Productivity Game PDF Package

75+ one‐page summaries of the best books on personal productivity

By Nathan Lozeron

www.ProductivityGame.com

Copyright © 2020 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: November 2020

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Table of Contents
New summaries (not in previous eBook editions) are highlighted in red

Introduction
Section 1: Success Mindset
Page Book
9 Mindset
10 Productivity Principle: Growth vs. Fixed Mindset
11 SuperBetter
12 One Small Step Can Change Your Life
13 The Compound Effect
14 Barking Up The Wrong Tree
15 Ego is the Enemy
16 The Obstacle is the Way
17 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do
18 12 Rules for Life
19 The ONE Thing
20 Essentialism
21 Hell Yeah or No
22 Productivity Principle: Positive ‘No’
23 Your One Word
24 Awaken the Giant Within
25 Man’s Search for Meaning
26 Psycho‐Cybernetics
27 The Dip
28 Grit
29 Can’t Hurt Me
30 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***
31 How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
32 The Upside of Stress
33 Decisive
34 Thinking, Fast and Slow
35 Thinking in Bets
36 Algorithms to Live By
37 Smarter Faster Better
38 Principles
39 Designing Your Life
40 The Code of the Extraordinary Mind
41 Born for This
42 So Good They Can’t Ignore
43 Mastery
44 The Talent Code
45 Range

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 46 Originals
47 Give and Take
48 How to Win Friends and Influence People
49 The Coaching Habit
50 Never Split the Difference
51 Getting to Yes
52 Crucial Conversations
53 The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
54 Productivity Principle: The Five‐Minute Favor
55 Extreme Ownership

Section 2: High Performance Habits

Page Book
57 Atomic Habits
58 Mini Habits
59 High Performance Habits
60 The Rise of Superman
61 Productivity Principle: The 4% Zone
62 Spark
63 Are You Fully Charged?
64 The Miracle Morning
65 Own the Day, Own Your Life
66 Breath
67 Why We Sleep
68 The Willpower Instinct
69 The Power of Full Engagement
70 Indistractable
71 Stillness is the Key
72 Performing Under Pressure
73 The Champion’s Mind
74 Emotional Agility
75 The Tools
76 Meditations
77 10‐Minute Toughness
78 10% Happier
79 The Happiness Advantage
80 Choose Yourself
81 Drive
82 Switch
83 Rethinking Positive Thinking
84 The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking
85 The First 20 Hours
86 Make It Stick
87 Unlimited Memory
88 Limitless

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 89 A Mind for Numbers
90 The Art of Learning
91 Ultralearning
92 Peak
93 The 4‐Hour Chef
94 How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
95 The Charisma Myth
96 Made to Stick
97 Presence
98 The 5 Second Rule
99 Hooked
100 The Power of Habit
101 Your Brain at Work

Section 3: Business Strategy

Page Book

103 The Personal MBA

104 Rework
105 $100 Startup + 100 Side Hustles
106 Zero to One
107 Blue Ocean Strategy
108 Competing Against Luck
109 The Lean Startup
110 Sprint
111 Perennial Seller
112 To Sell Is Human
113 Influence
114 Exactly What to Say
115 Start with Why + Find Your Why
116 Building a StoryBrand
117 The E‐Myth Revisited
118 Anything you Want
119 Good to Great

Section 4: Execution
Page Book

121 Make Time

122 The Effective Executive
123 The War of Art
124 Measure What Matters
125 Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
126 The 12 Week Year
127 The 4 Disciplines of Execution
128 When

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 129 Flow
130 Deep Work
131 Productivity Principle: Intensity x Time
132 Productivity Principle: Predict to Perform
133 Productivity Principle: Process vs. Product
134 Little Bets
135 Eat That Frog!
136 Getting Things Done
137 The Bullet Journal Method
138 Joy at Work
139 The Checklist Manifesto
140 Productivity Principle: Batch Buckets
141 Tribe of Mentors
142 The 4‐Hour Workweek
143 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.

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www.ProductivityGame.com 8
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 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.

How to adopt a Growth Mind-set:

1. Re-label:

2. Recall:

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 self-
efficacy 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 “As success arrives, like it does for a team “If success is ego intoxication, then failure
who speak do not know.” - Lao Tzu that has just won a championship, ego can be a devastating ego blow—turning
begins to toy with our minds and weaken slips into falls and little troubles into great
Ego is the enemy because it prefers talking the will that made us win in the first unravelings. We have many names for
over doing. place.” – Ryan Holiday these problems: Sabotage. Unfairness.
Adversity. Trials. Tragedy.” – Ryan Holiday
“It’s a temptation that exists for Ego is the enemy because it convinces us
everyone—for talk and hype to replace of our ‘greatness’ and erodes our will to Ego is the enemy because it avoids
action. work for continued success. responsibility and casts blame when
experiencing failure. Ego erodes
Our inbox, our iPhones, the comments “We stop learning, we stop listening, and relationships and erases progress by trying
section on the bottom of the article you we lose our grasp on what matters. We to save face.
just read. Blank spaces, begging to be become victims of ourselves and the
filled in with thoughts, with photos, with competition. Sobriety, open-mindedness, “The way through, the way to rise again,
stories. With what we’re going to do, with organization, and purpose—these are the requires a reorientation and increased self-
what things should or could be like, what great stabilizers. They balance out the ego awareness. We don’t need pity—our own
we hope will happen.” — Ryan Holiday and pride that comes with achievement or anyone else’s—we need purpose, poise,
and recognition.” – Ryan Holiday 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 The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

“There is good in everything, if only we look for it.” ‐ Laura Ingalls Wilder

 Terrible boss? Good. You have an opportunity to experiment with different tools, new styles of communication, and new
projects. If your boss doesn’t like it, so what? You were going to leave anyway, but now you can leave with a broader skillset.
 Coworker took credit for your work? Good. Instead of getting angry, complaining to others, and quitting, outwork and
outmaneuver them. And let their behavior be a reminder to praise and appreciate coworkers you respect.
 Computer crashed and you lost your work? Good. You’re no longer holding onto the mediocre parts of your work and you can
make your new work twice as good as what you lost.
 Injured and can’t play your sport for two months? Good. Use this downtime time to rest and create a training and nutrition
program so that you return better than ever.

"No one is talking glass‐half‐full‐style platitudes here. This must be a complete flip. Seeing through the negative, past its underside, and
into its corollary: the positive." – Ryan Holiday

"It’s one thing to not be overwhelmed by obstacles, or discouraged or upset by them. This is something that few are able to do. But after
you have controlled your emotions, and you can see objectively and stand steadily, the next step becomes possible: a mental flip, so
you’re looking not at the obstacle but at the opportunity within it." – Ryan Holiday

Amor Fati Attitude

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward,
not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” ‐
Frederick Nietzsche

Love whatever life throws your way. When life punches you in the face, smile back. When struck by misfortune,
don’t resist or ignore your frustration. Instead, accept it, feel it, then flip it on its head and learn to love your
situation. You’ll only spot opportunity in an obstacle if you adopt an ‘Amor Fati’ attitude.

When a setback occurs, author Ryan Holiday says, "The first thought should not be, 'I'm okay with this,' or, 'I think I feel good about this,'
but, 'I feel great about this.' Because if it happened, then it was meant to happen, and I am glad that it did when it did. I am meant to
make the best of it."

Premortem Plus
“The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is
anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves…the person who has rehearsed in
their mind what could go wrong will not be caught by surprise. The person ready to be disappointed won’t be.
They will have the strength to bear it. They are not as likely to get discouraged or to shirk from the task that
lies before them, or make a mistake in the face of it.”

Don’t wait for setbacks, simulate them.

If you own a business, imagine a year from now, you arrive at your office, the doors are locked, and there is an “out of business” sign on
your front door… What happened? What went wrong? Did a competitor outsmart you and steal your market share? Did you get complacent
and lose your drive?

After putting yourself in this bleak future, identify at least three strategies your competitor may have used to push you out of business.
Now, ask yourself, “How can we use those three strategies to build a lead on our competition?” Identify the main reason you lost your drive.
Maybe your culture turned toxic and you hate the people you work with. Use that fear by spending more time on hiring and putting
systems in place to remove poisonous people.

Whatever threats you identify, flip them around and use them to strengthen your approach and stay one step ahead of the competition.

“We’re like runners who train on hills or at altitude so they can beat the runners who expected the course would be flat.” – Ryan Holiday

A postmortem is a common medical exercise where doctors examine the cause of a patient's death. A premortem is the act of examining
the reason your career, business, or next work project was a failure before you start or while it’s healthy.

A ‘premortem plus’ goes beyond mitigating failure and turns future threats into opportunities.

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” ‐ Roman Emperor
Marcus Aurelius

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Insights from 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin

When author Amy Morin was 23, her mother suddenly died from a brain aneurysm. Three years later, her husband, age 26, suddenly died of
a heart attack. Amy felt like she was sliding into a dark mental place so she reflected on her work as a psychotherapist and she reminded
herself of 13 things mentally strong people don’t do; 13 reasons why her patients had failed to recover from a tragedy or setback.

Here are three destructive mental habits, if corrected, will correct all 13 things mentally strong people don’t do.

Mentally strong people don't feel the world owes them anything
If a man loses his business and thinks: “I've worked so hard, I don't deserve this,” or “I'm a good person, this isn't fair,” he's inviting more
frustration and anger into his life.

“No matter whether you’re the smartest person on the planet or you’ve persevered through life’s roughest circumstances, you don’t
become more deserving of good fortune than anyone else.” – Amy Morin

When a mentally strong person feels like the world owes them something, they shift their focus to people in need. They look for ways to
help their coworkers, friends, and family members. If we are busy doing good deeds for others, we’ll stop keeping score of our injustices
and forget the world owes us.

If you focus on what you can offer others, you’ll: (1) Stop Feeling Like the World
Owes You Anything, (2) Stop Wasting Time Feeling Sorry for Yourself, and (3) Stop
Resenting Other People’s Success

Mentally strong people don't focus on things they can't control

Heather Von St. James was diagnosed with cancer when her daughter was three months old. Heather went through multiple surgeries,
radiation, and chemotherapy, and 12 months later she was cancer free. However, Heather feared the cancer would return and her
daughter would grow up without a mother.

Terrified that she couldn't completely control the cancer from returning, she took out a marker and wrote down her fears on a plate. Then,
she went outside, started a fire, and smashed the plate into the fire. The act helped her let go of what she couldn't control and live each
day to the fullest.

When you feel like your life is out of control, take out a piece of paper and draw a horizontal line through the middle. In the top section,
write “What I can't control:” In the bottom section, write “What I can control:” When populating the top section, remember you can't
control what has happened, you can't fully control your thoughts and emotions, you can't completely control other people, and you can't
entirely control the future. BUT you can control what you focus on, what things mean, and how you behave.

After you’ve listed the things you can and can’t control, rip off the top section (the things you can’t control), then continue tearing that top
section into tiny little pieces OR go outside and light that piece of paper on fire and watch your fears burn away.

If you focus on what you can control and remember you can’t completely control
people, you’ll: (4) Stop Wasting Energy on Things You Can’t Control, (5) Stop Dwelling on
the Past, (6) Stop Giving People Your Power (stop letting people’s opinion dictate your
life), and (7) Stop Trying to Please Everyone.

Mentally strong people don't make the same mistake over and over
“Mentally strong people don't metaphorically dust themselves off and get right back on their horse. They pause to figure out why they
fell off in the first place before getting back on.” – Amy Morin

When you own and study your mistakes, you’re less likely to slide back into your old ways.

Experience less resistance to owning and studying a mistake you’ve made by imagining it was made by someone else. See yourself in the
third person and identify the factors that led to the mistake: thoughts, behaviors, and external factors. Then, like a coach giving homework
to a student, write down an alternative action they can take the next time those thoughts, behaviors, and external factors arise.

Now, generate a list of reasons you want to avoid this mistake in the future.

“Carry this list with you. When you're tempted to resort to your previous behavior pattern, read this list to yourself. It can increase your
motivation to resist repeating old patterns. For example, create a list of reasons why you should go for a walk after dinner. When you're
tempted to watch TV instead of exercise, read the list and it may increase your motivation to move forward.” – Amy Morin

If you prioritize personal growth and learn from your mistakes, you’ll: (8) Stop Making the Same
Mistakes Over and Over, (9) Stop Shying Away from Change, (10) Stop Fearing Calculated Risks
(because doing something new and taking calculated risks are great opportunities to learn and grow),
(11) Stop Giving Up After the First Failure, (12) Stop Expecting Immediate Results, and (13) Stop Fearing
Alone Time (because alone time is the best time to reflect and improve).

www.ProductivityGame.com 17
 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 Tell the truth ‐ or at least, don't lie
You and I have an innate need to compare ourselves to other people. The amount you can improve on yesterday will be limited by how truthful
you are willing to be today.
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 Until you face the truth, any improvement you make on who you were
serotonin in your blood, you feel confident and in control of your life. yesterday will be meaningless. Instead of moving forward, you'll just be
moving sideways. To make forward progress you need to acknowledge
But the instant you mind notices someone who threatens your status in what truth you're avoiding and what uncomfortable conversations you
society and makes you look incompetent, your brain restricts serotonin. need to have with yourself and others.
You start doubting yourself and feel a low sense of self‐worth.
Author Tim Ferriss once said, "A person's success in life can usually be
Now that you are connected to billions of people online, it doesn't take measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is
long for your brain to notice ways in which you compare unfavorably to willing to have."
other people.
Having an uncomfortable conversation is like having a controlled fire to
You think you're a good guitar player? There are dozens of exceptional burn off the deadwood in a forest so that the deadwood doesn't build up
guitar players on YouTube that will make you look completely and lead to a larger fire that destroys all the trees in the forest and ruins
incompetent...You're proud of graduating from that local college with a the soil.
business degree? Your friend just posted a photo on Facebook of him
graduating from Harvard with an MBA. 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:
When you're exposed to so many people that are better than you, and the "Did I do my best to tell the truth yesterday?"
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. 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
The best way to prevent this from happening is to stop comparing talking about, I'll rate myself a 1 or a 2 on a scale of 1‐10.
yourself to who someone else is today and start comparing yourself to
who you were yesterday. 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
I like to see every day that I've lived as a different version of myself (like a chaos.
separate person living out each day), isolate who I was yesterday and ask
myself: "Was I the best possible version of myself yesterday?” “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
I then rate yesterday's version of myself on a scale of 1‐10 (10 being my you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the
ideal self). If I'm slightly better than who I was yesterday, I'll know that truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it
I'm improving my skills and increasing my status in society. This realization Paradise.” ‐ Jordan Peterson
will provide me with a steady dose of serotonin and stop my downward
spiral into chaos.

“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

www.ProductivityGame.com 18
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.”

www.ProductivityGame.com 19
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 20
Insights from Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers
When over‐committed and scattered, adopt a ‘Hell yeah!’ or ‘No’ policy.

“If you feel anything less than ‘Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!’ — then say ‘no.’”

When you adopt a ‘hell yeah or no’ approach to life, you create space in your life to focus on what really matters and spend your time
doing things that are worth doing.

“Refuse almost everything. Do almost nothing. But the things you do, do them all the way.”

Three questions to help you determine what is worth doing:

What do you hate NOT doing?

“When we wonder what’s worth doing, we ask ourselves, ‘What do I really love?’ or ‘What makes me happy?’
That question never really goes well, does it? Maybe it’s because there’s a long list of things that make us
happy, and we need to narrow it down further. So try this question instead: What do you hate not doing?”

If you don't sleep for days, you realize how badly you need sleep. Think of activities (like sleep) you crave if you
cannot do them for an extended period of time.

After a few hectic days of meetings and running errands, I crave doing quiet, creative work; I miss being able to close the door, open a
book, take notes, and distill the information into a 1‐page summary. What do you hate NOT being able to do after a few busy days? If
nothing comes to mind, answer these two questions:

1. Imagine being held captive and forced to dig ditches like a prisoner of war. What do you most miss being able to do with your
free time?
2. Imagine learning that you have just been fired from your job or you have lost your business. What part of your old job will you
miss the most?

What scares you?

“Sometimes people ask me if there’s one motto or rule of thumb I use most often. This is it: Whatever scares
you, go do it. Fear is just a form of excitement, and you know you should do what excites you.”

“Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake
of progress and growth). Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.” ‐ Abraham Maslow

If a scary project has been on your mind for a few months, like starting a business that might fail or learning a language with a native
speaker over Zoom and fearing you might sound foolish, it's probably worth doing. Say ‘hell yeah!’ to a scary but intriguing project and say
no almost everything else for the time being.

What if you were satiated?

“You know that feeling you have after a big meal? When you’re so full that you don’t want anything more? Ever
wonder what that would feel like in other parts of your life?

What if you had so much attention and so much praise that you couldn’t possibly want any more? What would
you do then? What would you stop doing?

What if you had so much money that you couldn’t possibly want any more? What would you do then? What would you stop doing?”

We humans are hard wired to seek attention, praise, and approval from others. We also have an innate desire to accumulate resources
because we evolved to believe resources are scarce. However, if we continue to crave attention and money, we will say ‘yes’ to every
opportunity to make a buck and get praise from others, which results in doing things we don't like with people we don't like.

If we pause and generate a feeling of abundance, we can blunt our knee jerk reaction to say yes to every attention‐grabbing,
moneymaking opportunity and start playing the long game. When money and attention are no longer the first things on your mind, you
step back and focus on work that is interesting and useful.

When you focus on interesting and useful work, you’re excited to work; you get up early and stay up late. You push yourself harder and
further than most people, which often leads to a breakthrough. Therefore, paradoxically, when you feel like you have enough money and
attention, you are more likely to build something remarkable that makes money and garners attention.

Bold quotes by Derek Sivers, unless stated otherwise.

www.ProductivityGame.com 21
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.”

www.ProductivityGame.com 22
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:

Favorite Things Constants

What are my favorite books and what What interest(s) have been a
do they have in common? constant theme in my life?
________________________________ _______________________________
________________________________ _______________________________
________________________________ _______________________________
What are my favorite movies and what What do I never seem to never get
do they have in common? 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.

www.ProductivityGame.com 23
Insights from Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins
Take control of your life and determine your destiny by waking your inner giant and breaking free from the
psychological chains that hold you back.

Decide What You Want

Awaken your inner giant by specifying four inspiring life goals (“Remember: a goal is a dream with a deadline”):

 Career/business
 Personal development
 Adventure
 Contribution

Write down what you truly want in each of the four areas listed above by answering the question: “What would I go for, in this area, if I knew I
could not fail?” Pretend you’re a kid on Christmas Eve and “put yourself in a state of mind of absolute faith and total expectation that you can
create anything you want.” Write until you’re excited. “People are not lazy, they simply have impotent goals…goals that do not inspire
them.”

Question Your Beliefs

Limiting beliefs are like invisible chains that hold you back from pursuing big goals. “(However, limiting) beliefs are
(often) generalizations…based on interpretations of painful experiences.”

If a challenging project went poorly in the past, you may generalize the painful experience and avoid ALL
challenging projects going forward. If a teacher criticized your writing, you may generalize the critique and believe
YOU ARE a bad writer. If, in elementary school, you did poorly on a math test, you might believe you’re bad with
numbers and avoid ALL math and science classes in high school.

Prevent ‘generalizations’ from limiting your action towards your four goals. Find three ‘generalized’ limiting beliefs in each of the four areas:
Career/business, Personal Development, Adventure, and Contribution. Look for beliefs like “I am too….therefore I can’t…” or “I'll never…” or “I
always…” Now, question each limiting belief (“If you question anything enough, eventually you’ll begin to doubt it.”):

 Question the source of each belief: Is the person you inherited this belief from (Dad, Mom, high school friend, old coach or boss)
the perfect role model? Why should you believe them? Are they an expert in this area?
 Question the accuracy of each belief: Why might this belief not be 100% accurate? Has this belief always been true in your life
(think of counterexamples)? Is this belief true for everyone (search for counterexamples)?

Once you doubt a limiting belief, create an empowering belief in its place. Robbins says, “if you had a belief that ‘I can never succeed because
I’m a woman,’ your new belief might be, ‘Because I’m a woman, I have resources available to me that no man could ever dream of!’ What
are some of the references you have to back up this idea so you begin to feel certain about it? As you reinforce and strengthen this belief, it
will begin to direct your behavior in an entirely new and more empowering way.”

Two powerful empowering beliefs:

 “Problems are gifts – without problems, I do not grow.”

 “There’s always a way to turn things around if I’m committed.”

Alter Your Pain‐Pleasure Associations

If you fail to take consistent action towards your goals, it’s because you haven’t linked enough pleasure to action
and enough pain to inaction. Robbins says, “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure
instead of having pain and pleasure use you.”

Associate immense pain to inaction by visualizing procrastination, then repeatedly asking yourself:

 “What will my inaction ultimately cost me?” (feel the consequence of chronic inaction)
 “What will my inaction ultimately cost others?” (feel the negative impact on others)

Associate immense pleasure to action by generating an intense feeling of pride with every action that moves you closer to your goals (big or
small). Feel your confidence expanding with every step forward. See yourself like the bodybuilder who goes to the gym and pushes
himself/herself through the pain because he/she loves the feeling of progress after a workout.

“Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting
changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about.”

Bold quotes by Tony Robbins

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Insights from Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure or a quest for power, but a quest for meaning…The greatest task
for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.” – Viktor Frankl
From 1942 to 1945, Viktor Frankl survived four Nazi Concentration Camps by finding meaning in each moment. By discovering a steady
source of meaning, Frankl transcended suffering and sustained his will to live. After WWII, Frankl returned to his psychiatric practice and
helped individuals fill their ‘inner emptiness’ with meaning to eliminate despair and activate a sustainable source of productive energy.

During Frankl’s time in concentration camps and time as a psychiatrist, he discovered three rich sources of meaning; three ‘wells of
meaning’ you can turn to when you lose hope and require motivation to get through a difficult period in your life.

The Three Wells of Meaning

Pursue a Life Task

When Frankl entered the Auschwitz concentration camp, Nazi guards stripped Frankl of his possessions and
confiscated a manuscript he'd been working on his entire adult life. After a period of shock and disbelief,
Frankl vowed to survive his time at Auschwitz to rewrite and publish the manuscript.

While suffering from typhus and on the brink of death, Frankl wrote notes for his manuscript on scrap paper
he’d collected around camp. Frankl felt the manuscript was a valuable piece of work only he could do because
he had the unique collection of experience, knowledge, and skills to do it. If he died, the world would miss his
contribution.

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment.
Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is unique as is his specific opportunity to implement
it.” – Viktor Frankl

“In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were
most apt to survive.” – Viktor Frankl

What task awaits you? If you don't know, seek out new experiences, acquire new knowledge, and develop a rare combination of valuable
skills. Then look for opportunities to leverage your unique collection of experience, knowledge, and skill. When you feel like your life is one
long apprenticeship preparing you for a task you believe you were born to do, life feels meaningful.

Love
To Frankl, “love” is the act of seeing potential in others and helping them actualize that potential. Love is
creating opportunities for your child; love is mentoring a junior member of your team; love is introducing your
friend to someone who can get them a more rewarding job; love is comforting a sick parent, so they can find
the strength to live another day. When you lack meaning, find someone you can elevate; aim to make
someone else’s life a little bit better. Get so busy helping others you forget yourself in the process.

