break down the skill into a sub‐ set of skills. Understand each of these sub‐skills by reading ‘conventional’ and ‘unconventional’ guides. Look for similarities between the two. Interview world‐class performers of the skill (ex: Olympic silver medalist) and ask them: “If I needed to perform in this skill with only 20% of the ideal training time, what would you have me focus on?” “What do most novices do that you consider to be the biggest waste of time?”
“Rank the highest frequency items based on their ability to provide early wins and feeling of competency (highest return, least amount of time).” – Tim Ferriss
“A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow‐through doesn’t depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.” ‐ Tim Ferriss
Identify the 20% of available sub‐skills that you can use to produce 80% of the desired results (the sub‐skills you’ll use most frequently).
Learn and practice the 20% high frequency sub‐skills in a sequence that allow you to quickly experience a feeling of competency.
For Example: “Language is infinitely expansive (much like cooking) and therefore horribly overwhelming if unfiltered. Forget studying and masters long lists if you don’t plan to use them in 80% or more of the conversations that you will initially have.
“For cooking methods, the most popular (as also confirmed by my interviews) were as follows: Grilling, Sautéing & Braising The method that is most forgiving— braising— goes first, because early wins are paramount. The order of learning then becomes: Braising, Sautéing then Grilling.” – Tim Ferriss
Tim recommends using a site called stickK.com to set ‘stakes’. The site allows you to pick any goal, choose a referee (a friend to keep you honest), put money on the line, and pick an ‘anti‐charity’ – an organization you so despise so much that you’d rather slam your head in a car door than donate to them.
If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn’t matter how much (or how well) you study. It doesn’t matter how good your teacher is. One must find the highest‐ frequency material.” – Tim Ferriss
When learning how to swim, don’t start by learning the proper kicking technique because you’ll make minimal gains in swimming speed. Instead, practice pushing off the side of the pool and gliding through the water. This will provide you with a feeling of competency and motivate you to learn additional sub‐skills.
Ask yourself: “Can I see myself using this at least 80% of time initially performing the skill?”
It’s also important to start with sub‐ skills that have a high margin of error. You will make several errors when starting a skill so you need to feel safe doing so. Fear and anxiety quickly erode feelings of competency. Therefore, if you’re learning how to swim, start in the shallow end.
“Choose the highest yield material and you can be an idiot and enjoy stunning success.” – Tim Ferriss
“Have I narrowed down my study material and practice routine to the highest frequency items?”
“Based on stickK’s goal completion percentages from 2008– 2011, we find that the success rate with no stakes (no money on the line) is 33.5%. Once we add stakes like an anti‐charity, that success rate more than doubles to 72.8%!” – Tim Ferriss When learning to cook, schedule dinner parties to give you the incentive to be a better cook. When learning the guitar, tell a friend that you will learn a new song by a certain date OR give $200 to an anti‐ charity.
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Insights from How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams “The best way to increase your odds of success—in a way that might look like luck to others—is to systematically become good, but not amazing, at the types of skills that work well together and are highly useful for just about any job.” – Scott Adams
3 Universal Systems/Skills that increase your odds of professional success: Clear Writing
The goal of all business writing is to write clearly. That means removing unnecessary words and passive language. “As it turns out, business writing is all about getting to the point and leaving out all of the noise. You think you already do that in your writing, but you probably don’t. Consider the previous sentence. I intentionally embedded some noise. Did you catch it? The sentence that starts with “You think you already do that” includes the unnecessary word “already.” Remove it and you get exactly the same meaning: “You think you do that.” The “already” part is assumed and unnecessary. That sort of realization is the foundation of business writing.” – Scott Adams Your sentences should follow the structure of ‘Actor-Action-Object’. “Your brain processes “The boy hit the ball” more easily than “The ball was hit by the boy.” In editors’ jargon, the first sentence is direct writing and the second is passive. It’s a tiny difference, but over the course of an entire document, passive writing adds up and causes reader fatigue.” – Scott Adams
Making Conversation
The goal of conversation is to get people to like you. A proven conversation technique is smiling, using open body language, introducing yourself, and searching for a common interest by asking questions. “The technique is laughably simple and 100 percent effective. It’s all you need to be in the top 10 percent of all conversationalists.” – Scott Adams Here are five go-to questions: Where do you live? Do you have a family? What do you do for a living? Do you have any hobbies/sports? Do you have any travel plans? “The secret to making the list of questions work without seeming awkward is in understanding that the person you meet will feel every bit as awkward as you. That person wants to talk about something interesting and to sound knowledgeable. Your job is to make that easy. Nothing is easier than talking about one’s self.” – Scott Adams
Persuasion
“No matter your calling in life, you’ll spend a great deal of time trying to persuade people to do one thing or another.” – Scott Adams Scott is a trained hypnotist, and he knows a thing or two about persuasion. Here are two of his favorite persuasive words/phrases: “…Because”: People are more cooperative when you ask for a favor using a sentence that includes the word because, even if the reason you offer makes little or no sense. – Scott Adams “Would You Mind…?”: It’s hard to be a jerk and say no to any request that starts with “Would you mind.” The question comes across as honest, while also showing concern for the other person. It’s a powerful combination. – Scott Adams
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Insights from The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane “When you meet a charismatic person, you get the impression that they have a lot of power and they like you a lot.” ‐ Olivia Fox Cabane If you look at early presentations by Steve Jobs, you'll notice that he wasn't nearly as charismatic as he was later in life. In his initial presentations, he was bashful, awkward, and nerdy.
If you want to learn how to be more charismatic you need to learn how to convey a sense of power, warmth, and presence simultaneously and effortlessly.
It took Steve Jobs several years to become the charismatic person most of us remember.
You can find this rare combination of power, warmth, and presence in the late Steve Jobs, in the late Martin Luther King, and in Oprah Winfrey. It's the rare combination of power, warmth, and presence that gives charismatic people their magnetic personalities.
Author Fox Cabane has spent her adult life studying and teaching charisma. She has proven that like Steve Jobs, you can develop your charisma with practice. The assumption that charisma is something “you naturally have” is a myth. Charisma is not a gift; charisma is a skill you can develop.
The best way to convey power, warmth, and presence automatically and effortlessly is to put yourself in powerful, warm, and present mental states. When you adopt the optimal mental state for power, warmth, and presence, your body language and voice will naturally be more powerful, warm, and present.
“Whatever your mind believes, your body will manifest.” ‐ Olivia Fox Cabane
Three visualizations to create charismatic mental states:
Power
Warmth
Before a social interaction, take a few seconds to imagine yourself transforming into a big gorilla.
When you walk into a social situation, imagine that everyone in the room has angel wings.
If you're a big gorilla, you take up a lot of space, and when you walk into a room, people need to get out of your way to make space for you. When you see yourself as a big gorilla, you see yourself standing up, inflating your chest, and pounding it with your fists.
Every angel must perform good deeds in his or her life to become an angel. By imagining angel wings on every person, you assume that every person you meet is a good person who has performed an amazing act of altruism. Maybe the person you’re about to talk to rescued a child from a burning building or took care of a dying parent for several years.
By visualizing yourself as the big gorilla in the room, you’ll find that you reduce the tension in your shoulders, open your posture, and stand tall. A relaxed, open, and tall posture naturally conveys a sense of power to other people. “This is a great exercise to use before any meeting or interaction where you want to both feel and broadcast confidence—for instance, before a job interview, or before meeting someone who’s a bit intimidating.” ‐ Olivia Fox Cabane
Regardless of what they may have done, you know they are fundamentally good and deserve your utmost respect. Both of which will naturally convey a sense of warmth. “Many of my coaching clients (even hardened senior executives) have told me how extraordinarily effective this visualization has been for them. They can instantly feel more internal presence and warmth, and I can see a great increase in the amount of both presence and warmth that their body language projects.” ‐ Olivia Fox Cabane
Presence Before and during a conversation with someone, you might find your mind thinking about what you’re going to say next or worried about a problem unrelated to the conversation. When this happens, you need to bring your attention back to the present moment by briefly noticing the feeling of your toes touching the floor, the fabric of your sock, or the sole of your shoe. For an easy to remember visual, I like to imagine my brain being transported into my big toe. The brain in my toe can detect the slightest sensations in all ten toes. When I concentrate on my toes, I notice my awareness shifting from the thoughts in my head, down through my body and into my toes. After focusing on my toes, my attention is brought back to the present moment, and I can redirect that attention to the person I’m talking to. “When you exhibit presence, those around you feel listened to, respected, and valued.” ‐ Olivia Fox Cabane
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Insights from Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath 'When an expert asks, ‘Will people understand my idea?,’ her answer will be Yes, because she herself understands.' ‐ Chip & Dan Heath Once we know something, it’s hard to imagine what it was like to not know it. Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge. This ‘curse’ impedes our ability to share ideas effectively because it makes us believe other people share our interests and other people care about our ideas as much as we do.
To deliver messages people find interesting and memorable (despite not having our knowledge and experience), you need to modify your ideas to include the following traits:
Simple: What one thing do I want my audience to remember? In the 1992 US Presidential election, Bill Clinton was notorious for going off point. Clinton loved policy, and he wanted to address every issue that the country was facing at the time. But Clinton’s inability to prioritize policy issues made voters wary. James Carville, Clinton’s advisor, got Clinton to stay on point by writing three phrases on a whiteboard for all the campaign workers to see. One of the phrases was: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The United States economy was in the middle of a recession and needed to be the central talking point of every interview. The message was simple and memorable. What’s the main message you want your audience to walk away with? If you want your audience to remember anything you say, deliver fewer ideas. Two or three ideas are OK, but one idea is best.
Unexpected: How can I make my message surprising and insightful? When a manager at Nordstrom’s (a retail store in the United States) wants to explain the importance of customer service, she tells the story of the Nordstrom’s employee who gift‐wrapped items bought at Macy’s or the story of the Nordstrom’s employee who started a customer’s car in the middle of a snow storm. 'Tell them something that is uncommon sense.'‐ Chip & Dan Heath
Concrete: How can I make my message easy to understand? When managers at Trader Joe’s (a grocery store in the United States) explains their target customer, they don’t say ‘upscale budget‐conscious customer,’ they say, ‘unemployed college professor.’ Use concrete language everyone understands. Leave out the jargon. Stop trying to sound smart. 'The beauty of concrete language—language that is specific and sensory—is that everyone understands your message in a similar way.” – Chip & Dan Heath
Credible: How can I make my message believable? When the directors of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (LLDE) company tried to convince a workshop of people that their core value was ‘diversity,’ the audience seemed skeptical. One of the audience members said, “everyone claims that they value diversity, but you’re a dance company. You’re probably filled with a bunch of twenty‐five‐year‐old dancers, all of them tall and thin. Some of them are probably people of color, but is that diversity?” Peter DiMuro, the artistic director of the LLDE, responded with an extreme example, “as a matter of fact,” he said, “the longest‐term member of our company is a seventy‐three‐year‐old man named Thomas Dwyer…” This detail—seventy‐three‐year‐old Thomas Dwyer—silenced the skepticism in the room.' ‐ Chip & Dan Heath Make your message credible by telling extreme anecdotes with vivid detail.
Emotion: How can I make my audience care? In 2004, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that people were more likely to donate money when they heard a message about a starving seven‐year‐old girl in Africa than a message about 3 million starving children in Africa. When you tell a personal story about yourself, someone you know, or someone you read about, your audience can put themselves in their shoes and feels that person’s struggle and success. “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” ‐ Mother Teresa
Story: How can I keep my audience engaged? 'Telling stories with visible goals and barriers shifts the audience into a problem‐solving mode.... (we) empathize with the main characters and start cheering them on when they confront their problems: “Look out behind you!” “Tell him off now!” “Don’t open that door!” ‐ Chip & Dan Heath The most engaging stories are mysteries that keep your audience wondering:
“What’s going to happen next?” “How is this going to end?”
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Insights from Presence by Amy Cuddy “When our body language is confident and open, other people respond in kind, unconsciously reinforcing not only their perception of us but also our perception of ourselves.” – Amy Cuddy Your body position, at every moment of the day, influences your mind to feel empowered and disempowered. The Effects of Feeling Empowered (open & wide body position)
1. Creative and resourceful 2. Decisive and resilient 3. Focused 4. Confident 5. Compassionate
The Effects of Feeling of Disempowered (closed & slouched body position)
1. Forgetful and narrowly focused 2. Fearful and anxious 3. Distracted and impulsive 4. Unconfident 5. Self-absorbed
5 Body Positions to Boost Feeling of Empowerment: “We convince by our presence, and to convince others we need to convince ourselves…When our body language is confident and open, other people respond in kind, unconsciously reinforcing not only their perception of us but also our perception of ourselves.” – Amy Cuddy Chest and Shoulder Stretch Stand-up, put your hands on your lower back, and push your chest towards the sky. This will open your chest and shoulders. Hold this position for 20 seconds. Victory Pose Stand-up, raise your hands above your head, and pretend you just won the 100m dash at the Olympics. Author Amy Cuddy does this in the restroom prior to giving a speech.
