In order to succeed manage your energy by eating and doing exercise, hack your brains by daydreaming and embrace failure.
Author: [Scott Adams]
Introduction
Success might be a combination of talent, hard work and luck. One might think that having a conscious strategy will do, but the truth is that we cannot disentangle the outcome and understand if it was this strategy or pure luck
Calling bullshit requires a system. It is based on consistency, for instance in at least two dimensions of the following:
- Personal experience
- Experience of people you know
- Experts
- Scientific studies
- Common sense
- Pattern recognition
The tine I was crazy
He could talk to his cat,being a song or read a poem but he could not talk to other humans. This lead to doctors, psychiatry and loneliness.
He had to speak at an event in front of 1000 people and he was wondering if he would be able to do it
The day of the talk
when you stand in front of an audience your sensation of time is distorted. That's why inexperienced presenters speak too rapidly.
He puts himself in that situation because he embraces failure as a path to learn
Passion is bullshit
Passionate people show high energy and are persuasive about their passion but they are also less risk averse.
Passion is a signal that you are good at something or that it is easy for you. Success causes passion more than passion causes success.
Goals versus systems
Career advice by a CEO: Every time you land a new job you should start looking for a better one. Job seeking as an ongoing process as better deals has their own schedule. Instead of setting a goal such as his boss’ job, his system was to continually look for better options.
Goals makes you feel miserable once you achieve them. Systems makes you feel energetic as they succeed every time you apply the system.
We can think of goals as situations in which once you succeed you are done, while systems are those that you do periodically with an expectation that they will get you to a better place.
A system beats passion everytime.
My system
Build something easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. This general strategy was narrow down with a focus on creativity.
Deciding versus wanting
if you want success, figure out the price then pay it
Prices: sacrifice personal life for grades, putting off having kids, taking business risks…
Systems make the price lower so it may worth a go.
The selfishness illusion
In terms of generosity, three kinds of people:
- Selfish
- Stupid
- Burden on others
Advocates for selfishness understood as a long run view of the right choices for you and others. For instance invest time on fitness, eating right, pursuing your career and spending quality time with your family and friends.
The energy metric
In order to make choices among different alternatives we can choose those that maximize ones energy. That leads to eating, dreamin, resting and also by having something in life that excites you.
Energy is something that gives you a positive lift, mentally or physically. It might be blogging, writing a book, exercising or building your own thing.
A positive externality of good energy is that it gives a boost to the people around you.
You should manage energy as budgets in a company, seeking to maximize lo#ng term growth.
Matching mental state to activity
You should match your mood and energy levels to the activity, for instance creative tasks at the beginning of the day or exercise at noon.
Simplifiers va optimizers
Simplifiers look for the easy Pareto solution although knowing that extra effor would lead to better outcomes.
Optimizers aim for the best solution although it may increase the odds of failure.
Simplification is usually the right answer when you need communication with others. Optimizing might be worth when you so things on your own or with a closed partner
Humans are bad at good at following simple systems and these are also less subject to unexpected failures.
Simple systems are probably the best way to achieve success. Once you have success, optimizing begins to have more value.
Simplification frees up energy and time.
Tidyness
If your work space is a mess it distracts you and steals your energy. Tidy up for an energy boost.
Knowledge and the lack thereof
A big energy killer Is the fear that you do not know how to do something your job would require.
To avoid this:
- Ask questions and you usually find simple solution or cheap professionals that do it
- Flash research in Google to check out are the stuff that worries you so much
Don’t be an asshole
Being an asshole causes energy drains all around and it might involve spending energy cleaning up the mess you made.
Priorities
- You. Health
- Economics
- Family, friends, lovers
- Local community, country, world
Keep your priorities straight by judging how options affect your personal energy
Managing your attitude
You can manipulate your thoughts to manage your attitude. Buttons: Exercise, food, sleep. Avoid depressing news.
Fake smiles, daydreaming fake it till you make it. Acting confident makes you feel confident. Feeling energetic makes you feel like playing a sport Playing a sport makes you feel energetic.
Success at anything has a spillover effect on other things. Once you become good at unimportant things such as hobbies or sports, you are more prepared to be successful in more important challenges.
You should manipulate your perceptions to whatever makes you happy, because you are probably wrong about the nature of reality anyway.
My speaking career
Asked for a price for giving a speech that he did not want to give he asked for 5k.
The speaking requests flowed in as he entered the speaking circuit after overpricing himself.