“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to another person to love—the more human he is and
the more he actualizes himself.” – Viktor Frankl

Suffer Bravely
Frankl endured unimaginable amounts of suffering inside Nazi concentration camps, but he found a way to
transcend his suffering by imagining himself standing in front of a group of students in a well‐lit, warm lecture
room.

"I imagined myself giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp! All that oppressed me at
that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I
succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed
them as if they were already of the past.” – Viktor Frankl

Whenever an unexpected, uncontrollable setback happens in your life, find a use for it. Look at the suffering objectively and ask yourself,
"How might this be valuable?"

Often the primary value of suffering is the chance to strengthen your beliefs and values. Think of your favorite movie character. At some
point, that character suffered, and while watching him/her suffer, you discovered who they were and what they stood for. Now, imagine
you’re a character in a movie. When you encounter suffering, use it as an opportunity to display and strengthen your beliefs, values, and
ideals, and inspire others in the process.

"(By) accepting the challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this
meaning literally to the end." – Viktor Frankl

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Insights from Psycho‐Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
We are all born with an automatic “Creative Mechanism.” Our automatic Creative Mechanism works like a state‐of‐the‐art self‐driving car. The
conscious mind imagines a goal, initiates action, then lets the subconscious mind do the rest (similar to someone in a self‐driving car who inputs
a destination and then allows the car to determine the best route and get him/her to the desired destination).

Creatives throughout history have relied on their automatic Creative Mechanism to accomplish huge goals. Charles Darwin struggled to
organize and complete “The Origin of Species” for months. Then, one day, he stopped thinking about his book and delivered his challenge to his
subconscious. Days later, Darwin was hit with an intuitive flash, and the insight needed to complete ‘The Origin of Species’ came to him.

Unfortunately, few of us experience the genius of our automatic (subconscious) Creative Mechanism because we don’t allow it to work. Since
we can’t see it working, we worry, overthink, and interfere (we metaphorically grab the steering wheel or hit the brakes because we don’t trust
our self‐driving car to do what it was designed to do).

We interfere with our automatic Creative Mechanism while on route to a big goal because our self‐image does not align with our ambition.

“Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries about with us a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves. It may be vague and ill‐defined to
our conscious gaze. In fact, it may not be consciously recognizable at all. But it is there, complete down to the last detail. This self‐image is
our own conception of the ‘sort of person I am.’ It has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves. But most of these beliefs about
ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the
way other people have reacted to us, especially in early childhood.” – Maxwell Maltz

“The man who conceives himself to be a ‘failure‐type person’ will find some way to fail, in spite of all his good intentions, or his willpower,
even if opportunity is literally dumped in his lap.” – Maxwell Maltz

The only way you will get out of your own way and trust your automatic Creative Mechanism to deliver the insights you need to achieve a large
goal is to “upgrade” your self‐image so that your self‐image aligns with your goal.

Self‐Image Upgrade Exercise:

Step #1: Eliminate Tension
“In your mind’s eye see yourself lying stretched out on the bed. Form a picture of your legs as they would look if
made of concrete. See yourself lying there with two very heavy concrete legs. See these very heavy concrete legs
sinking far down into the mattress from their sheer weight. Now picture your arms and hands as made of concrete.
They also are very heavy and are sinking down into the bed and exerting tremendous pressure against the bed…
Repeat with arms, neck, (and every other part of your body).” – Maxwell Maltz

When a hypnotist begins a stage performance, he gets participants on stage to close their eyes and relax their bodies. If participants are tense,
they are less likely to accept and believe what the hypnotist is going to tell them later in the show. When you release tension in your body, you
are making yourself able and willing to believe the information you’re going to feed your mind in step two.

Step #2: Visualize Success

Think of a big goal you’re struggling to achieve. Now, imagine waking up tomorrow to discover that you've achieved it.
You're not sure how it happened, but it did! Notice small details of your new reality. For example, if you’ve been
struggling to start an online business, imagine sitting in your office (see the color of your desk, the make and model of
your laptop, and the clothes you’re wearing). Then imagine a colorful bar chart on your laptop screen with your month
by month sales and a number for this month’s sales: $51,255.

“Our brain and nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real experience, and one that is vividly imagined. Our automatic
Creative Mechanism always acts and reacts appropriately to the environment, circumstance, or situation. The only information concerning
the environment, circumstance, or situation available to it is what you believe to be true concerning it.” – Maxwell Maltz

Step #3: Layer on a “Success Feeling”

Think of a string of small, simple successes you’ve recently experienced, like making your bed, cooking a healthy meal,
or finishing your to‐do list. Build up a “success feeling” as your recall success after success. Now imagine transferring
that “success feeling” to the image you’ve created in step two.

When you associate the feeling of success with the achievement you’ve imagined in step two, you are convincing your
nervous system to normalize high achievement; you are raising the standard for what you can achieve and eliminating
self‐doubt.

If you conduct the three‐step self‐image upgrade visualization exercise for 5‐30 minutes a day for the next 21 days, you will see a shift in your
confidence. You will feel like success is inevitable and learn to get out of your own way. You will learn to set big creative goals, initiate action,
and then trust your automatic Creative Mechanism to take over and provide you with the ideas needed to accomplish your goals.

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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 Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
David Goggins is the personification of grit.
 Goggins finished the first week of Navy Seal training (aka “hell week”)…on two broken legs.
 Goggins completed a 135‐mile run in Death Valley…in the middle of summer.
 Goggins attempted the pull‐up world record three times…completing 4,030 pull‐ups in 17 hours on his third attempt and
breaking the world record.

Here are three guiding principles Goggins used to push past the pain and accomplish those extraordinary feats of endurance. You can use
these three principles to develop ‘Goggins‐Level‐Grit’ and unlock your full potential.

Callous Your Mind

As Goggins trained to break the pull‐up world record, the friction between his hands and the pull‐up bar formed
thick callouses on his palms. These callouses hardened his skin and blunted the pain.

The same principle applies to your mind. When you create mental friction by going against your innate need for
comfort and thrust yourself into intense physical and intellectual challenges, you callous over your fear of
discomfort and increase your pain tolerance.

“To callous your mind, do something that sucks every day. Even if it’s as simple as making your bed, doing the dishes, ironing your
clothes, or getting up before dawn and running two miles each day. Once that becomes comfortable, take it to five, then ten miles.
Doing things—even small things—that make you uncomfortable will help make you strong. The more often you get uncomfortable the
stronger you’ll become, and soon you’ll develop a more productive, can‐do dialogue with yourself in stressful situations.” – David
Goggins

Remember the 40% Rule

“Sadly, most of us give up when we’ve only given around 40 percent of our maximum effort. Even when we
feel like we’ve reached our absolute limit, we still have 60 percent more to give! That’s the governor in action!
Once you know that to be true, it’s simply a matter of stretching your pain tolerance, letting go of your identity
and all your self‐limiting stories, so you can get to 60 percent, then 80 percent and beyond without giving up. I
call this The 40% Rule, and the reason it’s so powerful is that if you follow it, you will unlock your mind to new
levels of performance and excellence in sports and in life.” – David Goggins

The next time you feel exhausted, remember the 40% rule: When your mind tells you you’re done you’re only 40% done. Dig deep, find your
60% reserve and extract it 5% at a time.

 When you're doing pushups and your brain starts complaining, remember the 40% rule and squeeze out one more set…then
another…and another.
 When you feel exhausted after work and don't have energy to play with your kids or work on your side business, remember the
40% rule and find your 60% reserve.

Dip into Your Cookie Jar

Goggins first ultramarathon was a 100‐mile run around a mile track. At mile 70, his kidneys started failing, he’d
broken all the small bones in his feet and lost every toenail. The pain was unbearable. At that moment, he
reached into his mental cookie jar and pulled out a cookie (memory of perseverance).

Goggins recalled the time that he had to study three times as hard to overcome a learning disability and graduate
from high school. He recalled the time he had to drop a hundred pounds in three months to qualify for Navy Seal
training. And he remembered the time he got through hell week on two broken legs.

“These weren’t mere flashbacks. I wasn’t just floating through my memory files, I actually tapped into the emotional state I felt during
those victories, and in so doing accessed my sympathetic nervous system once again. My adrenaline took over, the pain started to fade
just enough, and my pace picked up. I began swinging my arms and lengthening my stride.” – David Goggins

Stock your mental cookie jar with cookies by writing down a list of prior achievements. “Include life obstacles you’ve overcome, like
quitting smoking or overcoming depression or a stutter. Add in minor tasks you failed earlier in life, but tried again a second or third
time and ultimately succeeded at. Feel what it was like to overcome those struggles, those opponents, and win…When the pain hits and
tries to stop you short of your goal, dunk your fist in, pull out a cookie, and let it fuel you!” – David Goggins

“Everything in life is a mind game! Whenever we get swept under by life’s dramas, large and small, we are
forgetting that no matter how bad the pain gets, no matter how harrowing the torture, all bad things end.” –
David Goggins

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Insights from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

“Problems never go away, they just improve. Warren Buffett’s got money problems; the drunk hobo down at Kwik‐E Mart’s got money
problems. Buffett’s just got better money problems than the hobo. All of life is like this.

Don’t hope for a life without problems, there’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.” – Mark Manson

The path to better problems and the good life starts by subtly not giving a f*ck in two ways.

Subtly stop giving a f*ck who’s to blame for your problems and take responsibility
“If you woke up one day and there was a newborn baby on your doorstep, it would not be your fault that the
baby had been put there, but the baby would now be your responsibility. You would have to choose what to do.
And whatever you ended up choosing, there would be problems associated with your choice—and you would
be responsible for those as well.” – Mark Manson

The moment you stop looking for someone to blame and take full responsibility for your problems, you will feel
empowered to do something about them. Because if you’re not in a better place a month from now, then it’s your fault.

Spiderman's uncle said, "With great power comes great responsibility," but Manson provides a more insightful quote: “With great
responsibility comes great power.”

In 1872, William James's life was falling apart. At age 30, James was unemployed, his father was ashamed of him, and he suffered constant
back spasms. James considered taking his life. But late one night, after reading lectures by the philosopher Charles Peirce, James decided
to conduct an experiment: “For a year, I will take 100% responsibility for everything wrong in my life.” If his life wasn’t better in 12 months,
he would admit defeat and take his life.

Thankfully, the experiment worked. James later called the experiment his “rebirth.” In years that followed, he went on to become the
most influential psychologist of all time. The decision to take responsibility for his problems allowed him to direct all his energy to improve
his life, which improved the lives of millions of other people.

When you take responsibility for a problem, you take responsibility for how that problem makes you feel. If someone steals your car, the
level of rage or calm you experience afterward is entirely up to you, because you decide how you want to respond to the situation.

One way to have a more thoughtful response to your problems is to gain distance from them. Gain distance from your problems by asking
yourself, "How will I feel about this problem 10 years from now?”

Subtly stop giving a f*ck how painful your problems are…

Your success is determined by your answer to the question: “What pain can you sustain?”

“People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons and have chiseled abs and can bench‐
press a small house. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones
who fly to the top of it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle are
ultimately the ones who live it and make it.” – Mark Manson

The subtlety in subtly not giving a f*ck about how painful your problems are is about knowing which pain you should lean into and which
pain you should avoid. To know which pain you should lean into, you must know your values.

All emotional and psychological pain results from a personal value being violated. If seeing your child struggling to read is painful, it's
because you value their happiness, and you value education.

If seeing your neighbor drive a Tesla makes you angry because their Tesla is nicer than your car, you value material success and measure
your worth accordingly. You could endure 100‐hour workweeks to get a nicer car but you have to ask yourself, “is it really worth it?” You
get to decide which values are worth fighting for and which are not.

Whenever you’re struggling with a problem, ask yourself: "What is the underlying value that is causing my pain?"

The goal is to be aware of any outdated or superficial values you are needlessly suffering to uphold, and replace them with more
meaningful values, values you are willing to suffer for. Life is full of suffering, but your suffering will feel meaningful if you choose values
that are worth suffering for.

You have a limited number of f*cks to give in your lifetime, use them wisely.

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Insights from How to Stop Worrying & Start Living by Dale Carnegie

“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.” ‐ Erma Bombeck

Worry is a complete waste of time.

Worry doesn’t solve problems. Rational thought and decisive action solve problems; worry clouds our thinking and drains our energy.

Here are three ways to stop worrying and start living more productively.

Worry Remedy #1: Analyze Your Worry

The next time you're worried about something, grab a pen and paper and write down two questions.

1. What am I worried about?

2. What can I do about it?

Describe your worry in precise detail; then write at least three courses of action you can take. You’ll notice by
writing down your worry, you gain emotional distance from your worry and can objectively assess your options.

Determine which course of action has the highest probability of a positive result. If unsure, proceed with any good option for five minutes
and stop worrying. If, after five minutes, your decision feels right, continue. If not, proceed with the next best option.

The more action you take, the more worry fades away.

Worry Remedy #2: Accept the Worst, then Improve

Willis Carrier invented the first electric air conditioning unit and spent 20+ years leading the Carrier Corporation.
Early in his career, Carrier worked as an engineer installing equipment at gas plants. When one project was on
the brink of failure, Carrier was overwhelmed with worry.

How did Carrier reduce his worry? He imagined the worst and reconciled himself to live with the outcome.
Carrier imagined and felt as though the project had failed, his reputation had been damaged, and he was no
longer employed. It was unfortunate, but Carrier was still alive. Carrier knew if he worked hard, he could find a
job and rebuild his reputation. By mentally experiencing and learning to live with the worst‐case scenario, his worry dissipated.

After accepting the worst, Carrier could think free of worry, which allowed him to see that adding additional equipment to the project
might turn the project around. After implementing his solution, his company went from potentially losing $20,000, to making $15,000 (a
small fortune in 1899!).

Carrier told Carnegie, “One of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate…When we force ourselves
to face the worst and accept it mentally, we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we are
able to concentrate on our problem.”

Carnegie says accepting the worst “yanks us down out of the great grey clouds in which we fumble around when we are blinded by
worry (and) plants our feet good and solid on the earth.”

Worry Remedy #3: Compartmentalize Your Worry

In the early 1900s, large ships were designed so that if one part of the ship flooded, the captain could seal off
the flooded compartment with watertight doors and prevent the ship from sinking.

Apply this analogy to your life: imagine you are the captain of your ship and can press a button that shuts out
yesterday’s regret and tomorrow’s worries, allowing you to live in a ‘day‐tight compartment.’

To activate your ‘day‐tight compartment,’ wake up each morning and imagine each day is a new life. Your old
self died when you went to sleep last night (along with any regret) and today you have a clean slate.

Then tell yourself, "If I take care of today, tomorrow will take care of itself."

In the book, Dale Carnegie says, “the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your
enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.”

If you do your best to take care of today’s responsibilities, solve today’s problems, and prepare for tomorrow, why worry about tomorrow?

“Yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision, but today well lived makes yesterday a dream of
happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.” ‐ Kālidāsa

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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. Make the mind-set simple and concrete: “Thinking _____ will lead to _____”
ii. Allow yourself a trial period (1-2 weeks) to apply the new mind-set in the real world and determine its worth.
iii. 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 The benefits of Oxytocin

 Accelerates learning  Increases courage and confidence
 Strengthens focus  Increases empathy and compassion (enhanced ability
 Increases pattern recognition to understand what others are thinking and feeling)
 Counter-acts the harmful effects of cortisol and  Widens blood vessels and increases blood flow to the
adrenaline 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 Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Our decisions are governed by two thinking systems:
 System 1 ‐ fast, intuitive, feeling based system
 System 2 ‐ slow, reasoning based system

“When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what
to think about and what to do.” – Daniel Kahneman

Although System 2 believes it’s the hero of our lives, the automatic System 1 is more in control of our decisions than we realize.

“System 1 effortlessly originat(es) impressions and feelings that are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of
System 2… (System 1) is the secret author of many of the choices and judgments you make.” – Daniel Kahneman

If we don't periodically slow down and use System 2 to verify System 1’s intuitive judgment, we might make costly decisions and choose
the wrong career, choose the wrong business partner, or commit to the wrong project.

Three primary ways System 1 (the fast thinking system) makes costly decisions:

Frequent Exposure Bias

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily
distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.” – Daniel
Kahneman

When students at the University of Michigan were exposed to Turkish sounding words like ‘kadirga’ and ‘saricik’ in
ad boxes on the front page of the school newspaper for several weeks, those students were more likely to rate the random words as
meaning something ‘good’ on a questionnaire.

If we don’t check for the ‘frequent exposure bias’ (or what psychologists call the mere‐exposure effect) prior to an important decision,
then our preference will be based on environmental conditioning.

To combat the frequent exposure bias and exercise free will, we must learn to pause before an important decision and silently ask:

“Is this the best option or just the option I've been frequently exposed to?”

Status Quo Bias

System 1 defaults to choices that maintain the status quo because System 1 psychologically weighs losses twice as
much as gains (loss aversion). System 1 is emotionally attached to objects it owns or invests in (the endowment
effect) and overvalues the status quo.

To experience System 1 loss aversion, ask yourself: “if I flipped a coin and could lose $100 on tails or win $150 on
heads, would you take the bet?” Did you feel a slight hesitation to the gamble? Most people do, even though it’s a
reasonable bet to take.

To illustrate the endowment effect, Kahneman gave one group of students a mug, and another group of students the choice to take the
mug or a sum of money they thought was equivalent to the value of the mug. The first group (the mug owners), valued the mug at $7.12.
The second group (the choosers), valued the mug at $3.12! Same mug…slightly different point of view...drastically different perceived
value.

If we instinctively overweigh losses (loss aversion) and overvalue what we own and invest in (the endowment effect), we are trapped by
the past and destined to maintain the status quo.

Counteract the status quo bias by applying a fear to the loss to options outside the status quo, by asking:

“What opportunities do I lose by maintaining the status quo?” (or, “If I continue say yes to this, what am saying no to?”)

Tunnel Vision
System 1 loves to use limited information to form quick judgments and then block out conflicting information. I call
this the tunnel vision bias; author Daniel Kahneman calls it W‐Y‐S‐I‐A‐T‐I (What You See Is All There Is). Kahneman
explains that System 1 sees two or three pieces of information and then “infers and invents causes and intentions
then neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubt.”

We meet someone and assume we know their believes based on their profession and what they look like
(programmer who looks like a hipster is liberal, right?), but realize later that our initial judgment was wrong.

Counteract the natural tendency to form beliefs on limited information, by routinely asking:

“Why might the opposite be true?”

“Maintaining one's vigilance against biases is a chore but the chance to avoid a costly mistake is sometimes
worth the effort." – Daniel Kahneman
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Insights from Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
“There are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck.
Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about.” – Annie Duke
Annie Duke was a professional poker player, and in her book “Thinking in Bets” she explains three poker principles we can apply to daily
decision making. When applied, these three principles can significantly increase the quality of our decisions and thereby increase the
quality of our lives.

Principle #1: Every Decision as a Bet

Think of a future prediction you're certain of.

 Are you certain the stock market will continue to go up or down?

 Are you certain you’ll enjoy a book you've recently purchased?
 Are you certain your next project will be successful?

Now, imagine someone with an opposing point of view says, “Wanna bet?”

When you’re asked to wager a significant sum of money on your beliefs, you naturally pause, vet your beliefs, and think: "What information
am I missing? What does this person know that I don't?"

When you think of every decision as a bet, you begin to see a range of possible futures (favorable and unfavorable) and adjust your degree
of certainty – instead of being 100% sure you’re right, you may be 70% sure. As a result, you become less biased and more open to new
information.

“The approach of thinking in bets moved me toward objectivity, accuracy, and open‐mindedness. That movement compounds over time
to create significant changes in our lives.” – Annie Duke

Principle #2: Positive Expected Value

Despite any uncertainty about the future, we can make a confident bet if we know our bet has a positive expected
value.

Expected value = Possible reward * Likelihood of reward (probability of success). If an expected value > personal
cost (time, money & attention we need to commit), we have a positive expected value.

When a poker player determines that she has a 50% chance of winning a $200 pot, the expected value is $100 ($200*50%). If she only has to
commit $50 to the pot to see if her hand is better than her opponents, she has a positive expected value ($100 > $50). Therefore, she
should call the $50 bet. If she loses, she still made the right decision because if she makes the same bet enough times, she will make
money.

In life, if a potential reward (happiness, money, opportunity, etc.) is worth the cost (time, money, attention, etc.) after adjusting for the
probability of getting the potential reward, we should commit with confidence – if we don’t get the desired result we still made a good
decision.

Principle #3: Decision Evaluation (regardless of outcome)

Quality of Outcome =/= Quality of Decision.

In poker, I can completely misread my opponents’ hand, make a terrible bet but get a lucky draw and still win the
hand. If I don’t take the time to critically assess and adjust my faulty judgment, I am likely to make the same mistake
in the future and get a worse outcome.

In life, I can make a terrible decision and get a good result. I could buy a stock based on a hunch or start a business without doing market
research and get lucky and make money. But if I use that same haphazard approach when making future decisions, I will undoubtedly lose
money in the future.

That's why it's essential you and I develop the following habit: When we get a good result in life, we must find at least two mistakes we
made and admit them to a friend, a coworker, or partner. Not only will this keep us level‐headed, it will also help us make the shift from
being results‐focused to process‐focused.

Admitting mistakes is hard, but admitting mistakes we've made on route to a victory is much easier than talking about mistakes that led to
a loss.

“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good
process.” – Annie Duke

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Insights from Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

“In this book, we explore the idea of human algorithm design—searching for better solutions to the challenges people encounter every day.
Applying the lens of computer science to everyday life has consequences at many scales. Most immediately, it offers us practical, concrete
suggestions for how to solve specific problems.” ‐ Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

Here are three proven algorithms that efficiently solve the following three problems:

1. Among a group of qualified candidates, who should I hire?

2. Once I hire someone, how should I onboard them?
3. After a trial period, should I continue to invest in the new hire or try someone new?

Imagine you have a group of 20 qualified candidates for a position. You don't want to be rash and take the first person you interview, but you
also don't want to spend hours interviewing all 20. Luckily, there's a third option: a mathematically validated algorithm called the 37% rule. The
37% rule states that you should evaluate 37% of your options with no intention of selecting any of them (i.e., reject the first 37%
unconditionally). After evaluating the first 37%, pick the next option you encounter that is better than the options you've sampled.

When choosing between 20 qualified candidates, interview the first seven candidates (37% of 20 is 7.4) with no intention of hiring those seven.
Continue interviewing the remaining 13 candidates and stop the instant you find someone better than any of the seven you initially
interviewed.

If you believe there is at least a 50% chance the candidates you initially passed over will accept your offer (they didn't move on while you were
sampling and are still interested in the position), then the 37% rule turns into the 61% rule ‐ hold off hiring until you interview at least 12
candidates and if you don't find a better candidate in the remaining eight, go back and pick the best person you interviewed amongst all 20.

