Being able to pick and read good waves is almost more important than surfing well.
Dr. Adam Grant, professor of organizational psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says this is because J. J. Abrams is a giver, a rarity in an industry full of takers. No...
Intuition is the result of nonconscious pattern recognition, Dane tells me. However, his research shows that, while logging hours of practice helps us see patterns subconsciously, we can often do just...
When we hear a story, the neural activity increases fivefold, like a switchboard has suddenly illuminated the city of our mind.
Lateral thinking doesn’t replace hard work; it eliminates unnecessary cycles.
The common pattern among these fastest-rising US presidents’ journeys is that, like the BYU students, they didn’t parlay up a linear path. They climbed various ladders of success and then switched to...
Mentorship is the secret of many of the highest-profile achievers throughout history.
Simplification often makes the difference between good and amazing.
You can accelerate your training if you know how to train properly, but you still don’t need to be that special. I don’t think I’m that special of a programmer or a businessperson or a race car driver...
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...
My whole thing was, if I can put in 5 percent of the effort of somebody getting an A, and I can get a C minus, that’s amazing, he explains. It’s certainly good enough, right? [Then] I can take the oth...
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...
Increasingly in today’s culture, hacking is something done not just by criminals and computer scientists, but by anyone who has the capability to approach a problem laterally. (This is the original us...
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...
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...
If you want people to buy your product, you have to get them to care about your story.
Creativity comes easier within constraints.
THINK OF THE WAY a stretch of grass becomes a road. At first, the stretch is bumpy and difficult to drive over. A crew comes along and flattens the surface, making it easier to navigate. Then, someone...
Research from Brunel University shows that chess students who trained with coaches increased on average 168 points in their national ratings versus those who didn’t. Though long hours of deliberate pr...
Counterintuitively, however, Informal mentoring, Underhill found, produced a larger and more significant effect on career outcomes than formal mentoring.
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