The Eureka Factor lays out the history of so-called “aha moments” and explains what happens in your brain as you have them, where they come from and how you can train yourself to have more flashes of genius.
John Kounios and Mark Beeman both love creativity. So much
in fact, that they both hold PhDs in psychology and have dedicated most of
their lives to finding out how the right side of our brain works. The Eureka
Factor is their 2015 book, detailing everything they’ve found out so far.
Ranging from Archimedes (the original eureka moment) to
Columbus and Paul McCartney, it shares how many of history’s most important
eureka moments came about and explains what goes on in your brain every time
you exclaim “Aha!” in the shower, and, more importantly, what you can do to
make it happen more often.
Here are 3 lessons from The Eureka Factor:
An idea is only obvious after someone else has told you about it.
Your best insights only come bubbling to the surface when distractions are under control.
Distant-future thinking can help you come up with more brilliant ideas.
Lesson 1: Every seemingly straightforward idea is only
obvious after someone else has told you about it.
I’m sure you’ve uttered these six words before: “I could
have thought of that!” Happens to me all the time. I look at some invention and
say: “Wow, that’s actually quite obvious, why didn’t I think of that?” Even
worse are the occasions where I did think of the idea, but didn’t implement it,
but doing the work is a whole other topic.
If you have wonderful friends like me, who try to keep you
grounded on earth all the time, they’ll kindly remind you: “Well, but you
didn’t.” – and they’re right.
Most of the time when we point out how obvious something is
in hindsight, it’s really just a mechanism for us to feel better about
ourselves. In reality, any good idea only becomes obvious after someone else
has told you about it.
Take Christopher Columbus, for example. After he had
discovered the new world across the Atlantic and returned to Spain, many nobles
claimed that it had been no great feat. In fact, if only they’d had a fleet,
many of them claimed they’d have done it themselves. Instead of arguing,
Columbus ordered a bunch of boiled eggs, giving the nobles one each and asked
them if they could make their egg stand upright, without any tools or help.
They all tried for a while, but eventually gave up.
Columbus took his egg, tapped its bottom on the table, so
that it slightly broke, and set it upright on the dented end. The nobles were
shocked and Columbus cunningly asked them: “If there was such a simple
solution, why didn’t any of you think of it?”
He’d clearly made his point.
Lesson 2: You can only have your best insights when you keep
your distractions under control – like in the shower.
Whenever you live with someone, please, please don’t rush
them when they’re in the shower. Those few extra minutes of quiet might lead
them to brilliant insights. But why is that?
Why do we always seem to come up with great stuff in the
shower? It’s because your mind is entirely free to focus on important problems.
In the shower, all distractions are under control. The white noise of the water
takes away distracting sounds and the feel of the water keeps your entire sense
of touch busy without new stimuli.
It is right then and there that all the concepts, thoughts
and ideas you’ve had boiling in your subconscious come bubbling to the surface,
combined in new ways and voilà: an entirely new perspective on a familiar
problem leads to a breakthrough insight!
The only precondition to this is that you’ve previously
given your brain some time to actually mull over everything subconsciously, for
example by (literally) sleeping on it. When your mind plays with an idea while
you’re sleeping, this is called sleep incubation and it’s said that this is how
Paul McCartney came up with the melody of the song “Yesterday.” When he woke up
in the morning, it was playing in his head.
Lesson 3: A good exercise to evoke more eureka moments is to
practice distant-future thinking.
Your capacity to have eureka moments is to some extent set
in your genes – some peoples’ right brain halves are just less inhibited as
others’. But before you moan and think it’s all for nothing, there are several
things you can do make yourself have more flashes of genius.
One is to abandon conformist thinking. Non-conformity is an
art in itself, and the more you practice it, the better. You can start by
simply imagining yourself as a rebel, a status-quo-breaker, a punk even, and
your right brain half will lighten up.
Another good exercise is distant-future thinking. Just like
you can imagine distant events as immediate to make better decisions in the now
(like thinking your paper deadline is tomorrow, instead of three months away),
you can also do the opposite to give yourself more room to be creative.
Imagine I told you that you’ve just won a trip to Hawaii,
but in one case, the trip starts tomorrow, whereas in another, it starts a year
from now. Scenario A likely makes you think of things like getting your visa,
what to pack, how to get to the airport and whether you’ll lose your luggage.
With plenty of time left in scenario B, however, chances are you’ll imagine
lying at the beach, finding sea shells in the sand and maybe even bumping into
surfing legend Kelly Slater.
Let your thoughts drift into the far-away future and you’ll
be surprised at how creative you can be.
My personal take-aways
Wow, so many great stories and examples to share from this
book. It’s really hard to contain myself to just three here. Lovely combination
of storytelling and useful scientific insight, a hidden gem for sure. The
Eureka Factor is definitely a recommended read!
The Chimp Paradox uses a simple analogy to help you take control of your emotions and act in your own, best interest, whether it’s in making decisions, communicating with others, or your health and happiness.
With even some of the world’s most renowned companies no
longer requiring a college degree, it seems the concept of the classic CV gets
more outdated by the day. But that doesn’t mean you can’t end up with an
interesting career, even after starting on what most would think is a
conventional path.
Steve Peters first studied and taught mathematics, before
returning to university to attain a medical degree. Later, he added a
psychiatrist’s training and was well on his way to become a distinguished
doctor. Until, in 2001, one of his former students recommended him to the
British cycling team. He eventually went to consult with them full-time and is
now a performance coach, advisor to Olympians, and elite athlete himself.
And yet, despite completely changing careers, his success is
still rooted in his conventional education. The Chimp Paradox is a simple
analogy describing our brains he uses to help athletes deliver their absolute
best. But it’s a universal tool, so it can help you live a better life too.
Here are 3 lessons that will help you exercise control over
your emotions:
Your brain has two major pars, which often collide, so it’s
important to observe them.
Humans have four modes of communication and knowing which
one you’re in will help get your message across.
The chimp’s sneakiest trick is wanting more.
Ready to chase the monkey inside your brain? Let’s see if we
can get it up the next tree!
If you want to save this summary for later, download the
free PDF and read it whenever you want.
Lesson 1: There are two competing forces in your brain, so
learn to recognize them.
One of the easiest ways for us to learn is through analogy.
That’s why, when Steve replaced two complex sounding names for parts of our
brain with simpler images, he made a brilliant move as a teacher. He describes
our prefrontal cortex as the human part of our brain and our limbic system as
our inner chimp. The human acts rationally, based on facts, but the chimp only
decides using emotions.
As you can imagine, this leads to problems whenever the two
clash or the wrong one ends up in charge. Let’s say you got cut off in traffic
and almost suffered a crash. You come home to your partner and share this
disturbing event. Trying to calm you down, they tell you that, luckily, it all
turned out fine.
If you’re still in monkey mode, you might take that as
criticism and start an argument. Only if the human’s in charge can you see this
fact clearly, calm down, and move on without harping on the situation.
Therefore, the most important thing is to start observing
your own state of mind. When you start stressing out, ask yourself: “Who’s in
charge here? Do I want to feel and act this way? Or is the chimp taking over?”
Learning to observe this is the first, big step in mastering your inner monkey.
Lesson 2: We communicate in four distinct modes, which
determine how to best say what you want to say.
In the scenario above, your partner can’t know what mental
state you’re in before making a comment. It’s hard to guess sometimes, so it’s
normal that you will often be wrong about others too. As a result, there are
four communication scenarios:
You’re using your human brain and so is your conversation
partner.
You are in human mode, but the person you’re talking to
behaves like a chimp.
You’re the chimp, while the other person’s human is in
charge.
Both of you behave like monkeys.
The first scenario is ideal, two and three are tough to
figure out, but can be handled once you know what you’re dealing with. It’s the
fourth scenario that’s to be avoided, because it most often ends in an ugly
fight. Besides making an effort to recognize the modes of all participants, you
should address problems immediately and directly.
Explaining your reasoning in an assertive, but respectful
manner is the best way to avoid emotional responses and bring back others to
the rational plane of thinking.
Lesson 3: Since the chimp always wants more, it can become a
fundamental obstacle to your long-term happiness.