Both methods give you the chance to determine your preference during a sampling period and provide a good benchmark for which to base
your final decision on. The 37% rule and 61% rule are not guaranteed to get you the result you want, but they do give you the highest
probability of attaining a favorable outcome.

When a new computer joins a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) network, it receives a single packet of information from a computer in the
network and responds with an ‘acknowledge’ packet. With each acknowledgement, the sender doubles the number of packets. However, the
moment the receiving computer gets bogged down with information and fails to send an acknowledge packet to the sender, an algorithm called
Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease (AIMD), takes over. The AIMD algorithm cuts the number of packets being sent by half, which frees up
space on the network and allows the receiving computer to catch up. Once the receiving computer starts acknowledging information again, the
sender can add one additional packet to each new message. When another failure occurs, the AIMD algorithm halves the message again. The
authors say “Essentially, AIMD takes the form of someone saying, ‘A little more, a little more, a little more, whoa, too much, cut way back,
okay a little more, a little more…’”

You can use a similar algorithm to rapidly onboard a new hire. When you hire a freelancer, give them a tiny task to complete. After they deliver
a satisfactory result, double their workload and keep doubling it until you get back work you are not satisfied with. At that point, immediately
cut the workload by half. With this exponential increase in work, you can quickly find the freelancer's capacity. Now, only increase their
workload by one unit at a time and give them a chance to build back up slowly. When your new hire eventually reaches the level they failed at
before, they'll have far more confidence and will be more likely to surpass that level.

In the 1970s, a young mathematician named John Gittins was tasked with optimizing Unilever's pharmaceutical investments. Gittins had to
determine if Unilever should continue investing in a proven drug or pivot to a new drug on trial. Based on several iterations and months of
calculations, Gittins came up with a table of values known as the ‘Gittins Index.’ The index was used to help Unilever determine if they should
pivot to a new drug believed to be 90% as effective and profitable as a current drug by evaluating the number of successes and failures of the
two drugs (number of times the drugs were or were not successful at treating a disease) and going with the drug which had a higher
corresponding Gittins Index.

You don’t need to consult the Gittins Index table to determine if you should switch to a new hire or a new project, you only need to remember
this key finding: an untested option with zero successes and failures has a Gittins index of 0.7. Meaning, if a project or person is not meeting
your expectations at least 70% of the time, you should consider switching to a new project or person with similar potential.

“The unknown has a chance of being better, even if we actually expect it to be no different, or if it’s just as likely to be worse. The untested
rookie is worth more (early in the season, anyway) than the veteran of seemingly equal ability, precisely because we know less about him.
Exploration in itself has value, since trying new things increases our chances of finding the best.” ‐ Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

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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 When making decisions, CHOOSE When leading a team, CHOOSE to
predict how the day will unfold. to consider the desirable and give team members the authority
undesirable outcomes. Then assign to make decisions.
Your mind is a prediction machine. It loves
approximate probabilities to each
to know whether it’s predictions are right If you crave autonomy, so does your team.
or wrong. Envisioning tomorrow causes the possible outcome.
Empower others to make choices and
brain to focus intently on what it failed to provide them with a safe environment to do
predict. “Making good decisions relies on forecasting
so.
the future, but forecasting is an imprecise,
"We aid our focus by building mental often terrifying, science because it forces us
"By pushing decision making to whoever is
models—telling ourselves stories—about to confront how much we don’t know. The
closest to a problem, managers take
what we expect to see." – Charles Duhigg paradox of learning how to make better
advantage of everyone’s expertise and
decisions is that it requires developing a
unlock innovation.
To stay focused during the day, make the comfort with doubt." – Charles Duhigg
following predictions at the start of the A sense of control can fuel motivation, but
day: By seeing decisions as a range of possible
for that drive to produce insights and
 Given my current schedule, how outcomes with approximate probabilities
solutions, people need to know their
much progress do I expect to (i.e. there’s an 80% chance of getting into
suggestions won’t be ignored and that their
make today? the college I want to), you’ll be less prone
mistakes won’t be held against them." -
 What distractions am I likely to to seek absolute certainty before making a
Charles Duhigg
encounter? decision. This speeds up the decision
 How am I likely to handle those process and leads to more action.
distractions?
"Learning to think probabilistically requires
At the end of the day ask yourself: “What us to question our assumptions and live with
was I wrong about?” 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

www.ProductivityGame.com 37
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 In your “Fascinated Life,” you are doing what you would do if money
vanishes. Either your market collapsed (ex: the phonebook and image were no object.
market in the 90's), or Artificial Intelligence can do your job
better than you. Is there something that you're fascinated with and always wanted to
do but were afraid you wouldn't make enough money or people
What industry would you transfer your skills to? Go back to would laugh at you for doing it?
your "Good Time Journal" and see what engaging and
energizing experiences you could experience while working Take out a piece of paper and sketch out the next five years of "Your
in another industry. Complete a five‐year sketch for this life. 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

www.ProductivityGame.com 39
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 How will I need to grow to have As a result of growing, how will I
anyone’s permission, what those experiences? be able to give back to the
experiences would I want to world?
have? See yourself growing physically,
intellectually, and spiritually to See yourself having an impact on
See the environment you want to become your best self. See the your family, your company, and
live in, the adventures you want skills you need to develop to have your community. See the ways
to have, and the things you want the experiences you desire. you are able to share your
to experience with your friends creative self with the world.
and family.

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

www.ProductivityGame.com 40
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.

www.ProductivityGame.com 41
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 42
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 43
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 44
Summary of Range by David Epstein
What do two‐time NBA MVP Steve Nash, six‐time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady, and 20‐time Grand Slam
champion Roger Federer have in common?
Other than being among the greatest to ever play their sport, they were all ‘late specializers.’

 Nash grew up playing soccer and did not start playing basketball until he was 13.
 Tom Brady spent much of his childhood playing baseball; he was drafted into professional baseball before football.
 Roger Federer sampled a wide array of sports before focusing on tennis in his early teens.

“Elites typically devote less time early on to deliberate practice in the activity in which they will eventually become experts. Instead, they
undergo what researchers call a ‘sampling period.’ They play a variety of sports, usually in an unstructured or lightly structured
environment; they gain a range of physical proficiencies from which they can draw; they learn about their own abilities and proclivities; and
only later do they focus in and ramp up technical practice in one area.” – David Epstein

Late specialization is the norm among elite athletes. Late specialization is also the norm among people who have lucrative, fulfilling, and
impactful careers.

Range = Success & Fulfillment

Todd Rose, director of Harvard's Mind, Brain, and Education Program and neuroscientist Ogi Ogas set out to study people who were
successful and fulfilled at work. They interviewed a wide range of people from master sommeliers, animal trainers, and midwives to
architects and engineers. When they concluded their study, they decided to call it the Dark Horse Study.

Why Dark Horse?

Every successful and fulfilled professional they interviewed thought they were odd for not knowing what they wanted to do early on, and
not taking a straight path to their ultimate profession. They told researchers, "Most people don't do it this way," but they were wrong.

The majority of people with successful and fulfilling careers seemed lost at the beginning of their careers. Instead of specializing, they
sampled many different roles in many different fields and worked with a variety of different people. They didn't have five‐ or 10‐year career
goals. They had 90‐day goals at best.

The Dark Horse Study researchers summarized the mindset of the most successful people in the study as follows: “Here’s who I am at the
moment, here are my motivations, here’s what I’ve found I like to do, here’s what I’d like to learn, and here are the opportunities. Which
of these (opportunities) is the best match right now?”

Most of us think we know ourselves well. We know what we're good at, we know what we're interested in, so we think we know what
we'll be good at five, ten, twenty years from now but the science says otherwise. David Epstein says, “(It's clear from the science that) our
work preferences and our life preferences do not stay the same because we do not stay the same."

Just think back to the career you were sure you wanted ten
years ago – does it align with who you are now? Or does it
seem ridiculous knowing what you know about yourself
now? Think about all the people who realized halfway
through medical school that it wasn't a good fit…

The key is NOT marrying yourself to one path too early, and
instead, dating several possibilities to see what work you
have a deep connection with. Start your career on a six‐lane
highway, not a one‐way street ‐ hop between the lanes by
taking different roles that interest you. As you pursue a
range of experiences, develop a range of skills, and face a
variety of new problems, remember: It's going to feel
inefficient and messy, but that's a great sign; effective
learning is never smooth or easy.

When you have doubts, and you feel like you're falling behind your peers, fear not. Epstein says, “One study showed that early career
specializers jumped out to an earnings lead after college, but that later specializers made up for the head start by finding work that
better fit their skills and personalities.”

Take your time and accumulate a range of experiences and skills, but when you feel like you've sampled enough and you know yourself
well enough, go deep on an interest and get really good.

Roger Federer may have changed sports when he was young, but eventually, he decided to master the game of tennis. Tom Brady didn't
change sports after determining football was the sport for him; Brady committed to be the best quarterback he could.

Breadth before depth helped Federer and Brady rise to the top. It helped the majority of people in the Dark Horse Study find fulfilling
careers, and it'll help you and I do the same.

“We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.” – David Epstein

www.ProductivityGame.com 45
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 46
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.

www.ProductivityGame.com 47
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 48
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."

www.ProductivityGame.com Bold quotes shown above are by Michael Bungay Stanier 49

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

www.ProductivityGame.com 50
Insights from Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury
“Standard strategies for negotiation often leave people dissatisfied, worn out, or alienated—and frequently
all three.” – Getting to Yes
Avoid a long, drawn‐out negotiation and preserve the relationship between you and the person you’re negotiating with by using the
following set of negotiating principles:

Try on Their View

“(The people you negotiate) have egos that are easily threatened. They see the world from their own personal
vantage point, and they frequently confuse their perceptions with reality. Routinely, they fail to interpret what
you say in the way you intend and do not mean what you understand them to say. Misunderstanding can
reinforce prejudice and lead to reactions that produce counterreactions in a vicious circle; rational exploration
of possible solutions becomes impossible and a negotiation fails.” – Getting to Yes

At the start of a negotiation, try on the other side’s point of view:

 Imagine how the other person arrived at their position and why they want what they want.
 Feel the pressure they’re under to win the negotiation ‐ their boss doesn't want them to compromise or their wife is pressuring
them to get the best deal possible.
 Then summarize their position in a way that satisfies them, by saying, "Let me see if I can summarize your position…”

If you're an office manager in a salary negotiation, show your employee you understand their position by saying, "Let me see if I can
summarize your position: you want a larger raise than the standard 5% annual raise because you've hit all your annual targets and you feel
like you're taking on harder projects than most people in the office."

With some back and forth clarification, your employee will feel understood and more inclined to work with you to develop a mutually
beneficial agreement.

Invent a Win‐Win Agreement

You and your friend both want the last lemon in the fridge – the whole lemon. Instead of compromising and
cutting the lemon in half, you focus on your interests and discover that your friend wants the lemon to add
lemon zest to her cake recipe, and you want the lemon to add lemon juice to your water. Due to your
differences, you both get what you want without compromising! Zest the lemon for her, and then juice the
lemon for yourself.

“Agreement is often based on disagreement. It is as absurd to think, for example, that you should always begin by reaching agreement
on the facts as it is for a buyer of stock to try to convince the seller that the stock is likely to go up. If they did agree that the stock would
go up, the seller would probably not sell. What makes a deal likely is that the buyer believes the price will go up and the seller believes it
will go down. The difference in belief provides the basis for a deal.” – Getting to Yes

To invent a win‐win agreement, focus on how values, believes, and interests differ. What does one party care more about than the other
(immediate gain, long‐term opportunity, saving money, building a relationship, results, etc.)?

Insist on Using Objective Criteria

If you can't reach a mutually beneficial agreement, act like a judge, and insist on using objective criteria to decide
your case.

Let's say you got in a car accident and totaled your car, and your insurance adjuster’s final offer is $5,000. That
isn’t enough to replace your car. The insurance adjuster doesn’t want to negotiate and insists he is following
company policy.

To settle the dispute, you insist on using objective criteria and ask: “What's your basis?” and "How did you arrive at that figure?"

If he insists it’s company policy, find three comparable used cars to determine fair market value, reference the ‘blue book’ standard value
for your car's make, model, and year, and look up past settlements to determine how much a court may award you in a settlement case.

When your negotiation reaches an impasse or you’re being bullied into an agreement, it’s helpful to ask: "How would a court decide this?”
Research standards, existing precedent, cultural norms, or a list of experts who can objectively arbitrate the negotiation.

“Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if
agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship
between the parties.” – Getting to Yes

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Insights from Crucial Conversations by K. Patterson, J. Grenny,
R. Mcmillan, and A. Switzler
A crucial conversation is a critical confrontation that must be handled with care.
 Calling a client who hasn't paid an overdue invoice.
 Talking to your boss about a promotion he promised.
 Confronting a teammate who isn't doing his share of a project.

Navigating a crucial conversation is like defusing a bomb ‐ touch the wrong button or hit the wrong wire and you set off an explosion of
emotion. The best way to avoid an emotional explosion and prevent a conversation from going silent or verbally violent is to keep the
dialogue going. If there's dialogue, then there's a good chance you can work through the issue at the heart of any crucial conversation.

Here is a toolset you can use to diffuse tension during a crucial conversation and get back to productive dialogue:

“When‐I” Invite
Don’t start with a conclusion (“You don’t care about…”). Start with your observations:

 “When… (this happened and that happened)”

 “I… (experienced this thought and/or emotion)”

After sharing your observations as objectively as possible, invite them to share their story.

For example, if you need to confront a teammate who's not doing his share of work on a team project, start by saying, “When you don't
show up to team meetings and don't deliver work to your teammates on time, I fear you don't care about this project and aren't putting in
the same effort as your teammates. I'm probably not seeing the whole picture. Can you help me see what's going on?”

“The best at dialogue speak their minds completely and do it in a way that makes it safe for others to hear what they have to say and
respond to it as well. They are both totally frank and completely respectful.” – Crucial Conversations

Common Ground
“Find a shared goal, and you have both a good reason and a healthy climate for talking.” – Crucial
Conversations

To ensure your conversation partner DOES NOT see you as the enemy and resist everything you say, find and
communicate a common goal, value, or purpose. If you can identify and communicate a common goal, value, or
purpose, your conversation will transform from a fight to a strategy brainstorming session (looking for a way
to get what you both want).

If a crucial conversation with a teammate isn’t going well, remind him, “We both want to enjoy working together, and this argument isn’t
helping. Let’s see if we can come up with a creative solution together.”

If a conversation with your spouse isn't going well, pause and say, “Why are we fighting? We both love and want what's best for this
family. Let’s work together to find a solution that works for both of us.”

If you’re having an argument with a client, remind her, “We both want a long a profitable business relationship. Let’s see if we can find a
win‐win solution here.”

Priming
To start an industrial pump, you often need to ‘prime it’ by pouring water on it to get it up to the proper speed.
Often, you can get a conversation up to speed by offering a good faith guess as to what your conversation
partner is thinking. It can be as simple as saying “Are you thinking…” and voice concerns they may have.

To make a good faith guess you must form two beliefs:

1. The person I'm talking to is a reasonable, rational, and decent person.

2. I am primarily responsible for the problem behind this conversation.

With these two foundational beliefs, any attempt to guess what someone is thinking will come across with a dose of goodwill and humility
(both of which get a conversation back to productive dialogue).

The more you engage in productive dialogue, the greater chance you find agreements, and the more likely
you’ll work together to resolve the problem at the heart of any crucial conversation.

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Insights from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Why does a team become dysfunctional?

Team members care more about their results than the team’s results.

Why do team members lose sight of the team’s results?

Team members don’t hold one another accountable to the team's results.

Why aren’t team members willing to hold one another accountable?

Team members aren’t committed to the team plan, so they don’t care if a teammate doesn’t do his/her part.

Why aren’t team members committed to the plan?

Team members aren’t involved in the development the team plan because they are afraid of challenging the leader’s decisions and
experiencing interpersonal conflict.

Why are team members afraid of conflict?

Team members don’t trust that the leader (or anyone on the team) will accept an opposing point of view without taking it personally and
starting an ugly, political battle.

The five dysfunctions of a team: inattention to team results, lack of accountability, lack of commitment, fear of conflict, and absence of
trust.

How you can prevent these five dysfunctions from destroying your team’s performance:
Establish Vulnerability‐Based Trust

Trust building exercise: Take turns openly acknowledging a weakness that could hurt the team and a strength
that will help the team succeed. Go first, and show your team it’s ok to be vulnerable. You might say, "My
technical skills aren't strong, but I believe that my ability to find new customers and sell products will help this
team succeed."

When you and your teammates are transparent about your faults, you take down the veil of perfection and allow open
and honest feedback to find its way into team discussions.

Encourage Health Conflict

Encourage healthy conflict in meetings by creating a ‘Team Engagement Charter’ that promotes candid,
passionate debate. Then have your teammates sign it and bring it to every meeting. Sample ‘Team Engagement
Charter’: “We will address conflict‐laden issues and sort out disagreements with passionate debate. When
discussing team issues, we will not withhold commentary ...”

Earn Commitment

Get team members to buy‐in to your decisions by allowing them to participate and feel heard during team
planning sessions.

“I’ve come to understand that most people don’t really need to have their ideas adopted (a.k.a. “get their
way”) in order to buy in to a decision. They just want to have their ideas heard, understood, considered, and
explained within the context of the ultimate decision.” – Patrick Lencioni

Learn to disagree and commit by saying, “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but since we don’t have all the information, are you willing to
gamble with me on this? Can we disagree and commit so we can move fast and get feedback?”

Foster Peer‐to‐Peer Accountability

Show your teammates it’s ok to hold every team member (even those of higher status) accountable, by allowing
every team member to host weekly status meetings. During a weekly status meeting, the host goes around the
room and asks every team member, “Did you do what you said you were going to do last week? And if not, why
not?” When everyone sees a junior team member question a senior team member, a new standard of team
accountability is set.

Focus on Team Results

Keep the team focused on team results (instead of individual results) by connecting personal rewards to team
results. For example, team members only receive an extra day off at the end of the month if the team hits its
monthly target. Team rewards remind team members that if the team doesn't win, no one wins.

"On strong teams, no one is happy until everyone is succeeding because that's the only way to achieve the
collective results of the group." – Patrick Lencioni

www.ProductivityGame.com 53
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 54
Insights from Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
& Leif Babin

“There are only two types of leaders: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders that lead successful, high-
performance 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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www.ProductivityGame.com 56
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.

www.ProductivityGame.com 57
Insights from Mini‐Habits by Stephen Guise
When starting a new exercise routine, learning a new skill, or developing a daily writing habit, be wary of big starting requirements (i.e.,
exercising for 60 minutes, practicing for 2 hours, writing 5,000 words).

Massive action requires motivation, and the more motivation you need to act, the more likely you’ll make excuses to avoid doing it (you’ll
always either be “too tired” or “too busy”).

But what if you made the requirement for a desired habit so small that there was no excuse to skip it?

What if you leveraged the power of mini‐habits?

A mini‐habit is a “stupid small” behavior change that generates big results. To create a mini‐habit, scale back the action you want to take
until you think, “This requirement is a joke. No matter how tired I get I’ll still be able to do this.” Author Stephen Guise says, “I encourage
you to frequently remind yourself of the absurdity of not being able to meet your mini habit requirement(s).”

If you want to journal every night before going to sleep, make the minimum requirement ‘one word.’ No matter how tired you are at the
end of a long day, you can always pull out your bedside journal and write one word of gratitude.

Mini‐Habit Power #1: Post‐movement motivation

After you write one word in your journal, there is a good chance you’ll find the motivation to write two words, then
three, then four. Why? It’s basic physics. An object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by another force
(Newton's first law of motion). Start a micro action, then get out of your way and let physics take over!

Guise created an equation to explain this phenomenon: One small step + Desired behavior = High probability of
further steps.

Mini‐Habit Power #2: Less effort, same result

Building a habit is like riding a bike up a hill. It takes work to get up the hill, but when you reach the top, you can use
gravity to roll down the hill effortlessly.

It takes work to build a habit (18 to 254 days of effort, depending on the habit and the person), but once engrained,
it becomes automatic and effortless. In fact, it becomes hard NOT to execute the habit.

 Try not brushing your teeth in the morning…

 Try not having a shower in the morning…
 Try not saying your usual greeting when you answer the phone.

If you fail to execute a familiar routine when it’s cue is present (the cue for nighttime journaling can be getting into bed), you’ll experience
discomfort (the brain craves consistency).

Little known secret: The urge to execute a familiar habit comes from consistency, not quantity.

“It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It's what we do consistently.” ‐ Anthony Robbins

When you scale back a habit requirement, you reach the top of the ‘habit hill’ in approximately the same time as you would have with a
harder requirement; it's like retrofitting your bike with a mini‐motor to get up the hill without breaking a sweat.

Mini‐Habit Commandment: Be happy with the minimum

Never set the intention to do one push‐up but be disappointed when you don’t do more – your mind can detect
manipulation and will resist your mini‐goals if they aren’t your actual goal.

The key to building a mini‐habit is to be genuinely satisfied with your mini accomplishments (do the minimum and be
ready to walk away). Bonus reps are optional, not an obligation.

When you give yourself the option to do more, you activate a sense of autonomy, which is a powerful intrinsic motivator. Often, you’ll
want to do more and have days when you do 20x the minimum just because you feel like it.

Over time, you will look back at your total action (the minimum action you take on bad days plus bonus action you take on good days) and
see it adds up to a significant result. By embracing mini‐habits, you will accomplish more than you would have with a hard initial goal, with
a much higher probability of success.

“Be the person with embarrassing goals and impressive results instead of one of the many people with
impressive goals and embarrassing results.” – Stephen Guise

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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 Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod
"Our levels of success will rarely exceed our level of personal development, because success is something we
attract by who we become." – Jim Rohn
Here are six timeless personal development habits, if performed every morning, will create ‘miraculous’ changes in your life:

Silence
“If you want to immediately reduce your stress levels, to begin each day with the kind of calm, clarity, and peace of
mind that will allow you to stay focused on what’s most important in your life, and even dance on the edge of
enlightenment—do the opposite of what most people do—start every morning with a period of purposeful Silence.” –
Hal Elrod

Instead of checking your phone and seeing what's happening in the world, check in with yourself by starting the day with a period of
mindfulness. When you start the morning with either seated or walking mediation, you establish a calm and peaceful reference point for
the remainder of the day. Think of your morning meditation like lighting an internal candle you use to find peace of mind during a noisy an
chaotic day.

Affirmations
“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. Once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to
happen.” ‐ Muhammed Ali

Consider a transformation you want to make and phrase it as, "I __[your name]__ will be __[transformation]__.”
Repeat your affirmation out loud with intense conviction. Affirmation forms belief; belief leads to action; action leads
to progress; progress strengthens belief.

"You must expect great things from yourself before you can do them." ‐ Michael Jordan

Visualizing
Be like the Olympic downhill skier who imagines going down the mountain, executing each turn perfectly. Visualize
yourself executing the work you need to do today to become the person you aspire to be. When see yourself
executing a task in your mind’s eye you make the task easier to execute later in the day, because visualization fires and
strengthens the same neural circuits you’ll use to complete the task.