Lean Back Chair Pose Put your back against the chair and open up your chest. Put your hands behind your head or on the chair next to you. Hold this pose during meetings to boost confidence. I call this the “CEO pose”. Standing Hand Gestures When possible, stand-up and use hand gestures when talking to people. I’ve recently purchased a wireless headset for making calls so I can walk around my office and conduct phone conversations like a wall street trader . Walking or Exercising Move your body in a dynamic way: go for a walk (bonus points if you strut while walking) or hit the gym.
“Focus less on the impression you’re making on others and more on the impression you’re making on yourself.” Amy Cuddy
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Insights from The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins “I was the problem and in five seconds, I could push myself and become the solution.” – Mel Robbins
When you silently count down from five, your brain knows something needs to happen after one; it's the universal cue to act. And when you take a deliberate action immediately after counting down you generate the joy of feeling in control. “There’s an important concept in psychology put forth by Julian Rotter in 1954. It’s called ‘locus of control.’ The more that you believe that you are in control of your life, your actions and your future, the happier and more successful you’ll be. There’s one thing that is guaranteed to increase your feelings of control over your life: a bias toward action.” – Mel Robbins According to psychologists, the ‘Golden Rule of Habits’ says to change a bad habit you must replace it with a different habit. Every habit has three parts: cue, routine, and reward. When you silently countdown from five (cue), take a small positive action (routine), and get a pleasurable feeling of control (reward), you’ve created a new habit loop. Here are a few ways you can use a five‐second action habit to overwrite a bad habit:
If you want to break a bad habit of drinking wine before bed, notice yourself reaching for the bottle of wine at night and then silently say to yourself “five, four, three, two, one,” and put the bottle back of the cupboard. If you have a habit of getting angry at people, notice the anger and then silently say “five, four, three, two, one,” and think of three people you’re grateful for. If you have a habit of getting nervous before a performance, notice your anxiety and silently say to yourself “five, four, three, two, one…I’m excited!”
“I speak for a living. A lot. In 2016, I was named the most‐booked female speaker in America— 98 keynotes in one year. Amazing. Do I get nervous? Absolutely. Every single time. But here’s the trick: I don’t call it ‘nerves.’ I call it ‘excitement’ because physiologically anxiety and excitement are the exact same thing…When using this technique in experiments ranging from singing karaoke to giving a speech on camera to taking a math test, participants who said ‘I’m excited’ did better in every single challenge than those participants who said ‘I’m anxious.’” – Mel Robbins
“When you set a goal, your brain opens up a task list. Whenever you are near things that can help you achieve those goals, your brain fires up your instincts to signal to get that goal completed. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have a goal to get healthier. If you walk into a living room, nothing happens. If you walk past a gym, however, your prefrontal cortex (front part of your brain) lights up because you are near something related to getting healthier. As you pass the gym, you’ll feel like you should exercise. That’s an instinct reminding you of the goal. That’s your inner wisdom, and it’s important to pay attention to it, no matter how small or silly that instinct may seem.” – Mel Robbins Here are a few ways you can immediately start acting on your inner wisdom:
When you're lying in bed in the morning and you know you should get up and work on your business idea, act on your inner wisdom and start counting down, “five, four, three, two, one,” and then get out of bed and walk to your desk. When you’re in the office and have the feeling that you should stop checking email and start writing that proposal or presentation, act on your inner wisdom and start the countdown, “five, four, three, two, one.” Then close the email application and start writing. At night when you’re about to watch new episode on Netflix and get the feeling that you should turn off the TV so that you can get a good night’s sleep and be more productive tomorrow, listen to that inner wisdom. “Five, four, three, two, one,” and then get your butt in bed.
“You can’t control how you feel. But you can always choose how you act.” – Mel Robbins
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Insights from Hooked by Nir Eyal A study of 150,000 people found that the average smartphone user unlocks their phone 110 times a day! (https://dailym.ai/1gATNlP) “79 percent of smartphone owners check their device within 15 minutes of waking up every morning.” ‐ Nir Eyal
Why You’re Hooked to Your Smartphone Smartphone Apps Provide Immediate Relief
When you feel bored, a list of interesting tweets or Instagram photos is one‐click away. When you feel uncertain, a list of Google search results is a few seconds away. When you feel insignificant, you can tap the email icon on your phone to see a list of people who need you.
Human beings have always felt bored, uncertain and insignificant, but thanks to our smartphones, we’ve never had a faster way to remedy these “negative” emotions. Evan Williams, the co‐founder of Medium and Twitter, tells us the formula he and other technology companies use is, “Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time… and use modern technology to take out steps.” “Negative emotions frequently serve as internal triggers…To build a habit‐forming product, makers need to understand which user emotions may be tied to internal triggers and know how to leverage external triggers to drive the user to action.” ‐ Nir Eyal
Smartphone Apps Offer Variable Rewards “Simply giving users what they want is not enough to create a habit‐forming product.” – Nir Eyal Every time you pick up your phone you’re in for a surprise. There is a constant stream of new content coming your way via email, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and a dozen other apps. In a list of new content, you’re bound to find an interesting idea or photo worth liking. The frequency and variability of pleasurable content inside apps keep you hooked. In the 1950s, psychologist B.F. Skinner put pigeons inside of a box. Inside the box was a button and every time the pigeons pecked the button, they received a food pellet. The pigeons learned to peck the button when they were hungry and to stop when they were satiated. Then Skinner adjusted the food pellet dispenser so that sometimes the pigeons pecked the button and received a food pellet and sometimes they received nothing. Making the reward variable made the pigeons go insane. One pigeon pecked the button more than two times a second for 16 hours straight! Sadly, human beings aren’t much different…
Smartphone Apps Get Us to Make Small Investments “A psychological phenomenon known as the escalation of commitment has been shown to make our brains do all sorts of funny things. The power of commitment makes some people play video games until they keel over and die. It is used to influence people to give more to charity... The more users invest time and effort into a product or service, the more they value it.” – Nir Eyal When you open the Instagram app for the first time, Instagram asks you to add a friend. Instagram makes adding people easy because they give you popular suggestions and offer to scan your Facebook and Contact list. Instagram knows when you make the small investment needed to add one person to your Instagram account you are more likely to return to the app when they send you a notification. The more often you return to an app, the more you invest in an app, and the more likely you are to form a mindless app checking habit.
How to get UNHOOKED Make it harder to check your phone: Put a long password on your phone, so it takes time to unlock it. Put your phone in a drawer under a stack of papers while you work. Put your phone in another room when you go to sleep. Turn off all non‐essential app notifications. The only app notifications on my phone are to‐do list reminders and calendar events. If an application can’t buzz, ding, or flash messages at you, that app is less likely to get you to use it. When you understand how product developers design apps to hook you, and what you can do to unhook yourself, you are well on your way to reclaiming your ability to focus and being more productive.
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Insights from Your Brain at Work by David Rock How well do you know your brain? Can you explain what your brain is doing when you open up your laptop to work, open a textbook to study, or conduct a meeting? In the book “Your Brain at Work” author David Rock uses the latest neuroscience to explain what your brain is doing while you work. Rock says your mind is like a theater. The stage in your mental theater represents your short‐term working memory, and it's controlled by your prefrontal cortex (the brain region just behind your forehead). During the workday you can use your stage to perform five functions: understanding, recalling, memorizing, inhibiting, and deciding. To remember these five functions, think of the acronym: U.R. M.In.D. To perform these five functions, you need actors, audience members, and a stage director. Actors on stage represent objects, tasks, and pieces of information you're focused on at any one moment. This sentence is currently an actor on your stage. Audience members are maps of information in your long‐term memory. The audience is constantly trying to make sense of and associate with actors on stage. Understanding, recalling, memorizing and deciding are made possible by the audience making associations to the actors on stage. The stage director is responsible for inhibiting unwanted actors from coming onto the stage and ruining a performance. These unwanted actors are external distractions, like nearby conversations, and internal distractions, like afternoon food cravings.
3 Things You Must Know About Your Theater Your Stage is Tiny
Your Stage Has One Spotlight
Recent research shows that the short‐ term working memory of the human brain (your mental stage) can only fit four actors (four units of information). Focusing on more than four units of information at a time is impossible, unless you can find a way to simply and chunk the information (ex: create mental models or acronyms for multiple units of information).
Your stage is illuminated by a single spotlight, and that spotlight can only focus on one actor at a time. If two or more actors are trying to get your attention, the light needs to rapidly switch between those actors. Imagine watching a performance where two actors are talking at that same time, and a spotlight is rapidly switching between those actors… That would be a terrible performance to watch!
Although you can fit up to four actors on your stage at one time, 'a study by Brian McElree at New York University found that the number of chunks of information you can remember accurately with no memory degradation is, remarkably, only one.'
Author David Rock describes a study from the University of California at San Diego that 'showed when people do two cognitive tasks at once, their cognitive capacity can drop from that of a Harvard MBA to that of an eight‐year‐ old. It’s a phenomenon called dual‐task interference.'
Your Director is Less Effective Later in the Day Over the course of a workday, hundreds of unwanted actors are trying to get on stage and steal attention away from important actors on stage. Each time your director has to step in and hold back an unwanted actor, he/she loses a bit of energy. Eventually, your stage director becomes too weak to stop unwanted actors from walking on stage and ruining the performance.
3 Ways to Deal with the Limitations of Your Mental Stage When deciding among multiple options, limit the number of actors on stage by isolating two options at a time. If you 're deciding between five or more colors for a design, arrange head‐to‐head battles starting with the first two colors. Isolate color one and color two on the list and ask yourself, “Which of these two colors improves the design?” Whichever color wins goes on to face the third color on the list.
Instead of rapidly switching your spotlight between two or more sources of information (text messages, email messages, work project, etc.), process the information in a serial manner. Take a few moments to schedule tasks so you can give each task your undivided attention. If you want to complete three tasks in the next hour, set up a sequence of three 20‐minute time blocks and assign each task to a separate time block.
When your stage director is having a hard time keeping unwanted actors off the stage, start pushing cognitively demanding tasks on your to‐do list to the next morning (if possible). If you need to plan a big project, understand a complex subject, or make a major decision, do it in the first half of the day when your stage director can do a better job of keeping actors off stage.
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Insights from The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman Do I need an MBA to be a successful businessperson? “Here’s the answer: five simple words that will save you years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars: Skip business school. Educate yourself.” – Josh Kaufman
3 Disturbing Truths about MBA School
MBA School debt takes the average MBA student 12 years to pay off. MBA Schools teach out-dated business practices that are worthless by the time you graduate. Getting an MBA degree doesn’t guarantee you a high-paying job or make you a skilled manager. One Stanford University study analyzed MBA graduates for 40 years and found that having an MBA had zero correlation to career success and salary increases.
After learning these disturbing facts about MBA School, author Josh Kaufman decided to skip MBA School and teach himself the fundamentals of business. After reading 100’s of business books, he realized that business was far less complicated than he initially thought. In fact, every successful business could be explained using the following 5 part system:
5 Part Framework to Evaluate Any Business Value Creation: Is the business creating something people actually want to buy?
In the book ‘Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t,’ Kevin Maney identifies two primary characteristics of products and services that people are willing to pay for: convenience and high-fidelity. Convenience means quick, reliable, easy, and flexible. High-fidelity means high aesthetic appeal, high emotional impact, and a high degree social status. 'If you’re craving pizza, a table at the original Pizzeria Uno in Chicago is high-fidelity; Domino’s home delivery is convenient. Accordingly, Pizzeria Uno benefits more from making the dining experience remarkable, while Domino’s benefits more from delivering decent pizza as quickly as possible.' – Josh Kaufman
Marketing: Is the business attracting and holding people’s attention?
When Apple announced the first iPod, they told the world that the new device would be “1000 songs in your pocket.” This headline was remarkable at the time, and it violated people’s expectations. The goal of every marketing team should be attracting attention through remarkable and unexpected messages. 'In the classic marketing book Purple Cow, Seth Godin uses a wonderful metaphor to illustrate this principle. A field full of brown cows is boring. A purple cow violates the viewer’s expectations, which naturally attracts Attention and interest. If you design your offer to be Remarkable— unique enough to pique your prospect’s curiosity— it’ll be significantly easier to attract attention.' – Josh Kaufman
Sales: Do people believe and trust the business enough to make a transaction?