This is something I struggle with: We should celebrate and
appreciate our achievements as they come. I always have goals, but when I
achieve them, I tend to gloss over, not really take much of a break, and
immediately dig in to the next challenge. That’s not healthy.
It’s also the chimp’s sneakiest trick. By always wanting
more, he gets you to chase an illusionary, perfect state in which you can
finally be happy – but only once you have the next thing. Of course, there’s
always a next thing and that feeling of relief never comes. This is how people
end up winning Olympic gold medals without being any happier for it.
So remember: Your inner monkey will always dangle the next
reward in front of you. Don’t let it ruin your long-term happiness. When you
achieve something you’re proud of, take a break, celebrate, and learn to
appreciate what you have.
My personal take-aways
What academics often struggle with is communicating their
vast knowledge in ways people enjoy, like, and understand. But not Steve
Peters. The Chimp Paradox is a brilliant, simple metaphor that will help you
assess your own behavior, focus on the long-term, and communicate better with
others.
The Art Of Learning explains the science of becoming a top performer, based on Josh Waitzkin’s personal rise to the top of the chess and Tai Chi world, by showing you the right mindset, proper ways to practice and how to build the habits of a professional.
The Art Of Learning Summary
Josh Waitzkin, the author of The Art of Learning, is a former child prodigy, a celebrated author, has won countless chess tournaments and holds a collection of martial arts titles! It’s safe to say you can trust this man with teaching you the fundamentals of learning, which he does with marvelous cogency in The Art of Learning, showing you how to overcome even the toughest obstacles in pursuit of your goals.
I first learned about Josh Waitzkin from Tim Ferriss, who not only had him on his podcast a couple times, but also tried to learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under his guidance in an episode of his TV show The Tim Ferriss Experiment.
Josh is incredibly passionate about learning itself, more so
than about any particular skill field or industry. That also explains how he
could just quit chess at the age of 23, in spite of being one of the most
promising players of all time and jump straight into martial arts.
In 2008, he wrote this book to share what he’s learned about
what it takes to become a top performer – regardless of whether you’re
particularly talented, or not.
Here are 3 lessons about the secrets of top performance:
If you want to win, you have to lose first.
Don’t turn distractions into excuses – use them to getbetter.
Improve your recovery rate with HIIT.
Committed to kicking the world’s ass in something? Let’s
look at the lessons from lead performers!
Lesson 1: Losing comes before winning (not just in the dictionary).
When Josh was 10 years old, he started to play in adult
chess tournaments. For the first time, he started actually losing a bunch of
matches. Of course, Josh was frustrated. But it was only through this
frustration that he found a major flaw in his chess skills: he couldn’t
concentrate long enough to compete in serious tournaments.
Adult chess matches are twice as long as the one in
children’s leagues, so Josh started working on his endurance.
The only way to get better is to compete with people, who
are better than you. But competing against better people always means losing.
This makes losing a necessary precursor of winning. However,
especially when it comes to children, we’re very focused on a mindset of
non-competition today. The answer is somewhere in the middle. Losing too much
is bad, but so is not losing at all.
When you or your kid lose in something that’s important to
you, do this:
Remember that it’s okay to be disappointed.
Be proud of yourself for showing up in the first place.
Identify where to improve in the short term.
Always use failure to set new short-term goals, which fuel a
long-term goal, and you’ll never get discouraged from any particular loss.
Lesson 2: Stay in the soft zone to accept distractions and perform in spite of them.
Sometimes it gets really loud in the café I usually work in
these days. Business meetings, students venting about their latest exam, loud
coffeemakers. On some days it feels very distracting and I get annoyed, because
it feels like the world won’t let me focus.
Josh would call this being in the hard zone. Our anger takes
over and we can’t perform at the level we’re used to. But in reality, great
performers can also deliver when conditions aren’t ideal. For example, soccer
players have to be able to execute a free kick or penalty, even when thousands
of people are raging in the stands around them.
If you embrace distractions instead, and learn to perform
while they’re present, you get better at being in the soft zone. In this state,
you can ignore or even use disruptions to build mental resilience and make your
brain stronger.
For example, Josh once lost an important chess match,
because he had a catchy song stuck in his head. Learning from the loss, he
started practicing at home with music playing, eventually aligning his thoughts
with the rhythm. This worked so well, that he start ed singing songs in his
head before tournaments on purpose, so he could trigger this new flow state.
Lesson 3: High-intensity interval training will cut your recovery rate down fast.
If you’re a runner, or do cardio on a regular basis, you
might have heard of HIIT before. It stands for high-intensity interval training
– short bursts of very tough exercise, followed by a brief period of recovery
time.
For example, if you’re running laps on a track, you could
run one lap at your regular pace, then sprint as fast as you can for 10 seconds
when you reach the start/finish line, and finish the rest of the lap at your
normal pace again. The more you repeat this process, the quicker your heart
rate returns to its base level and the longer it takes for it to reach really
high levels.
Whether you’re big on sports or not, integrating some form
of HIIT into your schedule will be well worth your time: Researchers at the
Human Performance Institute have found that this skill translates from physical
to mental and will help you reduce stress and recharge after exhausting your
mental capacities.
My personal take-aways
A very cool glimpse into the world of high-performers. Screw talent, it’s all about practicing and practicing right. Whether you’re trying to become a writer, better manager or want to dominate in a sport, this book can give you a few valuable principles to make your practice more deliberate. Go Josh!
The Art Of Choosing extensively covers the scientific research made about human decision making, showing you what affects how you make choices, how the consequences of those choices affect you, as well as how you can adapt to these circumstances to make better decisions in the future.
The Paradox of Choice is one of my favorite books of all
time. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a sucker for most books that, in one way
or the other, tell us to go back to “the good old days,” when making choices
was easier.
Sheena Iyengar thinks learning how to make choices is more
important today than ever. She’s one of the world’s most prominent researchers
in this field and conductor of the famous jam study, in which shoppers could
sample either 6 or 24 different varieties of jam at a grocery store, which led
to six times more purchases when less jams were available.
In this book, she explains what affects our choices, how
those choices in turn affect us, and what we can do to choose better. Here are
my 3 favorite lessons, one from each category:
How much choice you need is up to you to find out, but very important.
Having some choice is so important that even just thinking you do helps.
There are situations when it’s better for us not to choose ourselves, as long as the choice is communicated well to us.
Are you game to chop some complexity out of your choices?
Let’s level up your inner decision-maker!
Lesson 1: You must find out how much choice you personally
need, something that heavily depends on culture, for example.
There are innumerable factors that influence any given
choice you make. When we think about how we can change these, we usually try to
answer the question “How can I maximize the amount of choice I have?” – because
we assume that more choice is better. At least that’s how I try to answer it,
because I grew up in the Western civilization.
Here’s where it gets tricky: Not all of us need to maximize
our freedom of choice to thrive. How much choice you need is highly individual.
One of the factors that determines how much choice you
actually need is culture. It makes sense. Cultures that focus and promote
individual freedom, as in Europe or the United States, produce people who
thrive on being in charge. Eastern cultures are usually more focused on their
collective entity, in which it feels more natural to have others make decisions
for you.
In a study where Asian-American and Anglo-American children
were either given a toy to play with by their mothers or allowed to select a
toy to play with themselves, the Asian kids played longer when their mom
selected the toy, whereas the American kids enjoyed playing longer if they
self-selected.
What might seem trivial when looking at kid’s playing
behaviors is not when it comes to life: In another study, the same two ethnic
groups were given a math test before and after playing Space Quest, a game
designed to improve their math skills. One group could choose their spaceship’s
color and name, another was given the most popular settings among the class.
The American kids improved by 18% when they were allowed to
choose themselves and not at all when they were denied the choice, whereas the
Asian kids improved by 18% when they were given the settings, and only 11% if
they had to decide.
How much freedom of choice you need is not an easy one to
answer for yourself, but you can bet that it’s an important one to find out.
Lesson 2: Some choice is better than none, and even the
illusion of it makes us happier.
Two famous studies among over 10,000 British civil servants,
called the Whitehall studies, showed that employees with a higher salary tended
to be healthier, in spite of having more stressful jobs. Those with the lowest
pay grade had the highest likelihood of dying from heart disease. However,
nobody who works for their government in a Western country lives a life close
to the poverty line, so what’s the deal?