"During the months I spent writing The Miracle Morning, I would visualize myself writing with ease, enjoying the creative process, free from
stress, fear, and writer's block." – Hal Elrod

Exercising
When you increase your heart rate with aerobic exercise, you trigger the release of neurochemicals (dopamine,
norepinephrine, and BDNF), which significantly increases your ability to focus during the day. John Ratey, a researcher
at Harvard Medical Schools, says, "A dose of exercise is like taking a bit of Ritalin."

"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

Reading
After purposeful silence, affirmations, visualization, and exercise, your brain is hungry to learn – pick up a personal
improvement book and start reading!

Whatever area of life you want to improve (relationships, health, finances, happiness), there is a book to guide you.
Books are the richest source of high‐quality, curated knowledge. Skim a book every morning to find one big idea that
may advance your life.

Scribing
Write (aka: "scribe") down big ideas and brainstorm ways to use those ideas in your life. If, for example, you're getting
ready for a performance review with your boss, write out a few salary negotiation techniques from a negotiation book
and plan out exactly what you will say during the salary negotiation part of your performance review.

When you write down ideas and implementation plans (“when…then…”), you dramatically increase the odds you'll
retain and act on the nuggets of wisdom you acquire.

"Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days ‐ which inevitably
create a successful life ‐ in the same way, that unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre mornings generate
unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre days, and ultimately a mediocre quality of life." ‐ Hal Elrod

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Insights from Own the Day, Own Your Life by Aubrey Marcus
To own the day, you first need to own the morning. As Aristotle once said, "Well begun is half done." There are four simple yet powerful
actions you can take each morning to generate the energy you need to optimize your nutrition, mindset, productivity, performance,
fitness, sex, and sleep.

Water Intake
When you go to sleep tonight, you'll lose approximately one pound of water through exhaling water vapors and
sweating under warm sheets. When you lose 1% of your body weight in water, you experience headaches, moodiness,
irritability, anxiety, and fatigue. If you lose 2% of your body weight in water, your short‐term memory is compromised,
and your mental performance suffers. Researchers from Duke University estimate that if we go 100 hours without
water, we’ll die. That means, after a full night's sleep, we’re roughly 10% dead!

In a morning dehydration crisis, most people consume coffee to feel better. Although coffee contains water, it's not a great way to
hydrate. To get the water intake you need to properly rehydrate, you'll need to consume an abundance of caffeine. Plus, coffee is missing
key minerals and electrolytes lost during the night.

Instead of rushing to consume a cup of coffee, drink 12 ounces of water (the size of a red solo cup you see at parties), with a few pinches of
pink Himalayan sea salt (3 grams), and lemon juice (¼ lemon) first.

“Sodium (in salt) binds to water in the body to maintain the proper level of hydration inside and outside our cells. Along with potassium,
it also helps maintain electrical gradients across cell membranes, which are critical for nerve transmission, muscle contraction, and
various other functions. Without it, needless to say, we would be toast...Sea salt contains upward of sixty trace minerals…together they
are essential for healthy bodily function and contribute meaningfully to optimal performance.” Lemon juice provides the extra
potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium you need to feel fully charged.

Oxygen Intake
At the end of your morning shower, hyper‐oxygenate your cells with a ‘power breathing’ technique so that you
experience a dose of adrenaline and are better able to withstand cold water. Why do you want to withstand cold
water? When you transition from hot water to cold water, you create acute stress on the body. Acute cold stress
triggers a surge of healthy hormones that repair, protect, and energize your body. When you turn off the cold water
and walk out of the shower, you’ll feel great and ready to own the day!

At the end of your morning shower, perform the following ritual:

1. Hyper‐oxygenate your body with the Wim Hof power breathing technique: inhale through the nose or mouth into the belly and
exhale without additional effort, just let the chest fall. Perform 30 deep breaths or until you feel a tingling sensation in your
hands and feet.
2. Turn the shower handle to the coldest setting. Let cold water hit your chest and continue rhythmic deep breathing until the
shock of the cold water fades and you feel as calm as you were before the cold water.
3. When you no longer need to breath deeply to withstand the cold, empty your body of air and hold at the bottom of your breath
until you experience a gasp reflex. IF YOU FEEL LIGHT‐HEADED – SIT DOWN IN THE SHOWER OR RESUME BREATHING
NORMALLY.
4. Turn off the water, get out of the shower, dry yourself off, and enjoy the rush of energizing hormones!

Light Intake
Your circadian rhythm (inner biological clock) controls your body temperature and triggers the release of cortisol (an
energizing hormone that makes you more alert). Your circadian rhythm is partially activated when light hits light
receptors in your eyes and ears.

You can hack the start of your circadian rhythm by exposing yourself to intense light indoors or going outdoors to get
a few minutes of sunlight. When you take in bright light or sunlight shortly after waking, you give yourself the extra boost of energy you
need to own the day (you’ll also fall asleep easier at night).

Fat Intake
Here are some common breakfast foods: bread, cereal, muffins, bagels, pancakes, waffles, breakfast bars, fruit, and
fruit juice. What do these foods have in common? They're sugar bombs.

When you consume sugary foods and refined carbohydrates (like bread and cereal), your blood sugar rises quickly,
which causes your body to release a flood of insulin. Insulin takes excess blood sugar and transports it to muscle cells
and brain cells to be used as fuel. The sugary, refined breakfast foods trigger excess insulin release, which results in too much sugar
extracted from the blood. Therefore, after your initial high, you feel sluggish and foggy. To recover blood sugar levels, you search for a
sugary snack…and the cycle continues: blood sugar spike ‐> blood sugar crash ‐> food cravings.

Avoid this distracting and energy‐depleting process by starting your day with healthy fats: avocado with lime juice and sea salt, hard‐boiled
eggs with salt and pepper, bone broth (yup, soup for breakfast! Give it a shot), OR grass‐fed butter and coconut oil blended into your
coffee. Paradoxically, consuming fat will keep you in a fat‐burning zone, which means more energy in the morning and throughout the day.
Also, consuming healthy fats makes you feel full longer, so you don't need to spend your day thinking about food and searching for snacks.
Most importantly, when you consume fat instead of sugar or refined carbohydrates, you avoid the blood sugar roller coaster.
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Insights from Breath by James Nestor
You will take approximately 26,000 breaths today. How you complete your breaths (heavy or light, deep or shallow, through the mouth or
the nose) will have a significant impact on how you feel.

After reading “Breath,” I've started asking myself two questions to optimize my breathing and feel my best:

“Am I nasal breathing?”

Nearly 50% of kids and adults are chronic mouth breathers.

Author James Nestor implanted silicone plugs in his nose for ten days to see how chronic
mouth breathing would affect his health. After just a few hours of mouth breathing, he felt
awful. His heart rate variability plummeted, indicating he was in a state of chronic stress. His
blood pressure spiked by 13 points, putting him in a stage two state of hypertension. The
longer Nestor's nose was plugged, the less he could concentrate on work and remember
simple facts. Mouth breathing was making him dumber.

After ten days of mouth breathing, Nestor removed the silicone plugs and breathed through his nose again. After just a few hours of nasal
breathing, Nestor felt like a different person ‐ he experienced more mental clarity, his blood pressure stabilized, and his stress was gone.
Nestor learned the importance of nasal breathing the hard way.

When we breathe through our nose, we purify, heat, moisten, and pressurize the air we breathe, which increases the amount of oxygen
we absorb by 10 to 15%. When we nasal breathe, we create six times more nitric oxide in our bodies. Nitric oxide gas increases blood
circulation throughout the body, which allows the body to function at peak efficiency.

For an additional boost of nitric oxide, occasionally make a small noise at the back of your throat while you nasal breathe. Imitate Darth
Vader from “Star Wars” or hum while you exhale. Humming is proven to create a 15‐fold increase in nitric oxide.

Unfortunately, many people don't get the benefits of nasal breathing because they're chronically congested. If you’re congested and find
nasal breathing difficult, perform the following exercise:

Exhale through your nose, then pinch your nose shut and hold your breath. Shake your head up and down or side to side to keep
your mind off the breath hold. When you experience an intense sensation to breathe, take a slow controlled breath through your
nose. Repeat this exercise until you can comfortably breathe in and out of your nose.

If you routinely remind yourself to breathe through your nose, it will get easier to nasal breathe. Nestor says, "Nasal breathing begets
more nasal breathing," because when you breathe through your nose, you tone the tissues and muscles in your nasal airway to stay open.

“Could I breathe less?”

"A perfect man breathes as if he's not breathing." ‐ Lao Tzu

In Japan, legend has it that an aspiring samurai soldier had a feather placed under his nose
while he inhaled and exhaled. If the feather moved, the soldier would be dismissed and
could not be a samurai.

When breathing, less is more.

When you breathe less frequently, you accumulate carbon dioxide in the cells of your body.
The more carbon dioxide in a cell, the more oxygen will leave the blood to go to that cell. Therefore, the more carbon dioxide you have in
your body, the more oxygen you absorb and the better you feel.

“Carbon dioxide is the chief hormone of the entire body; it is the only one that is produced by every tissue.” ‐ Yandell Henderson, the
director of the Laboratory of Applied Physiology at Yale

As you read the rest of this summary, try and breathe three times slower and softer than you're currently breathing. Experiments show
that subjects can maintain high blood oxygen levels while increasing carbon dioxide by 25% simply by reducing the number of breaths they
take from 18 breaths a minute (the number of breaths the average American takes) to six breaths a minute.

When stressed, we tend to breathe quickly. And when we breathe quickly, our lungs only absorb about a quarter of the oxygen we inhale,
and exhale the rest, along with a huge amount of carbon dioxide. Therefore, it's important to notice your breathing during the day and ask
yourself, “Could I breathe less?” Slowly inhale and exhale and take comfortable pauses between breaths. The goal of each breath is to take
in just enough air to meet your metabolic needs and no more.

“The key to optimum breathing, and all the health, endurance, and longevity benefits that come with it, is to practice fewer inhales and
exhales in a smaller volume. To breathe, but to breathe less.” – James Nestor

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Insights from Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker Ph.D.
During sleep, your brain transition between three types of sleep: deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep.

Deep Sleep
During the day, your hippocampus (a finger‐shaped region in the middle of your brain) temporarily stores information, like names or the
steps of a new work procedure. During deep sleep, your mind transports data from the hippocampus to permanent storage locations in
the brain, like a mail delivery service transporting packages from a mailroom to homes around a city.

If you decide to stay up late and skip out on the first two hours of your regular sleep schedule, you’ll miss most of your deep sleep and fail
to store important information in your long‐term memory.

Light Sleep

Light sleep acts like the mailroom cleaning staff – it clears your hippocampus to make room for new information the following day. After
being awake for 16 hours, it’s difficult for your hippocampus to hold on to new information. If you’ve stayed up late to read a textbook,
and read the same paragraph over and over, failing to comprehend the information, then you’ve experienced a full hippocampus. Light
sleep is the delay refresh that renews your ability to learn new facts.

Most of your light sleep is at the end of a full night’s sleep. That means waking up early to study can be counterproductive. When you wake
up early and only get five to six hours of sleep, you severely impair your ability to learn. And, if you wake up much earlier than usual (up at 5
a.m. when you typically wake at 7 a.m.), you're also missing most of your REM sleep that night.

REM Sleep (Dream Sleep)

When you enter REM sleep, your mind begins to make sense of what happened during the day by connecting newly stored information
with previously stored information. The connections are often bizarre and lead to creative breakthroughs. Singer/songwriter Paul
McCartney famously woke up with the entire melody to ‘Yesterday’ in his head and thought someone else had written it.

REM sleep not only provides creative insights, it offers emotional insights too.

Dreams (which only occur during REM sleep) simulate anxious situations so that you learn how to deal with your anxiety and become
coolheaded under pressure. Dreams also help you transition from despair to hope ‐ if you're going through a bitter break‐up or divorce,
dreaming will help you move on. Dreams are the cheapest and most effective form of therapy.

Deep sleep improves your ability to recall information, light sleep improves your ability to learn new
information, and REM sleep improves your ability to make sense of information, and any related emotion.

Two Pillars of a Good Night’s Sleep

Dark Cool
When the brain detects blue light, it suppresses a chemical called Your body temperature needs to drop two to three degrees
melatonin. That’s not good, because melatonin provides the Fahrenheit to initiate sleep. It is hard to lower your core
push you need to fall asleep. temperature when your house remains at room temperature.
That's why I’ve programmed my thermostat to reduce my house
A study found that reading a book on an iPad suppressed temperature to 65F every night at nine p.m., and maintain that
melatonin 50% more than reading a print book. Another study temperature throughout the night.
found that a bedside lamp, with just one to two percent of the
strength of daylight, can also reduce melatonin by 50%. That's Also, right before bed, I take a hot shower. Taking a hot shower
why when the sun goes down, I now put on blue light blocking might seem counter‐intuitive…but after a hot shower/bath my
glasses. Then, a half hour before bed, I read a print book under body heat transfers from my core to the surface of my body,
red LED light. Then, when it’s time to sleep, I put on my sleep then dissipates into the atmosphere. The result: core
mask. temperature drops, and it’s easy to fall asleep.

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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. After 90 minutes of continuous focus on a task.

2. 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

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Insights from Indistractable by Nir Eyal
Discomfort breeds distraction.

 Boredom creates the urge to check our phones.

 Social anxiety makes us say “yes” to meeting requests we don’t want to attend.
 Stress leads to overeating.

When you and I experience boredom, anxiety, or stress, our minds crave relief and seek distraction.

“The only way to handle distraction is by learning to handle discomfort.”‐ Nir Eyal

Surf the Urge

In 2010 a group of researchers asked flight attendants who smoked to rate their craving for a cigarette during
flights when they couldn’t smoke and between flights when they could. You might think the flight attendants
who didn't get their fix between flights would crave a cigarette more than the flight attendants who smoked.
But you’d be wrong.

All the flight attendant’s cravings dropped after the smoke break, regardless if they smoked or not!

Your urges will naturally fall if you act on them or not.

The next time you have an urge to check your phone, eat junk food, or indulge in any other type of distraction, imagine you’re a surfer
riding your internal wave of discomfort. Feel the wave rise, peak, and naturally subside, like a wave moving towards an ocean shore.

On a seven‐day study, smokers who practiced ‘surfing their urge’ reduced their cigarette cravings by 37% (if ‘surfing the urge’ works for
nicotine‐addicted smokers, it’s sure to work for most distracting urges).

Most waves of discomfort last less than 10 minutes. Therefore, Nir Eyal recommends using the 10‐minute rule: "If I find myself wanting to
check my phone as a pacification device when I can't think of anything better to do, I tell myself, ‘It's fine to give in, but not right now. I
have to wait just 10 minutes.’ This technique is effective at helping me deal with all sorts of potential distractions, like Googling
something rather than writing, eating something unhealthy when I'm bored or watching another episode on Netflix when I'm 'too tired
to go to bed.'"

Create Pacts
Watching your urges rise and fall is hard. Therefore, pacts are the incentive you need to stick to your ‘urge surfing habit.’

“The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.” – Nir Eyal

Effort Pacts

Add effort between you and the thing you don’t want to do, so that surfing an urge is easier than giving into an urge.
Example: The ‘kSafe’ is a device that locks tempting treats like Oreo cookies and Reese's Pieces in a container with a
timer. Nir Eyal says, "You could smash the container with a hammer or run out and buy more cookies, but that extra
effort makes those choices less likely."

Price Pacts

Put a price on your distractions. For example, if you get distracted by junk food while on a diet, promise a friend you’ll
burn a hundred‐dollar bill taped to your bathroom mirror and send him/her a video of you burning the bill.

Download a smartphone usage tracking app and send a screenshot of your weekly usage to a friend each week. If you
pass a certain threshold, promise to burn a twenty‐dollar bill and send him/her video evidence.

Identity Pacts

Adopt an identity that does not align with the action you’re trying to avoid. If you’re resisting meat, declare to your
family and friends that you’re a vegetarian. If you want to stop answering emails before noon, write, "Sorry, I don't
answer emails before noon" in your email signature. Issuing “I don’t” statements is a great way to nullify distracting
urges.

“A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research tested the words people use when faced with temptation. During the
experiment, one group was instructed to use the words ‘I can’t’ when considering unhealthy food choices, while the other group used ‘I
don’t.’ At the end of the study, participants were offered either a chocolate bar or granola bar to thank them for their time. Nearly twice
as many people in the ‘I don’t’ group picked the healthier option on their way out the door.” – Nir Eyal

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Insights from Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday
“(Stillness) inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. Helps us resist the
passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder. Stillness allows us to persevere. To succeed. It is
the key that unlocks the insights of genius.” – Ryan Holiday
Reap the benefits of stillness by focusing on three domains: mind, body, and spirit.

Empty the Mind

“Journaling is spiritual windshield wipers, as the writer Julia Cameron once put it. It’s a few minutes of
reflection that both demands and creates stillness…Journaling may turn out to be the most important thing you
do all day.” – Ryan Holiday

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, develops mental stillness each morning with a journaling practice called
‘Morning Pages.’ Each morning she fills three pages with longhand, stream of consciousness thought. “As you
write,” Cameron says, “you trap the muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts (nebulous worries, jitters and preoccupations) on paper so
that you can face the day with clear eyes.” What she writes is for her eyes only.

Brian Koppelman, screenwriter for the movie “Rounders” and TV show “Billions”, swears by his ‘Morning Pages’ practice and credits much
of his professional success to his ‘Morning Pages’ daily ritual.

Steady the mind each morning by writing three pages of continuous thought on paper. After filling the three pages, throw them in the
trash (or save them to review later) so you can start your day free from internal distraction.

Move the Body

In the mid‐1920s, Winston Churchill signed a contract to produce a six‐volume, 3,000‐page account of World War I
in addition to fulfilling his responsibilities as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Rather than power through the heavy
workload and burnout, Churchill took up a new and rather odd form of leisure to rejuvenate his mind between
blocks of work: bricklaying. The slow, methodical process of mixing mortar and stacking bricks was perfect for
keeping his body busy while allowing his mind to unwind. Churchill’s daily regimen was to lay 200 bricks and write
2,000 words.

A generation before Churchill, British Prime Minister William Gladstone chopped down more than 1000 dying trees during his time in office.
Gladstone found the process of chopping down trees completely consuming and said he had no time to think of anything but where the
next stroke of his axe would fall.

The two men, Churchill and Gladstone, found stillness in a meditative physical activity. As their bodies executed a repetitive movement,
their minds were restored.

What meditative physical activity can you lose yourself in and return to your work feeling mentally refreshed afterward? Whatever the
activity, put it on the weekly calendar and schedule your work around it.

Satisfy the Spirit

“If you believe there is ever some point where you will feel like you’ve ‘made it,’ when you’ll finally be good,
you are in for an unpleasant surprise. Or worse, a sort of Sisyphean torture where just as that feeling appears
to be within reach, the goal is moved just a little bit farther up the mountain and out of reach. You will never
feel okay by way of external accomplishments. Enough comes from the inside. It comes from stepping off the
train. From seeing what you already have, what you’ve always had. If a person can do that, they are richer than
any billionaire, more powerful than any sovereign.” – Ryan Holiday

Today, when you sit down to eat, reflect on the fact that the wealthiest person in the world a hundred years ago would envy you. They
would give anything to have access to the technology you take for granted. They would marvel at your ability to access information on any
topic, listen to an endless supply of music, and order a vast array of delicious food.

Stop envying others and start envying your own life. Ryan Holiday reminds us that, “the factory worker wishes desperately to be a
millionaire, the millionaire envies the simple life of the nine‐to‐five worker. The famous wish they could go back to the private life that
so many others would gladly give away; the man or woman with a beautiful partner thinks only of someone a little more beautiful. It’s
sobering to consider that the rival we’re so jealous of may in fact be jealous of us.”

Cultivate a feeling of abundance throughout the day. Temporary hit pause on your desire for more and find stillness. In that stillness you'll
find more presence, more clarity, and more insight.

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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. Visualize the high‐pressure moment; think about the things you can control, and imagine those going well.
2. Now think about the things you can’t control. Visualize your performance going astray.
3. 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.”
All bold‐italic quotes are by authors Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw‐Fry
www.ProductivityGame.com 72
Insights from The Champion’s Mind by Jim Afremow
"The difference between a pedestrian performance and a peak performance begins and ends with your state of mind… Adopting a
winning mind‐set will help you perform at the top of your game and enable you to succeed when you want to succeed the most.”

Jim Afremow is a sports psychologist who has helped dozens of athletes prepare for the Olympic games. However, you do not need to be
an Olympian to leverage the lessons in this book.

Thinking like a champion will allow you to step up and stand out in any competitive environment, be it at work or in sports. If you cultivate
the following four champion mind‐sets before your next performance, you will be more likely to perform your best.

elief
Champions go into every competition believing that success is inevitable ‐ success seems like destiny. But how can
someone develop a ‘destiny‐like’ belief when failure is a real possibility?

A champion doesn't doubt his or her ability because they believe they've trained harder than anyone else. The key to
an unshakeable self‐belief is to, as sprinter Maurice Greene a one‐time world record holder in the 100‐metre dash said,
“Train like you are No. 2, but compete like you are No. 1.”

Train and prepare as though you have come up just short of winning. Imagine you've lost by a millisecond or a single
point. Now work tirelessly to make sure that does not happen again. Before a competition, reflect on the strengths you have honed while
training, and victory will seem inevitable.

njoyment
Enjoyment combats the fear of failure and eliminates tension in the body. It is impossible to be afraid and grateful at
the same time. That’s why champions enter every competition with an attitude of gratitude. A champion routinely
thinks, "I'm so lucky to be here, competing at the highest level," or "I've trained so hard for this. I can't wait to show
the world what I'm capable of."

Jesse Owens, the legendary track and field star who won four gold medals in front of Nazis at the 1936 Berlin Olympics,
famously said, “Find the good. It’s all around you.”

elf‐Talk
If you want to perform your best, you need to eradicate the Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) that eat away your
performance. The ANTs you will encounter during a performance include, "Don't screw this up," or "What if I (then
imagine the mistake).” The negative thoughts you experience during a performance bring to mind images of potential
failure, which creates tension in the body, and increases the likelihood of failure.

During a performance, a champion gets his or her mind to stop thinking of a potential mistake by using positive,
present‐focused self‐talk. A champion might repeat to herself, "Right here, right now. Right here, right now." Jim
Afremow advises his athletes to think, “One‐good‐play‐in‐a‐row.” On May 23rd, 2002, professional baseball player Shawn Green went six‐
for‐six at the plate with four home runs by repeating the Zen mantra, "Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water," to help stay
present and execute the fundamentals. Whatever self‐talk you choose to use during your performance, make sure it's simple, positive, and
focused on the present.

oughness
“Mental toughness does not entail clenching your teeth, trying harder, thinking more, straining your eyes to focus,
or having someone scream “Be tough!” at you. Mental toughness is the ability to remain positive and proactive in the
most adverse of circumstances.”

See every setback as an opportunity for an epic comeback. Use the lessons learned so far in this summary to stay
positive through adversity and quickly bounce back from a bad performance ‐ remind yourself of your training to
reaffirm your belief, enjoy the moment by laughing at mistakes or being grateful for what is going well, and using self‐
talk to direct your attention away from the error and back to the task at hand.