Recognizing your talents and knowing when to quit
You can achieve something extraordinary by combining ordinary talents (vs gifted extraordinary innate world class talent)
You can recognise your talents by:
- Checking what you did obsessively as a kid
- Tolerance for risk. We accept high risk when we expect high returns.
A system to achieve success involves trying lots of different things (sampling). This contradicts the general wisdom of sticking to it.
How you can tell when to quit? Things that work out started out well.
small successes can grow into big ones, but failures rarely grow into successes
Successes have X factor, meaning that you should focus if a segment of the audience is enthusiastic about it, instead of focusing in average responses. X factor can be detected by what users do with your product, instead of what they are saying.
Is practicing your thing?
Some people enter in flow mode when they are practicing (endless repetition) while for others this is hell on earth. The latter usually prefer gaining experience on a variety of functions or knowledge.
Managing your odds for success
Success formil: Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.
Good + Good > Excellent
The power of leveraging multiple mediocre skills and also because everytime you learn a new skill it makes learning new skills easier.
The more you know the more you can know.
Reading newspapers to broaden you exposure to new topics which rewires your brains and provides with energy boosts.
The math of success
You can’t control luck. But you can move from a game with low odds of success to a game with odds more favourable to you.
List of skills that every adult should have working knowledge:
Public speaking
Took a Dale Carnegie public speaking class.
When I am on stage, it is a good day for me, I am the happiest person in the room. The audience only gets to listen, I get to speak, to feel, to be fully alive. I will absorb their energy and turn into something good.
The transformative power of praise versus the corrosive impact of criticism.
Psychology
It is important to understand how the brain perceives the world.
Salespeople know that you can manipulate buyers by controlling what they compare.
Quality is not an independent force of the universe, it depends on what you choose as your frame of reference.
It includes a large list of cognitive biases and mental models.
In order to succeed do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
People do not usually use reason for their big decisions in life. Do not think of people as rational beings.
He suggests that we need to embrace psychology and try to be lifelong learners.
Business writing
Get a course. Get rid of unnecessary words and passive voice.
Accounting
Cash flow projections, spreadsheet, time value of money.
Design
You can learn rules and tricks of design to be effective in designing PowerPoints, flyers or whatsoever.
Conversation
Reasons to have a conversation:
- Exchange information
- Plan
- Complain
- Entertain
- Feel connected
- Befriend
- Seduce
- Persuade
- Be polite
- Avoid awkward silence
- Brag
How to make a conversation with strangers:
- Ask questions till you find a mutual interest:
- What’s your name?
- 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?
- Don’t complain
- Don’t talk about boring experiences
- Don’t dominate the conversation
- Don’t get stuck on a topic. Keep moving
- Planning is useful but it is not a conversation
- Keep the sas stories short
The six questions might make you feel awkward but people love talking about themselves and it is very easy for everyone. You work as a conversationalist is to keep asking questions till you find what you have in common with the stranger. The point is to make the other person feel good.
How to become a master of short but interesting stories?
Or how to translate interesting experience into story form. Good storytelling needs preparation, and that means following a structure:
- Setup: keep it brief, one sentence or two.
- Pattern: establish a pattern your story will violate
- Foreshadowing: you leave clues where the story is going
- The characters: fill the story with personality traits
- Relatability: pick story topics your listeners will relate to
- The waist: no plot twist, no story.
- Topics to avoid
- Food
- TV plots
- Dreams
- Medical stories
Overcoming shyness
One technique involves imagining you are acting instead of interacting. A shy person can act like someone else more easily than acting like himself. Fake it till you make it.
Another technique is acting interested in other people.
Also try to classify people in two classes: thing people (love talking about tech, politics, tools and possessions, processes and systems) and people people (love talking about people doing interesting things), they get easily bored about thing topics.
Learn from outgoing people by observing them.
Second language
Learn a second language.
Golf
Not for business but for bonding with other males. It is also vacation for the mind.
Proper grammar
You don’t want to sound like a moron/hillbilly.
Persuasion
You always have to try to convince people.
Really enjoyed the take on this (p 135) Useful expressions:
- Because
- Would you mind…?
- I’m not interested
- I don’t do that
- I have a rule I just wanted to clarify Is there anything you can do for me? Thank you This is just between you and me
When situations are uncertain and complicated they look for leadership and decisiveness sometimes looks like leadership. So if you deliver decisiveness some people will picture you as a leader.