As it turned out, health wasn’t a matter of money, but a
matter of choice. With higher pay comes higher responsibility, but also more
freedom to structure your work and tasks – and this makes people happier and
healthier.
Feeling like you’re in charge is (to some extent, remember
lesson 1) so important that even the perception of choice matters a great deal,
regardless of how much you actually end up having.
For example, when new residents of a nursing home were given
a suggested schedule of activities, along with being told they were “allowed”
to visit other floors, they felt like their health was the staff’s
responsibility, and they gave up on it. Telling a second group that everything
was their choice made them much happier, even though technically both groups
were free to do as they pleased.
Lesson 3: Sometimes it’s better to have others choose for
you, but only if you’re properly informed.
Sometimes in life, we have to make really, really hard
choices.
For example, in the extreme situation of parents having to
decide whether to keep their terminally ill children alive or not, parents can
deal better with the decision to cease palliative care if it’s initiated by the
doctor – it puts less of a burden on their shoulders.
However, while it ultimately is better to have someone make
such a tough decision for you, it only makes you feel better if you’re
well-informed about it.
In a study where participants read about the following three
variations of such a scenario, the group that didn’t have to make the decision
but was well-informed felt best about it:
The parents aren’t informed about their child’s survival
chances, the doctors stop the treatment and the child dies.
The parents are told there’s a 60% survival chance, but with
severe neurological disabilities, before the doctors stop the treatment and the
child dies.
The parents are told the chances and have to decide
themselves.
Groups 1 and 3 felt equally as bad, either for being robbed
the choice and the information or for having to deal with both, while group 2
felt glad to know what was going on and that the choice was inevitable.
My personal take-aways There were so many good things to share from this summary, I had a tough time choosing – ironic huh? Highly recommended read
Rewire explains why we keep engaging in addictive and self-destructive behavior, how our brains justify it and where you can get started on breaking your bad habits by becoming more mindful and disciplined.
Dr. Richard O’Connor is a psychotherapist, who spent over 20
years working in the fields of addiction, depression and mental illness.
He believes his own struggles with depression, both in his
40s and his 20s – his mother committed suicide when he was 15 – give him a
unique and strong perspective on it, which he shares in this book.
Explaining plenty of reasons for why we engage in
self-destructive behavior, the book also gives you valuable starting points to
get better, so if you want to finally stop smoking, quit munching chips in
front of the TV and not kick yourself so much if you fail, this is for you.
Here are 3 great lessons from the book:
You have two selves that influence your actions – a conscious one and an automatic one.
Repressing your emotions can cause you to become self-destructive.
You can start breaking your bad habits by faking it and training mindfulness.
Have a bad habit you want to kick? Let’s do it!
Lesson 1: You have two selves that influence your actions –
a conscious one and an automatic one.
Which one is it going to be after work – gym or TV?
The moment I ask you that question you know which answer is
the right one.
Yet, we’ve all faced this or similar decision countless
times, but still ended up on the couch with a bag of chips.
Why?
Dr. O’Connor says it’s because we have two selves, a
conscious one and an automatic one.
The conscious self relies a lot on rational arguments, it’s
when you reason yourself into doing things, for example going to the library
early to get a good spot, because it’ll be crowded later on.
The automatic self is in charge when you eat your entire
popcorn before the movie starts. Your conscious self isn’t there to think about
the consequences and only when it reactivates again later do you regret your
actions.
Whenever you perform a bad habit, your automatic self is
running the show, after all you’d never choose to do a bad habit consciously.
There are two ways then, to break bad habits:
Strengthening your conscious self, so it becomes the
dominant force.
Training your automatic self to just stop slipping up.
Both work, but in the long run, training your automatic self
is a lot less effort, because once the neural pathways have been established,
they work on autopilot.
Lesson 2: Repressing your emotions can cause you to become
self-destructive.
Have you ever wished to yell at someone at the top of your
lungs, because they really pissed you off?
Chances are more often than not, when you wanted to, you
didn’t.
Dr. O’Connor says you should have.
Emotions are chemical reactions in your body. They build up
over time and eventually break, which is when we have to let them out.
Like water in an overflowing bathtub, they’ll find a way.
You not yelling when someone harasses you in the morning
might lead you to eat a whole pie by yourself in the afternoon, just because
you bottled up those feelings.
Emotions are never right or wrong, it’s not for you to
judge, they’re feelings and therefore not even meant to be based on reason and
common sense.
When you’re trying to rationally pick your feelings, you’ll
create a communication gap between your conscious and your automatic self.
Your automatic self really tells you to yell at your
co-worker for deleting all that data, but your rational you steps in and says
you shouldn’t cause a scene in the office.
Eventually, this conflicting advice might lead you to engage
in self-destructive behavior, like drinking way too much coffee, so listen to
your gut.
Lesson 3: You can start breaking your bad habits by faking
it and training mindfulness.
Rewiring your brain is never easy, but it’s easy to get
started.
Alcoholics Anonymous use the saying “Fake it till you make
it” a lot, and it helps a lot of recovering addicts get started.
It focuses on being dedicated to getting better, and giving
it your best, even when you end up caving and having a drink after a week or
two.
If you constantly beat yourself up every time you have
another drink, you’ll keep sabotaging yourself, because you’re repressing those
emotions, remember?
Instead, focus on continuing your efforts and “fake it”
until you eventually make not drinking a habit – it’ll get easier to control
yourself over time.
Note: Speaking of not drinking, check out what my friends
Ruari and Andy are doing over at One Year No Beer – a tremendous program!
Another great starting point is training your mindfulness
through meditation.
Just by sitting down for 30 minutes every day and focusing
and re-focusing your attention on your breath, you can substantially increase
your awareness for when you’re about to do a bad habit.
Don’t worry about being perfect, it’s normal to have other
thoughts as you meditate. Gently push them aside and re-focus your attention.
That’s what meditation is all about, but, you know, fake it
till you make it 😉
My personal take-aways
This summary on Blinkist reminded me a bit of The Upside Of
Your Dark Side. It shows you not all unwanted behaviors are bad and really digs
into why you’re engaging in them in the first place.
I think we all break bad habits differently at different
times (I’ve even created a quiz to show you which type you are for what
situation), but it’s important to know the roots and basics, so you don’t slide
down a slippery slope into addiction.
Very good summary, short, but packed with information – highly recommend.
Note: I recently published a very practical 3-step guide to
breaking bad habits, along with a mini course, which will also be a good
starting point to get going today.
Predictably Irrational explains the hidden forces that really drive how we make decisions, which are far less rational than we think, but can help us stay on top of our finances, interact better with others and live happier lives, once we know about them.
Dan is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics and researches on how we make choices. How we decide what things are worth to us, what influences the way we experience the world and how we tackle long-term goals are all shockingly irrational, and this book sheds some light on just how incoherent we are, so you can be more reasonable in the future.
#3 lessons
We compare whatever we can, so give others easy comparisonsto pick you.
Free is really just another price, but a powerful one.
You overvalue what you own.
Lesson 1: Give others easy comparisons, so they’ll value you more highly.
Imagine you’re trying to buy a new lawnmower, one of those
fancy ones you can sit on and drive around. The local brick and mortar store
around the corner has some, but just one model, and it’s priced at $3,000. Is
that good or bad?
It’s really tough to say, isn’t it, without having something
to compare it against to?
Let’s say you walk down the street and find another store,
which has two different models, the first one you saw at the first store, and
another one, which has slightly better functionality and looks better, but
costs more than double, $7,000! This makes it a lot easier to pick the first
one, doesn’t it?
We’re wired to compare things, and our brains do so in the
easiest way possible.
We compare what’s right in front of us, not necessarily what
we should think about or look at that might not be around at the time.
So if you give people options to compare yourself or your
products to, which are slightly worse, they’ll pick you more often.
For example, if you’re single, and you show up at the club
with a friend, who looks similar, but slightly less attractive than you, people
will always compare the two of you against one another. It’s a lot easier to
compare you two than to compare one of you with all the other, different looking
people, or people they saw a week ago at another club, so if you can get people
to think you’re hotter than your friend, they’ll likely even think you’re the
prettiest person at the club!