Or perform a symbolic gesture – toss a piece of grass, clear your throat, or crumble up a piece of paper and throw it in the trash to
symbolize throwing out the mistake and clearing it from your memory.

Mental Performance Scorecard

Keep a mental performance scorecard for each performance by rating yourself on a scale of 1‐5 in each of the four areas:

 Belief ‐ did I prepare so well that I felt as though I could not fail?
 Enjoyment ‐ did I maintain an attitude of gratitude and a sense of humor throughout the performance?
 Self‐talk ‐ did I deploy a steady stream of positive self‐talk to kill my automatic negative thoughts and stay present?
 Toughness ‐ how quickly did I reset and recover after a setback?

If you improve your scorecard with every performance, you will be well on your way to becoming a champion.

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Insights from Emotional Agility by Susan David
Are you a bottler or a brooder?
Bottlers don’t deal with uncomfortable emotions; bottlers suppress emotions. Bottlers try to forget about emotions like stress, anger, and
anxiety by distracting themselves with busy work (compulsively checking email, making long to‐do lists, etc.).

“More than once, I’ve met bottlers who find themselves, years later, in the same miserable job, relationship, or circumstance. They’ve
been so focused on pushing forward and being a good doobie that they haven’t been in touch with a real emotion in years, which
precludes any sort of real change or growth.” – Susan David

Brooders obsess over emotions and are unable to focus on anything else.

“(Brooders pay) too much attention to their internal chatter and (allow) it to sap important cognitive resources that could be put to
better use…With brooders, emotions become more powerful in the same way a hurricane does, circling and circling and picking up
more energy with each pass.” – Susan David

Whether you bottle or brood over distracting and uncomfortable emotions, those emotions get stronger and more destructive.

4 Steps to Deal with Distracting & Destructive Emotions

Name
“Learning to label emotions with a more nuanced vocabulary can be absolutely transformative. People who can identify
the full spectrum of emotion—who realize how, for example, sadness differs from boredom, or pity, or loneliness, or
nervousness—do much, much better at managing the ups and downs of ordinary existence than those who see
everything in black and white.” – Susan David

Unnamed emotions cause uncontrollable stress. Name your emotions like a child would point and name the animals at the zoo. When you
feel an uncomfortable emotion, silently say to yourself, “this one is uncertainty," or, "this one is insecurity."

Accept
When you stop fighting an emotion, you strip that emotion of its power. As Susan says, "We end the tug of war by
dropping the rope.”

We fight back uncomfortable emotions because we believe that we ALWAYS need to feel good. “The goal is not to always feel good. The
goal is to deal with destructive thoughts and emotions so you don’t get hooked (i.e., identify with your emotions), derail your progress,
your relationships and your career or business.” – Susan David

Start down the path of recovery by accepting emotions: feel them without judging them; an emotion is neither good or bad, it just is.

Step out
“Stepping out means learning to see yourself as the chessboard, filled with possibilities, rather than as any one piece on
the board, confined to certain preordained moves.” – Susan David

 When you hear a rude comment and experience anger, you don't have to react aggressively. You can take a second to step out
of your emotion and choose to respond thoughtfully.
 When you feel anxious in a social setting, you don't need to reach for your phone and distract yourself. Instead, you can step out
of your emotion, watch your anxiety rise and fall, choose to be polite, and start a conversation with the person beside you.

How to step out: After you name and accept an emotion, take a second to visualize yourself standing outside of your body looking back at
yourself and your emotion. Watch your emotion rise and fall and objectively determine if the emotion is helpful or not.

Act according to your values

When you step out and detach from an emotion, you lift the fog and see the road ahead (your goals) and the signposts on
the side of the road (your values ‐ the people and activities that matter most)

Ask yourself: “If I react to this emotion, will I be acting according to my values?”

By getting in the habit of asking "If I react to this emotion, will I be acting according to my values?", every uncomfortable emotion is a
reminder to live with purpose.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our
response lies our growth and our freedom.” ‐ Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor

www.ProductivityGame.com 74
Insights from The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels
‘The Tools’ in this book have been tested by the authors Phil Stutz and Barry Michels (psychotherapists with a combined 60 years of

experience) and proven to help people overcome internal obstacles and live with more courage, confidence, and creativity.

If you use the following three tools by visualizing the actions described below, you will activate a mysterious force (what the authors call a
“higher force”) to propel you forward. Hold your skepticism until you try each tool a few times.

Tool #1: The Reversal of Desire

Use this tool when you are avoiding difficult work, need to get out of bed and go for a run, or need to make a difficult phone call but you
keep putting it off.

The moment you feel resistance to starting an uncomfortable task, execute the following four steps:

1. Imagine the pain of the task as a cloud hovering in front of you.

2. Silently yell, "Bring it on!" as you move into the cloud.
3. Once inside the cloud, feel at one with it and silently say to yourself, "I love pain."
4. Then feel the cloud spit you out the other side and thrust you toward a realm of pure
light as you silently say, “Pain sets me free!”

The realm of light represents the realm of unexpected possibility.

Viktor Frankl, the author of Man's Search for Meaning and survivor of four Nazi death camps, leaned into the pain during his time in the Nazi
concentration camps and came through the other side of that pain with an entirely new field of psychology called ‘Logotherapy.’
Logotherapy has helped millions of people find meaning amidst suffering and reduce their suffering.

If you run from pain, your world shrinks. But if you condition yourself to move towards necessary pain (pain that exists between you and a
meaningful goal), a world of possibility awaits you.

Each time you use the ‘Reversal of Desire,’ you will experience a slight nudge forward. Sometimes you need to use the tool 20 times to
build up the inner strength required to face an intimidating task. But the ‘Reversal of Desire’ only takes three seconds to perform, which
means you can perform the tool 20 times in the next minute. The more you use it, the more unstoppable you will feel.

Tool #2: Inner Authority

Use this tool when you feel nervous before a performance. “A performance is any situation where you’re subject to the judgments and
reactions of others. This could take the form of a job interview, sales meeting, presentation, or an awkward social situation such as a
blind date or big party.” – Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

The moment you experience performance anxiety:

1. Imagine standing on a stage in front of people who make you feel inferior. This group might include a
past boss or a kid from high school you desperately wanted to impress.
2. Turn your feelings of inferiority into a shadow off to one side of you. For most people, this
Shadow looks like a younger, weaker version of themselves.
 To a female CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the book, the Shadow looked like a lonely,
weeping, eight‐year‐old girl.
 Author Phil Stutz's Shadow is a young, skinny, fearful, inexperienced child.
3. Ignore the audience and focus all your attention on your Shadow. Feel an unbreakable bond between the two of you.
4. Imagine you and your Shadow turning towards the audience and saying, "Listen!” in unison. Feel the authority that comes from
talking in unison with your Shadow.

When you imagine your insecurities out in the open for the world to see and embrace those insecurities (by talking and acting in unison
with your Shadow), you have nothing to hide. Now you can freely express yourself.

Tool #3: Jeopardy

Use this tool when you feel lazy, your concentration is fading, or you are about to give up on a worthwhile goal and give in to short‐term
pleasure.

The moment you have the urge to give in to a guilty pleasure:

1. See yourself lying on your deathbed with medical devices around you and surgical tubes connected to
your body.
2. See your older self sit up just before his or her last breath and scream at you, "Don't waste the present
moment!"

When you feel your older self looking at you and urging you not to waste your life, you unlock a hidden reserve of willpower to resist
temptation and do what you know is right.

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Insights from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius was a stoic philosopher and emperor of Rome from the year 161 to 190 and said to be the last of the five good Roman
emperors.

During his 19‐year reign, Marcus faced considerable hardship ‐ war with barbarian tribes, a hostile takeover attempt by a close ally, an
incompetent and greedy stepbrother as a co‐emperor, an economy on the verge of collapse, and the death of several children.

Marcus Aurelius relied on a collection of ancient stoic practices to cope with hardship, manage stress, and remain a posed, effective, and
beloved leader ‐ here are three such stoic practices:

Praemeditatio Malorum
"Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill‐will, and selfishness." –
Marcus Aurelius

Marcus routinely rehearsed interacting with people who made him feel stressed. Paradoxically, simulating
stress allowed Marcus to experience less stress throughout the day.

Praemeditatio Malorum, which is Latin for “Premeditation of Adversity,” is the act of imagining and accepting
a troubling event; not thinking of ways to avoid an undesirable outcome but accepting an undesirable
outcome has occurred and learning how to cope.

The key to stress management is convincing your mind you can cope with any situation. By imagining a worst‐case scenario has come true
and rehearsing how you’ll deal with the fallout, you convince your mind that you’ll handle any outcome.

If you're about to give a presentation, assume it's already gone badly and now you need to deal with the embarrassment and shame that
you feel. As those feelings wash over you, you’ll realize it sucks, but you're still alive. An hour after the presentation, the stress will be
greatly diminished; a day later, you'll have moved past it, and a month later, you'll have completely forgotten about it.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the
present.” – Marcus Aurelius

Stoic Reframing
When you encounter a troubling situation, reframe the situation as an opportunity to practice virtue.

Virtue is derived from the Greek word ‘Arete,’ which means ‘excellence of character.’ If you're not sure which
virtues to practice during the day, imagine a person you admire, alive or dead, and ask yourself, “Which
character traits do I want to emulate?” I often imagine Winston Churchill and set an intention to practice
steadfastness and decisiveness, or I consider my favorite college professor and aim to express the virtues of
curiosity and humility.

At the start of Meditations, Marcus created a long list of traits he admired in family members and mentors. Later Marcus concludes, "In
human life there is nothing better than the virtues of justice, truth, temperance and fortitude to attain complete self‐satisfaction
(paraphrased)"

The next time you encounter hardship, select a virtue you admire in others and wish to develop in yourself. Reframe a stressful situation as
an opportunity to accelerate the development of that virtue in your life and become a person others will admire.

“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not ‘This is misfortune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good
fortune.’” – Marcus Aurelius

Stoic Explaining
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for
what they are.” – Marcus Aurelius

The human mind is like a great Hollywood director ‐ it's great at adding drama to events and making situations
seem dire. When we encounter a setback, it's natural to use vivid emotional language and describe the
situation as “devastating,” “horrible,” or “terrible.” It's natural to jump to a dire conclusion and assume “I’m
doomed” or “Everyone will think I’m an idiot for letting this happen.” Dramatic and dire descriptions
unnecessarily amplify stress.

If we learn to strip away emotional language when describing a problem and talk about the problem like a scientist or a robot, only talking
about the facts and never making untested assumptions, we can manage stressful events with grace. If you've just delivered a poor
presentation to your boss, don't tell yourself, “Damn, that was awful, my boss probably thinks I'm an idiot. I'll never get that promotion.”
Drop the emotional baggage, and just stick to the facts: “That wasn't my best performance.”

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
‐ Marcus Aurelius

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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-or-
flight 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

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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. Download a guided meditation (I suggest using a smartphone app like ‘Calm,’ ‘Headspace’, or ‘10% Happier’).
2. 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.
3. 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

www.ProductivityGame.com 78
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 Choose Yourself! by James Altucher
“Human beings are born pioneers. The rise of corporatism (as opposed to capitalism) forced people into
cubicles instead of out into the world, exploring and inventing and manifesting. The ethic of the Choose
Yourself era is to not depend on those stifling trends that are defeating you. Instead, build your own
platform, have faith and confidence in yourself instead of a jury‐rigged system, and define success by your
own terms.” – James Altucher

Bypass the gatekeepers (corporate hiring managers, bosses, publishers) and choose yourself by making three fundamental shifts:

Become an Idea Machine

The choose yourself path is paved with ideas. The more ideas you can generate, the more profitable ideas you’ll
have, and the more confidence you'll have to pursue your ideas (because you’ll know that whatever problems
arise, you'll have the idea power to solve them).

We are all idea machines, but some of us have let our idea muscle atrophy from lack of use. Start building idea
muscles by buying a waiter's pad and filling it with 10 ideas each day. A waiter's pad costs less than a dollar, and it
is easy to store in your pocket. It is space constrained, so it forces you to be concise with your ideas, and the
pages are small enough to make the thought of generating 10 ideas less intimidating.

You can generate ideas on anything. But to get started, generate 10 ways that you can make a product or service you use better. For
example:

 10 ways you can make this summary better

 10 ways you can improve a marketing/sales email you have recently received
 10 ways you can improve the frying pan you used to cook breakfast this morning

Once you have generated 10 ideas, either use those ideas yourself, send those ideas to someone who may benefit from them, or archive
them. Author James Altucher used to generate 10 ideas for financial articles and send them to financial writers in NYC. His idea generosity
led to a meeting with Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money and creator of thestreet.com, who then paid Altucher to write articles for
thestreet.com.

Focus on The Daily Practice

Bringing ideas to life requires energy and influence. Create an abundance of energy and influence by focusing on “The Daily Practice.”

The Daily Practice is the act of strengthening four areas of your life by 1% a day. The four areas are mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Imagine these four areas of your life like four separate bodies.

Mental Body: Generate 10 ideas or practice a new hobby (take a 15‐minute chess, piano, or creative writing lesson).

Emotional Body: Make plans to spend time with a friend or read a chapter of a biography about someone who inspires you.

Spiritual Body: For a few minutes, stop time traveling. Stop thinking about the past or future, and be grateful for what is
right in front of you. When author James Altucher walks through his New York City neighborhood, he marvels and
appreciates the architecture of the buildings around him.

Physical Body: Take the stairs, eat two meals a day instead of three, or go to bed 10 minutes earlier than you did
yesterday.

When you strengthen your four areas 1% each day, that 1% gets compounded. When you compound 1% a day, you are 37 times better by the
end of the year. If a year from now, you're 37 times more mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically stronger than you are today, your
energy and optimism will be infectious, and you'll have the capacity to turn great ideas into valuable products and services.

“What you need to do is build the house you will live in. You build that house by laying a solid foundation: by building physical,
emotional, mental, and spiritual health.” – James Altucher

Underprice and Overdeliver

When James Altucher was building websites, he built a website for New Line Cinema for 1/100th the market rate and
delivered a website that was better than most sites New Line Cinema had ever seen. New Line Cinema spoke highly
of Altucher’s work, which led to much more work.

Altucher says, "If someone pays you $100 and you give them just $100 in value, then you have FAILED. People are
like three‐year‐olds. They like to get presents. When you over‐deliver, you’re giving them an unexpected present. People want to do
business with people who give them presents. And when you give, you will receive."

Eventually, Altucher became so busy that he had to say ‘No’ to incoming work. When he started saying ‘No’, more people wanted to work
with him. Altucher says, "If you reduce the supply of you through no, then the demand of you goes up and you make more money and
you have more fun."

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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

www.ProductivityGame.com 81
Summary of Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
How do you convince someone to change?
Whether you’re trying to get a team at work to change from Microsoft Office to Google Suite or trying to get your child to
eliminate a bad habit, remember the people you want to change have two selves: a rational self and an emotional self.

The rational self is like a rider on top of a six‐ton elephant. The rational rider (the part that believes it “should”
change) is at the mercy of the emotional elephant (the part that “doesn’t feel like” changing). If you’ve tried to
start a new exercise habit but quit after three weeks because you don’t feel like going to the gym, you’ve felt the
power of the elephant.

To convince someone to change their behavior, you need to do more than make a rational argument for
change (i.e., convince the rider to change); you must motivate their inner emotional elephant to embrace
change.

Motivate the Elephant with a Sense of Progress

In 2004, a local car wash gave 300 loyalty cards to 300 random customers ‐ 150 loyalty cards required 8 stamps
to earn a free car wash, and the other 150 loyalty cards required 10 stamps to earn a free car wash. The card
with 10 required stamps, however, came with 2 free stamps. Both cards required the same effort to complete
(8 car washes), but the loyalty card with 2 stamps motivated nearly twice as many people to return 8 times to
earn their free car wash!

If you can make someone believe they’ve partially completed a change (like those 2 stamps did), you’ll increase
the odds they’ll change. If you manage a team of designers who work on outdated design software, you’ll
have a better chance at getting them to switch to a new software program if you show them how their skills on the existing software
transfer to the new software, which moves them up the new software learning curve.

“That sense of progress is critical, because the Elephant in us is easily demoralized. It’s easily spooked, easily derailed, and for that
reason, it needs reassurance, even for the very first step of the journey.” – Chip and Dan Heath

Motivate the Elephant with Identity Misalignment

In 1977, a 21‐year‐old college student named Paul Butler tried to save the St. Lucia parrot – a species of parrot
on the verge of extinction that only existed on the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia. Many St. Lucians were
poaching the bird and destroying the parrots’ natural habitat.

Butler hosted St. Lucia parrot puppet shows, distributed parrot T‐shirts, and recruited volunteers to dress up in
parrot costumes and visit local schools in the hopes of making the St. Lucians aware and proud of their parrot.
At every public event, Butler would say, “This parrot is ours. Nobody has this but us. We need to cherish it and
look after it."

More than 30 years after these change efforts, Butler reported there are more than 1000 St. Lucia Parrots on the island and, “no St. Lucian
has been caught shooting a parrot for fifteen years.”

If you can help people see that they are not acting in alignment with who they say they are (St. Lucian’s weren’t acting like St. Lucians by
killing their own bird), they'll be motivated to change.

“How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences?” – Chip and Dan Heath

Direct the Rider Through Change

If you motivate someone’s inner elephant to change, your work isn’t done. Now, you must direct the rider.

The rational rider loves to think, but the more time the rider's left wondering, "What should I do next?” and
"Am I doing this right?", the more it pulls on the reins and walks the elephant around in circles, which quickly
de‐motivates the elephant. Therefore, you need to eliminate ambiguity and give the rider explicit behaviors to
execute. Think of facilitating change like programming a computer. If you don’t give the computer specific
commands, you’ll receive an error.

“Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors. In short, to make a switch, you need to script
the critical moves.” – Chip and Dan Heath

Don’t simply tell your friend to “Go to the gym and exercise.” Instead, help him set up a detailed workout routine so that he knows exactly
what exercises to do, at what weight, for a specific number of repetitions and sets. But only include critical decisions – decisions that might
cause confusion and derail the change. Leave out trivial actions, like what to wear to the gym and what music to listen to at the gym.

When proposing a change, walk through the change in your mind to identify the key decision points and script explicit behaviors (i.e.,
“When you encounter _____, do this _____.” OR “If _____ happens, do _____.”). Eliminate points of confusion to increase the probability
of change.

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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 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward Burger & Michael Starbird

“Extraordinary people are just ordinary people who are thinking differently… Brilliant students and brilliant
innovators create their own victories by practicing habits of thinking that inevitably carry them step‐by‐step to
works of greatness.” – Edward Burger & Michael Starbird
When you encounter a complex problem, think of the classical elements once believed to be the essence of nature and matter: Earth, Air, Fire,
and Water.

Earth
Use the element of ‘Earth’ to solve a complex problem by going to the root of the problem:
 Ask yourself, "What are the core components or underlying factors I need to know more about?"
 Break the problem into a list of knowledge areas you need to research.
For example, if you struggle with procrastination, break the problem of procrastination into a list of underlying factors:
distraction, lack of motivation, and overwhelm. Overcome procrastination by gaining a rock‐solid understanding of the
factors that cause procrastination.

“To learn any subject well and to create ideas beyond those that have existed before, return to the basics repeatedly.”– Edward Burger &
Michael Starbird

Air
Use the element of ‘Air’ to solve a complex problem by asking perspective‐changing questions. Ask yourself:
 "What if I were a curious child who knew nothing about this problem?" When you ask this question, you adopt a
beginner’s mind and notice untested assumptions.

 "What if I were a pro and this was easy?” When you ask this question, you stop struggling and start looking for a
simple solution (it’s also a great question to ask when feeling overwhelmed by a massive problem).

Successful entrepreneurs routinely ask, "What if I were the customer?" This question helps an entrepreneur adopt the customer's point of view
and notice points of friction in the purchase funnel, which they can fix to generate more sales.

When you consider the element of ‘Air’, imagine whirling around a problem like a tornado and adjusting your point of view.

Fire
Use the element of ‘Fire’ to solve a complex problem by testing ideas and embracing mistakes.

When you’re not sure what to study for an upcoming exam, take a practice test, then study the subject matter related to
the questions you got wrong. If you’re not sure how to respond to an email, write a terrible draft, find errors, and fix
them.

There is a big difference between failing and failing productively. Failing, looking bad, and quitting isn't useful. Failing productively, however, by
making mistakes and asking, "What specifically went wrong, and how can I do it better?" illuminates the path to success.

Water
Use the element of ‘Water’ to solve a complex problem by building on past success and iterating your way to the perfect
solution (like a small wave gradually turning into a tsunami).

Great authors will tell you their first draft is complete crap, but they can always find something small (maybe just a few
sentences) that they can build from. By gradually building on what's working, great authors can turn a rough draft into a
bestseller.

Innovative solutions come from existing ideas made better through iteration.

The Quintessential Element

“In ancient Greek philosophy, the quintessential element was the unchanging material from which the extraterrestrial
realm was made. Here the unchanging fifth element is, ironically, change itself.” – Edward Burger & Michael Starbird

The first four elements won't do you much good unless you're willing to embrace change. Most people think, "I am who I
am. I can't change my ways," but effective people think, "I am constantly evolving. I am a lifelong learner."

When you think of the quintessential element, imagine a rising phoenix, a symbol of transformation. See every problem as an opportunity to
transform your thinking and improve your problem‐solving abilities.

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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

All bold quotes are from the book Make It Stick

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Insights from Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley
“Memory is not a thing that happens to you; you create your memories…The greatest secret of a powerful
memory is to bring information to life with your endless imagination” ‐ Kevin Horsley
Author Kevin Horsley always assumed he had a bad memory. But after learning a few simple memory techniques, Horsley trained himself
to remember the first 10,000 digits of pi, get 5th place in the World Memory Championships, and earn the title ‘International Grandmaster
of Memory.’

There are two primary methods that Horsley and other ‘International Grandmasters of Memory’ use to remember vast amounts of
information.

You can use these two methods to remember the name of every person you meet, and details of every presentation you deliver.

Sense
Use your imagination to create a rich sensory experience in your mind.

To remember the last name of the author, Horsley, visualize a horse. Then imagine touching it, smelling it, hearing it, and tasting it… Okay,
tasting a horse is a bit gross, but it's memorable!

Exaggerate
Make the horse pink and make it the size of a house.

The goal is to be extreme, ridiculous, and funny. Horsley says, "The more illogical the image, the more it will stick…There is no scientific
evidence to prove that learning should be serious.”

Energize
Lastly, energize your mental image by tapping into your inner Walt Disney and turn the image into a motion picture. See the horse running,
jumping, or getting launched over a house with a cannon!

"Your mind is the greatest home entertainment center ever created." ‐ Mark Victor Hanson

Use the S.E.E. method to remember a new word by thinking of images that sound like sections of the word.

For example, if you’re giving a presentation on the brain and you need to recall the neurotransmitter Serotonin (the neurotransmitter
which produces a feeling of happiness), you could see your see your friend Sara (sounds like the first part of “Sero‐ton‐in”), with a giant
musical note on her head (reminds you of tone, the second part of “Ser‐ton‐in”), jumping through a field of daisies (reminds you of
happiness).