If a stranger were to walk up to you at the bus stop and offer you $20 in exchange for $10, would you make the transaction? Probably not, because you don't believe or trust the offer is legitimate. However, if your friend standing next to you could vouch for this stranger, you'd probably make the transaction. Sales is all about making a customer believe and trust the business can deliver on it’s promise. The quickest way to build belief and trust is social proof. Examples of social proof include one hundred 5-star Amazon reviews, or getting a recommendation from a key influencer like Oprah. Thousands of people trust Oprah, and that trust is transferred to any product she recommends, leading to thousands of sales.
Value delivery: Is the business exceeding customer expectations?
Customer expectations have to be high enough for the customer to make an initial purchase. After the purchase is made, however, if the performance of the offering surpasses customer expectations the customer will be more likely to buy again and recommend the business to friends. Zappos, the online shoe company, provide their customers with free expedited shipping, despite not advertising free expedited shipping; the surprise that comes from exceeding customer expectations is far more valuable. The best way a business can reliably exceed customer expectations is building efficient systems of delivery, and providing excellent customer service.
Finance: Is the business making more money than it is spending?
The final part is straightforward: ensure more money is coming in than going out. 'It’s really not any more complicated than that. Yes, there can be fancy models and jargon, but ultimately you’re simply using numbers to decide whether or not your business is operating the way you intended, and whether or not the results are enough...to justify all of the time and effort that goes into running the operation.' – Josh Kaufman
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Insights from Rework by Jason Fried Starting a business doesn’t need to be intimidating. The book “Rework” offers a refreshing approach to business that author Jason Fried and his team at Basecamp have validated over the last twenty years while running a successful software business. I’ve developed a three‐part mantra from “Rework” to successfully start any business venture:
“Solve your problem, with less, then pick a fight.” “Solve your problem” When Bill Bowerman was a track coach at the University of Oregon, he looked for a lighter, higher‐ quality running shoe for his athletes. He couldn’t find any. He went to a local workshop and started pouring rubber in a waffle iron to create his own shoes. Years later, Nike was born. Author Jason Fried and his team at Basecamp develop software applications for project managers. Each of their products is built on a simple question, “Is it something we need and would want to use?” Fried says, “There was no need for focus groups, market studies, or middlemen. We had the itch, so we scratched it.” By making a product or service to solve one of your specific problems, you will know immediately if what you are doing is any good. When you solve your own problem, you can make decisions faster and more effectively. Your ability to build a successful business come down to the speed and quality of your decisions.
“With less” When Basecamp was building their first software application, they did it on a shoestring budget and in far less time than they had originally planned. They shared office space with another company. They bought one server and had just enough storage to support the launch plus a few months. They didn’t hire customer support. The owners answered every customer email. It would be nice to have an MBA or be the foremost expert in your industry before starting a business, but you might be able to get started with access to Google and a handful of trusted resources you can ask for help along the way. It would be nice to develop a detailed business plan, but your time might be better spent building a solution that works and then seeing if ten people want to buy it. Once you’ve validated your solution, then you can build a detailed business plan. There are so many things aspiring business owners think they need to start their business. Most of it fits in the category of nice‐to‐have or should have, not must have. You need less than you think.
“Then pick a fight” Dunkin’ Donuts, a coffee shop in the United States, positions itself as the anti‐Starbucks. They pride themselves on not having fancy names for cup sizes, like ‘venti’ or ‘grande.’ They even had a website called DunkinBeatStarbucks.com where visitors could send e‐cards with messages like “Friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks.” Jason Fried says “Being the anti‐________ is a great way to differentiate yourself and attract followers… Taking a stand always stands out. People get stoked by conflict. They take sides.” However, since you’re starting on the cheap, you might think it’s hard to one‐up your competition. Don’t. Instead, one‐down them. I recently went to a coffee shop in NYC that had four options: hot coffee, cold coffee, espresso, and espresso with milk. Their minimalist approach was their way of being the anti‐mainstream coffee shop. They offered less, but what they did offer, was better than the competition. Their cold coffee was one of the best coffees I’d ever had. I’ll be going back. The strategy is to see what the mainstream solutions are, then decide what few things you are going to do to do well, and purposely ignore the rest.
“What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.” ‐ Jason Fried
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Insights from Zero to One by Peter Thiel Startups create a better future “Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future…Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can.” – Peter Thiel Most important strength of a startup: the ability to support a new way of thinking about the world.
7 Question to Answer Before Launching a Startup Engineering Question – Do we have a technology that is 10x better than the competition? “PayPal made buying and selling on eBay at least 10 times better. Instead of mailing a check that would take 7 to 10 days to arrive, PayPal let buyers pay as soon as an auction ended. Sellers received their proceeds right away, and unlike with a check, they knew the funds were good.” ‐ Peter Thiel. Engineer a solution that is 10x better than the competition.
Timing Question – Is now the right time to start this business? “Tesla CEO Elon Musk rightly saw a one‐time‐only opportunity. In January 2010 Tesla secured a $465 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. A half‐billion‐dollar subsidy was unthinkable in the mid‐2000s. It’s unthinkable today. There was only one moment where that was possible, and Tesla played it perfectly.” – Peter Thiel A great startup is based on an idea that wasn’t possible three years ago and won’t be possible (or special) three years from now.
Monopoly Question – Are we starting with a big share of a small market? “Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high‐end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too.”‐ Peter Thiel Focus your initial efforts on a promising market segment to prove your business model can generate cashflow.
People Question – Do we have the right team? “If you’re at Tesla, you’re choosing to be at the equivalent of Special Forces. There’s the regular army, and that’s fine, but if you are working at Tesla, you’re choosing to step up your game.” – Elon Musk, Tesla CEO You need people on your team who are as committed to the startup vision as you are. You also need the right balance of engineering and sales talent to be successful.
Distribution Question – Do we have a way to deliver our product? “Most companies underestimate distribution, but Tesla took it so seriously that it decided to own the entire distribution chain. Other car companies are beholden to independent dealerships: Ford and Hyundai make cars, but they rely on other people to sell them. Tesla sells and services its vehicles in its own stores. The up‐front costs of Tesla’s approach are much higher than traditional dealership distribution, but it affords control over the customer experience, strengthens Tesla’s brand, and saves the company money in the long run.” – Peter Thiel The sales and distribution plan is as important as the engineering and product development plan.
Durability Question – Will our market position be defensible 10 years from now? “Tesla has a head start and it’s moving faster than anyone else—and that combination means its lead is set to widen in the years ahead.” – Peter Thiel Create a defensible market position for decades by either creating strong brand (ex: Tesla and Apple’s strong association with luxury goods), proprietary technology (ex: Google’s search algorithms), large network (ex: Facebook’s user size ensures people don’t leave the platform for a smaller and less valuable network), or economies of scale (ex: Amazon and Walmart sell a massive number of items, which lowers their fixed cost per item and allows them to outprice smaller competitors).
The Secret Question – Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don't see? “Rich people especially wanted to appear “green”...Tesla built a unique brand around the secret that cleantech was even more of a social phenomenon than an environmental imperative.” – Peter Thiel Base your business on a behavior that people don’t want to admit or are aware they’ll be doing in the years to come.
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Insights from Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne “The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.” – Blue Ocean Strategy If you want to launch a successful business, don’t waste time competing for market share. Instead, focus on creating new value and expanding the current market. If you create new value, you will find yourself in a highly profitable Blue Ocean, where the competition is irrelevant. Professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne studied the launch of 108 businesses across 30 industries over the span of several decades. Their study revealed that when a new business tried to compete with an established business and steal market share, they were substantially less profitable than a new business that avoided competition. Of the 108 businesses, 16 businesses adopted a Blue Ocean strategy by creating a new product category that made the competition irrelevant. Those 16 Blue Ocean businesses took home 61% of the combined profits of all 108 businesses! What's more, those 16 Blue Ocean businesses went on to dominate their market category for 10-15 years! “The companies caught in the red ocean followed a conventional approach, racing to beat the competition by building a defensible position within the existing industry order. The creators of blue oceans, surprisingly, didn’t use the competition as their benchmark. Instead, they followed a different strategic logic that we call value innovation.” – Blue Ocean Strategy
WHAT IS VALUE INNOVATION? Value Innovation is the act of producing an innovative new product at a remarkably low price. The first step of value innovation is selecting your target audience. Instead of focusing on regular customers within your desired market (existing customers everyone is competing for), focus on the customers on the edge of your market (infrequent customers) and customers in adjacent markets, who either avoid your market or have never heard of your market. In the example below, Casella wines started to process of developing a new wine by focusing on the needs of beer and cocktail consumers. The next step of value innovation is to look at the typical business model in your market and ask four questions:
What processes can we ELIMINATE? What standards can we REDUCE? What standards can be RAISE? What standards or processes can we incorporate from adjacent industries to CREATE a new experience?
“Our research has found that rarely do managers systematically set out to eliminate and reduce their investments in factors that an industry competes on. The result is mounting cost structures and complex business models. The second two factors (raise and create), by contrast, provide you with insight into how to lift buyer value and create new demand. Collectively, they allow you to systematically explore how you can reconstruct buyer value elements across alternative industries to offer buyers an entirely new experience, while simultaneously keeping your cost structure low.”- Blue Ocean Strategy
HOW CASELLA WINES ACHIEVED VALUE INNOVATION: Casella Wines started by asking non-wine drinkers [beer and cocktail drinkers] why they avoid wine. They discovered that most non-wine drinkers thought wine was intimidating and pretentious. These non-wine drinkers said the complexity of wine’s taste was a turnoff. Casella Wines aimed to address the frustrations of these ‘noncustomers’ by creating a wine that was fun, unintimidating, and easy to drink. To achieve this, they implemented the four value innovation action framework:
They ELIMINATED the wine aging process. Aging wine resulted in a taste that was too complex for nonwine drinkers. By eliminating the aging process they saved money on oak barrels and storage costs. They REDUCED their inventory to just two wines, a white Chardonnay and a red Shiraz. By reducing their inventory two wines they had far fewer wines than most wine businesses, and this was a good thing because it made the wine selection process less intimidating for non-wine drinkers. They RAISED the freshness and drinkability of the wine by raising their grape selection standards. Raising the drinkability of the wine made it fun to drink for beer and cocktail drinkers. They incorporated a few standards from the beer industry to CREATE a new wine experience for nonwine drinkers. They created a wine label that simple and inviting, like most beer bottle labels. It didn’t have the age of the wine and it didn’t have fancy language describing the vineyard or the winemaking process. It had an image of a kangaroo, the name of their wine company, and the origin country of the wine: ‘Australia.’ This simple label made their wine seem less pretentious, and more fun and adventurous.
“Casella Wines created [yellow tail], a wine whose strategic profile broke from the competition and created a blue ocean. Instead of offering wine as wine, Casella created a social drink accessible to everyone: beer drinkers, cocktail drinkers, and other drinkers of nonwine beverages. In the space of two years, the fun, social drink [yellow tail] emerged as the fastest growing brand in the histories of both the Australian and the U.S. wine industries and the number one imported wine into the United States, surpassing the wines of France and Italy. By August 2003 it was the number one red wine in a 750-ml bottle sold in the United States, outstripping California labels.” – Blue Ocean Strategy
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Insights from Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen If you were the owner of a fast food restaurant that sold milkshakes, and your milkshakes weren’t selling well, how would you go about improving your milkshakes?
Would you buy higher quality ingredients? Would you survey customers to see what flavors they would like to see on the menu? Would you focus on one popular flavor, say chocolate, and make the chocolate shake richer and decadent?
