In an age of platforms, creative problem solving is more valuable than computational skill. To
Too many of us place our hopes and dreams in the unreliable hands of luck, but the world’s most rapidly successful people take luck into their own hands (even though many are too humble to say so). To...
The key to intellectual humility is increasing the cognitive diversity inside our own heads.
I see this book as a simultaneous hat tip and counterpoint to some of the great success and innovation literature out there (check out shanesnow.com/ booklist for my recommendations). It’s a re-analys...
Hands-on learning and the use of tools, he says, helps us to want to learn, to get rapid feedback, and to actually grasp math better than memorizing facts from the bottom up.
We’re told that the best way to succeed is to start young, work hard, and move up through the ranks. The two ingredients are hard work—not quitting when things get tough—and luck—spots opening up on t...
Lateral thinking doesn’t replace hard work; it eliminates unnecessary cycles.
THE SECOND CITY MANAGES to accomplish three things to accelerate its performers’ growth: (1) it gives them rapid feedback; (2) it depersonalizes the feedback; and (3) it lowers the stakes and pressure...
Like The Second City, Upworthy turned its work into rapid, scientific experiments. It turned tiny failures into depersonalized feedback and created an environment where total failure was nearly imposs...
Mentorship is the secret of many of the highest-profile achievers throughout history.
The most popular post on Eli Pariser’s blog on the day after he launched it was about Gandhi. Twelve people shared it. The post told the story of the talisman the revered Indian leader once gave to hi...
Michelle Phan grew up in California with her Vietnamese parents. The classic American immigrant story of the impoverished but hardworking parents who toil to create a better life for the next generati...
Creativity comes easier within constraints.
Counterintuitively, however, Informal mentoring, Underhill found, produced a larger and more significant effect on career outcomes than formal mentoring.
Playing, it turns out, makes us less afraid of cognitive friction.
Trouble with moonwalkers and billionaires is when they arrive at the top, their momentum often stops. If they don’t manage to find something to parlay, they turn into the kid on the jungle gym who jus...
Traditional paths are not just slow; they’re no longer viable if we want to compete and innovate.
When we hear a story, the neural activity increases fivefold, like a switchboard has suddenly illuminated the city of our mind.
All ten of the top ten presidents in C-SPAN’s survey were hackers. Only one, JFK, climbed a semblance of a traditional ladder; he served in both houses of Congress, but was a war hero and author of a...
Luck is often talked about as being in the right place at the right time. But like a surfer, some people—and companies—are adept at placing themselves at the right place at the right time. They seek o...
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