Be a ladder hacker, rather than a ladder climber
2015-03-19
主要想法是work smarter, not harder，不要想着一个人闷头一口井打到黑，不要按部就班pay due蛮干。主要内容总结如下：
1. Shorten:
1) Hacking the Ladder:
a. Lateral thinking: Edward de Bono, who coined the term "lateral thinking", says "You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper."
b. The secret of Super Mario world record (wrap pipe): Lateral thinking doesn’t replace hard work; it eliminates unnecessary cycles.
c. The mindset of “hacking”: work smarter, not just harder. Throw out the pay-due paradigm, involve in lateral thinking, and question the assumptions, be a ladder hacker rather than a ladder climber.
d. Ladder switching: the average age of US president is smaller than that of US Senators in Congress. Bigger or Better is a scavenger hunt, a sort of trick-or-treating for (young) adults: agility, when one route doesn’t work out, quickly change to another.
2) Training with Masters:
a. Learn from other fields: GOSH doctors handover problem and the mentoring from F1 Ferrari pit crew.
b. Establish personal relationship with mentors: Official mentoring doesn't work. Establish a personal relationship with a mentor and care about that person, because it opens up vulnerability to share more details.
c. Virtual mentor: You can also have a "virtual" mentor who you read about and admire so much that you remember every details (story of Jimmy Fallon).
3) Rapid Feedback:
a. The “second city” comedy school story: Don't get stuck in our own head, get rapid feedback that focuses on task rather the person, in situations when stakes and pressure are low. Kluger and DeNisi found that, as with bowling anxiety, the closer feedback moves our attention to ourselves, the worse it is for us.
b. The story of “Unworthy” tests the click rate of hundred of different titles for the same story, and monitor the feedback before sending to a larger group.
c. Albert Einstein: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
2. Leverage:
1) Tool/Platform:
a. The story of superior education system in Finland: Use tools (calculators), reduce memory of fact, and use our mind for higher-order thinking to better understand the world.
b. The quick success of Twitter: the leverage of Ruby Rail for building a site quickly. Platforms teach us skills and allow us to focus on being great, rather than reinventing wheels or repeating ourselves. In an age of platforms, creative problem solving is more valuable than computational skill.
c. The basket evaluation study: Newbies using standard process for deliberate pattern spotting do better than high-expertise students' intuitions. Deliberate pattern spotting can compensate for experience. But we often don’t even give it a shot.
2) Waves:
a. Study the waves to better leverage it in the right moment.
3) Superconnectors:
a. J.J. Abrams: get the help from super-connectors and help others later on.
3. Soar:
1) Momentum:
a. Research found that what motives employees most is simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless how small. The story of depressed billionaires and astronauts.
b. The Oreo super bowl ads story: momentum isn't just a powerful ingredient of success. It's also a powerful predictor of success.
c. The importance of preparation: The story of Michelle Phan and double rainbow. The secret to harnessing momentum is to build up potential energy, so that unexpected opportunities can be amplified. Do the due diligence before the inflection point or the lightening bolt.
2) Simplicity:
a. Take a step back: The story of baby-heating wrap Embrace. Sometimes the smartest next step is a step back and question the basic assumptions.
b. To soar, we need to simplify. The art of being a first-class focuser.
c. Creativity comes easier within constraints.
3) 10x Thinking:
a. Astro Teller (GoogleX head). "It's often easier to make something 10 times better than it is to make it 10 percent better."
b. The story of SpaceX Falcon1: 10x goals force you to come up with smartcuts.