Offering comparisons means selling, and while experiments
like the one above are fun, you shouldn’t abuse this. Plus, for the sake of
your own happiness, it’s best to try and stop comparing altogether.
Lesson 2: Free is just another kind of price, but a very powerful one.
When people hear something is free they go insane. Do you
have a box at home with free gifts you’ve collected over the years, that you
never use, but still keep? Or do you always go for the “buy one, get one free”
deal when it’s offered to you?
Dan Ariely says free is a powerful emotional trigger, but at
its core, it’s just another price – the price of zero dollars.
However, the difference between $0 and even just $0.01 is
huge. When Dan did a study offering people to buy a Lindt truffle for $0.26 or
a Hershey’s kiss for $0.01, the groups were split evenly (40% for each of the
chocolates, with 20% of people buying nothing). But when they reduced both
prices by one cent, making the cost of the truffle $0.25, but the cost of the
Hershey’s kisses $0.00 (=free), 90% decided to go for the Hershey’s kisses,
even though the difference in price was the same.
This has to do with our incredibly strong tendency to avoid
losses wherever possible. If we buy something and it’s bad, we lose money. But
if we get something for free, the potential downside is zero, but it still
might be good for us, so we value free items disproportionately high.
Lesson 3: The endowment effect causes you to overvalue what you own.
In a funny video of one of his shows, famous stand up
comedian George Carlin says about how we look at other people’s possessions:
“Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?”
In a nutshell, this expresses the economic concept of the
endowment effect – the fact that we value things more highly once we own them.
For example, if you bought that Lindt truffle in the above
example for $0.26 cents, chances are you wouldn’t sell it to me at that price
after you’ve had it for even just a minute. You’d likely quote me a price
that’s somewhere around twice as high, maybe $0.50.
At Duke University, this phenomenon was investigated with
baseball tickets. To get one you have to enter a lottery, so all participants
are equally likely to get a ticket, or not. But once the tickets have been
distributed, those who won them wouldn’t sell them for less than a staggering
$2,400, while those who didn’t win any wouldn’t pay more than $170.
That’s the endowment effect at work and it’s based on three
things:
We love what we own, simply because of our memories and
fantasies about it (“I loved wearing this shirt at work/I’ll have so much fun
at the game”).
We hate losing things we own, whereas we don’t mind missing
out on something all that much.
We expect others to think highly of the same things we do (“If I like this carpet, I’m sure all my friends will like it too).
Predictably
Irrational by Dan Ariely
Print
| Kindle | Audiobook
Detailed Summary
Many
of our behaviors are misguided.
But
they’re not random; they’re systematic and predictable.
By
recognizing our irrational patterns, we can make better decisions in life and
business.
The
Five Big Ideas
We
tend to focus on what we may lose, rather than what we may gain.
With
everything you do, you should train yourself to question your repeated
behaviors.
We
assume other people will see monetary transactions from the same perspective as
we do.
People
will work more for a cause than for cash.
Giving
up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification is procrastination.
Predictably
Irrational Summary
“Humans
rarely choose things in absolute terms.”
We
tend to focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate
value accordingly.
“Most
people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context.”
Gregg
Rapp, a restaurant consultant, discovered high-priced entrées on the menu boost
revenue for the restaurant—even if no one buys them. Why? Because even though
people generally won’t buy the most expensive dish on the menu, they will order
the second most expensive dish.
“We
are always looking at the things around us in relation to others.”
“We
not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on
comparing things that are easily comparable—and avoid comparing things that
cannot be compared easily.”
“The
more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of
relativity.”
“Once
we buy a new product at a particular price, we become anchored to that price.”
“The
basic idea of arbitrary coherence is this: although initial prices are
‘arbitrary,’ once those prices are established in our minds they will shape not
only present prices but also future prices (this makes them ‘coherent’).”
“Initial
prices are largely ‘arbitrary’ and can be influenced by responses to random
questions; but once those prices are established in our minds, they shape not
only what we are willing to pay for an item, but also how much we are willing to
pay for related products (this makes them coherent).”
Price
tags become anchors when we contemplate buying a product or service at that
particular price.
“The
first anchor influences not only the immediate buying decision but many others
that follow.”
Herding
happens when we assume that something is good (or bad) on the basis of other
people’s previous behavior, and our own actions follow suit.
Self-herding
happens when we believe something is good (or bad) on the basis of our own
previous behavior.
To improve
an irrational behavior, ask yourself, “How did it begin? Second, ask yourself,
“What amount of pleasure will I be getting out of it. Is the pleasure as much
as I thought I would get?”
With
everything you do, you should train yourself to question your repeated
behaviors.
Ariely
on decision-making:
We
should also pay particular attention to the first decision we make in what is
going to be a long stream of decisions (about clothing, food, etc.). When we
face such a decision, it might seem to us that this is just one decision,
without large consequences; but in fact the power of the first decision can
have such a long-lasting effect that it will percolate into our future
decisions for years to come. Given this effect, the first decision is crucial,
and we should give it an appropriate amount of attention.
“The
sensitivity we show to price changes might in fact be largely a result of our
memory for the prices we have paid in the past and our desire for coherence
with our past decisions—not at all a reflection of our true preferences or our
level of demand.”
According
to Margaret Clark, Judson Mills, and Alan Fiske, we live simultaneously in two
different worlds—one where social norms prevail, and the other where market
norms make the rules.
People
will work more for a cause than for cash.
“No
one is offended by a small gift, because even small gifts keep us in the social
exchange world and away from market norms.”
“When
a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long
time.”
“To
make informed decisions we need to somehow experience and understand the
emotional state we will be in at the other side of the experience. Learning how
to bridge this gap is essential to making some of the important decisions of
our lives.”
Giving
up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification is procrastination.
When
Ariely offered his students a tool by which they could pre commit to deadlines,
they achieved better grades.
A
good course of action is to give people an opportunity to commit upfront to
their preferred path of action.
The
endowment effect is our tendency to value what we own more than other people
do.
Our
aversion to loss is a strong emotion and one that sometimes causes us to make
bad decisions.
We
assume other people will see monetary transactions from the same perspective as
we do.
The
more work you put into something, the more ownership you begin to feel for it.
We
can begin to feel ownership even before we own something (this applies to
points of view, too).
Given
a simple setup and a clear goal, all of us are quite adept at pursuing the
source of our satisfaction.
“Research
on stereotypes shows not only that we react differently when we have a
stereotype of a certain group of people, but also that stereotyped people
themselves react differently when they are aware of the label that they are
forced to wear (in psychological parlance, they are “primed” with this label).”
“Since
people engage in a cost-benefit analysis with regard to honesty, they can also
engage in a cost-benefit analysis to be dishonest.”
“When
we are removed from any benchmarks of ethical thought, we tend to stray into
dishonesty. But if we are reminded of morality at the moment we are tempted,
then we are much more likely to be honest.”
“Cheating
is a lot easier when it’s a step removed from money.”
“People
are sometimes willing to sacrifice the pleasure they get from a particular
consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others.”
Recommended Reading
If
you like Predictably Irrational, you may also enjoy the following books:
Contagious:
Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
Drive:
The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
To
Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and
Influencing Others by Daniel H Pink
Pre-Suasion takes you through the latest social psychology research to explain how marketers, persuaders and our environment primes us to say certain things and take specific actions, as well as how you can harness the same ideas to master the art of persuasion.
33 years after Influence stormed into the hearts of business
owners, marketers and managers and sold millions of copies, Robert Cialdini is
back on the scene with his first solo book since then. Pre-Suasion: A
Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade isn’t about getting people to
decide the way you want. It’s about setting the stage the right way, so they’ll
automatically want to when the time comes.
This book shows you two sides of the same coin: the way
we’re being pre-suaded in our everyday lives and how you and I can use those
very same tactics to persuade others. If you’re a marketer, this’ll help you
sell more stuff. If you’re a frequent shopper, you’ll learn to see why you buy
things the way you do.
Here are 3 lessons about how we decide, before we decide:
So-called leading or pre-suasive questions elicit certain answers and prime us to decide in a specific way.
We put more relevance on what’s attention-grabbing, sobeware!