You can also persuade others by sharing your enthusiasm.
Technology
You should have basic understanding of tech for working at startups, conversations and self preservation
Proper voice technique
You need breath control (from the belly button, not chest), tone (deep low tones) and mouth strategies. Posture is also important.
Pattern recognition
Successful people patterns
The seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey:
- Be proactive
- Begin with the end in mind
- Put first things first
- Think win-win
- Seek first to understand then be understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the saw
And Adams add:
- Lack of fear of embarrassment: Bravery
- Education
- Exercise: physical exercise brings energy, creativity, bravery…
Humor
Humor makes you look more attractive and confident. It also helps you out life in perspective.
In-person humor requires effort but it does not demand too high quality.
Avoid humor traps:
- Overcomplaining
- Don’t overdo the selfdeprecaition
- Don’t mock people
- Avoid puns and wordplay
Affirmations
Affirmations consist of repeating what you want to achieve while you imagine it.
I, Pelay Arbues, will become a…
It is not magical thinking, it is about increasing focus.
Timing is luck too
Timing is the greatest form of luck. You have to synchronise with the universe. You can increase the odds by working hard, but it still works that way.
Experts
They are right 98% of the time on the easy stuff and 50% on complicated, rare or misterious stuff
Association programming
Knew a guy that thought that he could became rich if he was surrounded by rich people. It might make sense because you learn by example, your energy might be boosted by seeing your goal live and direct.
People surrounded by overweight people is more prone to gain weight.
Happiness
Goal in life: maximize lifetime experience of happiness.
Science of happiness: happiness isn’t as dependent of your circumstances as you may think.
You can get 80% of happiness by manipulating your body chemistry. Tips:
- Being able to do what you want, when you want. The timing can be more important than the things. A mediocre meal when you are starving > delicious meal when you are not hungry. A flexible schedule might make you really happy, so work towards flexible schedule.
- Happiness is more related to the direction of the vector than the position of the point. You feel happy when things move in the right direction and bad when they has a downward trend. Sports provide you a feeling of progress.
- Imagining a brighter future also brings joy. Recall the daydreaming chapter.
Bad mood is usually the result of good food, sleeping, exercise, imagination , flexible schedule and routine.
Diet
Diet that works: eat as much as you want, of anything you want, whenever you want.
Your food preferences change thoroughout your life and you can deliberately change your preferences. Cravings can be manipulated. You can erase and gro cravings for unhealthy and healthy food.
Food is mood
In order to change perception of healthy food you need you need to look at things differently.
Think of yourself as a programmable robot. Eating right makes you less vulnerable to the bumps of life.
look for the pattern
Test the food is mood claim by testing it and observing your mood depending on your recent meals. Which meals make you feel energetic Vs sleepy?
The food-exercise connection
Food is the fuel that makes exercise possible because it can turn your lazy mood to energetic.
Breaking the simple carb addiction
In order to reduce the willpower necessary to avoid simple carbs (white rice, bread, potatoes). The system is to break addiction to simple carbs and you can do it by eating as much as you want from other meals.
how to know what to eat
Nutrition science is full of bullshit and very incomplete.
know why you are eating
When you don’t get enough sleep you have a bold hunger sensation. This can be calmed with nuts and chease.
how to make healthy food taste good
Avoid healthy but boring and awful food. Eating that requires too much willpower and it is unsustainable. Experiment with veggies and:
- Butter
- Salt
- Cheese
- Soy sauce
Proteins:
- Edamame
- Nuts
- Pasta
- Cheese
- Veggies
Coffee
Coffee makes you enjoy your daily routine. 2-4 cups a day can make you more eager to exercise.
Fitness
Be active everyday
If you are active everyday, all other physical exercise will require much less willpower. And no willpower requirements is essential for the system to work.
The system is being active everyday, and all forms of exercise will do: take a walk, play basketball, clean garage…
Practical ways to schedule exercise:
- Join an organised team
- Always exercise at the same time everyday
- Exercise with your partner
Motivation to exercise
You need a good diet for having the energy to work out. And you don’t want to overexercise so much you don’t want to be active the next day. Also soreness is a penalty for exercise.
Be active everyday and avoid setting specific days for exercise. Rest days break the habit.
Rewards
Healthy snack, read articles on the phone or a cup of coffee.
Coffee can help you to get in the mood of exercise.
Put on exercise clothes an sneakers and allow yourself to not exercise.