When you have a long list of items you need to remember, like five stories for an upcoming presentation or ten ingredients of a recipe,
place the items on your list in the memory of a familiar environment.

Our minds are great at remembering the details of familiar environments.

Close your eyes and imagine walking through your house. Can you visualize your front door? Your kitchen? Your TV room? Your stairs? And
your bathroom?

You can leverage your memory of environments to memorize new information. If, for example, you want to remember the five main
ingredients of a chicken soup recipe (onion, garlic, carrot, chicken, egg noodles), you can place those ingredients around your mental
house:

 At the front door, you can see a giant onion with legs and arms doing jumping jacks.
 When you walk through your front door and into your kitchen, you can see the sink overflowing with garlic cloves.
 Then, as you walk into your TV room, you can see two giant carrots making out on your couch.
 As you walk up the stairs, you can see dozens of chickens flying at you and feathers flying everywhere.
 Finally, when you go into the upstairs bathroom, you can imagine undressing and have a bath in a tub full of warm egg noodles.

“Some people say, ‘I will run out of space.’ (But) if I gave you a truck full of objects to place in a shopping
mall, would you be able to do that? Of course you would. If you look for it, you will find thousands and
thousands of places just waiting to be used in your mind. There are no limits to this system, only limits in your
own thinking.” – Kevin Horsley

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Insights from Limitless by Jim Kwik
If you're struggling to improve your mental abilities, it’s either due to a limiting mindset, limited motivation, or a lousy learning method.
Here is how the right mindset, motivation, and methods can help you improve your reading speed and comprehension.

Limitless Reading Mindset

If you insist you can't read fast, then your reading speed is fixed. Jim Kwik says, "When you fight for your limitations,
you get to keep them." The key to improving any mental ability is to suspend limiting beliefs and temporarily ‘act as
though’ your mental abilities are limitless. Entertain the idea your reading speed is 400% faster than your current
reading speed by practicing the following 4‐3‐2‐1 exercise and notice how much your baseline reading speed increases:

Set a timer for four minutes, open an easy to read book, and start reading at a comfortable pace while using your finger to underline the words
as you read them. When the four‐minute timer expires, mark the point at which you stopped. Go back to where you started, set a timer for
three minutes, and get to the point you reached after four minutes of reading. Don't worry about perfect comprehension; just ensure you see
every word. When the three‐minute timer expires, do the same for two minutes. Then one minute.

After this exercise, resume reading the book at a comfortable speed for four minutes. When you compare the number of words you read in
the first four minutes of the exercise with the number of words you can now read in four minutes, you will be pleasantly surprised by how
many more words you can read and comprehend. When you suspend your perceived limitations and ‘act as though’ you can read fast (as
you did in the final six minutes of the 4‐3‐2‐1 method), you realize more of your potential.

Limitless Reading Motivation

Jim Kwik says, "All learning is state dependent." If you pick up a book in a peak state of curiosity, wonder, and
excitement, you are bound to learn quicker and retain more. Therefore, before you start reading a book, put yourself
in a peak state of curiosity by repeatedly asking yourself the following three questions:

1. What great insight will I get from this book?

2. How will this insight forever change my life?
3. When will I get to use this insight?

Limitless Reading Methods

Jim Kwik says, “When was the last time you took a class called reading? For most, it was back in the 4th or 5th grade.
And if you’re like most people, your reading skill is probably still the same as it was back then.” If you haven't
changed your reading habits since elementary school, the following three habits are likely limiting your reading speed:
regression, subvocalization, and word‐by‐word reading.

Bad reading habit #1: Regression

Regression is the tendency for our eyes to go back and reread certain words in a sentence. Jim Kwik says, "Almost everyone does it to
some degree, and most of the time it is done subconsciously."

Solution: use your finger as a pacer to guide your reading and prevent your eyes from jumping around the text (our eyes love to follow
movement). If you move your finger at a pace that's just on the edge of your perceived max reading speed, it will require your full
attention to keep up ‐ more attention equals more retention.

Bad reading habit #2: Subvocalization

Subvocalization is the act of saying the words to yourself in your head as you read.

Solution: quietly count out loud as you read. It's hard for your mind to subvocalize words and count at the same time. If you count “One,
two, three, four, five…” while you read, you will free your mind of the inner narrator and train your brain to see the words on the page as
images and turn what you're reading into a mental motion picture experience.

Bad reading habit #3: Word‐by‐word reading

When you first learned how to read, you trained your eyes to look at one word at a time. But now you're familiar with most words and
have the ability to absorb multiple words at a single glance. Instead of reading “The | boy | walked | home,” you can read those four words
as a single word chunk. To read multiple words at a single glance, you will need to expand your visual reading field by learning to use your
peripheral vision. Try the free Chrome Extension ‘Spreed’ (or equivalent program) on your computer to train your visual reading field to
view large words chunks at a glance (Spreed takes a body of text in your browser and displays the text back to you in single word chunks).

When you start using these three methods: pacing, counting, and expanding/word chunking, you'll feel a little awkward. If you continue using
them, however, you'll start to see your speed and reading comprehension improve dramatically.

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Insights from A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley

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Summary of The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
On the road to becoming an ‘International Chess Master’ and Tai Chi Push Hands World Champion, author Josh Waitzkin discovered three
universal learning principles to reliably rise to the top 1% in any discipline.

Universal learning principle #1: Feel the fundamentals

Josh learned chess by clearing the chessboard and focusing on King and Pawn positions until he had a good sense
of how both pieces moved. Then he added a few more Pawns and a Knight and focused solely on the Knight’s
movements. He learned how the Knight moved and internalized basic Knight principles, like looking for double
attacks (i.e., attacking two pieces at one time). After gaining an intuitive feel for the Knight, Josh moved to the
Bishop, then the Rook, then the Queen.

“Soon enough, the movements and values of the chess pieces are natural to me. I don’t have to think about them consciously, but see their
potential simultaneously…I see how each piece affects those around it. Because the basic movements are natural to me, I can take in more
information and have a broader perspective of the board. Now when I look at a chess position, I can see all the pieces at once.” – Josh
Waitzkin

By isolating a core component (Knight, Bishop, Rook, etc.) and practicing simple variations until each component felt easy, Josh’s mind
was free to think through advanced combination attacks instead of being bogged down with basic rules and principles. By going slow at
first, he could quickly understand advanced chess principles (go slow to go fast).

Regardless of what skill you’re trying to learn, isolate and internalize the fundamentals; then layer on complexity.

“(A figure skater) should begin with the fundamentals of gliding along the ice, turning, and skating backwards with deepening relaxation.
Then, step by step, more and more complicated maneuvers can be absorbed, while she maintains the sense of ease that was initially
experienced within the simplest skill set.” – Josh Waitzkin

Universal learning principle #2: Stay true to your style

Josh fell in love with chess after watching Chess Hustlers in New York's Washington Square Park. Josh was
captivated by their wild, aggressive attacking style of chess. When Josh started formally learning chess, everything
he learned was designed to make him a better attacking player, like the Hustlers in Washington Square Park. Josh
slowly developed his unique attacking style and thrived in junior chess tournaments.

In his late teens, however, Josh put his faith in a Grandmaster who taught a passive chess style that eliminated
opponent moves with perfect positional play. Josh likened it to an Anaconda coiling around its prey, slowly killing it. This style felt foreign
to Josh, and his performance suffered. Josh had once loved moving pieces into chaotic positions and then finding a brilliant attack within
the chaos by trusting his intuition. Now he was told to think like someone else.

By moving away from his natural inclinations and trying to mold himself to someone else's style, his love for chess faded, and he stopped
competing. Josh realized his mistake years later and made sure not to repeat the mistake in his martial arts training. His path to the top of
the Tai Chi Push Hands was paved by building on his strengths and developing a style that felt natural to him.

Stay true to your style by finding teachers whose style you resonate with, then gradually tweak their style to develop your own. When
learning to write, write in a style that mimics your favorite writer. Then, over time, make modifications to find your unique voice.

Universal learning principle #3: Invest in loss

“Respond to heartbreak with hard work.” – Josh Waitzkin

The ‘Art of Learning’ is about enjoying the process of learning, but it's also about putting your ego on the line by
competing on a big stage or committing to public performances.

Why? Because the pain of public mistakes provides the fuel to study technical and psychological errors and
accelerate growth.

Investing in loss means putting your ego on the line and intensely studying your losses and learning from your mistakes. The return on
investment will come in the form of better preparation, effective new strategies, and a renewed drive to practice.

“Great ones are willing to get burned time and again as they sharpen their swords in the fire. Consider Michael Jordan. It is common
knowledge that Jordan made more last‐minute shots to win the game for his team than any other player in the history of the NBA. What is
not so well known, is that Jordan also missed more last‐minute shots to lose the game for his team than any other player in the history of the
game. What made him the greatest was not perfection, but a willingness to put himself on the line as a way of life. Did he suffer all those
nights when he sent twenty thousand Bulls fans home heartbroken? Of course. But he was willing to look bad on the road to basketball
immortality.” – Josh Waitzkin

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Insights from Ultralearning by Scott Young
“Ultralearning: A strategy for acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self‐directed and intense.”
– Scott Young
Whatever skill you want to acquire, accelerate your skill development by creating an Ultralearning project.

To start an Ultralearning project, focus on three Ultralearning strategies:

Make a Metalearning Map

“Metalearning: Start by learning how to learn the subject or skill you want to tackle.” – Scott Young

As an Ultralearner, create your own curriculum so that you don’t spend time learning material you won’t use.

Spend the first 10% of your allotted learning time to answer the following question: "What concepts do I need to
understand, what facts do I need to memorize, and what procedures do I need to practice to reach my
performance goal?"

First, determine what exactly you wish to be able to do at the end of your Ultralearning project. If you want to learn Mandarin, be specific
on what you want to do with Mandarin. If your goal is to have a conversation in Mandarin, you don't need to memorize Mandarin
characters.

After specifying what you want to do, conduct online searches, skim books, and reach out to subject experts to determine what concepts
you need to understand, what facts you need to memorize, and what procedures you need to practice.

Draw three columns on a piece of paper. At the top of column one, write, "Concepts to Understand." If you’re learning computer
programming, you need to understand arrays, functions, and data types.

In the second column, write, “Facts to Memorize." If you’re learning Spanish, you should memorize a list of common verbs, nouns, and
conjugations.

In the last column, write, "Procedures/Movements to Practice." If you’re learning Mandarin, you need to practice Mandarin tones.

Design Drills
“Drill: Be ruthless in improving your weakest points. Break down complex skills into small parts; then master those
parts and build them back together again.” – Scott Young

Once you've created a list of things you need to understand, memorize, and practice; circle a few items on your
list that you think will be challenging to learn and critical to your success. Use the remaining portion of your 10%
planning time to research and design drills for the items you’ve circled.

When Ben Franklin was a young man, he developed his writing skills by designing two writing exercises. In the first exercise, Franklin took a
piece of prose he had written and replaced as many words with synonyms as possible, while still maintaining the rhyme of the original
prose. In the other exercise, Franklin read articles in his favorite magazine, ‘The Spectator,’ and wrote notes in the margins. Days later,
Franklin reconstructed the main argument of each article from memory. After each attempt, Franklin went back to the original articles to
learn how he could’ve made his arguments more compelling.

Like Franklin, you can take items that you need to understand, memorize, and practice, and design drills for them. Executing a practice drill
is like isolating a key muscle, like a bodybuilder doing dips to develop his triceps.

Overlearn
Overlearning means going beyond the requirements of your target performance to make your learning stick.

A study found that students who take a calculus class immediately after an algebra class recalled significantly
more algebra than the students who just took the algebra class, even if the algebra‐only students had better
grades in the algebra class.

Embrace overlearning by adding ‘next‐level’ material to your learning schedule. You can think of overlearning like
completing course work for Psychology 101 and 102 to prepare for a Psychology 101 exam.

Another way to embrace overlearning is to overperform. Scott’s fan prepared for a speech contest by performing for a group of 7th graders
first. Seventh graders are much harder to engage than the audience at his speech contest.

“Beyond principles and tactics is a broader Ultralearning ethos. It’s one of taking responsibility for your own
learning: deciding what you want to learn, how you want to learn it, and crafting your own plan to learn what
you need to… Learning well isn’t just about following a set of prescriptions.” – Scott Young

www.ProductivityGame.com 91
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 92
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 “Choose the highest yield “Rank the highest frequency items “A goal without real
thought of as exploration. This material and you can be an based on their ability to provide early consequences is wishful
is where we throw a lot on the idiot and enjoy stunning wins and feeling of competency thinking. Good follow‐through
wall to see what sticks…it is success.” (highest return, least amount of doesn’t depend on the right
where we answer the question: – Tim Ferriss time).” intentions. It depends on the
how do I break this amorphous – Tim Ferriss right incentives.” ‐ Tim Ferriss
“skill” into small, manageable Identify the 20% of available
pieces?” sub‐skills that you can use to Learn and practice the 20% high Tim recommends using a site
– Tim Ferriss produce 80% of the desired frequency sub‐skills in a sequence called stickK.com to set
results (the sub‐skills you’ll use that allow you to quickly experience ‘stakes’. The site allows you
Break down the skill into a sub‐ most frequently). a feeling of competency. to pick any goal, choose a
set of skills. Understand each referee (a friend to keep you
of these sub‐skills by reading For Example: “Language is “For cooking methods, the most honest), put money on the
‘conventional’ and infinitely expansive (much like popular (as also confirmed by my line, and pick an ‘anti‐charity’
‘unconventional’ guides. Look cooking) and therefore horribly interviews) were as follows: Grilling, – an organization you so
for similarities between the overwhelming if unfiltered. Sautéing & Braising despise so much that you’d
two. Forget studying and masters The method that is most forgiving— rather slam your head in a car
long lists if you don’t plan to braising— goes first, because early door than donate to them.
Interview world‐class use them in 80% or more of the wins are paramount. The order of
performers of the skill (ex: conversations that you will learning then becomes: Braising, “Based on stickK’s goal
Olympic silver medalist) and initially have. Sautéing then Grilling.” – Tim Ferriss completion percentages from
ask them: 2008– 2011, we find that the
If you select the wrong When learning how to swim, don’t success rate with no stakes
 “If I needed to perform in material, the wrong textbook, start by learning the proper kicking (no money on the line) is
this skill with only 20% of the the wrong group of words, it technique because you’ll make 33.5%. Once we add stakes like
ideal training time, what would doesn’t matter how much (or minimal gains in swimming speed. an anti‐charity, that success
you have me focus on?” how well) you study. It doesn’t Instead, practice pushing off the side rate more than doubles to
matter how good your teacher of the pool and gliding through the 72.8%!” – Tim Ferriss
 “What do most novices do is. One must find the highest‐ water. This will provide you with a
that you consider to be the frequency material.” – Tim feeling of competency and motivate  When learning to cook,
biggest waste of time?” Ferriss you to learn additional sub‐skills. schedule dinner parties to
give you the incentive to be a
Ask yourself: It’s also important to start with sub‐ better cook.
 “Can I see myself using this skills that have a high margin of
at least 80% of time initially error. You will make several errors  When learning the guitar,
performing the skill?” when starting a skill so you need to tell a friend that you will learn
feel safe doing so. Fear and anxiety a new song by a certain date
 “Have I narrowed down my quickly erode feelings of OR give $200 to an anti‐
study material and practice competency. Therefore, if you’re charity.
routine to the highest learning how to swim, start in the
frequency items?” shallow end.

www.ProductivityGame.com 93
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 If you want to learn how to be more charismatic you need to learn
he wasn't nearly as charismatic as he was later in life. In his initial how to convey a sense of power, warmth, and presence
presentations, he was bashful, awkward, and nerdy. simultaneously and effortlessly.

It took Steve Jobs several years to become the charismatic person You can find this rare combination of power, warmth, and
most of us remember. 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
Author Fox Cabane has spent her adult life studying and teaching presence that gives charismatic people their magnetic
charisma. She has proven that like Steve Jobs, you can develop personalities.
your charisma with practice.
The best way to convey power, warmth, and presence
The assumption that charisma is something “you naturally have” is automatically and effortlessly is to put yourself in powerful, warm,
a myth. Charisma is not a gift; charisma is a skill you can develop. 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 Presence

Before a social interaction, take a few When you walk into a social situation, Before and during a conversation with
seconds to imagine yourself transforming imagine that everyone in the room has someone, you might find your mind
into a big gorilla. angel wings. thinking about what you’re going to say
next or worried about a problem
If you're a big gorilla, you take up a lot of Every angel must perform good deeds in unrelated to the conversation.
space, and when you walk into a room, his or her life to become an angel. By
people need to get out of your way to imagining angel wings on every person, When this happens, you need to bring
make space for you. When you see you assume that every person you meet is your attention back to the present
yourself as a big gorilla, you see yourself a good person who has performed an moment by briefly noticing the feeling of
standing up, inflating your chest, and amazing act of altruism. Maybe the person your toes touching the floor, the fabric of
pounding it with your fists. you’re about to talk to rescued a child your sock, or the sole of your shoe.
from a burning building or took care of a
By visualizing yourself as the big gorilla in dying parent for several years. For an easy to remember visual, I like to
the room, you’ll find that you reduce the imagine my brain being transported into
tension in your shoulders, open your Regardless of what they may have done, my big toe. The brain in my toe can detect
posture, and stand tall. A relaxed, open, you know they are fundamentally good the slightest sensations in all ten toes.
and tall posture naturally conveys a sense and deserve your utmost respect. Both of
of power to other people. which will naturally convey a sense of When I concentrate on my toes, I notice
warmth. my awareness shifting from the thoughts
“This is a great exercise to use before any in my head, down through my body and
meeting or interaction where you want to “Many of my coaching clients (even into my toes. After focusing on my toes,
both feel and broadcast confidence—for hardened senior executives) have told me my attention is brought back to the
instance, before a job interview, or before how extraordinarily effective this present moment, and I can redirect that
meeting someone who’s a bit visualization has been for them. They can attention to the person I’m talking to.
intimidating.” ‐ Olivia Fox Cabane instantly feel more internal presence and
warmth, and I can see a great increase in “When you exhibit presence, those around
the amount of both presence and warmth you feel listened to, respected, and
that their body language projects.” ‐ Olivia valued.” ‐ Olivia Fox Cabane
Fox Cabane

www.ProductivityGame.com 95
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 The Effects of Feeling of Disempowered

(open & wide body position) (closed & slouched body position)

1. Creative and resourceful 1. Forgetful and narrowly focused

2. Decisive and resilient 2. Fearful and anxious
3. Focused 3. Distracted and impulsive
4. Confident 4. Unconfident
5. Compassionate 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

www.ProductivityGame.com 97
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

www.ProductivityGame.com 98
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.

www.ProductivityGame.com 99
Insights from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Eliminating a bad habit with sheer willpower rarely works. The only reliable way to banish bad habits is to leverage the Golden Rule of Habit
Change. The Golden Rule of Habit Change says, if you want to change a bad habit, keep the habit cue (what triggers your craving) and the
reward (the sensation you crave), but insert a new routine.

“The Golden Rule has influenced treatments for alcoholism, obesity, obsessive‐compulsive disorders, and hundreds of other destructive
behaviors, and understanding it can help anyone change their own habits.”

Whether you want to stop wasting hours mindlessly checking your phone or snacking on food that makes you feel lethargic, use the
Golden Rule to take control of your bad habits by following these three steps:

Rethink the reward

When a smoker craves a cigarette, they want the nicotine in the cigarette…right? If that were true, smokers who
use a nicotine patch or chew nicotine gum should easily quit smoking. But less than 10% of smokers who use a
nicotine patch or chew nicotine gum quit smoking.

What smokers actually crave is less obvious. Some smokers crave a cigarette because they have associated
smoking with being outside and socializing with other smokers. Other smokers crave a cigarette because smoking
relieves boredom and provides a temporary escape from work. A smoker doesn’t need to smoke a cigarette to receive these rewards;
many non‐smoking behaviors can relieve boredom and provide a temporary escape from work.

When you have a craving for a cupcake or an urge to check your phone, your brain may want stimulation and distraction. Therefore, you
don’t need to eat the cupcake or check your phone to get the reward you seek. Instead, sipping a cup of tea or doing ten pushups might
satisfy your craving. The only way to know if alternative behaviors will satisfy your craving is to test new routines.

Test new routines

While writing ‘The Power of Habit,’ author Charles Duhigg developed a cookie‐eating habit and gained several
pounds. Thankfully, Duhigg had just learned the Golden Rule of Habit Change, so he started testing routines that
could take the place of his cookie eating routine while still satisfying his cookie craving.

First, Duhigg isolated the cue that triggered his cookie craving by answering four questions when he craved a
cookie:

1. Where am I?
2. What time is it?
3. What is my emotional state (Stressed? Anxious? Bored?)
4. What am I doing (i.e., what action proceeds my craving)?

After a week of observing his cookie craving cues, Duhigg noticed a pattern: At roughly 3:30 PM every day, while in the office, I craved a
cookie.

Now that Duhigg was aware of his cookie craving cue, he could test a new routine each time the cue was present. For the next few days,
Duhigg set an alarm at 3:30 PM and executed the following routines:

 Day 1: Walk around the block and go back to my desk without eating anything.
 Day 2: Buy an apple at the cafeteria, eat it, then go back to my desk.
 Day 3: Order a cup of coffee and drink it at my desk.
 Day 4: Go to a friend's office, gossip for a few minutes, then go back to my desk.

"Through experimentation, I learned that it wasn't really the cookie I craved. Rather, it was a moment of distraction and the opportunity
to socialize."

Script the new routine

Write out and complete the following sentence to increase the odds that you execute your new routine the next
time your bad habit cue is present:

 “When [cue for the bad habit], I will [new routine that satisfies your craving] and experience [the reward
you got from your bad habit].”

All new Starbucks employees are required to write in their employee workbook, "When my customer is unhappy
[cue], I will… [routine] and enjoy… [reward: a grateful customer or praise from my manager]." This behavior plan helps employees with a
track record of losing their temper stay calm and poised throughout an eight‐hour shift.

When you write out a new routine, you will be less likely to revert to your old routine because you have a plan and don’t need to decide
what to do when your old cue is present.

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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 Your Director is Less Effective Later in
the Day
Recent research shows that the short‐ Your stage is illuminated by a single spotlight,
term working memory of the human and that spotlight can only focus on one actor at Over the course of a workday, hundreds
brain (your mental stage) can only a time. If two or more actors are trying to get of unwanted actors are trying to get on
fit four actors (four units of your attention, the light needs to rapidly stage and steal attention away from
information). Focusing on more than switch between those actors. Imagine watching important actors on stage.
four units of information at a time is a performance where two actors are talking at
impossible, unless you can find a way that same time, and a spotlight is rapidly Each time your director has to step in
to simply and chunk the information switching between those actors… That would be and hold back an unwanted actor,
(ex: create mental models or acronyms a terrible performance to watch! he/she loses a bit of energy.
for multiple units of information).
Author David Rock describes a study from the Eventually, your stage director becomes
Although you can fit up to four actors University of California at San Diego that too weak to stop unwanted actors from
on your stage at one time, "a study "showed when people do two cognitive tasks at walking on stage and ruining the
by Brian McElree at New York once, their cognitive capacity can drop from performance.
University found that the number of that of a Harvard MBA to that of an eight‐year‐
chunks of information you can old. It’s a phenomenon called dual‐task
remember accurately with no memory interference."
degradation is, remarkably, only one."