The words we use determine what we do – more than we think.
Ready to learn the art of pre-suasion? Let’s give this a go!
Lesson 1: Leading questions try to get you to respond with
certain answers and influence your later decisions.
Last semester I took a statistics class, for which I had to
create a survey about energy drinks. One of the first things we learned was
that we must not ask leading questions. Leading questions are questions, which
steer the respondent to answer in a certain way.
For example, if I ask you: “Given the recent terrorist
attacks in London, how dangerous do you perceive the threat of terrorism to
be?” then that question is loaded with pre-suasion. By reminding you of those
attacks I draw your attention to the recency of the topic, and thus you’ll
naturally evaluate it the danger as a lot realer.
But pre-suasive questions can be even simpler: “Are you
unhappy?” gets you to start fishing for unhappiness in your life, whereas “Are
you happy?” makes you look for the positives. In a 1993 study among students,
those with the first question were 375% (!) more likely to report actually
being unhappy.
What kind of answer you get highly depends on how you ask
the question.
Lesson 2: Whatever grabs our attention, we think is
relevant.
Have you been thinking about terrorism for the last minute
or so? That’s because I planted something very attention-grabbing in your head.
And the longer you think about it, the more relevant it’ll become in your mind.
What’s more, if we’re not giving our attention to something
that grabs it already, we’ll just settle for whatever’s available right now. If
I ask you whether you like cappuccino in a Starbucks, you’re a lot more likely
to say yes – even if you don’t – just because you feel it’s the right response
in this environment.
In the same vein, you will think 9/11 is historically less
important two weeks before and after the anniversary date than the week of.
When the news have been recycling it for days, the event is still fresh in your
mind, it’s emotional and available.
So the next time someone tries to sell you an alarm system
by citing all kinds of scary crime statistics, remember: they’re making things
seem more relevant to you than they might actually be.
Lesson 3: Our word choices matter a lot more than we think,
because words get us to do things.
I think you should watch Entourage. It’s a hilariously funny
TV show, has great guest stars, awesome actors, and a superb soundtrack,
especially for people who like hip-hop.
Does this make you want to watch the show? If so, what do
you think sold you on it? The fun? The actors? The soundtrack? Chances are,
it’s none of those things. Most likely, if you now feel compelled to watch this
show, it’s because I used words that reminded you of some of your favorite
things. Maybe you thought of a funny actor you like, a hip-hop song you love,
or even just something random you think is awesome.
One of the psychologists Cialdini cites in the book says the
primary purpose of speech is to direct the attention of listeners to certain
aspects of reality. Use the right words, get people to focus on certain things
and thus, to take certain actions.
For example, in a study where participants had to assemble
sentences from scrambled words, those with aggressive words like “blood,”
“rage,” “angry,” or “kill” set intensity levels of electric shocks in a
follow-up test 50% higher than the control group. Similarly, after reading a
long text about old people with triggering words, participants of another study
actually walked slower.
What you say matters. It changes what you do. More than you
think.
My personal take-aways
You have to be bold to come back after 30 years and say: “Look, I wrote another book!” Especially when your first one was so successful. I have nothing but respect for that. And I think Robert Cialdini actually pulled it off. The book’s getting great reviews, the blinks make a lot of sense to me and this adds a fresh and new perspective to a topic that’s been talked so much about. Bravo!
Peak accumulates everything the pioneer researcher on deliberate practice has learned about expert performance through decades of exploration and analysis of what separates those, who are average, from those, who are world-class at what they do.
If you’ve spent a little bit of time on this site, you’ll
likely have come across a phrase that’s dropped often in popular science:
deliberate practice. This idea represents an alternative to the long-prevailing
notion that world-class performance is the result of mere talent and innate
ability. Bounce, Deep Work and The Art of Learning are just a few of numerous
bestsellers discussing this topic you’ll find on Four Minute Books.
What we haven’t done so far is trace this powerful concept
back to its humble beginnings. Anders Ericsson is the true pioneer in this
field. It’s his research that the 10,0000-hour rule is based on and he’s been
investigating peak performance for decades. Only in 2016 did he finally wrap
everything he’s learned so far into this book, called Peak: Secrets from the
New Science of Expertise.
Here are my 3 favorite lessons about how the idea has
developed and transformed over the years and why it puts an end to the talent
vs. skill debate:
The path professionals take is called ‘purposeful practice’
and it consists of four parts.
When you practice in a mature field of expertise and have
someone to guide you, purposeful practice becomes deliberate.
True genius isn’t an innate talent – but the mere result of
years of deliberate practice.
Are you sick and tired of believing you can’t become who you
want because you weren’t built to? Then this is for you.
Lesson 1: Professionals practice with purpose, which is a 4-part approach.
Way back in the 1970s, Anders Ericsson did a study with one
of his undergraduate students, named Steve. The goal was to see if Steve could
significantly improve his ability to remember a sequence of numbers. When they
began working together, Steve could remember the average length most people have
no trouble with – seven digits in a row. Steve hadn’t had any memory training
before and he wasn’t particularly good with numbers either.
At the end of the study, several months later, Steve could
remember number sequences up to 82 digits long.
What happened in between? Four things, specifically, which
shaped Steve’s practice environment:
He had a clear, specific goal: memorize more numbers.
Steve was focused during practice. A researcher recited the
numbers to him in one-second intervals. There were no distractions.
Ericsson constantly pushed him to achieve more. When he
pulled off 32 numbers, they’d start again with 32 the next session, then shoot
for 33.
Lastly, Steve received feedback after every attempt, telling
him exactly how he had done.
These four things combined create a training environment
Ericsson calls purposeful practice. However, purposeful practice is just a
stepping stone. For the real deal, two more things must happen.
Lesson 2: Purposeful practice becomes deliberate when it’s guided and within a well-developed field.
Going from an average to a world-class performer is like
climbing a ladder with an infinite number of rungs. The difference between good
and great is in how fast you can get to the next rung, including how many you
can skip altogether.
This happens when your practice turns from purposeful to
deliberate, for which two elements must come together:
Your practice must take place in a field that’s
well-established. The longer it’s been around and the more seasoned experts you
can potentially access, the better. If there’s a clear gap in performance
between beginners and pros, that’s a good sign.
Your practice must be guided by a trainer, coach or mentor,
who can instruct you in the activities necessary to improve.
Take music, for example. It’s been around forever and
hundreds of training techniques for all kinds of instruments have been refined
and crafted until today. By having a violin teacher, who shows you how to play
scales the best way, you skip a lot of steps and frustrating attempts.
Leveraging the guidance of someone with access to a big
share of the resources and strategies in your field takes your practice from
purposeful to informed – and that’s what makes it deliberate.
Lesson 3: Even the world’s greatest talents are really the result of years of deliberate practice.
But what about child prodigies Nik? When did they practice?
Ericsson argues there is no evidence to prove something such
as innate talent exists and that even the most gifted among us are the result
of lots and lots of deliberate practice.
Even Mozart was trained, not just talented. He just happened
to receive excellent training, particularly from his father, starting before he
was four years old. Contrary to popular belief, Mozart likely only started
composing “proper” music in his teenage years – by when he had put in a
decade’s worth of deliberate practice already.
Plus, even if you consider others to be “more of a natural”
than you, it wouldn’t change the fact that you too can become world-class,
thanks to deliberate practice. Whether our starting points differ or not
becomes moot: he who practices the most and does so deliberately, wins.
So get off the complain train and start calling potential
mentors!
My personal take-aways
Given Anders Ericsson’s background and his pioneer status when it comes to human performance, it’d be foolish to skip Peak for other books about the subject. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise should be your number one, go-to book about deliberate practice. If you’re interested in learning about this topic, make it your first stop, not your last.
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson
The Book in Three Sentences
Anders
Ericsson has made a career studying top performers.
We
all have the seeds of excellence within us; —it’s just a question of nurturing them properly.
In
Peak, Ericsson shows you how to get better at the things you care about.
The
Five Big Ideas
People
aren’t born with fixed reserves of potential; instead, potential is an
expandable vessel, shaped by the various things we do throughout our lives.
The
right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to
improvement. Nothing else.