Any one of these innovations might increase sales, but you can’t be sure. The success of each innovation relies heavily on luck. It’s like throwing out a bunch of seeds and hoping for one of them to take root and grow into something people will buy. Companies take this hopeful approach to innovation far too often. They waste millions of dollars and often go out of business because they don’t know how to innovate. When global executives were recently surveyed by McKinsey, a shocking 94 percent said they were unsatisfied with their innovation performance. Author Clayton Christensen has studied innovation for over two decades, and he says those who fail to innovate are simply asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “How can I get more people to buy my product?”, they need to ask, “What job are my customers hiring this product to do?” “As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement that transformed manufacturing, once said: ‘If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.’” ‐ Clayton Christensen “When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” something to get a job done. Some jobs are little (“pass the time while waiting in line”), some are big (“find a more fulfilling career”). Some surface unpredictably (“dress for an out‐of‐town business meeting after the airline lost my suitcase”), some regularly (“pack a healthy, tasty lunch for my daughter to take to school”)” ‐ Clayton Christensen The “Jobs to be Done” theory essentially states that all products are services that promise a better experience for the person hiring them. If you have the desire to create an innovative product or improve an existing product in an innovative way, and you want to rely more on creativity and skill, and less on luck, here are three steps to get your product hired:
Find a job that needs to be done. Aim to understand why you, a set of existing customers, or a set of target customers would want to pull your product into their lives. Don’t just focus on the rational reasons like “satisfying hunger.” Dig deeper. Focus on the emotional and social reasons people have for wanting to make progress in their lives. “In many innovations, the focus is often entirely on the functional or practical need. But in reality, consumers’ social and emotional needs can far outweigh any functional desires. Think of how you would hire childcare. Yes, the functional dimensions of that job are important—will the solution safely take care of your children in a location and manner that works well in your life—but the social and emotional dimensions probably weigh more heavily on your choice. ‘Who will I trust with my children?’” ‐ Clayton Christensen When looking for a job to be done, think of yourself less as an entrepreneur and more of a psychologist. You want to find out what people care about and determine where they specifically want to make progress in their life.
Document the journey from the moment a customer or potential customer hires the product for a job to the moment the job is complete (or the customer gives up). You want to be like a documentary filmmaker. Your goal is to find out where, when, and what they are doing at the moment they have the desire to hire your product, and then create a timeline of the experience that follows. “What progress is that person trying to achieve? What are the circumstances of the struggle? What obstacles are getting in the way of the person making that progress? Are consumers making do with imperfect solutions through some kind of compensating behavior? How would they define what “quality” means for a better solution, and what tradeoffs are they willing to make?” ‐ Clayton Christensen
Remove the obstacles, remedy the frustrations, and create a better experience. The new experience you create must at least be twice as good as their current experience. Why? Because most of us get anxious when hiring something new. New is often scary. Behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have done several studies to show that “Loss aversion—people’s tendency to want to avoid loss (and maintain the status quo)—is twice as powerful psychologically as the allure of gains.” Executing these three steps won’t be easy, but it’s far easier than the alternative: spending a bunch of time and money on a series of innovations and hoping one of them leads to more sales.
“New products succeed not because of the features and functionality they offer but because of the experiences they enable.” ‐ Clayton Christensen
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Insights from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries 'As an engineer and later as a manager, I was accustomed to measuring progress by making sure our work proceeded according to plan, was high quality, and cost about what we had projected. After many years as an entrepreneur, I started to worry about measuring progress in this way. What if we found ourselves building something that nobody wanted? In that case what did it matter if we did it on time and on budget?' – Eric Ries
The Core Question:
How can I build an innovative product without wasting a bunch of time and effort? Entrepreneurship and innovation inherently result in wasted time and effort because there isn’t an exact roadmap you can follow to achieve success. Without a clear roadmap, you may be tempted to rely on intuition, expert advice, or focus group surveys to determine if the work you are doing will ultimately be valuable. However, author Eric Ries says this is the wrong approach. In 2004 Eric Ries was the Chief Technology Officer of a Silicon Valley Startup called IMVU. After wasting six months building a product nobody wanted, Eric Ries and his team discovered they could avoid wasted effort by building preliminary (and somewhat embarrassing) products and presenting them to target customers to measure their behavior. Eric Ries calls this the Lean Startup method.
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Create a Vision
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Identify Critical Assumptions
The Lean Startup Method:
Write out a brief, high-level description of your product or service. This is NOT a step-by-step execution plan. It is simply a framework you can use to explain the value proposition of your idea to others and discover critical assumptions. I like to write out a vision for a new business in list-form and from an end user’s experience – a narrative detailing how a target customer would experience my product or service for the first time. Look at your vision and ask yourself: “What value assumptions have I made, which if wrong, would result in a significant amount of wasted time and effort?” It’s easy to overlook the list of assumptions within your vision/value proposition because the value seems obvious to you. What you consider simple and meaningful is often complex and meaningless to others. Failing to identify and test assumptions inherent in your value proposition can lead to wasted work and frustration down the road. 3. Build Minimum-Viable Products (MVPs) to Test Critical Assumptions Pick one critical assumption and ask yourself: “What early version of my desired product can I build to test this assumption?” Here is a guideline you can use to create your MVP: “What component, feature, or process of my ideal product is not absolutely necessary to test my assumption? ” An MVP is a lean version of your final product, BUT it is still functional and valuable to your loyal customers. IMVU’s Minimum-Viable Product development strategy: “Instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum viable product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash-your-computer-yes-really stability problems. Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready. And we charge money for it. After securing initial customers, we change the product constantly—much too fast by traditional standards—shipping new versions of our product dozens of times every single day.” - Eric Ries
4.
Release MVP & Measure Behavior
Once you’ve built an MVP with enough functionality to test a critical assumption, it’s time to release your MVP to a small segment of potential customers. This process is scary, but it’s important to remember: “Am I willing to temporarily look foolish to customers on route to building a great product? Would I rather delay and risk wasting a significant amount of time and effort?” If you had an idea for an innovative new board game, you could: a. Create a Facebook ad and target a small group of avid board game players. b. Direct people to a webpage with an animated video describing your board game (the Minimum Viable Product in this case). c. Install a “Pre-order: $20” button on the bottom of the webpage with an estimated release date of the board game. Once the MVP is public, you need to evaluate key metrics to validate your product or service. In this example, you could measure the amount of clicks your ad gets versus a typical Facebook ad, the average watch time on your video, or the percentage of pre-orders you receive for every person who visits your webpage.
5.
Pivot OR Persevere
Make tweaks to your MVP to get the desired customer behavior (clicks, engagement time, pre-orders, etc.). If you don’t observe the desired customer behavior after several iterations, it’s time to pivot to a new product strategy and vision. “The sign of a successful pivot is that these engine-tuning activities are more productive after the pivot than before.” – Eric Ries When doing innovative, creative work always ask yourself: 'Which of my efforts are value-creating and which are wasteful?' Then seek empirical data from live experiments rather than relying on market research, focus groups, or pure intuition.
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Insights from Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz 7 Profound Problem-Solving Techniques Used in the Sprint Method
Map the Problem Determine the steps required to get the users/customers to a desired result. Find someone that has experience with this problem (so called ‘expert’) and ask them to verify your map. The goal of developing a map is to reveal ONE event between the user and the end result that is more important than any other event at this particular time.
Ask “How might we…?” List all the possible failure points on your map and then convert them into “How might we…?” questions. Example: A ‘site crashes from too much traffic’ issue turns into “How might we prevent the site for crashing when traffic is high?” Converting an issue into a “How might we…?” question converts a problem into an interesting challenge, thus making your problem-solving more enjoyable. “When we tried it, we came to appreciate how the open-ended, optimistic phrasing forced us to look for opportunities and challenges, rather than getting bogged down by problems or, almost worse, jumping to solutions too soon. And because every question shares the same format, it’s possible to read, understand, and evaluate a whole wall full of these notes at once.” – Sprint book
Gather a Team and Vote w/ Dots WHY?...When each person votes with dots, visual patterns emerge. When all the dots (5 per person) are placed on the board containing various options, important issues start to emerge. Dot voting is a great way of limiting the endless back and forth discussion and discovering the biggest issues in less time. HOW?...Give team members an equal collection of dot stickers to place on the wall of ideas.
Conduct Lightning Demos Use a timer to search for and sketch examples. Reveal a new example every 3-5 minutes. Look inside and outside your domain/industry. Find out what other people have done to solve the problem you’re dealing with.
Silently Sketch Some people have the ability to persuade others to adopt their solution with a great presentation (even if the idea is bad!). The final solution selection should be based on the quality of the solution, not the charisma of the presenter. To ensure the best idea wins every time, everyone needs to sketch their ideas: “Everyone can write words, draw boxes, and express his or her ideas with the same clarity. If you can’t draw (or rather, if you think you can’t draw), don’t freak out. Plenty of people worry about putting pen to paper, but anybody—absolutely anybody—can sketch a great solution.” – Sprint book
Elect a Decider Select one person to make all the final decisions. WHY?...Doing so limits the endless discussion surrounding a decision and allows the team to move forward confidently and swiftly. Since you should be testing your solution long before it is fully developed, it’s OK if the decisions aren’t perfect!
Validate w/ 5 People According to data from 1000’s of user tests, 85% of the potential issues of your proposed solution are revealed after testing the solution with JUST 5 people. Testing your solution on more than 5 people yields diminishing returns.
“Lurking beneath every goal are dangerous assumptions. The longer those assumptions remain unexamined, the greater the risk.” - Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz
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Insights from Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday “In every industry— from books to movies to restaurants to plays and software— certain creations can be described as “perennial.” By that I mean that, regardless of how well they may have done at their release or the scale of audience they have reached, these products have found continued success and more customers over time. They are the kind of art or products that we return to more than once, that we recommend to others, even if they’re no longer trendy or brand‐new.” – Ryan Holiday
How can we make a product that remains valuable? The movie ‘Star Wars: A New Hope,’ and the book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ are perennial sellers. Like all perennial sellers they live on by word‐of‐mouth. I learned about Star Wars from a friend in grade school, who heard about Star Wars from his dad…20 years after its release date. Ryan Holiday has uncovered methods of making and marketing products to maximize word of mouth. By using his methods, our work (blog posts, videos, books, etc.) can remain valuable long after its release date. By learning the tools to make a perennial seller we can do the hard work now and reap the benefits for years to come. Here are three methods we can use to maximize word of mouth and develop a perennial seller.
Make it Timeless Focus on a topic or problem that never gets old. Author Dale Carnegie released the book 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' in 1936. People still recommend ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ it to their friends in 2017. Why? Dale Carnegie’s book solves a timeless problem: social anxiety. People struggle with social anxiety today as they did in 1936. People will continue to struggle with social anxiety for the foreseeable future. If you want to make a perennial seller ask yourself: why will people still be talking about this ten years from now? (tip: focus on reoccurring human problems and not the latest technology) “Focus on the things that don’t change.” – Jeff Bezos
Make it Specific People share products they love. When people enthusiastically share a product with their friends, the products audience will grow organically over time (like compound interest). If you want to make a perennial seller, you need to ask yourself: Who specifically will love this? 'It's better to make a product that one hundred people love than a product one million people just like.' – Paul Graham (Y Combinator founder) People love products that fit their needs, wants, and interests. Therefore, you must narrow your focus and direct your energy on making a product for a specific person (or niche group of people). All perennial products can be described in one sentence: This is a __, that does__ for __. When you help a specific person solve a specific problem, that person (and people like them) are more likely to fall in love with your product and share it with everyone they know. “Many creators want to be for everyone . . . and as a result end up being for no one. Picking a lane isn’t limiting. It’s the first act of empowerment we take as a creator.” – Ryan Holiday
Make it Accessible It's better to be underpaid than to be unheard of. “Think about all the stuff out there that you haven’t checked out— even though most of it is really cheap. That’s the kind of abundance we enjoy as consumers. There is so much out there that you couldn’t possibly consume it all in your lifetime. So we ignore a lot of it, especially the stuff that looks expensive. Which is why as creators we have to get more comfortable with giving people a taste of our work— or, in some cases, giving some people the entire meal for free. That’s how we build an audience and gather momentum.” – Ryan Holiday Don’t be afraid to mark down your product at first (make it free!). The low cost will make it accessible to more people. When a low‐cost item is of high utility and quality, people will share it with everyone they know. “As a general rule, however, the more accessible you can make your product, the easier it will be to market. You can always raise the price later, after you’ve built an audience.”‐ Ryan Holiday
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Insights from To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink
“We’re ALL in sales” – Daniel Pink If we look at our outgoing emails and text messages from the previous week, we’ll see that several of our messages were sales attempts. We may have sold a friend on the idea of sharing a Facebook post. We may have sold our kids on the benefits of cleaning their rooms. Or we may have sold a work colleague on the importance of attending our project meeting. Anytime we persuade someone to act; we’re selling. Most of our professional success will depend on receiving help from people. Therefore, knowing how to sell people and persuade them to act is critical to our long‐term success. But selling is hard. If we don’t take the time to develop the right sales skills, people will resist our sales pitches. “Selling, I’ve grown to understand, is more urgent, more important, and, in its own sweet way, more beautiful than we realize. The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and our happiness.' – Daniel Pink
Two Essential Sales Skills Attunement We can think of attunement as the adjustment of a radio dial in the mind. Just as a radio needs to be adjusted to attune to the frequency of a radio station, we need to adjust our thinking to attune to the thoughts of the people we’re trying to persuade. The first step to attunement is lowering our perceived power If we approach a sale with the feeling that we have more resources and know more than the person we’re trying to persuade, we’ll fail to attune to their perspective. A 2006 Northwestern University study revealed that when people are primed to feel powerful through a series of power inducing exercises, they were three times less likely to consider another person's point of view. Therefore, the first step of attunement requires lowering our perceived power. “Think of this first principle of attunement as persuasion jujitsu: using an apparent weakness as an actual strength. Start your encounters with the assumption that you’re in a position of lower power. That will help you see the other side’s perspective more accurately, which, in turn, will help you move them.” – Daniel Pink
Clarity Consider a mess in your house you should clean up, but you don’t feel like cleaning it up right now. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning ‘not the least bit ready’ and 10 meaning ‘totally ready,’ how ready are you to start cleaning? Now answer this question: Why didn’t you pick a lower number? 'This technique, which originated in therapy and counseling but has since spread to other realms, seeks to spark behavior change not by coercing people, promising them rewards, or threatening them with punishments, but by tapping their inner drives... Most people who resist doing or believing something don’t have a binary, off‐on, yes‐no position.” – Daniel Pink By comparing our current state of readiness with a lower state of readiness, we clarified our motive for acting (cleaning the house). Our job as salespeople is to clarify personal, positive, and intrinsic motives for action by making comparisons. If we use the right comparisons, we will spark a desire for action within the person we are persuading, which will make them more receptive to what we’re selling. 'We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation....That’s why the most essential question you can ask (when clarifying a problem) is this: Compared to what?” – Daniel Pink Start your sales by comparing someone’s current experience with a potential experience, or what they have, with what they could lose. ALWAYS answer these two questions when selling: '1. If the person you’re selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? “2. When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you’re doing something wrong.' – Daniel Pink
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Insights from The E‐Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber “If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world…” – Michael Gerber To prevent your business from turning into a personal prison you must replace yourself (and all your unique talents) with a unique system. The entrepreneurial perspective is about “building a business that works not because of you but without you.” – Michael Gerber If you own a bakery, you don’t want to bake the best cakes in town. You want to create a system that bakes the best cakes in town. You want your cake baking system to enable the ordinary people you hire to produce extraordinary results.
