More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I believe in the discipline of mastering the best of what other people have figured out.
In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins. Removing blind spots means we see, interact with, and move closer to understanding reality. We think better. And thinking better is about finding simple processes that help us work through problems from multiple dimensions and perspectives, allowing us to better choose solutions that fit what matters to us.
While pontificating with friends over a bottle of wine at dinner is fun, it won’t help you improve. The only way you’ll know the extent to which you understand reality is to put your ideas and understanding into action.
Our failures to update from interacting with reality spring primarily from three things: not having the right perspective or vantage point, ego-induced denial, and distance from the consequences of our decisions.
The pursuit of understanding fuels meaning and adaptation, but this understanding, by itself, is not enough.
Understanding only becomes useful when we adjust our behavior and actions accordingly.
We optimize for short-term ego protection over long-term happiness.
In short, they have blind spots. Big blind spots. And they’re not aware of their blind spots.
“To the man with only a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.”
The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.
Without a latticework of the Great Models our decisions become harder, slower, and less creative.
Right now you are only touching one part of the elephant, so you are making all decisions based on your understanding that it’s a wall or a rope, not an animal.
The map appears to us more real than the land. D.H. Lawrence1
Maps describe a territory in a useful way, but with a specific purpose. They cannot be everything to everyone.
There is no shortcut to understanding. Building a circle of competence takes years of experience, of making mistakes, and of actively seeking out better methods of practice and thought.
There are three key practices needed in order to build and maintain a circle of competence: curiosity and a desire to learn, monitoring, and feedback.
Keeping a journal of your own performance is the easiest and most private way to give self-feedback.
What went wrong? How could I do better? Monitoring your own performance allows you to see patterns that you simply couldn’t see before.
Elizabeth took England from a country of civil unrest and frequent persecution to one that inspired loyalty and creativity in its citizens.
I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile! Richard Feynman1
If we never learn to take something apart, test our assumptions about it, and reconstruct it, we end up bound by what other people tell us—trapped in the way things have always been done.
When the environment changes, we just continue as if things were the same, making costly mistakes along the way.
Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas. (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?) Challenging assumptions. (How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?) Looking for evidence. (How can I back this up? What are the sources?) Considering alternative perspectives. (What might others think? How do I know I am correct?) Examining consequences and implications. (What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?) Questioning the original questions. (Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?)
Socratic questioning stops you from relying on your gut and limits strong emotional responses.
Creativity is intelligence having fun. Anonymous
Billionaire success takes all of those things and more, plus a lot of luck. That’s a big reason that there’s no recipe.
But failure carries with it one huge antifragile gift: learning.
the rough, jagged real-world experience of it—teaches through rapid feedback loops of success and failure. In other words, trial and error carries the precious commodity of information.
Identify the problem Define your objective Identify the forces that support change towards your objective Identify the forces that impede change towards the objective Strategize a solution! This may involve both augmenting or adding to the forces in step 3, and reducing or eliminating the forces in step 4.
Even if we are quite logical, most of us stop after step 3.
But Lewin theorized that it can be just as powerful to remove obstacles to change.
In fact, the invention of powered human flight is highly counterintuitive, requiring an understanding of airflow, lift, drag, and combustion, among other difficult concepts. Only a precise combination of the right factors will do. You can’t just know enough to get the aircraft off the ground, you need to keep it in the air!