Once
you reach a level of “acceptable” performance and automaticity, the additional
years of “practice” don’t lead to improvement.
The
goal, with deliberate practice, is not just to reach your potential but to
build it, to make things possible that were not possible before.
Much
of deliberate practice involves developing ever more efficient mental
representations that you can use in whatever activity you are practicing.
Table
of Contents
Chapter
1: The Power of Purposeful Practice
Chapter
2: Harnessing Adaptability
Chapter
3: Mental Representations
Chapter
4: The Gold Standard
Chapter
5: Principles of Deliberate Practice on The Job
Chapter
6: Principles of Deliberate Practice in Everyday Life
Chapter
7: The Road to Extraordinary
Chapter
8: But What About Natural Talent?
Chapter
9: Where Do We Go From Here?
Peak
Summary
No
matter what role innate genetic endowment may play in the achievements of
“gifted” people, the main gift that these people have is the same one we all
have—the adaptability of the human brain and body, which they have taken
advantage of more than the rest of us.
People
aren’t born with fixed reserves of potential; instead, potential is an
expandable vessel, shaped by the various things we do throughout our lives.
Learning
isn’t a way of reaching one’s potential but rather a way of developing it. We
can create our own potential.
The
right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to
improvement. Nothing else.
Chapter
1: The Power of Purposeful Practice
The
following are the basic types of practice—the sorts of practice that most
people have already experienced in one way or another.
1.
The Usual Approach (A.K.A. “Naive Practice”)
Once
you reach a satisfactory skill level and automate your performance, you stop improving.
According
to Ericsson, once a person reaches a level of “acceptable” performance and
automaticity, the additional years of “practice” don’t lead to improvement. If
anything, people who have been at it for twenty years are likely to be a bit
worse than the one who’s been doing it for only five. Why? Because automated
abilities gradually deteriorate in the absence of deliberate efforts to
improve.
2.
Purposeful Practice
Purposeful
practice has several characteristics that set it apart from what we might call
“naive practice,” which is essentially just doing something repeatedly, and
expecting that the repetition alone will improve your performance.
Purposeful
practice is, as the term implies, much more purposeful, thoughtful, and focused
than naive practice. In particular, it has the following characteristics:
Purposeful
practice has well-defined, specific goals
Purposeful
practice is all about putting a bunch of baby steps together to reach a
longer-term goal
Purposeful
practice is focused
You
seldom improve much without giving the task your full attention
Purposeful
practice involves feedback
You
have to know whether you are doing something right and, if not, how you’re
going wrong.
Generally
speaking, no matter what you’re trying to do, you need feedback to identify
exactly where and how you are falling short. Without feedback—either from
yourself or from outside observers—you can’t figure out what you need to
improve on or how close you are to achieving your goals.
Purposeful
practice requires getting out of one’s comfort zone. Why? Because if you never
push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve. To get out of
your comfort zone, you need to try something you couldn’t do before.
Often,
the goal isn’t to “try harder”; it’s to “try differently.”
The
best way to get past any barrier is to come at it from a different direction,
which is one reason it is useful to work with a teacher or coach. Someone who
is already familiar with the sorts of obstacles you’re likely to encounter can
suggest ways to overcome them.
Sometimes
it turns out that a barrier is more psychological than anything else.
Whenever
you’re trying to improve at something, you will run into such obstacles—points
at which it seems impossible to progress, or at least where you have no idea
what you should do in order to improve. This is natural. What is not natural is
a true dead-stop obstacle, one that is impossible to get around, over, or
through.
In
all of his years of research, Ericsson has found it is surprisingly rare to get
clear evidence in any field that a person has reached some immutable limit on
performance. Instead, he’s found that people more often just give up and stop
trying to improve.
While
it is always possible to keep going and keep improving, it is not always easy.
Maintaining the focus and the effort required by purposeful practice is hard
work, and it is generally not fun.
Meaningful
positive feedback is one of the crucial factors in maintaining motivation. It
can be internal feedback, such as the satisfaction of seeing yourself improve
at something, or external feedback provided by others, but it makes a huge
difference in whether a person will be able to maintain the consistent effort
necessary to improve through purposeful practice.
Purposeful
practice in a nutshell: Get outside your comfort zone but do it in a focused
way, with clear goals, a plan for reaching those goals, and a way to monitor
your progress. Finally, figure out a way to maintain your motivation.
Although
it is generally possible to improve to a certain degree with focused practice
and staying out of your comfort zone, that’s not all there is to it. Trying
hard isn’t enough. Pushing yourself to your limits isn’t enough. There are
other, equally important aspects of practice and training that are often
overlooked.
Chapter
2: Harnessing Adaptability
There
is a growing body of evidence that both the structure and the function of the
brain change in response to various sorts of mental training, in much the same
way as your muscles and cardiovascular system respond to physical training.
The
hippocampus is the horse-shaped part of our brain that is involved in the
development of memory.
In
one study, Ellenor McGuire, a neuroscientist at University College London,
studied a group of people training to become licensed taxi drivers in London.
McGuire
found that the volume of the posterior hippocampi had gotten significantly
larger in the group of trainees who had continued their training and had become
licensed taxi drivers. By contrast, there was no change in the size of the
posterior hippocampi among the prospective taxi drivers who had failed to
become licensed (either because they simply stopped training or because they
could not pass the tests) or among the subjects who had never had anything to
do with the taxi training program.
You
need to continually push to keep the body’s compensatory changes coming, but if
you push too far outside your comfort zone, you risk injuring yourself and
actually setting yourself back.
Recent
studies have shown that learning a new skill is much more effective at
triggering structural changes in the brain than simply continuing to practice a
skill that one has already learned.
Musical
training modifies the structure and function of the brain in various ways that
result in an increased capacity for playing music.
The
most effective forms of practice do more than help you learn to play a musical
instrument; they actually increase your ability to play.
Long-term
training results in changes in those parts of the brain that are relevant to
the particular skill being developed.
Regular
training leads to changes in the parts of the brain that are challenged by the
training. The brain adapts to these challenges by rewiring itself in ways that
increase its ability to carry out the functions required by the challenges.
The
effects of training on the brain can vary with age in several ways. The most
important way is that younger brains—those of children and adolescents — are
more adaptable than adult brains are, so training can have larger effects on
younger people. Because the young brain is developing in various ways, training
at early ages can actually shape the course of later development, leading to
significant changes.
“The
Bent-Twig Effect”: If you push a small twig slightly away from its normal
pattern of growth, you can cause a major change in the ultimate location of the
branch that grows from that twig; pushing on a branch that is already developed
has much less effect.
In
many cases people who, have developed one skill or ability to an extraordinary
degree seem to have regressed in another area.
The
cognitive and physical changes caused by training require upkeep. Stop
training, and they start to go away.
When
Maguire studied a group of retired London taxi drivers, she found that they had
less gray matter in their posterior hippocampi than did active taxi drivers,
although they still had more than retired subjects who had never been taxi
drivers.
The
reason that most people don’t possess these extraordinary physical capabilities
isn’t because they don’t have the capacity for them, but rather because they’re
satisfied to live in the comfortable rut of homeostasis and never do the work
that is required to get out of it. They live in the world of “good enough.”
The
traditional approach to learning is not designed to challenge homeostasis. It
assumes, consciously or not, that learning is all about fulfilling your innate
potential and that you can develop a particular skill or ability without getting
too far out of your comfort zone. In this view, all that you are doing with
practice—indeed, all that you can do—is to reach a fixed potential.
The
goal, with deliberate practice, is not just to reach your potential but to
build it, to make things possible that were not possible before. This requires
challenging homeostasis—getting out of your comfort zone—and forcing your brain
or your body to adapt. But once you do this, learning is no longer just a way
of fulfilling some genetic destiny; it becomes a way of taking control of your
destiny and shaping your potential in ways that you choose.
Chapter
3: Mental Representations
Research
has shown that the amount of time spent analyzing positions—not the amount of
time spent playing chess with others—is the single most important predictor of
a chess player’s ability. It generally takes about ten years of this sort of
practice to reach the level of grandmaster.
A
mental representation is a mental structure that corresponds to an object, an
idea, a collection of information, or anything else, concrete or abstract, that
the brain is thinking about.
