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December 31, 2019 - May 22, 2020
Automation is also a great way to take advantage of economies of scale, when an operation becomes more efficient as its size increases.
parallel processing,
Parallel processing is an example of a divide and conquer strategy. If you can break a problem into independent pieces and hand these
pieces out to different parties to solve, you can accomplish more, faster.
Another strategy to get to a solution quicker when faced with a hard situation is to reframe the problem
strategy to get to a solution quicker when faced with a hard situation is to reframe the problem.
social engineering, where you are manipulated to give up your password willingly. Hackers literally engineer a social situation designed to get you to give up your password.
Traits that provide reproductive advantages are naturally selected over generations, making them more prevalent as species evolve to fit their environment.
In any part of society, you can trace the path of how ideas, practices, and products have adapted to ever-changing tastes, norms, and technology.
You will live through many more societal shifts: economic cycles, waves of innovation, evolving norms and standards.
is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
You can’t expect to discover the setup that helps you do your best work right away. But if you keep experimenting (with different schedules, software, organization, processes, etc.), you will get closer and closer to
the optimal setup, enabling you to go much further, faster.
Inertia is a physical object’s resistance to changing its current state of motion.
significant inertia in your beliefs because of confirmation bias and related models.
The more inertia you have, the more resistant you will be to changing these beliefs, and the less likely you will be to adapt your thinking when you need to.
can be hard to change old habits and beliefs once they are so ingrained, even if you now know them to be flawed.
inertia. A long-term commitment to an organizational strategy creates a lot of inertia toward that strategy. This inertia can lead to suboptimal decisions, referred to as a strategy tax.
avoid locking yourself into rigid long-term strategies, as circumstances can rapidly change.
Shirky principle, named after economics writer Clay Shirky. The Shirky principle states, Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. An
If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not “aging” like persons, but “aging” in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy. This is an indicator of some robustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life!
This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not “aging” like persons, but “aging” in reverse.
Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additio...
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The Lindy effect applies to technologies, ideas, organizations, and other nonperishable things.
Assuming that the thing in question is not falling out of favor, the longer it endures, the longer you can expect it to further endure.
the longer it endures, the longer you can expect it t...
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Momentum is a model that can help you understand how things change.
In physics, momentum is the product (multiplication) of mass and velocity, whereas inertia is just a function of mass. That means a heavy object at rest has a lot of inertia since it is hard to move, but it has no momentum since its velocity is zero. However, a heavy object gets momentum quickly once it starts moving. The faster an object goes, the more momentum it has. However, its inertia remains the same (since its mass remains the same), and it is still similarly difficult to change its velocity.
flywheel, a rotating physical disk that is used to store energy.
It takes a lot of effort to get a merry-go-round to start spinning, but once it is spinning, it takes little effort to keep it spinning.
Good to great comes about by a cumulative process—step by step, action by action, decision, turn by turn of the flywheel—that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.
when we multitask, we never get enough momentum on any one task for it to start to feel easier.
The flywheel model tells you your efforts will have long-term benefits and will compound on top of previous efforts by yourself and others. It’s the tactical way to apply the concepts of momentum and inertia to your advantage.
On the other hand, trying to change something that has a lot of inertia is challenging because of the outsized effort required.
there is homeostasis, which describes a situation in which an organism constantly regulates itself around a specific target, such as body temperature.
When you get too cold, you shiver to warm up; when it’s too hot, you sweat to cool off.
When you fight homeostasis—in yourself or in others—look out for the underlying mechanisms that are working against your efforts to make changes.
Potential energy is the stored energy of an object, which has the potential to be released. Center of gravity is the center point in an object or system around which its mass is balanced.
pent-up energy, energy waiting to be unlocked, released from its stored state, and unleashed on the world. Hidden potential energy is another thing you can look for when seeking change.
The term center of gravity is used notably in military strategy to describe the heart of an operation. Knowing an opponent’s center of gravity tells you where to attack to inflict the most damage or what pieces of their infrastructure they will defend more than others. The closer to their center of gravity, the more damage you will cause, and the more they will risk defending it.
Activation energy is the minimum amount of energy needed to activate a chemical reaction between two or more reactants.
A catalyst decreases the activation energy needed to start a chemical reaction. Think of how it is easier for a wildfire to start on a hot and dry day, with increased temperature and decreased moisture serving as catalysts.
activation energy can refer to the amount of effort it would take to start to change something, and catalyst to anything that would decrease this effort.
When attempting change, you want to understand the activation energy required and look for catalysts to make change easier.
In both cases it seems that once there was enough activation energy, the movements pushed forward very quickly.
we described how commitment can help you overcome present bias; it can also serve as a great catalyst, or forcing function, to reach the activation energy required for a personal or organizational change.
You should be wary of fighting high-inertia systems blindly. Instead, you want to look at things more deeply, understand their underlying dynamics, and try to craft a high-leverage path to change that is more likely to succeed in a timely manner.
what often creates the underlying momentum behind new ideas as they permeate society: critical mass.
in physics critical mass is the mass of nuclear material needed to create a nuclear chain reaction, where the by-products of one reaction are used as the inputs for the next, chaining them together in a self-perpetuating fashion.
Below the critical mass, nuclear elements are relatively harmless; above, and you have enough material to drive an atomic explosion.