3 Ways to Deal with the Limitations of Your Mental Stage

When deciding among multiple Instead of rapidly switching your spotlight When your stage director is having a
options, limit the number of actors between two or more sources of information hard time keeping unwanted actors off
on stage by isolating two options at a (text messages, email messages, work project, the stage, start pushing cognitively
time. etc.), process the information in a serial demanding tasks on your to‐do list to
manner. Take a few moments to schedule the next morning (if possible).
If you 're deciding between five or tasks so you can give each task your undivided
more colors for a design, attention. If you need to plan a big project,
arrange head‐to‐head battles starting understand a complex subject, or make
with the first two colors. Isolate color If you want to complete three tasks in the next a major decision, do it in the first half
one and color two on the list and ask hour, set up a sequence of three 20‐minute of the day when your stage director
yourself, “Which of these two colors time blocks and assign each task to a separate can do a better job of keeping actors
improves the design?” Whichever time block. off stage.
color wins goes on to face the third
color on the list.

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www.ProductivityGame.com 102
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 $100 Startup & 100 Side Hustles by Chris Guillebeau

“The new reality is that working at a job may be the far riskier choice. Instead, take the safe road and go out on
your own.” – Chris Guillebeau
Chris Guillebeau interviewed thousands of people who started a business with less than $1000 (many with less than $100), and now each
generate more than $50,000 a year in business profit. These micro‐entrepreneurs didn’t have special skills or a business degree; they found
a product or service others would find useful and they were passionate about. The micro‐entrepreneurs had a bias for action, strived to
make their first sale as fast as possible, and adjusted their approach until they had a profitable business.

Many successful micro‐entrepreneurs focused on two high potential return, low financial investment product categories: information
products and private label products. Here are examples from each product category and a roadmap to get started.

Profitable idea pool #1: Information products

 Frequent traveler shares his knowledge of frequent flyer miles and how to find cheap flights with
an email list and generates $963,234 in sales in the first year.
 Lady loves making sourdough bread with her daughter; she creates a series of sourdough
breadmaking online courses on Udemy and goes from collecting food stamps to collecting
$179,000 in sales in two years.
 Architect studies for an industry exam and shares his notes online in an eBook – makes $7,008 in
the first month, and over $30,000/month the following year.

When people are new to an industry, need to take an exam, or want to learn a new skill, they don’t have time to do research or read an
entire book. They'd rather have a short eBook guide, convenient video course, or a few curated emails to find solve their problem and
accelerate their learning, which creates an excellent opportunity to take what you know (or what you want to learn) and package it into a
profitable product.

“Choose something specific, and focus on benefits. It doesn’t matter if your course has forty‐eight different modules and a voice‐
controlled system that will give you daily affirmations. It matters if it will make your customer a better person, solve a big problem for
them, or otherwise improve their life. Craft everything around these needs!” – Chris Guillebeau

1. Select an attractive but complex topic that is potentially valuable to others.

2. Set up a free or low‐cost email list and invite everyone you know to join.
3. Provide your mailing list with useful, curated information.
4. Introduce a paid membership option, eBook guide, or video course for those who want premium content.

Profitable idea pool #2: Private label products

 Petroleum Engineer from Houston escapes the corporate rat race by creating an attractive brand
for a basic $30 manual coffee grinder – sells over 200,000 units on Amazon.
 Family travels the world thanks to revenue generated by their customized Italian ceramic frying
pan.
 Marketing manager spends $200 to manufacture and custom label a wristband and adds a special
scent to repels mosquitos – a year later, he generates $350,000 in profit.

Thanks to Alibaba, Crowdfunding, and Fulfillment by Amazon, you don’t need to be a skilled inventor and don’t need a $200,000 loan to
manufacturer, warehouse, and sell a physical product.

1. Search for items on Alibaba.com that you can custom label and sell (create a custom label and make design modifications to a
desired product by hiring a designer on fiverr.com or freelancer.com). Consider the following products:
a. Products you use and can easily sell to your target customer because you understand their pain and desire.
b. Products not well represented on Amazon (similar products on Amazon that are too generic or have poor sales
pages).
c. Products people will share on social media (you want your product sales to increase by word of mouth).
2. Create a Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) account and get Amazon to store your product, accept orders on your behalf, and deliver
your product to the customer – all you need to do is create an Amazon Store and product sales page on the Amazon website.
3. If the manufacturers minimum order is too expensive, create a crowdfunding page on Indiegogo or Kickstarter and market your
product before you manufacture it. Promote your crowdfunding product page with Facebook ads (spend $10 to gauge the
interest and determine if you need to improve your ad and/or sales page, or find a better product). Only manufacture your
product if you crowdfund the manufacturers minimum order amount.

In $100 Startup, the founder of a Denver food tour business wisely says, "The biggest lesson I learned was to trust my own judgment.
When I started my tour business, I got all sorts of advice from people around me, ranging from why it wouldn’t work at all to how things
should be run on a day‐to‐day basis. I had researched it and knew it was a viable idea, so I decided to keep my own counsel and quit
asking people what they thought. People who know less about the business than me do not get to make decisions about it. I value input,
but now I seek it out from people who have unique perspectives about how I can improve.”

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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 non-
wine 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 non-
wine 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 non-
wine 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.

The Lean Startup Method:

1. Create a Vision
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.

2. Identify Critical Assumptions

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 Influence by Robert Cialdini
“Why is it that a request stated in a certain way will be rejected, while a request that asks for the same favor in a slightly different
fashion will be successful?” ‐ Robert Cialdini
The success of a salesperson, fundraiser, or leader depends upon their ability to get others to comply. Here are six proven psychological
principles to influence compliance and generate sales, raise money, and get people to join your cause.

Scarcity
Rule: We are more likely to buy something if we fear losing our opportunity to buy it; we are motivated by a potential
loss more than a potential gain.
How a business/salesperson leverages the persuasive power of scarcity:
 Informs a customer that a product is in “limited supply.”
 Uses a countdown timer at checkout (Amazon uses countdown timers on their ‘lightened deals’ and on ‘guaranteed delivery dates’ –
“Order in the next ten minutes and you’ll receive this item by June 1.”).
 Instead of stating what the customer stands to gain (“If you buy X, you’ll save Y dollars a month.”), a salesperson states what the
customer stands to lose (“if you don’t buy X, you’ll continue losing Y dollars a month.”).

Social Proof
Rule: When uncertain, we look to others to see how we should act.
How a business/salesperson leverages the persuasive power of social proof:
 Door‐to‐door salesperson names three of your neighbors using the service they’re selling.
 Retailers like Amazon and Walmart include a “Best Seller” label above specific items. “We seem to assume that if a lot of people are
doing the same thing, they must know something we don’t.” – Robert Cialdini
 Companies use testimonials on a product sales page ‐ pictures of smiling customers with a paragraph explaining why they love the
product.

Authority
Rule: We have a deep‐seated sense of duty to comply with authority (ex: we are conditioned to comply with a man or
woman in a police uniform or doctor’s lab coat). Therefore, we are more likely to buy from someone who “appears” to
be an authority in their industry.
How a business/salesperson leverages the persuasive power of authority:
 Wears a business suit to imply authority (an experiment in Texas found when a man wears a freshly pressed business suit and tie, people
are three times more likely to illegally cross the street with that man than if he wears a simple work shirt and trousers).
 Displays status symbols (high‐status = authority): luxury car, expensive watch, shelf of books in the background of a video call, etc.
 Uses impressive sounding titles: senior sales associate, VP of _________, CEO, etc.

Liking
Rule: We buy from people we like, and we like people who are like us (similar interests, background, lifestyle), who
compliment us, who spend time with us, and who we find physically attractive.
How a business/salesperson leverages the persuasive power of liking:
 Observes and relates (car saleswoman notices a soccer ball and cleats in the back of the car, and later, mentions how she’s looking
forward to getting outside and playing soccer after work).
 Compliments a customer’s choices (“I like your choice of black; black cars are easier to keep clean.”).

Escalating Commitments (Consistency)

Rule: When we make a small commitment, we are significantly more likely to make a larger commitment.
How a business/salesperson leverages the persuasive power of escalating commitments:
 Offers $1 to join a monthly membership for the first month, before requiring $39/month to remain a member.
 Hosts a 30‐minute webinar for a new online course ‐ if we commit 30‐minutes to the webinar, we are more likely to pay $599 for the
course.

Exchange (Reciprocation)
Rule: When we receive something of value, we feel morally obligated to return the favor.
How a business/salesperson leverages the persuasive power of exchange (reciprocation):
 Supermarkets offer samples of cheese, which leads to more cheese sales
 Car salesman makes a concession on price or appears to fight with their boss to lower the price, and we might return the favor by
buying a car from that salesperson.

When considering using the six persuasive sales tools, apply the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

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Insights from Exactly What to Say by Phil Jones
“Magic Words are sets of words that talk straight to the subconscious brain. The subconscious brain is a
powerful tool in decision‐making because it is preprogrammed through our conditioning to make decisions
without overanalyzing them.” – Phil Jones
Below are five sets of Magic Words you can use to persuade most people to listen to your idea or product pitches and take action. For each
set of Magic Words, I’ll use the example of selling this book, ‘Exactly What to Say’ to a business owner.

"What do you know about…?"

Example: "What do you know about the magic words of persuasion?

When you introduce a topic with the preface: “What do you know about…?”, you put your recipient’s mind to work,
searching for knowledge related to the topic you want to discuss. Once your recipient realizes he or she has a knowledge
gap, they will be eager to fill it and curious to know more. At this point, you have an opportunity to introduce a few unexpected benefits of
what you’re pitching/selling.

"How open‐minded are you…?"

Example: “How open‐minded are you to learning a set of words that could dramatically increase your sales?"

No one wants to be seen as ‘close‐minded’; therefore, to save face, your recipient will likely pause and listen to what you
have to say (even if he or she is initially opposed to your idea or resistant to buying your product).

Now that you’ve got your prospect's attention with either “What do you know about…?” or “How open‐minded are you…?”, you need to
increase their interest in what you’re pitching. Therefore, the next set of Magic Words is:

“Just imagine...”
Example: "Just imagine if you could hit your sales target by using a few Magic Words.”

Author Phil Jones says, ‘Just imagine' is the adult equivalent to: 'Once upon a time.' “When you hear the words, ‘Just
imagine,’ the subconscious brain kicks a switch and opens up the image viewer, and it cannot help but picture the very
scenario you are creating.”

Don’t stop at getting your recipient to see the positive difference your idea or product can make, get them to feel the difference your idea
or product can make with the following set of Magic Words:

"How would you feel if ..."

Example: "How would you feel if you doubled your sales next month?”

Author Phil Jones says, “The more contrast you can create between where somebody does not want to be and where
they hope to be, the more likely you are to get people to move.”

Now that you've got someone interested in your product or idea, they need a ‘nudge’ to make the decision you want them to make. If you
don't push your recipient to decide, they’ll put it off.

Author Phil Jones says, “To me, the primary job description of all sales professionals is to be ‘decision catalysts’ in the lives of their
customers and prospects, yet still the job can be more simply described as ‘professional mind‐maker‐upper.’”

If you want to become a ‘professional mind maker‐upper,’ use the following set of magic words:

"The way I see it, you have three options…"

Example: "The way I see it, you have three options. First, rely on your current sales skills and continue to struggle. Second,
spend thousands of dollars on sales workshops to improve your sales skills. Or third, pick up this short book for $11.99 to
substantially improve your sales skills and start acquiring more customers."

The key is to follow up the preface, “The way I see it, you have three options…” with two options that seem painful (troublesome status
quo and a laborious alternative) and the option you want them to pick. If you frame the final option in a way that makes it seem like the
path of least resistance, your recipient is more likely to choose option three and act in a way you want them to.

“The rhythm of three makes for easy listening for the other person, and by leaving your preferred choice until the end, you easily build
the value of that option and load the choices so your preferred outcome stands out as a clear favorite.” – Phil Jones

“The right words at the right time can make all the difference.” – Phil Jones

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Insights from Start with Why & Find Your Why by Simon Sinek
Great Businesses Start with Why
In 2018, Nike released an ad with the face of the quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick, and the
caption, "Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything." No product, just Kaepernick's face and
those words.

Nike's stock fell 3% the day after the ad was released. But over the next week, Nike's online sales jumped 25%.

Nike made it clear what they believe and what they stand for, and those who believe what Nike believe went out
and bought a bunch of Nike products.

Great businesses, like Nike, start by telling you what they stand for, not what they’re selling.

"People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it." – Simon Sinek

Great Leaders Start with Why

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did NOT stand in front of 250,000 people in Washington DC and say, "I have a
10‐step plan to end racial segregation in the South." Dr. King told the crowd about an inspiring vision – his WHY ‐
he was willing to die for: "I dream of a world where little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands
with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers…”

Dr. King motivated thousands of people to join the civil rights movement because he started with inspiration, not
instruction.

Finding Your WHY

Find your WHY and you’ll not only be able to inspire others to buy your product or join your cause, you’ll inspire yourself to get out of bed and
take on challenging tasks.

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." ‐ Friedrich Nietzsche

“Discovering your WHY is like panning for gold in the river of the past: the gold is there, lost in the debris of the river, hidden by rushing
water.” – Simon Sinek

As you search through the river of your past, your goal is to fill the following WHY statement:

Examples:

"My WHY is TO propel people forward SO THAT they can make their mark on the world." ‐
David Mead (co‐author of Find Your Why)

"My WHY is TO inspire people to do what inspires them, SO THAT together we can change
the world for the better." – Simon Sinek

Method #1: The Friend Exercise

Author Simon Sinek found his WHY asking close friends: “Why do you consider me a good friend?”

One friend said, "I can trust you to be there for me," and "You're fun to be around." But Sinek encouraged him to go deeper, and asked, "What
is it that makes me a unique friend?"

After a few uncomfortable moments, his friend said something that gave him goosebumps: "When I talk to you, I feel inspired."

Sinek felt a surge of energy and knew he was close to finding his WHY. He thought more about it and experimented with different wording until
he came up with the statement "My WHY is TO inspire people to do what inspires them, SO THAT together we can change the world."

Once Sinek could articulate his WHY, every decision filtered through his WHY. As a result, he shut down his marketing business and started
writing ‘Start with Why’…the rest is history.

Method #2: Impactful People Exercise

Create a list of people who have helped you become the person you are today.

• Did your grandma give you the confidence to be yourself when most people thought you were weird?
• Did your middle school teacher change the way you see the world and your role in it?
• Did a coach help you realize your potential?

Find a partner and tell them about the specific impact each person had on you. Your partner’s job is to notice when you talk about an impact
that makes you come alive. Your WHY is to have that impact on others. Fill in your WHY statement accordingly.

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." ‐ Mark Twain

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Insights from Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
“In a story, audiences must always know who the hero is, what the hero wants, who the hero has to defeat to
get what they want, what tragic thing will happen if the hero doesn’t win, and what wonderful thing will
happen if they do. If an audience can’t answer these basic questions, they’ll check out and the movie will lose
millions at the box office.” – Donald Miller
When marketing your personal brand, your startup, or the business you’re working for, capture your
customer’s attention by answering four basic story questions.
Who is the hero?
“Your customer should be the hero of the story, not your brand. This is the secret every phenomenally successful
business understands.” – Donald Miller

Your role as a marketer is to act as a guide in your customer’s story (you’re Yoda, and your customer is Luke
Skywalker). Talk more about the customer and less about yourself. If you talk about your backstory, your goals, and
your achievements, your customer won’t feel like a hero.

What does the hero want?

You should be able to pause a great film after the first ten minutes and know exactly what the hero wants.

 At the beginning of Star Wars, Luke wants to avenge the death of his aunt and uncle.
 At the beginning of The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne wants to know his true identity.

“If The Bourne Identity were a movie about a spy named Jason Bourne searching for his true identity, but it also
included scenes of Bourne trying to lose weight, marry a girl, pass the bar exam, win on Jeopardy, and adopt a
cat…The audience would lose interest.” – Donald Miller

Craft your marketing messages around ONE THING your customer wants from your brand. What one result can you guide your customer
toward? Here are a few examples from the book:

 Landscaping business: "We help make your yard look better than your neighbors."
 College alumni association: "We’ll help you leave a meaningful legacy."

When you clarify your marketing around one desire, you invite your customer into a story by getting them to think, "How will they get me
what I want?"

Who does the hero have to defeat?

How exciting would Harry Potter be without Voldemort? How entertaining would Star Wars be without Darth Vader?
How engaging would Rocky IV be without the big, bad Russian?

“If we want our customers’ ears to perk up when we talk about our products and services, we should position
those products and services as weapons they can use to defeat a villain. And the villain should be dastardly.” –
Donald Miller

If you offer time management software, make distractions the villain ‐ personify distractions as evil bank robbers with masks, robbing your
customers’ time and killing their entrepreneurial dreams.

By personifying and clarifying a villain and positioning your business as a tool to defeat that villain, your customer will feel like a hero who's
ready to rise to the challenge.

What tragic thing will happen if the hero doesn’t win?

If Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and Frodo don't defeat their villain, an evil force will enslave the world (or galaxy)
…there’s a lot at stake.

To make your marketing stories engaging, talk about the stakes – what is the cost of NOT doing business with you?
Wendy's did this with their, "Where's the beef?" marketing campaign. Wendy's wanted you to know that if you didn’t
choose Wendy’s to satisfy your hamburger craving, you'd be stuck with an unsatisfying hamburger from another fast
food restaurant.

Clarifying what will happen if your hero doesn’t act is a powerful story tactic, but use it carefully. Adding fear to your message is like adding
salt to your meal. Without it, your message is bland, but too much of it and your message is off‐putting. Including just a dash of fear makes
your message a compelling story your customer wants to be a part of.

“Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives. Tell them.” – Donald Miller

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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 “The Rule of Ordinary People—that says the blessing of ordinary
start by considering how you want your company to interact people is that they make your job more difficult. The typical owner
with its customers. You test different wording for your sales calls of a small business prefers highly skilled people because he believes
and modify your sales script to increase its effectiveness. You they make his job easier—he can simply leave the work to them.
write down everything you learn in your companies Sales That is, the typical small business owner prefers Management by
Operation Manual. Abdication to Management by Delegation.

“Before long, the Sales Operations Manual contains the exact “Unfortunately, the inevitable result of this kind of thinking is that
scripts for handling incoming calls, outgoing calls, meeting the the business also grows to depend on the whims and moods of its
customer at the door. The exact responses to customer inquiries, people. If they’re in the mood, the job gets done. If they’re not, it
complaints, concerns. The system by which an order is entered, doesn’t. In this kind of business, a business that relies on discretion,
returns are transacted, new product requests are acted upon, ‘How do I motivate my people?’ becomes the constant question.
inventory is secured.” – Michael Gerber ‘How do I keep them in the mood?’ It is literally impossible to
produce a consistent result in a business that depends on
When building your operations manual, ask yourself: extraordinary people. No business can do it for long. And no
extraordinary business tries to!” – Michael Gerber
“What would best serve our customer here? How could I most
easily give the customer what he wants while also maximizing After hiring an ‘ordinary’ person to be your salesperson, hand
profits for the company? And at the same time, how could I give them the manual and walk them through it. In a few weeks you’ll
the person responsible for that work the best possible have your replacement performing the job just as good as you
experience?” – Michael Gerber did. Now that you’ve freed yourself from the sales position, you
can develop systems for other areas of your business.
When your Sales Operation Manual is complete (and you’ve
followed your procedures exactly as you’ve written them to get "The system becomes the tools your people use to increase their
results you desire), it’s time to run an ad for a salesperson. 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
“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 Make it your mission to work ON the business (building systems)
(you’ve) spent so much time and energy discovering. Someone for instead of IN the business. Aim to be non‐essential to any system
whom questions haven’t become answers. Someone who is open that produces your company’s product or service.
to the possibility of learning skills he hasn’t developed yet, skills he
wants to learn.

“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 Good to Great by Jim Collins
“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.” – Jim Collins

Jim Collins and his team studied 11 publicly traded companies that performed at or below the market average for 15 years, then outperformed
the market by more than threefold over the next 15 years.

Collins compared these ‘Good to Great’ companies to nearly identical companies (same industry, size, and access to resources) that failed to
outperform the market. Collin's and his team discovered that the Good to Great companies mastered three concepts the comparison
companies did not. You can use these three concepts to determine if the companies you invest in, the company you work for, or the business
you own can go from good to great.

The Hedgehog Concept

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” – Ancient Greek Parable

The Good to great companies had a hedgehog concept – a core strategy; a unifying vision they simplified their business around. The Good to
Great companies discovered their hedgehog concept by focusing on three circles.

Circle #1: What can we (and can not) be the best in the world at?

Wells Fargo outperformed the market by a multiple of four from 1983 to 1998, “accept(ed) the
truth that it could not be better than Citicorp in global banking. Wells Fargo then turned its
attention to what it could be the best in the world at: running a bank like a business, with a
focus on the western United States.”– Jim Collins

Circle #2: What is our economic engine?

How can the company generate more profit per X than any other company in the industry (X might
be customers of a certain demographic, like new mothers living in Manhattan; or employees or
stores)? Wells Fargo discovered that by restructuring their branches to have more ATMs and fewer
employees, they could generate more profit per employee than any other bank.

Circle #3: What are we deeply passionate about?

A big difference between Philip Morris (a Good to Great company from 1964 to 1979) and other tobacco companies, was executives at Philip
Morris genuinely believed life was better with cigarettes, despite the long‐term health risks. A Philip Morris vice‐chairman once said, “I love
cigarettes, it’s one of the things that makes life really worth living.”

The Bus
Good to Great companies are careful about who they let on their bus, are quick to get the wrong people off their bus, and constantly move the
right people around until they find the right seat.

All good to great managed their people (i.e., their bus) using three principles:

 Principle #1: When in doubt, don’t hire – keep looking.

 Principle #2: When you know you need to make a people change, act. Collins says, “Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair
to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people.” You’ll know if
you need to make a change if the answer is ‘no’ either questions: “Would we hire this person again?” & “If this person told us she
was leaving to pursue a new exciting opportunity, would we feel terribly disappointed?”
 Principle #3: Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

Level 5 Leadership
“Compared to high‐profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good‐to‐great leaders seem to
have come from Mars...They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.” – Jim Collins

All the Good to Great leaders were Level 5 leaders ‐ great managers with the perfect mix of humility and stoic resolve to do whatever it took to
make the company great.

The Level 5 leaders Collins interviewed routinely said things like, "I don't think I can take much credit. We were blessed with marvelous
people." The leaders of Good to Great companies didn’t care about being famous or well‐liked; they only cared about making their company
great. One good to great CEO of a family pharmaceutical company kicked family members off the board when he took over the company
because that's what was needed to move the company forward. Another CEO routinely went against Wall Street and held to his vision even
after Wall Street analysts downgraded the company's stock.