Much
of deliberate practice involves developing ever more efficient mental
representations that you can use in whatever activity you are practicing.
The
thing all mental representations have in common is that they make it possible
to process large amounts of information quickly, despite the limitations of
short-term memory.
What
sets expert performers apart from everyone else is the quality and quantity of
their mental representations. Through years of practice, they develop highly
complex and sophisticated representations of the various situations they are
likely to encounter in their fields. These representations allow them to make
faster, more accurate decisions and respond more quickly and effectively in a
given situation.
The
main thing that sets experts apart from the rest of us is that their years of
practice have changed the neural circuitry in their brains to produce highly
specialized mental representations, which in turn make possible the incredible
memory, pattern recognition, problem-solving, and other sorts of advanced
abilities needed to excel in their particular specialties.
The
best way to understand exactly what these mental representations are and how
they work is to develop a good mental representation of the concept mental
representation.
The
more you study a subject, the more detailed your mental representations of it
become, and the better you get at assimilating new information.
To
write well, for example, develop a mental representation ahead of time to guide
your efforts. Then monitor and evaluate your efforts and modify that
representation as necessary.
The
more skilled you become, the better your mental representations are, and the
better your mental representations are, the more effectively you can practice
honing your skill.
As
you push yourself to do something new—to develop a new skill or sharpen an old
one—you are also expanding and sharpening your mental representations, which
will, in turn, make it possible for you to do more than you could before.
Chapter
4: The Gold Standard
In
one study, Ericsson interviewed violin students from Berlin University of The
Arts. One of his most significant findings was that most factors the students
had identified as being important to improvement were also seen as
labor-intensive and not much fun; the only exceptions were listening to music
and sleeping.
Everyone
from the very top students to the future music teachers agreed: improvement was
hard, and they didn’t enjoy the work they did to improve. In short, there were
no students who just loved to practice and thus needed less motivation than the
others. These students were motivated to practice intensely and with full
concentration because they saw such practice as essential to improving their
performance.
First,
to become an excellent violinist requires several thousand hours of practice.
Ericsson found no shortcuts and no “prodigies” who reached an expert level with
relatively little practice. And, second, even among these gifted musicians—all
of whom had been admitted to the best music academy in Germany—the violinists
who had spent significantly more hours practicing their craft were on average
more accomplished than those who had spent less time practicing.
Nobody
develops extraordinary abilities without putting in tremendous amounts of
practice.
Deliberate
practice is different from other sorts of purposeful practice in two important
ways: First, it requires a field that is already reasonably well developed—that
is, a field in which the best performers have attained a level of performance
that clearly sets them apart from people who are just entering the field.
Second,
deliberate practice requires a teacher who can provide practice activities
designed to help a student improve his or her performance.
Deliberate
practice is informed and guided by the best performers’ accomplishments and by
an understanding of what these expert performers do to excel. Deliberate
practice is purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get
there.
Deliberate
practice is characterized by the following traits:
Deliberate
practice develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do
and for which effective training techniques have been established. The practice
regimen should be designed and overseen by a teacher or coach who is familiar
with the abilities of expert performers and with how those abilities can best
be developed.
Deliberate
practice takes place outside one’s comfort zone and requires a student to
constantly try things that are just beyond his or her current abilities. Thus
it demands near-maximal effort, which is generally not enjoyable.
Deliberate
practice involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving
some aspect of the target performance; it is not aimed at some vague overall
improvement. Once an overall goal has been set, a teacher or coach will develop
a plan for making a series of small changes that will add up to the desired
larger change. Improving some aspect of the target performance allows a
performer to see that his or her performance has been improved by the training.
Deliberate
practice is deliberate, that is, it requires a person’s full attention and
conscious actions. It isn’t enough to simply follow a teacher’s or coach’s
directions. The student must concentrate on the specific goal for his or her
practice activity so that adjustments can be made to control practice.
Deliberate
practice involves feedback and modification of efforts in response to that
feedback. Early in the training process much of the feedback will come from the
teacher or coach, who will monitor progress, point out problems, and offer ways
to address those problems. With time and experience, students must learn to monitor
themselves, spot mistakes, and adjust accordingly.
Deliberate
practice both produces and depends on effective mental representations.
Improving performance goes hand in hand with improving mental representations;
as one’s performance improves, the representations become more detailed and
effective, in turn making it possible to improve even more. Mental
representations make it possible to monitor how one is doing, both in practice
and in actual performance. They show the right way to do something and allow
one to notice when doing something wrong to correct it.
Deliberate
practice nearly always involves building or modifying previously acquired
skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve
them specifically; over time this step-by-step improvement will eventually lead
to expert performance. Because of the way that new skills are built on top of
existing skills, it is important for teachers to provide beginners with the
correct fundamental skills in order to minimize the chances that the student
will have to relearn those fundamental skills later when at a more advanced
level.
Research
has shown that the “experts” in many fields don’t perform reliably better than
other, less highly regarded members of the profession—or sometimes even than
people who have had no training at all.
Be
careful when identifying expert performers. Ideally you want some objective
measure of performance with which to compare people’s abilities. If no such
measures exist, get as close as you can.
Another
method is to seek out the persons that professionals themselves seek out when
they need help with a particularly difficult situation. Talk to the people
about who they think are the best performers in their field, but be certain
that you ask them what type of experience and knowledge they have to be able to
judge one professional as being better than another.
If
you find that something works, keep doing it; if it doesn’t work, stop. The
better you are able to tailor your training to mirror the best performers in
your field, the more effective your training is likely to be.
Chapter
5: Principles of Deliberate Practice on the Job
The
first step to enhancing performance in an organization is realizing that
improvement is possible only if participants abandon business-as-usual
practice. Doing so requires recognizing and rejecting three prevailing myths:
The
belief that one’s abilities are limited by one’s genetically prescribed
characteristics.
If
you do something for long enough, you’re bound to get better at it.
All
it takes to improve is effort. If you just try hard enough, you’ll get better.
The
deliberate-practice mindset offers the following view: anyone can improve, but
it requires the right approach. If you are not improving, it’s not because you lack
innate talent; it’s because you’re not practicing the right way. Once you
understand this, improvement becomes a matter of figuring out what the “right
way” is.
When
you look at how people are trained in the professional and business worlds, you
find a tendency to focus on knowledge at the expense of skills. The main
reasons are tradition and convenience: it is much easier to present knowledge
to a large group of people than it is to set up conditions under which
individuals can develop skills through practice.
Chapter
6 Principles of Deliberate Practice in Everyday Life
One
of the most important things a teacher can do is to help you develop your own
mental representations so that you can monitor and correct your own
performance.
You
may need to change teachers as you yourself change.
If
you find yourself at a point where you are no longer improving quickly or at
all, don’t be afraid to look for a new instructor. The most important thing is
to keep moving forward.
If
your mind is wandering or you’re relaxed and just having fun, you probably
won’t improve.
Focus
and concentration are crucial. Shorter training sessions with clearer goals are
the best way to develop new skills faster.
To
effectively practice a skill without a teacher, it helps to keep in mind three
Fs: Focus. Feedback. Fix it. Break the skill down into components that you can
do repeatedly and analyze effectively, determine your weaknesses, and figure
out ways to address them.
When
you first start learning something new, it is normal to see rapid — or at least
steady—improvement, and when that improvement stops, it is natural to believe
you’ve hit some sort of implacable limit. So you stop trying to move forward,
and you settle down to life on that plateau. This is the major reason that
people in every area stop improving.
The
best way to move beyond it is to challenge your brain or your body in a new
way.
Any
reasonably complex skill will involve a variety of components, some of which
you will be better at than others. Thus, when you reach a point at which you
are having difficulty getting better, it will be just one or two of the
components of that skill, not all of them, that are holding you back. To figure
out which one, you need to find a way to push yourself a little—not a lot—harder
than usual. This will often help you figure out where your sticking points are.
First,
figure out exactly what is holding you back. What mistakes are you making, and
when? Push yourself well outside of your comfort zone and see what breaks down
first. Then design a practice technique aimed at improving that particular
weakness. Once you’ve figured out what the problem is, you may be able to fix
it yourself, or you may need to go to an experienced coach or teacher for
suggestions. Either way, pay attention to what happens when you practice; if
you are not improving, you will need to try something else.