How do you build such a system? Here’s how…
Imagine you want to hire a Salesperson for your business. You start by considering how you want your company to interact with its customers. You test different wording for your sales calls and modify your sales script to increase its effectiveness. You write down everything you learn in your companies Sales Operation Manual.
“The Rule of Ordinary People—that says the blessing of ordinary people is that they make your job more difficult. The typical owner of a small business prefers highly skilled people because he believes they make his job easier—he can simply leave the work to them. That is, the typical small business owner prefers Management by Abdication to Management by Delegation.
“Before long, the Sales Operations Manual contains the exact scripts for handling incoming calls, outgoing calls, meeting the customer at the door. The exact responses to customer inquiries, complaints, concerns. The system by which an order is entered, returns are transacted, new product requests are acted upon, inventory is secured.” – Michael Gerber
“Unfortunately, the inevitable result of this kind of thinking is that the business also grows to depend on the whims and moods of its people. If they’re in the mood, the job gets done. If they’re not, it doesn’t. In this kind of business, a business that relies on discretion, ‘How do I motivate my people?’ becomes the constant question. ‘How do I keep them in the mood?’ It is literally impossible to produce a consistent result in a business that depends on extraordinary people. No business can do it for long. And no extraordinary business tries to!” – Michael Gerber
When building your operations manual, ask yourself: “What would best serve our customer here? How could I most easily give the customer what he wants while also maximizing profits for the company? And at the same time, how could I give the person responsible for that work the best possible experience?” – Michael Gerber When your Sales Operation Manual is complete (and you’ve followed your procedures exactly as you’ve written them to get results you desire), it’s time to run an ad for a salesperson. “But not for someone with sales experience. Not a Master Technician. But a novice. A beginner. An Apprentice. Someone eager to learn how to do it right. Someone willing to learn what (you’ve) spent so much time and energy discovering. Someone for whom questions haven’t become answers. Someone who is open to the possibility of learning skills he hasn’t developed yet, skills he wants to learn.
After hiring an ‘ordinary’ person to be your salesperson, hand them the manual and walk them through it. In a few weeks you’ll have your replacement performing the job just as good as you did. Now that you’ve freed yourself from the sales position, you can develop systems for other areas of your business. 'The system becomes the tools your people use to increase their productivity, to get the job done in the way it needs to get done in order for your business to successfully differentiate itself from your competition.' – Michael Gerber Make it your mission to work ON the business (building systems) instead of IN the business. Aim to be non‐essential to any system that produces your company’s product or service.
“What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost. That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.' – Michael Gerber
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Insights from Anything You Want by Derek Sivers 'Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself. When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.' – Derek Sivers
How to Start a Business Solve your own problem
In 1997, Derek wanted to sell his CD without having to land a huge record deal. PayPal hadn’t been invented yet, so he had to set up his own online credit card merchant store with a ‘BUY NOW’ button in order to sell his CD. He formed partnerships with existing merchants and taught himself how to program. After months of work, he had a ‘BUY NOW’ button on his site and people could buy his CD.
Share your solution
“When I told my musician friends about my BUY NOW button, one friend asked, ‘Could you sell my CD, too?’ I thought about it for a minute and said, ‘Sure. No problem.’ I just did it as a favour.” – Derek Sivers People have the same problems you do. Find people with the problem you’ve just solved for yourself and show them your solution. If providing this solution to others starts taking up too much of your time and it brings in more money than your day job, then turn it into a full-time business.
If it’s not a hit, switch
Our solutions might not be the best solution for others. Derek urges us to keep improving and inventing ideas until we get a hit: “Don’t waste your time persistently doing what’s not working.” When you discover a hit, the product or service will promote itself.
How to Grow a Business Focus on a utopian customer experience (from the customers point of view)
Derek wrote down his utopian-dream-come-true experience for his customer: “In a perfect world, my distributor would: Pay me every week. Show me the full name and address of everyone who bought my CD. (Because those are my fans, not the distributor’s.) Never kick me out for not selling enough. (Even if I sell only one CD every five years, it’ll be there for someone to buy.)” – Derek Sivers
Inject moments of unexpected generosity
At CD Baby this meant answering the phone after two rings between 7am - 10pm, no matter what. When shop floor employees would take the time to talk about a customer’s CD for 30 minutes, the customer would rave about their experience at CD Baby. “It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.” – Derek Sivers
Delegate or Die...
When asked a question regarding an operational decision, complete the following steps: 1. Gather everyone together 2. Explain your philosophy (why you would do what you would do) 3. Ensure that everyone understands (simulate an example and ask questions) 4. Get one person to write down the philosophy in the company manual 5. Let everyone know that they can make the decision next time without having to ask you for permission
When to Sell a Business
If selling your business is what’s best for the customer “I asked Seth Godin’s advice. All he said was, “If you care, sell.” (I think his point was that my lack of enthusiastic vision was doing a disservice to my clients. It’d be better for everyone if I put the company in more motivated hands that could help them all grow.)? – Derek Sivers
If staying in the business is stunting your personal growth “I got excited about all the cool new projects I could do instead (of working on my company). I realized that the bigger learning and growing challenge for me was letting go, not staying on.” – Derek Sivers
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Insights from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield An internal enemy prevents you from being creative. That enemy is Resistance. “Most of us have two lives: The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” – Steven Pressfield Everyone has the capacity to be creative and produce original work, but very few do. Resistance stops them. Resistance is like the Terminator; it’s programmed to kill your creative spirit and prevent you from realizing your potential. Resistance is the antagonist on your creative journey. Resistance fills your heads with self‐doubt:
If you dream of writing a book, Resistance will convince you that you have nothing to say. If you dream of being a creative freelancer, Resistance will convince you that you’re not talented enough. If you dream of launching an innovative business, Resistance will tell you that you have too much to lose.
Resistance urges you to give into cravings and forget your creative aspirations:
Resistance urges you to pour an extra glass of wine and sleep‐in the next day. Resistance urges you to order dessert, so you feel too lethargic to work on your craft afterward.
Resistance can convince you to do the most idiotic things to avoid doing creative work.
When author Robert McKee wanted to start a new book, Resistance convinced him to try on every piece of clothing in his closet first.
How do we defeat Resistance? Embrace it “If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there's tremendous love there too. If you didn't love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn't feel anything. The opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference. The more resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art project or enterprise is to you, and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.” – Steven Pressfield When you feel lost, Resistance is your guiding compass. Listen to that little voice in your heart, seek out projects that interest you, and then gauge the amount of Resistance you feel. The more Resistance, the better.
If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur with a long list of product ideas, pick the product you find most interesting and terrifying. If you’re an actor and don’t know what part to take next, take the part that excites you and scares you.
Face it (especially on days when you don’t feel like it) When Pressfield is working on a book, he faces his Resistance every day at 10:30 am, even on days when he doesn’t feel like working. Every day at 10:30 am he sits down to write and doesn’t stop until he’s exhausted or starts making typos (which is usually 3‐4 hours later). Pressfield doesn’t care how many pages he’s produced or if his writing is any good. “All that matters,” he says, “is I put in my time, and hit it with all I've got. All that counts is that for this day, for this session, I have overcome resistance.” When you commit to sitting with your Resistance for a set amount of time every day, something magical happens; a divine power rewards your efforts. It’s as though you’re given an angel for the day to show you the way forward. “When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us… we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” – Steven Pressfield The experience goes from excruciating to enjoyable...but only for the remainder of the day. Resistance will be waiting for you tomorrow. If you can find the courage to face Resistance tomorrow, and the next, and the next…without giving in to its demands, you will discover what you were born to do. “If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.” – Steven Pressfield
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Insights from Measure What Matters by John Doerr “As much as I hate process, good ideas with great execution are how you make magic. And that’s where OKRs come in.” – Larry Page, Google co‐founder The Objective: WHAT you want to achieve. The Key Results: HOW you’re going to achieve your objective; 3‐5 measurements that indicate you’re moving closer to your objective. Common key results include revenue, growth, active users, customer satisfaction scores, etc.
3 Essentials for Setting OKRs Audacious Objective Set an audacious objective by being idealistic, not realistic. Ask yourself:
If I were freed from constraints, what change would I want to make in the world? If I had the unique opportunity to be the best in the world at one thing, what would that be?
After discovering a goal that inspires you, scale it back until it’s one step short of being impossible. Your objective must be significant and inspiring, but believable. When Bill and Melinda Gates started 'The Gates Foundation,' they set an audacious objective of eradicating malaria by 2015. However, they realized it was an impossible goal that demotivated the team, so they adjusted their objective to eradicate malaria by 2040. The new objective was still big, but now it was believable. This audacious objective inspired the team to grow to meet the challenge. 'When you try to do something BIG, you never entirely fail' ‐ Larry Page
Quality & Quantity Key Results “Objectives are the stuff of inspiration and far horizons. Key results are more earthbound and metric‐driven.” ‐ John Doerr Example Objective (from the book): Win the Indy 500 Weak Key Results:
Average Key Results:
Strong Key Results:
Increase lap speed Reduce pit stop time
Increase average lap speed by 2% Reduce average pit stop time by 1 second
Increase average lap speed by 2% (quantity result) Reduce average pit stop time by 1 second (quantity result) Reduce pit stop errors by 50% (quality result) Practice pit stops 1 hour a day (quality and quantity result)
A strong set of key results are specific and measurable quality and quantity targets. When you have quality and quantity key results, you reduce costly errors and re‐work. Key results are like gauges on the dashboard of your vehicle. You want to increase average speed while keeping your RPM and engine temperature low so that you can get to your destination as efficiently as possible.
Color Coding Check‐ins Regular color‐coding check‐ins will keep you accountable for setting challenging key result targets and making progress on those key results. Each week, month or quarter (you choose the time frame based on your key results), look at your key results and label each result green, yellow or red.
Green means you are 70%‐100% on target, and you should continue with your current strategy. Yellow means you are 30%‐70% on target, and you need to develop a recovery plan and adjust your strategy. Red means you are 0%‐30% on target, and you need to develop a recovery plan or replace that key result.