“Look for situations where extraordinary results exist but where no individual steps forth to claim excess credit. You will
likely find a potential Level 5 leader at work.” – Jim Collins

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www.ProductivityGame.com 120
Insights from Make Time by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky
Two forces are eroding your time: The Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools.
Busy Bandwagon
When you ask someone at work how they're doing, they'll probably tell you, "Busy! Really, really busy." People wear
their busyness like a badge of honor. You and I feel pressure to join the ‘busy’ club and spend the day responding to
emails, running from meeting to meeting, and adding tasks to our to‐do lists.

If we step off the Busy Bandwagon to relax, ‘Infinity Pools’ are waiting to pull us into their vortex.

Infinity Pools
“Infinity Pools are apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content. If you can pull to refresh, it’s an
Infinity Pool. If it streams, it’s an Infinity Pool.” – Make Time

Infinity Pools, like Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix, are powerful because they track our behavior, know what we
like, and make it effortless to consume their content.

“While the Busy Bandwagon defaults to endless tasks, the Infinity Pools default to endless distraction. Our phones, laptops, and
televisions are filled with games, social feeds, and videos. Everything is at our fingertips, irresistible, even addictive. Every bump of
friction is smoothed away.” – Make Time

“With the average person spending four‐plus hours a day on their smartphone and another four‐plus hours watching TV shows,
distraction is quite literally a full‐time job.” – Make Time

To prevent the Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools from turning our daily lives into a blur of meaningless activity, focus on daily highlights.

The Daily Highlight

If you answer 100 emails and complete 20 errands but don't have a big win or a peak moment (i.e., a highlight), your
days and weeks will be a blur (like a dream you can hardly remember).

To define your daily highlight, imagine that a friend calls you at the end of the day and asks:

"What was the highlight of your day?"

If you can answer that question at the start of the day, you give yourself the best chance to experience a peak moment. To help you define
your daily highlight, authors Jake and John provide three highlight categories:

Urgency

Find a highlight in the ‘urgency’ category, by asking yourself, "What's the most pressing thing I need to do today?" This might be a
proposal you promised a client or a test you need to study for. I find it helpful to ask, “Of all the urgent things in my life, what would
provide the greatest sense of relief?”

Satisfaction

When searching the satisfaction category for a potential daily highlight, ask yourself, "At the end of the day, what would give me the most
satisfaction?" Maybe that's drafting 2,000 words for your next book or completing the first module of a computer programming course
you’ve wanted to start. Satisfaction highlights are things you want to do but don't necessarily need to do.

Joy

Find a highlight in the ‘joy’ category, by asking yourself, "When I reflect on my day, what experience would give me the most joy?" Stop
searching for things you can accomplish, and start identifying the people you enjoy and activities that bring you joy (i.e., activities you do
for the sake of doing them). A joy‐based highlight may be going to the playground with your child, or having a guitar jam session with your
friend, or taking a cooking class with your spouse.

Select your highlight

1. Write down all the potential highlights on a blank piece of paper (call it your “might‐do” list). Each highlight should be bigger
than a task but smaller than a major project, and each highlight should take between 60 to 90 minutes to complete.
2. Rewrite the top three potential highlights on a new sheet of paper, then circle the one highlight you want to focus on today.
Now write that highlight on a Post‐It note and put that Post‐It note in a place you’ll see throughout the day.
3. Block out a 60 to 90 minute chunk of time in your calendar to dedicate to your highlight.

That's it! By identifying and focusing on one highlight each day, you'll pull yourself away from the Busy
Bandwagon and Infinity Pools, and start living more intentionally.

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Insights from The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
“To focus on contribution is to focus on effectiveness.” – Peter Drucker
To identify your biggest contribution and maximize your effectiveness, ‘Know Thy Strengths’ and ‘Know Thy Time’.

Know Thy Strengths

“We are all incompetent at most things. The crucial question is not how to turn incompetence into
excellence, but to ask, ‘What can (I) do uncommonly well?’” – Peter Drucker

Find your strengths, put them to work, and achieve your greatest contribution.

What are your strengths? What can you do uncommonly well? If you don’t know, conduct a feedback
analysis.

"Most people think they know what they're good at. They're usually wrong. And people who know
what they're not good at are more often wrong than right (paraphrased)." – Peter Drucker

To conduct a feedback analysis, volunteer for roles at work, at school, in your community, and then:

1. Write down your upcoming responsibilities.

2. Estimate your performance for each responsibility (scale of 1‐5).
3. Six to twelve months later, compare your expectations to your results.

If you volunteered for a management position, were you better at creating plans and delegating tasks then you thought? Were you better
at solving problems and making decisions under pressure than you thought?

Know Thy Time

Contribution = Strengths x Time

Manage your time to maximize the time you do what you do best.

“One cannot even think of managing one’s time unless one first knows where it goes…the first step
toward executive effectiveness is therefore to record actual time‐use.”– Peter Drucker

If you look back more than an hour, you'll fool yourself into thinking you were far more effective than
you were. The only way to know how you spend your time is to record your time as close to real‐time
as possible.

I suggest starting a time recording habit by recording your activities for just three consecutive hours every workday.

If you work best between 9:00 AM and noon, set an alarm on your phone for 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM, and noon.

 When the alarm goes off, open a physical notebook or a note on your phone, and write down everything you did the last hour ‐
be as specific as possible, and don't forget to include small distractions.
 Estimate how many minutes you spent doing work that leveraged your strengths.

Do this for a month, and you’ll get a time log statement (much like a credit card statement) that will help you see how where you’re
wasting your time. Use your time log statement to create two lists: ‘Stop‐Doing’ list and ‘Offload’ list.

Typical ‘Stop‐Doing’ items: common distractions, useless meetings, and good but not great opportunities.

Typical ‘Offload’ items: cleaning, running errands, updating spreadsheets, formatting documents, and any work that doesn’t require
refined judgment or creativity.

Before looking at your ‘To‐do’ list each day, plan how you will systemically eliminate items on your ‘Stop‐Doing’ list, and give away items on
your ‘Offload’ list.

The Ultimate Goal: Spend your time doing what you do best, and stop doing or offload the rest.

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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  Increase average lap speed by 2%  Increase average lap speed by 2% (quantity result)
 Reduce pit stop time  Reduce average pit stop time by 1  Reduce average pit stop time by 1 second
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

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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. Assign the longest duration item(s) with a 13 (highest Fibonacci number in the sequence: 1,2,3,5,8,13)
2. Assign Fibonacci numbers 1,2,3,5,8,13 to all items, relative to the hardest item
 Part 2: Sprint Planning Session
1. Set fixed Sprint duration (time till next evaluation - max 20% of the project duration)
2. INITIAL SPRINT: estimate points to be completed within that time
3. 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 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington

“Let’s redefine a year: A year is no longer 12 months, it is now only 12 weeks...There are no longer four
periods in a year; that’s old thinking. Now, there is just a 12 Week Year, followed by the next 12 Week Year...
(and) each 12 week period stands on its own.” – The 12 Week Year
During a typical 12‐month year, it’s easy to procrastinate on your annual goals. But during a 12‐week year, there’s a constant sense of
urgency because the end of the year is always looming and you need to generate a month’s worth of progress every week!
To accomplish your annual goals in 12‐weeks and achieve a month’s worth of progress every week, you need to fundamentally change the
way you approach your goals and adopt the 12‐week year ‘Special O.P.S.’ framework:
 Own results
 Plan weekly keystone actions
 Keep score of execution

Ownership requires 100% commitment to your goals, and commitment (as defined in the American
Heritage Dictionary), is “The state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to a course of action, or to
another person or persons.”
A sure way to be “bound emotionally or intellectually to a course of action, or to another person” is to bet
on yourself. Tell a friend: “In 12‐weeks I will [ANNUAL GOAL], or give you [A PAINFUL AMOUNT OF MONEY],
no matter what!”
When you meet with your friend 12‐weeks later, you either prove you hit your 12‐week goal, or you pay up.
No excuses. You can’t tell your friend you were too busy, your house burnt down, or you didn’t receive
enough support. If you didn’t do what you said you were going to do, you must honor your word.
“When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstances permit, but when
you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.” – The 12 Week Year

“At its most basic level, planning is just problem solving. Your plan solves the problem of how to close
the gap between your results today and your 12‐week goal… A 12 week plan gets down to the critical
actions that you will need to take each week to reach your goal.” – The 12 Week Year
When you spend 15 minutes to plan your week, you ultimately save time and energy ‐ two resources you
must use wisely to achieve a 12‐month goal in 12‐weeks.

 Weekly planning increases the odds of finding the shortest route to your goal and prevents you from
constantly backtracking. The authors say, “If you take time to plan before engaging with a complex task,
you reduce the overall time required to complete the task by as much as 20 percent.”
 Weekly planning prevents you from overthinking hour‐by‐hour decisions and thus reduces daily
decision fatigue
Every week, search for tactics people have used to reach a similar goal, then extract and write down a list of keystone actions.
“In most endeavors there are often many activities that help you accomplish your goal. However there are usually a few core activities
that account for the majority of the results, and in some cases there are only one or two keystone actions that ultimately produce the
result. It is critical that you identify these keystones and focus on them.” – The 12 Week Year

Results lag action, often by several weeks.

If two people are selling the same product, the person who focuses sales made may lose enthusiasm and
quit if he’s not hitting his weekly sales targets. But the guy who measures his execution (i.e., number of
doors he’s knocked on and number of prospects he’s called), and does not fixate on weekly results, will
ultimately make more sales.

“If you want to know what your future holds, look to your actions; they are the best predictor of your
future.” – The 12 Week Year

Stay focused on execution by keeping score of weekly actions. Each week review your weekly action plan
and give yourself an execution score. If you completed 4/5 planned actions, give yourself an execution
score of 80% and aim to improve your score next week.

“We have found that if you successfully complete 85 percent of the activities in your weekly plan, then you will most likely achieve your
objectives (12‐week year goals).” – The 12 Week Year

“The 12 Week Year system forces you to confront your lack of execution — and it’s uncomfortable, but it is
the very thing that is required if you’re going to perform at your best. We call this discomfort productive
tension.” – The 12 Week Year

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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.

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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 Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow is an optimal state mind between boredom and anxiety where you perform your best and feel your best.

Flow is the experience of being so engaged in a task that you lose track of time.

4 Flow Factors
Conditions that lead to more flow at work

Focus Freedom
To access flow, “a person must concentrate attention on the “In flow there is no room for self‐scrutiny.” ‐ Mihaly
task at hand and momentarily forget everything else…Flow‐ Csikszentmihalyi
producing activities require an initial investment of attention
before (they) begin to be enjoyable.” ‐ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi A rock climber Csikszentmihalyi interviewed said, “You can get
your ego mixed up with climbing in all sorts of ways…But
Enter flow at work by starting each task with a focus exercise to when things become automatic, it’s like an egoless
cultivate single‐pointed attention. thing…Somehow the right thing is done without you ever
thinking about it…”
Close your eyes and pay attention to music or your breathing
for a minute. When you open your eyes, direct that focus on the I find the best way to activate an egoless, judgment‐free state
task at hand. of mind is to set permission timers.

Think of your focus exercise like a warm‐up routine before a Throughout the day I start 10‐30‐minute countdowns and give
workout. The purpose is to make the transition from scattered myself permission to work without editing my work or
focus to single‐pointed focus smoother. critiquing my ideas. I generate ideas freely and trust my ability
to execute tasks on autopilot.
“Flow‐producing activities require an initial investment of
attention before (they) begin to be enjoyable.” ‐ Mihaly The goal is to get into a Zen‐like state and watch yourself
Csikszentmihalyi produce results automatically and effortlessly.

Feedback Four % Challenge

“The climber inching up a vertical wall of rock has a very If you're playing chess, you should play chess against players
simple goal in mind: to complete the climb without falling. who are rated just 4% higher than you.
Every second, hour after hour, he receives information that he
is meeting that basic goal.” ‐ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi If you play a weaker player, you’ll win too easily and be bored. If
you play a Grandmaster like Magnus Carlson, you'll get crushed
Chess players in flow have the clear objective to mate the and find the experience frustrating and hopeless.
opponent's king before his king is mated. “With each move, he
can calculate whether he has come closer to this objective.” But if you compete against people who are just slightly better
than you (rated 4% higher than you), you know you can win if
To determine if your actions at work are moving you closer to you dig deep, dedicate your attention to the task at hand, and
your objective, you must give yourself feedback throughout the experience flow.
day.
If you adjust the difficulty of work tasks to be slightly harder
I do this by setting an hour alarm. When the alarm goes off, I than what you can do comfortably, you might find flow.
ask myself, “What did I accomplish in the last hour?” and “What
can I accomplish in the next hour?”  If you can comfortably write 1000 words in 25 minutes,
push yourself to complete 1000 words in 24 minutes.
This hourly check‐in helps me clarify my goals and determine if  If you can comfortably clean the kitchen in 20 minutes,
my actions align with my goals. These brief check‐in’s help me push yourself to do it 30 seconds faster.
find the flow sweet spot (the four percent challenge).
You’ll know if your challenge is in the 4% zone if half the time
you meet expectations and half the time you don’t.

“Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But
once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically
rewarding.” ‐ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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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 completed during long uninterrupted periods of time. Deep work requires a state of
distraction‐free concentration to push your 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: Intensity * Time
Inspired by the book Deep Work by Cal Newport

“(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, Deep Work

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.

You have a choice: take 4 hours to complete a task in a semi‐distracted state OR take 1 hour to complete the
same task in a state of intense, undistracted focus.

While working on an important task, ask yourself:

 How would I rate my work intensity on a scale of 1‐5? 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 is “concentration so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant.”
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist and author of Flow

www.ProductivityGame.com
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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.

How to Find Your Biggest Frog

Consider the Consequences
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

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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

Cue Action
Think of an idea, or 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

Cue Action
Receive a daily 1. Open capture list within Evernote, look at one item at a time (starting from the top), and ask: “Do I want to
calendar act on this soon?”
notification at 4pm. 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: Reminders Location:
Thought process: Thought process: "I Calendar iOS App Thought process: iOS app Reminders iOS
“This idea might be might want to do Thought process: “It’s out of my Thought process: app
useful one day but this, but not “I need to do this hands but I “Not time specific but Thought 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

Cue Action
Receive a weekly 1. Spend 5 minutes writing a 3‐5 year vision: “What does a typical day to look like 3‐5 years from now?”
calendar 2. Review project list – delete complete or unnecessary projects, then prioritize the top 3
notification on 3pm 3. Review next action lists – delete completed or unnecessary actions, then prioritize the top 10
each Friday.

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Insights from The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll
“The Bullet Journal Method is for anyone struggling to find their place in the digital age. It will help you get
organized by providing simple tools and techniques that can inject clarity, direction, and focus into your days.”
‐ Ryder Carroll

The Bullet Journal method converts an old‐fashioned notebook into a combination planner, notebook, and journal.

Key Components of the Bullet Journal Method

Index
The Index is a four‐page dynamic table of contents that lives at the front of your Bullet Journal and
contains the location of the Future Log, Monthly Logs, special lists (reading list, food log, etc.), and
projects.

“The Index provides an easy way to find your thoughts days, months, or years after entrusting
them to your notebook.” ‐ Ryder Carroll

Future Log
The Future Log is a four‐page section (following the Index), where you store tasks and events you
can’t complete in the current month (each page contains three months of the year).

“Think of the Future Log as a queue, each item eagerly waiting for its month to arrive. When
you’re setting up a new Monthly Log (see below), be sure to scan your Future Log for any items in
the queue that are ready now.” ‐ Ryder Carroll

Monthly Logs
At the beginning of every month, create a new Monthly Log. Each Monthly Log is two pages long.
The first page contains a quick calendar used to capture key milestones, event dates, and work
deadlines. The second page contains a task list. If you plan to complete a task before the end of the
month, but cannot complete that task today or tomorrow, put it in your current Monthly Log task
list.

Daily Log
At the beginning of each day, create a new Daily Log. The Daily Log is where you capture all thoughts during the day
(see ‘Rapid Logging’ section).

“The Daily Log is there to prevent us from having to waste time thinking about where to write things down. It’s a
catchall, designed to hold our thoughts until we’re ready to sort them out.” ‐ Ryder Carroll

Rapid Logging
The Bullet Journal maintains a clean and minimal look by leveraging a series of symbols and
short‐form notation to enter information.

Short‐form notation example:

 Rick: email re: XYZ Project Status

Migrating
At the end of the day, you either delete unfinished items on your Daily Log by crossing them
out, or you rewrite unfinished items in either tomorrow’s Daily Log (complete tomorrow),
the current Monthly Log (complete later this month), or Future Log (complete later this year
– include specific date).

“During Migration, we transfer content from one place in our Bullet Journal to another by
rewriting it. This may seem like a lot of effort, but it serves a critical purpose: It weeds out
distractions… It helps you identify and focus on what is meaningful by stripping away
what is meaningless.” ‐ Ryder Carroll

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Insights from Joy at Work by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein

“When surrounded by clutter, our brains are so busy registering all the things around us that we can’t focus on what we should be doing in
the moment, such as tackling the work on our desk or communicating with others. We feel distracted, stressed, and anxious, and our
decision‐making ability is impaired.” – Joy at Work

If you struggle to maintain a tidy office, try the ‘KonMari Method.’

The KonMari Method

“The key to success is this: Tidy by category, quickly and completely, all in
one go (within a month). If you just tell yourself you’ll tidy when you
have time, you’ll never finish.” – Joy at Work

Coauthor Marie Kondo, famous for her previous book ‘The Life‐Changing
Magic of Tidying Up,’ created the ‘spark joy’ movement with her KonMari Method. Kondo's KonMari Method is best known for decluttering
bedroom closets. If you were to use the KonMari Method to tidy your bedroom closet, you’d start by taking all your clothes out of the closet
and putting them in a pile in the middle of the room (organizing all your clothes at one time allows you to compare each item and create a
comprehensive list of categories so that you can reserve a space in your closet for each category). Now, pick up one piece of clothing at a time
and ask, “Does this spark joy?”

If a piece of clothing brought you joy in the past, but that joy has faded, thank the item for fulfilling its purpose and discard or donate it. The act
of thanking the object for being useful at a time in your life makes the discarding process less stressful. Many of Kondo's clients believe there
are few clothes they are willing to part with, but end up donating two‐thirds of the clothes in their closet.

After using the KonMari Method to declutter your closet, that old feeling of overwhelm is replaced with gratitude, since every item you see in
your closet is a source of joy.

But how can you use this method in your office? You can’t throw out an expense report or work manual just because it fails to spark joy!

Tidy Your Physical Workspace with the Modified KonMari Method

Gather books, papers, miscellaneous items (gadgets, office supplies, etc.), and sentimental items
(memorabilia, gifts, etc.) in the middle of your office and while focusing on one category at a time, ask:

1. Does this spark joy? A book you love to see on your bookshelf when you walk in your office, a
pen you love to write with, or a picture of your family.
2. Will this item contribute to a joyful future? A manual you will use to complete a project,
which could lead to a promotion.
3. Is this item necessary to do my job? A book of industry standards, expense report, or stapler
might not bring you joy but you need them to complete your job responsibilities.

Books, papers, miscellaneous items, and sentimental items that don't answer “yes” to any of the three
questions get discarded or donated. Commonly discarded items:

 Books you bought with enthusiasm but are no longer excited to read.
 Documents you can scan and store in the cloud or old revisions of important documents you no longer need.
 Excess office supplies (pens, pencils, rulers, etc.).
 Awards and pictures that no longer spark joy.

When you let go of your stuff, “let them go with gratitude for the joy they gave you in the past." – Joy at Work

Now you are left with the critical few items that spark joy, contribute to a joyful future, and are necessary to do your job. It is now easier to
divide your stuff into categories and reserve storage space for each category (i.e., small box in your desk drawer for USBs, upright filing cabinet
for papers, etc.). Keep items out of sight (if possible) to minimize distraction.

“If you want to tidy up so completely that you never revert to clutter again, aim for one simple goal: knowing where everything in your
workspace belongs.” – Joy at Work

When a new item enters your workspace, put it through the three‐question filter and make discarding items your default decision.

When you take control of the clutter in your physical workspace, you will feel more in control of your work life, which will increase your joy at
work. By keeping the things that are necessary for your job, contribute to a joyful future, and spark joy, you are surrounded by items you are
grateful for. The goal of tidying is not just to reduce stress, but to help you discover what you truly value.

“If you’re thinking that choosing what sparks joy is the same as choosing what to discard, think again! To choose what sparks joy is to focus
on the positive aspects of the things we own, while to choose what to discard is to focus on the negative…If we focus on the negative when
we discard, the best we can hope for is to eliminate what we don’t like. Not being sick isn’t the same as being healthy…” – Joy at Work

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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 “We all have times when we think more
could do everything you’ve decided to effectively, and times when we should
CONTEXT MODE
do, simply because most of those actions not be thinking at all.” - Daniel Cohen
require a specific tool or location.” – What’s the best What’s the optimal
David Allen context to be in to mental state to be in “When I first wake up, my brain is
complete this? to complete this? relaxed and creative. The thought of
“If you have traveled to meet a client at writing a comic is fun, and it’s relatively
her office and on arrival discover that  At Office?  High Energy- easy because my brain is in exactly the
 In Car? Focused Mode?
the meeting will be delayed for fifteen right mode for that task. I know from
 At Home?  Social-Talkative
minutes, you will want to refer to your  During Meeting? Mode? experience that trying to be creative in
Calls list for something you could do to  At Grocery Store?  Low Energy- the midafternoon is a waste of time. By
use your time productively. Your action Mindless Mode? 2:00 P.M. all I can do is regurgitate the
lists should fold in or out, based on what ideas I’ve seen elsewhere. At 6:00 A.M.
you could possibly do at any time.” – I’m a creator, and by 2:00 P.M. I’m a
David Allen 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?

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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: 7 Rules to When Using a VA:

1. www.fiverr.com 1. Schedule meetings, 1. Create a competency test for desired skills (ex: for
follow-up appointments, excellent English speaking skills schedule a call first).
2. www.b2kcorp.com and travel 2. Have VAs rephrase the task back to you to verify their
accommodations understanding of the requirements.
3. www.taskseveryday.com 2. Make meeting minutes 3. Require intermediate progress updates (ex:
(transcribe meeting screenshots every 4 hours).
4. www.upwork.com audio) 4. Make deadlines no longer than 72 hours away (24-48
3. Conduct web-researches hours is ideal). If the task is large, break it down into
5. www.guru.com 4. Complete errands and smaller tasks that can be completed within 72 hours.
online purchasing 5. Issue one task at a time. Start small and go bigger over
6. www.freelancer.com 5. Do website maintenance time. Eventually, you’ll provide them prioritized task
(web design, publishing, lists to complete.
7. www.fancyhands.com uploading files) & basic 6. Help their decision-making process by identifying
web design several ‘if-then’ statements, general decision-making
6. Proofread, format, and philosophies, and monetary thresholds (ex: allow VAs
edit to use their judgement for decisions for purchased of
7. Write software programs $20 or less) to remedy potential issues.
7. 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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