“There’s no need to hold stubbornly to an outdated projection—strike it from your list and move on. Our goals are servants to our purpose, not the other way around.” ‐ John Doerr WARNING: If you're approaching 100% on all your key results, you've failed. Aim for a mix of yellow and green key results, with an average key result score of 70% on target. 'The biggest risk of all is not taking one.' ‐ Mellody Hobson
“OKRs allowed us to be ambitious and disciplined at the same time.” ‐ Bill Gates 80
Insights from Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland “At its root, Scrum is based on a simple idea: whenever you start a project, why not regularly check in, see if what you’re doing is heading in the right direction, and if it’s actually what people want? And question whether there are any ways to improve how you’re doing what you’re doing, any ways of doing it better and faster, and what might be keeping you from doing that.” – Jeff Sutherland
All major projects require cycles of execution and improvement called Scrum Sprints. Scrum Sprints are typically conducted bi-weekly, and they contain the following 7 steps: LIST: Create/Update a Backlog List (list document) Quickly list or update ALL desirable outcomes for the project. Format these outcomes to represent specific points in the ‘User’s Experience Story’: Who (X) + What (Y) + Why (Z) - “As an
operator (X), I use the touch screen to start the motor (Y), so I can control the pump remotely (Z).”
Ensure each item is testable (can be built and tested according to a clear set of pass-fail requirements). Sort items in order of their ability to validate critical assumptions AND provide immediate value.
ESTIMATE: Part 1: Refine and Estimate Backlog Items (list document with numbers and sections boxed off)
1. 2.
Assign the longest duration item(s) with a 13 (highest Fibonacci number in the sequence: 1,2,3,5,8,13) Assign Fibonacci numbers 1,2,3,5,8,13 to all items, relative to the hardest item
Part 2: Sprint Planning Session 1. 2. 3.
Set fixed Sprint duration (time till next evaluation - max 20% of the project duration) INITIAL SPRINT: estimate points to be completed within that time SUCCESSIVE SPRINTS: previous Sprint actual point total + 10%
POPULATE: Make Work Next Actions Visible Write all items that need to be completed during the current Sprint onto cards and put them in the ‘DO’ column of your Scrum
Board (a Scrum board is a wall board with post-it notes OR software program with 3 lists: DO, DOING, DONE – I suggest using the software program Trello.com). Move the three top priority items into the ‘DOING’ column (never have more than 3 items in the DOING column). When you complete an item move it from the ‘DOING’ column to the ‘DONE’ column.
CHART: Make Work Progress Visible At the end of each day, take the total number of points in the ‘DONE’ list and subtract that that total from the Sprint total. Show the results on a ‘Burndown Chart’ (a line chart that reduces in value each day, with the y-axis representing the Sprint point total and the x-axis representing the number of day in the Sprint):
ASK: Conduct 15-minute Daily Stand-up Meetings What did I/we do yesterday to help the team finish the Sprint? What can I/we do today to help the team finish the Sprint? What upcoming obstacles might slow my/our progress? DEMONSTRATE: Host a Sprint Demonstration Invite all project stakeholders (client, management, product owner or potential customer). Show the Sprint results (functional products only). Gather constructive feedback. REFLECT: Conduct a Sprint Retrospective (lessons learned document) What went well? What could have been better? What can we do differently next Sprint?
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Insights from The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling Why is it so hard to execute promising ideas and important goals? Authors Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling have surveyed over 200,000 leaders around the world to find out why they struggle to execute. The answers varied, but the authors realized all their answers had one thing in common. The main reason leaders and teams routinely fail to execute promising strategies and important team goals is because they spend all their energy dealing with the whirlwind. “The real enemy of execution is your day job! We call it the whirlwind. It’s the massive amount of energy that’s necessary just to keep your operation going on a day‐to‐day basis; and, ironically, it’s also the thing that makes it so hard to execute anything new. The whirlwind robs from you the focus required to move your team forward.” – The 4 Disciplines of Execution The whirlwind includes all the incoming messages you need to respond to, all the important phone calls you need to take, all the problems you need to resolve, and all the meetings you need to prepare for. “The whirlwind is urgent and it acts on you and everyone working for you every minute of every day. The goals you’ve set for moving forward are important, but when urgency and importance clash, urgency will win every time.' – The 4 Disciplines of Execution Executing any promising idea or important goal amid a raging whirlwind requires discipline. It requires the discipline to deal with urgent items while remaining focused on what’s important. The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) is a simple, repeatable, and proven formula to do just that.
Discipline #1: Focus on the WIG The first discipline of execution requires sustaining the whirlwind at its current level while you advance one wildly important goal. To find your wildly important goal, DON’T ASK: “What’s most important?” If you ask that question, you’ll inevitably focus on the whirlwind because everything in the whirlwind seems important. Instead, ask yourself: “If everything else remained at its current level of performance, what one achievement would make everything else seem secondary?” In other words, if you didn’t need to worry about anything else for the time being, what one goal would you focus on right now? “Once you stop worrying about everything else going backward, you can start moving forward on your WIG.” – The 4 Disciplines of Execution
Discipline #2: Measure Lead Behaviors There are two measurements you can focus on while executing: lead behavior measurements and lag result measurements. Lag result measurements are measurements of the results you want. Lead behavior measurements are measurements of the critical day‐to‐day activities that lead to the results you want.
More sales calls (lead behavior) leads to more sales (lag result). More time spent studying (lead behavior) leads to higher grades (lag result).
Measuring results such as sales or grades can be frustrating because it takes time for your actions to produce measurable results. That’s why they are called lag results. If you measure a value you can’t immediately improve, your willingness to execute will diminish. However, when you focus on a metric you can influence every day or every week, like a lead behavior, you’ll sustain your level of execution. Seeing daily/weekly signs of improvements will increase engagement and drive the execution of your WIG.
Discipline #3: Put up a Scoreboard Without a scoreboard, you or your team will lose track of your measurements, forget the score, and lose the will to win. Therefore, you need to create an office scoreboard that includes your WIG (title at the top of the scoreboard), your lag measurements (line chart from left to right), and your lead measurements (bar chart below the lag measurements). Your office scoreboard should be large enough to notice every day and simple enough to know if you’re winning in 5 seconds or less. If you’re improving the lead measurement, and that lead measurement is corresponding to improvements in the lag measurement, then you’re winning.
Discipline #4: Schedule Weekly Accountability Talks The fourth discipline of execution requires setting up weekly accountability meetings with teammates or peers (not bosses or managers). Holding regular weekly accountability meetings with people at your level (called WIG sessions) ensures you stay in the game. When you set up reoccurring weekly meetings with teammates or like‐minded peers to discuss your efforts, you strengthen your commitment to execution. During your WIG sessions (~15‐minute weekly accountability meetings), do three things: report on last week’s commitment, review the scoreboard and describe the actions you took to advance your WIG, and commit to a lead behavior improvement or a specific deliverable for this week. 82
Insights from When by Daniel Pink “Timing isn't everything but it's a big thing” – Daniel Pink Between the hours of 2pm and 4pm (the midday “trough”):
Doctors mistakenly give more patients a fatal dose of anesthesia before surgery than any other time of the day. Danish schoolchildren score significantly lower on standardized exams. CEOs of publicly traded companies are more likely to say something stupid in a quarterly earnings call and cause their stock price to drop. “Across many domains, (the midday) represents a danger zone for productivity, ethics, and health.” ‐ Daniel Pink
Your attention and mental ability is biologically programmed to rise and fall according to your circadian rhythm. When you wake up your attention and mental ability peak, trough, and rebound for approximately the next 16 hours.
During the Peak (first 7 hours of your day): Execute logical work. Focus on clarifying, organizing, structuring, and explaining. Do work similar to programming a computer, writing a legal brief, or taking a math test. If you're a writer or content creator, do your research and editing during the peak. If you're an salesperson, schedule important sales calls during the peak. If you're an educator or student, schedule math and science classes during the peak.
During the Trough (7‐9 hours after waking up): The best thing you can do in the through is avoid important work or take a nap. “In many ways, naps are Zambonis for our brains. They smooth out the nicks, scuffs, and scratches a typical day has left on our mental ice.” – Daniel Pink The best naps are between 10‐20 minutes. That’s right, 10‐20 minutes is all you need. A 5‐minute nap has no effect, but a 10‐minute nap is scientifically proven to increase mental alertness for three hours. “Italian police officers who took naps immediately before their afternoon and evening shifts had 48 percent fewer traffic accidents than those who didn’t nap.” – Daniel Pink NASA pilots, air traffic controllers, and computer programmers routinely take naps to boost performance. If you can’t nap take frequent breaks and execute your least important, most mundane work (run errands, sort notes, clean the house, etc.).
During the Rebound (last 7 hours of the day): Execute insight work. Focus on generating ideas, innovating, and designing. If you're a writer or content creator, do your creative writing during the rebound. If you're a salesperson, brainstorm ideas for your next presentation during the rebound. If you're an educator or student, schedule art and design classes during the rebound.
BUT… You might be the ~25% of people who have the late chronotype and experience a “peak” in attention in the evening and “rebound” in the morning. If you have a late chronotype, you will perform best on logical tasks in the evening and insight tasks in the morning. You have a late chronotype if on free days (you don’t have obligations and you haven’t been partying all night) you are slow to get up and have a moderate amount of energy in the mid‐morning, but experience a surge of energy in the evening.
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Insights from Deep Work by Cal Newport “My commitment to depth has rewarded me. In the ten-year period following my college graduation, I published four books, earned a PhD, wrote peer-reviewed academic papers at a high rate, and was hired as a tenure-track professor at Georgetown University.' – Cal Newport Shallow Work: non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks that can be completed in a semi-distracted state. Shallow work
includes answering email, sorting documents, and running errands. The less engagement your work requires, the more shallow it is.
“In an age of network tools, knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving e- mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction. Larger efforts that would be well served by deep thinking, such as forming a new business strategy or writing an important grant application, get fragmented into distracted dashes that produce muted quality.” - Cal Newport Any task that you complete while in a semi-distracted state will likely be automated in the near future (completed by software programs and/or robots). Or the task will be completed by several thousand people around the world who are willing to do it for far less money than you are doing it for. The more shallow work you do, the less rare and valuable your skills are, and the more likely you’ll be replaced by a cheaper alternative.
Deep Work: hard but important intellectual work that in completed during long uninterrupted periods of time. Deep work requires a
state of distraction-free concentration to push you cognitive capabilities to their limit and create new value that is hard to replicate. Here are 3 Examples of Deep Work: Writer Mark Twain worked in a cabin isolated from the main house, requiring his family to blow a horn to attract his attention for meals. While writing the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling's only tweet for the first year and a half after joining Twitter was: “This is the real me, but you won’t be hearing from me often I am afraid, as pen and paper is my priority at the moment.” CEO Bill Gates famously conducted “Think Weeks” twice a year, during which he would isolate himself in a lakeside cottage to do nothing but read and think big thoughts. One think week led to the famous “Internet Tidal Wave” memo which led to development of Microsoft’s powerful web browser. If you want to develop skills and produce work that the world considers rare and valuable, you need to develop a daily deep work ritual.
4 Deep Work Ritual Requirements: edicated workspace
“Your ritual needs to specify a location for your deep work efforts. This location can be as simple as your normal office with the door shut and desk cleaned off (a colleague of mine likes to put a hotel-style “do not disturb” sign on his office door when he’s tackling something difficult). If it’s possible to identify a location used only for depth—for instance, a conference room or quiet library—the positive effect can be even greater.” – Cal Newport
xact end time
“Give yourself a specific time frame to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open-ended slog.” – Cal Newport By establishing a clear end time for each deep work session, you give yourself permission to focus intensely and experience discomfort because you know exactly when the discomfort will end.
asy starting sequence
“Your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured. Without this structure, you’ll have to mentally litigate again and again what you should and should not be doing during these sessions and keep trying to assess whether you’re working sufficiently hard. These are unnecessary drains on your willpower reserves.” – Cal Newport
ower-ups
“Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth. For example, the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear.” - Cal Newport
“If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.” – Cal Newport
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Productivity Principle: Work = Time * Intensity Inspired by the book Deep Work by Cal Newport
Quality of Work Produced = (Time Spent) * (Intensity) You could spend 4 hours getting a task done in a semi-distracted state, or you could do the same amount of work with 1 hour of intense focus. “(T)he common habit of working in a state of semi- distraction is potentially devastating to your performance. It might seem harmless to take a quick glance at your inbox every ten minutes or so…(but) that quick check introduces a new target for your attention…The attention residue left by such unresolved switches dampens your performance.” - Cal Newport Transitioning between tasks, meetings, or projects creates attention residue. Glancing at an email, text, or social feed creates attention residue. Attention residue accumulates in a semi-distracted working state and reduces your ability to focus intensely. The more you fracture your attention, the longer it takes to produce high-quality work.
Your ability to focus intensely increases when the likelihood of being distracted is diminished: phone on Airplane Mode, no internet access, no TV playing in the background, no tempting foods nearby, no one to talk to, and no nearby conversations to eavesdrop in on. Even if you aren’t focusing on a distraction, some part of your attention will be consumed by it. The ideal environment to work intensely is an environment SO BORING that it makes work seem compelling. But I can’t get away! Then put on headphones or book a conference room for an hour. When a meeting gets cancelled, go to a nearby coffee shop. When you put the kids to bed, escape to a quiet part of the house. There are more ways to isolate yourself and experience intense focus than you may think… But I can’t go offline! You won’t lose a client or a friend if you go offline for 1 hour. But I need to be with my team! You can work intensely with other people, but make sure that you collectively work to eliminate distractions and direct your focus to a common reference point, like a whiteboard.
Ask yourself:
How would I rate my work intensity on a scale of 1-5?
1 being constantly distracted, and 5 being unable to maintain the intensity for longer than an hour without needing to take a break.
1
2
3
4
5
What could be reducing my ability to focus intensely?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Where can I go to achieve absolute focus?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
The goal: “concentration so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist and author of Flow
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Productivity Principle: Predict to Perform Inspired by the book Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg
In 2012, two economists and a sociologist from MIT studied the habits of top performers in a midsized recruiting firm. The researchers analyzed profit-and-loss data, appointment calendars, and 125,000 emails from the past ten months. “The superstars (those who earned an extra $10,000 in bonuses each year) were constantly telling stories about what they had seen and heard. They were more likely to throw out ideas during meetings, or ask colleagues to help them imagine how future conversations might unfold, or envision how a pitch should go. They came up with concepts for new products and practiced how they would sell them.” – Charles Duhigg The superstars told stories about their past experiences in the hopes that they could predict how future events would unfold. These superstars were also prone to take on projects outside their area of expertise because it was harder to predict how events would unfold. The mere act of making predictions was a source of enjoyment for these high performers because it caused them to focus more intently on what they were doing. According to Judy Willis, M.D., and neuroscientist, “every prediction you make triggers an increase in attention and dopamine.” Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that boosts attention and reduces noise in neural networks, making it easier to notice patterns. Increased pattern recognition means increased creativity, which ultimately boosts learning and overall performance. You won’t just get a shot of dopamine when your predictions are right; you’ll also release dopamine when your predictions are wrong. In fact, Dr. Willis says “the dopamine boost is often greater when you learn something new and useful than when you succeed.” This is one of the reasons gamblers keep coming back to the casino despite losing more often than not. Therefore, to boost your awareness, creativity, and performance, get in the habit of envisioning detailed stories for events you are about to experience. Before your next meeting, ask yourself:
Take a few minutes each morning to visualize how your day will unfold:
What does my quest to ‘get things done’ look like today? What conflicts am I likely to experience? How will I respond?
When you know how things should proceed, it’s easier to anticipate distraction and take corrective action. “If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do... Then you’ll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. By developing a habit of telling ourselves stories about what’s going on around us, we learn to sharpen where our attention goes.” – Charles Duhigg
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Productivity Principle: Process vs. Product Inspired by the book A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
“Procrastination is the death of success.” – Barbara Oakley
↑Time Spent Focusing on Product = ↑Time Spent Procrastinating… “Product is an outcome—for example, a homework assignment that you need to finish. Process means the flow of time and the habits and actions associated with that flow of time—as in, “I’m going to spend twenty minutes working.” – Barbara Oakley
To prevent procrastination, you want to avoid concentrating on product. Instead, your attention should be on building processes—habits— that coincidentally allow you to do the unpleasant tasks that need to be done. – Barbara Oakley When you focus on product, you rely on a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (a relatively new part of the brain in human evolution). This is the rational ‘thinking’ part of the brain you use to visualize solutions. It’s also an inefficient, energy intensive part of your brain. When you focus on process, you rely on a part of the brain called the basil ganglia (a relatively old part of the brain in human evolution). This part of the brain is used to execute habits (familiar work routines) and requires very little energy to operate. You have thousands of habits stored in your basil ganglia. By trusting the automatic execution of these habits and not obsessing over the end result, you bypass procrastination. It helps if you use a timer to cue your habits and periodically think of the product to ensure you don’t stray too far from your intended outcome.
Start by focusing on the process and let your habits take over. At set intervals turn your attention to the product (the intended outcome) for a brief period of time.
Aim to improve the process with each subsequent interval.
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Insights from Little Bets by Peter Sims “Chris Rock, the Pixar filmmakers, Frank Gehry, Steve Jobs, and Colonel Casey Haskins are all perfectionists and yet they accept, even welcome, failure as they develop new ideas and strategies.” - Peter Sims Failure = Imperfection, and that's hard to accept. “Innate curiosity, which is the basis for so much creativity routinely gets squelched (as an adult). Perfection is rewarded, while making mistakes is often penalized. The term “failure” has taken on a deeply personal meaning, something to be avoided at nearly all costs.” - Peter Sims A growing body of psychology research reveals that there are two forms of perfectionism: Healthy & Unhealthy. “Healthy perfectionism is internally driven in the sense that it’s motivated by strong personal values for things like quality and excellence. Conversely, unhealthy perfectionism is externally driven. External concerns show up over perceived parental pressures, needing approval, a tendency to ruminate over past performances, or an intense worry about making mistakes. Healthy perfectionists exhibit a low concern for these outside factors.” - Peter Sims
3 Questions to Combat ‘Unhealthy’ Perfectionism Questions direct our focus and guide our actions. By routinely asking the right questions we’ll find the courage to make little bets, embrace small failures, and prevent an unhealthy perfectionism from paralyzing our productivity.
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Insights from Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy 'It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of time at home that matters.' – Brian Tracy To increase the quality of your work‐time, you need to eat more ‘frogs’. 'Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.' – Brian Tracy Eating your biggest frogs allows you to get more done in less time so that you can spend more face time with the people you care about most, doing the things that give you the most joy.
Consider the Consequences
How to Find Your Biggest Frog
We all take on roles in our professional lives, and those roles require a series of key results to survive and thrive. 'The key result areas of management are planning, organising, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, and reporting. These are the areas in which a manager must get results to succeed in his or her area of responsibility. A weakness in any one of these areas can lead to under‐achievement and failure as a manager.' – Brian Tracy What are the key result areas of your current role? Hint: Your key results are the reason you’re on the payroll (if you’re an employee) or the reason you’re in business (if you’re an entrepreneur). Visualize the long‐term consequences of doing nothing on your work to‐do list for an entire week. Then circle the five items, if left undone, that would have the greatest long‐term impact on your key results areas. 'The potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important a task really is to you and to your company. This way of evaluating the significance of a task is how you determine what your next frog really is.' – Brian Tracy 'The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something.' – Brian Tracy
Find Your Greatest Contribution Among the things that you’ve identified to have long‐term consequences on your key result areas, ask yourself: What ONE task could I do ALL day, that would contribute the greatest value to my company? Brian Tracy says that if you ask yourself that question three times, the three tasks you come up with will be 90% of the contribution you can provide your company. 'Perhaps the most important WORD in the world of work is contribution. Your rewards, both financial and emotional, will always be in direct proportion to your results, to the value of your contribution.' – Brian Tracy 'Identify the three things you do in your work that account for 90 percent of your contribution, and focus on getting them done before anything else. You will then have more time for your family and personal life.' – Brian Tracy
Do the Worst First Start with the task you’ve most been avoiding. Do the worst first. By doing the worst first, you'll receive the greatest sense of relief and satisfaction upon completing it, giving you the confidence you eat more frogs. 'Eat the biggest and ugliest frogs before anything else.” – Brian Tracy 'Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.' ‐ Brian Tracy
How to Eat That Frog The best way to eat a big ugly frog is to focus (solely) on the next bite. 'One of the best ways to eat a large frog is for you to take it one bite at a time…There is an old saying that ‘by the yard it’s hard; but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch!’” – Brian Tracy I focus solely on the next bite by asking myself: 'What initial result can I achieve in the next 10 minutes to get me moving in the right direction?' 'Your job is to go as far as you can see. You will then see far enough to go further. To accomplish a great task, you must step out in faith and have complete confidence that your next step will soon become clear to you.' – Brian Tracy
“You cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest one, and that will be enough, at least for the time being.' – Brian Tracy 89
Insights from Getting Things Done by David Allen “Reflect for a moment on what it actually might be like if your personal management situation were totally under control, at all levels and at all times. What if you had completely clear mental space, with nothing pulling or pushing on you unproductively? What if you could dedicate fully 100 percent of your attention to whatever was at hand, at your own choosing, with no distraction?” – David Allen Here’s How: Build a trusted system (an external brain), and actively capture, clarify, and remind yourself of whatever you need to do at the time you need to do it. Here is my GTD (Getting Things Done) system and the three habits that allow my GTD system to be successful:
Capture “There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought…Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection tool, that you know you’ll come back to regularly and sort through.” - David Allen The Cue The Sequence Think of an idea, or 1a. Capture the idea or action item in Evernote by using the Evernote app on smartphone. action item. Note: I use Evernote, but you could use any other list-making app on your smartphone. If you don’t carry a smartphone, carry a small notepad and pen to capture items. The tool you use doesn’t matter. What matters is how fast you can capture items. Capture ideas and actions in their undeveloped form. You’ll decide what to do with them during the next phase: processing.
Process “You must clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it…You must use your mind to get things off your mind.” - David Allen The Cue Receive a daily calendar notification at 4pm.
The Sequence 1. Open capture list within Evernote, look at one item at a time (starting from the top), and ask: “Do I want to act on this soon?” 2a. If No: add item to the someday/maybe list or reference folder. If completely useless, delete it. 2b. If Yes: convert item to a next physical action, determine the outcome, and add outcome to the project list if it requires more than one action to complete. Then complete the next action item in 2-minutes or less OR move it to an appropriate location (see table below). Where I put my processed items: Reference List Someday/Maybe List Calendar Follow-up List Next Action List(s) Project List Location: Evernote. Location: Evernote. Location: Location: Email. Location: Index cards Location: Index Thought process: Thought process: 'I Outlook. Thought process: I carry with me. card I carry with “This idea might be might want to do Thought process: “It’s out of my Thought process: me. useful one day but this, but not “I need to do this hands but I “Not time specific but Through Process: it’s not actionable now…and I’d like to at a certain time should follow-up should get done as “This is an at this time.” be reminded of it on a certain day. on it soon.” soon as possible or outcome that I keep all periodically.” Otherwise I’ll I use boomerang when possible (in the requires many documents and Examples: Books to miss my in Gmail to send right context).” actions to be reference files in read, recipes to try, opportunity.” an email to Item format: action completed and I Evernote with the movies to rent, The calendar is myself in the item - detail. Create can’t forget that.” appropriate tags so weekend trips to sacred space. future for all separate lists for Project = I can find them take, web sites to ONLY put time follow-ups. different contexts: something that when I need them. surf. specific items in @home, @office, requires many the calendar, @store. actions to be otherwise, you’ll completed in a devalue all items. year or less. Note: Never spend more than 2 minutes on any one item; clarify or complete each item in 2 minutes or less.
Review “The more complete the system is, the more you’ll trust it. And the more you trust it, the more you’ll be motivated to keep it…(each week) Get clean, clear, current, and complete.” – David Allen The Cue Receive a weekly calendar notification on 3pm each Friday.
The Sequence 1. Spend 5 minutes writing a 3-5 year vision: “What does a typical day to look like 3-5 years from now?” 2. Re-write project list on a new index card in order of importance (leave out any projects that were completed during the past week). 3. Re-write next action lists on new index cards, in order of importance (leave out any projects that were completed during the past week).
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Insights from The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande “(T)he volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably.” – Atul Gawande, MD Each day we process an overwhelming amount of information and take on more responsibility. As the complexity of our life increases, we make small consequential oversights in our work, despite having experience and training. These oversights cause our co-workers, managers, and customers to doubt the quality of our work. When author and surgeon Atul Gawande makes a small oversight, like forgetting to wash his hands before surgery, he puts a patient’s life in jeopardy. According to research, these small avoidable oversights occur more than 75,000 times a year in operating rooms across America. On Gawande’s quest to find a solution he discovered a surprisingly simple, yet powerful tool the aviation industry has used for years: the checklist. “Four generations after the first aviation checklists went into use, a lesson is emerging: checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws inherent in all of us—flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness. And because they do, they raise wide, unexpected possibilities.” – Atul Gawande, MD
Checklists = Excellent Results Several industries use checklists to verify their work and make important decisions:
More than 16 disciplines use checklists on a major construction site to coordinate efforts and verify each major step of the building process. Their discipline to use checklists has kept the building failure rate in America to 0.00002% (1 in every 50,000 structure partially or entirely collapses due to human error). Venture capitalists who take a methodical, checklist-driven approach to investing in businesses are 40% less likely to fire senior management for incompetence. Venture capitalists who use checklists to verify investments experience 45% larger returns than venture capitalists who avoid using checklists to verify their decisions (on average). When surgeons and nurses started using checklists before surgery, major complications dropped by 36 percent, and deaths reduced by 47 percent!
Resistance to Checklists It’s one thing to realize that checklists work, it’s another thing to actually use them. “It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists…Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.” – Atul Gawande, MD To overcome the resistance of using checklists, you’ll need to make checklists efficient and effective. The more efficient a checklist is, the more likely you’ll use it. The more effective a checklist is, the more mistakes you’ll catch and the more you’ll learn to rely on it.
A Checklist for Making Useful Checklists Pause Point Every checklist must have a clear trigger – a location or routine action that reminds you to pause and complete the checklist. For example, I use a checklist when releasing a video on YouTube to verify the video's description, tags, and the links within the video. The pause point is just before I hit the ‘publish’ button on YouTube.com. Speedy Aviation checklist specialist Dan Boorman recommends making each checklist less than 60 seconds to complete - any longer and you’ll start taking shortcuts. To make a checklist speedy, aim for 5-9 ‘killer’ items. A ‘killer’ item is an item that if missed gives the impression of poor quality, or adversely effects other people. Short and Concise Items A checklist is NOT a how-to guide. Each item on a checklist should be a short and concise reminder of a routine that you are familiar with (prior training and expertise). For example, a pre-surgery checklist includes: “verify reserve blood.” This item description is sufficient for surgeons since surgeons know exactly where the reserve blood is stored, and how much reserve blood is needed before starting surgery. Field Tested and Revised Checklists must be practical and based on actual experience. A useful checklist is made up of past failures and lessons learned. For checklists to remain useful you need to continually update the items with the latest discoveries and lessons learned. Final note: For checklists to be effective you need to read, verify and physically check-off or click each item on a checklist. It’s the deliberate act of going through each item that makes checklists effective, NOT the fact that you are familiar with every item on a checklist.
'(Checklists) not only offer the possibility of verification but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance.” – Atul Gawande, MD
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Productivity Principle: Batching Buckets Inspired by the book Getting Things Done by David Allen The Situation Your to-do list is massive. “Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pin-pointed.” – David Allen, author of Getting Things Done
Why You Should Care: The longer your to-do list gets, the more anxiety you’ll feel. Getting through your to-do list starts to seem impossible, and you procrastinate on your to-do list as long as possible. Essential items go undone, and anxiety builds. “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.” – Will Roger
What You Can Do About It: Start capturing action items on separate batch lists (aka batch buckets), and empty those buckets in the right CONTEXT/ MODE. Doing so is an efficient use of your time, and it prevents your to-do list from getting out of control.
“There is never a moment at which you could do everything you’ve decided to do, simply because most of those actions require a specific tool or location.” – David Allen “If you have traveled to meet a client at her office and on arrival discover that the meeting will be delayed for fifteen minutes, you will want to refer to your Calls list for something you could do to use your time productively. Your action lists should fold in or out, based on what you could possibly do at any time.” – David Allen
CONTEXT
MODE
What’s the best context to be in to complete this?
What’s the optimal mental state to be in to complete this?
At Office? In Car? At Home? During Meeting? At Grocery Store?
High EnergyFocused Mode? Social-Talkative Mode? Low EnergyMindless Mode?
“We all have times when we think more effectively, and times when we should not be thinking at all.” - Daniel Cohen “When I first wake up, my brain is relaxed and creative. The thought of writing a comic is fun, and it’s relatively easy because my brain is in exactly the right mode for that task. I know from experience that trying to be creative in the midafternoon is a waste of time. By 2:00 P.M. all I can do is regurgitate the ideas I’ve seen elsewhere. At 6:00 A.M. I’m a creator, and by 2:00 P.M. I’m a copier.” – Scott Adams, Creator of the Dilbert Comic
“You should have as many in-trays as you need and as few as you can get by with.” – David Allen If I need to call a client, friend, or colleague, I put the task on my calls list and make the phone call during my commute time (when I can’t do much else). Context: car. Mode: social/talkative. If I need to write a blog post, I’ll put that task on my deep work list and complete that task in a deep work mode after my morning coffee when my energy and focus are highest. Context: quiet space. Mode: high energy and focus. What contexts (locations or tools) frequently constraint your actions (car, meeting, store, etc.)? ____________________________, ____________________________, ____________________________, ____________________________. What time of the day do you most experience the following modes? Focused work mode: ____ - ____ AM/PM Mindless work mode: ____ - ____ AM/PM Social/Talkative mode: ____ - ____ AM/PM Anything-but-work mode: ____ - ____ AM/PM
What 3-5 lists can you make based on the contexts and modes listed above and direct actions to throughout the day? 92
Insights from Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss “Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask... If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions.” – Tim Ferriss Author Tim Ferriss reached out to 100+ brilliant minds and asked them 11 questions about living a happier, more productive, more fulfilling life. One of those questions was, “What do you do when you feel overwhelmed and unfocused?” Among the hundreds of answers in the book 'Tribe of Mentors', I discovered three daily practices that many smart and successful people turn to when they feel overwhelmed and unfocused.
Daily Practice #1: Move “(Whenever I feel overwhelmed and unfocused I) Walk. Walk. Walk. A 30‐minute (or even 15‐minute) out‐of‐the‐ office walk with no devices almost invariably clears my head.” ‐ Tom Peters When you walk, you walk into a state of clarity. Each step you take leaves a bit of overwhelm in your tracks. “I’m kind of bummed that it took me so long to realize how great it makes me feel.” ‐ Jimmy Fallon The next time you feel overwhelmed and unfocused, drop what you’re doing and go for a long walk (bonus points if you walk a new route).
Daily Practice #2: Meditate “(When I feel overwhelmed and unfocused) I drop into my breath...' ‐ Leo Babauta “A few moments of focusing on my breath helps me move beyond the surface and go deeper.” ‐ Arianna Huffington (paraphrased) '(When I feel overwhelmed and unfocused) I observe my breath for a few seconds or minutes.” ‐ Yuval Noah Harari Babauta, Huffington, and Harari all rely on a simple form of meditation to eliminate overwhelm: breath awareness. A twenty‐minute meditation session simply involves shifting your attention from a distracting thought to the natural rhythm of your breath...over and over for 20 minutes. Each time you shift your attention to your breath, a little bit of overwhelm falls away and a small amount of focus is restored. Author Yuval Noah Harari says, 'Without the focus and clarity provided by this practice (two hours of daily meditation), I could not have written Sapiens and Homo Deus (two best‐selling books).' Several people in 'Tribe of Mentors' recommend 20 minutes of meditation in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon. Some suggest using the app Headspace to get started.
Daily Practice #3: Memento Mori When Naval Ravikant, CEO and co‐founder of AngelList is overwhelmed and unfocused, he repeats the words “memento mori.” Memento mori is Latin for 'remember you must die.' Death doesn’t need to be dark and depressing. In fact, realizing that you’re going to die one day can be a great tool to clarify your priorities. Tim Urban, creator of the blog WaitButWhy, uses death to pick projects he works on and people he spends his time with. When deciding what creative project to work on, he asks himself: 'Would I be happy if my epitaph had something to do with this project?' Urban says, 'For me, the epitaph test is usually a reminder to focus my time and effort on doing the highest‐quality and most original creative work I can.' When considering who to spend time with, Urban asks himself: 'Is this someone I might be thinking about when I'm on my deathbed?' and 'If I were on my deathbed today, would I be happy with the amount of time I spent with this person?' The next time you're feeling overwhelmed and unfocused, don't push on. Don't answer ten more emails and don't do an extra hour of work. Instead, move, meditate, and memento mori (remember that you could leave this earth right now).
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau
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Insights from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau Pareto’s Law states that 20% of work activity leads to 80% of the desired results. Therefore, 80% of potential tasks produce just 20% of desired results. To drastically reduce your workweek, find, eliminate, or delegate 80% of tasks so you can focus on the vital 20%. While working, get in the habit of asking: “Is this the best use of my time?” Does it generate income? Am I obligated to do it? Do I enjoy it? If the answer to these questions is ‘No’, you’re doing an ‘80%’ activity, and you need to complete the following steps (in the following order):
Let It Go
Are the consequences of not doing it reversible? What’s the worst case scenario of NOT doing this? Run small ignorance experiments: stop doing tasks with small and reversible consequences. After the experiments are complete, determine if you can live with the consequences and if you should stop doing those tasks all together. “Can you let the urgent ‘fail’—even for a day—to get to the next milestone for your potential life-changing tasks? Small problems will crop up, yes. A few people will complain and quickly get over it. BUT, the bigger picture items you complete will let you see these for what they are—minutiae and repairable hiccups. Make this trade a habit. Let the small bad things happen and make the big good things happen.” – Tim Ferriss
Let Others Do It
Is the task you want to hand off well defined (does it have clear instructions and requirements)? Is your hourly rate higher than what it would cost someone else to do the task?
Passing inefficient tasks to others will generate more work for you in the long run. “Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined. If you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off and assign your VA (virtual assistant) to do that for you, it doesn’t improve the order of the universe.” – Tim Ferriss Rule of thumb: do a task at least five times before handing it off to others - this allows you to work out any issues and simplify the process. Estimate your hourly income by cutting the last three zeros off of your annual income and halving the remaining number (ex: $50,000/year = $25/hour). If you make $25/hour, you should outsource all tasks that cost less than $25/hour to complete. This allows you to generate more income by focusing on high-value tasks.
Always be thinking ‘How can I teach someone to do this?’ Make yourself replaceable by building checklists and FAQs and move on to bigger and better things. When you’ve fully defined the tasks you want others to do, it’s time to hire a virtual assistant (VA):
7 Site to Find a VA:
7 Common VA Tasks:
1.
www.fiverr.com
2.
www.b2kcorp.com
3.
www.taskseveryday.com
4.
www.upwork.com
5.
www.guru.com
3. 4.
6. www.freelancer.com
5.
7.
1.
2.
www.fancyhands.com
6. 7.
Schedule meetings, follow-up appointments, and travel accommodations Make meeting minutes (transcribe meeting audio) Conduct web-researches Complete errands and online purchasing Do website maintenance (web design, publishing, uploading files) & basic web design Proofread, format, and edit Write software programs
7 Rules to When Using a VA: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7.
Create a competency test for desired skills (ex: for excellent English speaking skills schedule a call first). Have VAs rephrase the task back to you to verify their understanding of the requirements. Require intermediate progress updates (ex: screenshots every 4 hours). Make deadlines no longer than 72 hours away (24-48 hours is ideal). If the task is large, break it down into smaller tasks that can be completed within 72 hours. Issue one task at a time. Start small and go bigger over time. Eventually, you’ll provide them prioritized task lists to complete. Help their decision-making process by identifying several ‘if-then’ statements, general decision-making philosophies, and monetary thresholds (ex: allow VAs to use their judgement for decisions for purchased of $20 or less) to remedy potential issues. Never allow VA’s to use a debit card (credit card only), and create separate user accounts for VA’s with passwords that you don’t typically use.
“’Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.” – Tim Ferriss
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Insights from How to Have a Good Day by Caroline Webb
Morning Intention
Think about the day ahead and the activities you are likely to do (actions and interactions). Write them down if possible. “What matters most today?” Find 1 or 2 key outcomes: _______________________ & _______________________ “What does that mean for my attitude, attention, and actions?” Contrast the image of realizing your key outcome(s) with the attitude, focus, and actions you need to take to overcome the obstacles to attain that outcome(s) – internal and external struggles. “What specific goals should I set/prime for the day?” Schedule uninterrupted blocks of time where you can turn off notifications and advance your goals through creative thinking.
Daily Monitoring Shallow Breathing Remind yourself to breathe deeply when you start feeling ‘defensive’ ‐ aim for 90 seconds of deep diaphragmatic breathing each time. Task Resistance “What bigger aspiration or value of mine does this task speak to?” “How does this request support something that matters to me?” Behavior of Others Could they simply be tired, hungry, or dealing with a lot right now?
Nightly Recap “What went well today?”
1. ___________________________________________ 2. ___________________________________________ 3. ___________________________________________
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