Anyone
who hopes to improve skill in a particular area should devote an hour or more
each day to practice that can be done with full concentration.
Maintaining
the motivation that enables the above regimen has two parts: reasons to keep
going and reasons to stop. When you quit something that you had initially
wanted to do, it’s because the reasons to stop eventually came to outweigh the
reasons to continue. Thus, to maintain your motivation you can either
strengthen the reasons to keep going or weaken the reasons to quit.
Good
planning can help you avoid many of the things that might lead you to spend
less time on practice than you wanted.
More
generally, look for anything that might interfere with your training and find
ways to minimize its influence.
Chapter
7: The Road to Extraordinary
In
the first stage, children are introduced in a playful way to what will
eventually become their field of interest.
In
the beginning, a child’s parents play with their child at the child’s level,
but gradually they turn the play toward the real purpose of the “toy.”
At
this stage, the parents of children who are to become experts play a crucial
role in the child’s development. For one thing, the parents give their children
a great deal of time, attention, and encouragement. For another, the parents
tend to be very achievement-oriented and teach their children such values as
self-discipline, hard work, responsibility, and spending one’s time
constructively.
One
excellent supplement, particularly with smaller children, is praise. Another
motivation is the satisfaction of having developed a certain skill,
particularly if that achievement is acknowledged by a parent.
A child
who sees an older sibling performing an activity and getting attention and
praise from a parent will naturally want to join in and garner some attention
and praise as well. For some children, competition with the sibling may itself
be motivating, too.
In
many of the cases that have been studied, children with talented siblings also
had one or both parents encouraging them as well.
Once
a future expert performer becomes interested and shows some promise in an area,
the typical next step is to take lessons from a coach or teacher.
Helping
children develop mental representations can also increase motivation by
increasing their ability to appreciate the skill they are learning.
Finally,
as the students continued to improve, they started to seek out better-qualified
teachers and coaches who would take them to the next level.
Generally,
when they’re in their early or mid teens, the future experts make a major
commitment to becoming the best that they can be. This commitment is the third
stage.
During
this stage, the motivation lies solely with the student, but the family may
still play an important support role.
This
is the fourth stage of expert performance, where some people move beyond the
existing knowledge in their field and make unique creative contributions.
Researchers
who study how the creative geniuses in any field—science, art, music, sports,
and so on—come up with their innovations have found that it is always a long,
slow, iterative process.
Research
on the most successful creative people in various fields, particularly science,
finds that creativity goes hand in hand with the ability to work hard and
maintain focus over long stretches of time—exactly the ingredients of
deliberate practice that produced their expert abilities in the first place.
Even
if the Pathfinder doesn’t share the particular technique, simply knowing that
something is possible drives others to figure it out.
In
short, in most cases—and this is especially true in any well-developed area—we
must rely on the experts to move us forward.
Chapter
8: But What About Natural Talent?
Expert
performers develop their extraordinary abilities through years and years of
dedicated practice, improving step by step in a long, laborious process.
One
of the major reasons that people believe in the power of innate talent is the
apparent existence of natural prodigies,.
Ericsson
has made it a hobby to investigate the stories of prodigies, and he reports
with confidence that he has never found a convincing case for anyone developing
extraordinary abilities without intense, extended practice.
Ericsson’s
basic approach to understanding prodigies is the same as it is for
understanding any expert performer. He asks two simple questions: What is the
exact nature of the ability? and, What sorts of training made it possible? In
thirty years of looking, he has never found an ability that could not be
explained by answering these two questions.
People
do not stop learning and improving because they have reached some innate limits
on their performance; they stop learning and improving because, for whatever
reasons, they stopped practicing—or never started.
In
the long run, it is the ones who practice more who prevail, not the ones who
had some initial advantage in intelligence or some other talent.
Chapter
9: Where Do We Go from Here?
When
teaching a skill, break the lesson into a series of steps that the student can
master one at a time, building from one to the next to reach the ultimate
objective.
The
redesigned physics class at the University of British Columbia offers a road
map for redesigning instruction according to deliberate-practice principles:
Begin
by identifying what students should learn how to do. The objectives should be
skills, not knowledge.
In
figuring out the particular way students should learn a skill, examine how the
experts do it. In particular, understand as much as possible about the mental
representations that experts use, and teach the skill so as to help students
develop similar mental representations. This will involve teaching the skill
step by step, with each step designed to keep students out of their comfort
zone but not so far out that they cannot master that step.
Then
give plenty of repetition and feedback; the regular cycle of try, fail, get
feedback, try again, and so on is how the students will build their mental
representations.
Recommended
Reading
If
you like Peak, you may also enjoy the following books:
Payoff unravels the complex construct that is human motivation and shows you how it consists of many more parts than money and recognition, such as meaning, effort and ownership, so you can motivate yourself not just today, but every day.
Dan Ariely is awesome. He doesn’t take himself so seriously,
plus he always finds creative ways to make what he wants to say accessible to
everyone. This is the fourth of his five books to make it on Four Minute Books.
He’s primarily concerned with errors in human thinking, like
how we can avoid making irrational errors, use them to our advantage or what
causes us to lie.
Published in November 2016, this short book is part of TED’s
series of books from their speakers. It’s called Payoff and explains why
staying motivated isn’t as straightforward as dangling a promotion and pay raise
in front of your nose year after year.
These are the 3 lessons I learned from it today:
As long as your work is meaningful, it doesn’t matter if
it’s miserable sometimes.
You can give your work meaning by putting in more effort.
External motivators, like money, don’t work in the long run.
Zig Ziglar once said if motivation doesn’t last, that makes
it no different from bathing: you have to do it daily. So here’s your dose for
today (and hopefully many days after that)!
Lesson 1: Meaningful work can be miserable, yet still make
you happy.
Do you like your job? I mean really like it? If your pay was
cut in half, would you still do it?
Even if not, chances are you’re not doing it just for the
monthly paycheck. There are other factors at play, right? Dan says reducing
motivation to money and status is a huge mistake. It’s a complex construct,
with variables such as happiness, achievement, pride, fulfillment and countless
other intangibles factoring into the equation.
The number one factor though, is meaning.
If you find your work to be highly meaningful, it can be
miserable, yet you’ll happily tolerate it. That’s because meaning and happiness
aren’t the same thing.
Just think about careers, which include extremely
excruciating work, whether that’s physical (ultra marathoners, sculptors,
kitchen chefs) or mental (writers, therapists, poker players). These people
don’t enjoy the task itself more than others, they just derive more meaning
from it.
For most people, the best way to get a big sense of meaning
from their work is to contribute to a bigger mission.
Sure, sipping pina coladas all day on a beach would be nice
for a while, but the happiness from such pleasure activities is always
short-lived. It can’t possibly compete with the prospect of proper meaning.
Lesson 2: Effort engenders meaning.
Dan’s next assumption lends further credibility to his last
one: effort engenders meaning. The more work you put into something, the more
meaningful it will seem to you. This principle piggybacks off one of the strongest
biases in humans: the sunk cost fallacy.
Naturally, we hold on to something ever tighter, the more
time and effort we invest into it. This often works against us, because it
makes it hard to let go of things that aren’t working, but when it comes to
motivation, this can be advantageous.
Here’s how Dan verified the idea: he took two groups of
people and gave them the task of folding origamis. One group received
well-written instructions and pictures with directional arrows, leading them
step-by-step. The others were given minimal and even slightly confusing
guidance.
As you would expect, the guided group’s origamis looked a
lot better. But when asked how much they were willing to pay for what they’d
made, the do-it-yourselfers outbid the first group by far. Clearly, putting in
all this work had made their results more meaningful to them.
Lesson 3: External motivators aren’t sustainable.
Lastly, and I’m sure this won’t surprise you, Dan found that
external motivators, such as money or (social) status, will work in the short
run, but actually hurt your motivation long-term.
Many studies have been conducted in this field. Dan’s was
done in 2013 at a semiconductor factory of Intel in Israel.
He promised workers a cash bonus they’d receive in the morning
if they met a certain quota the day before. Many workers rallied and completed
the task. However, the second the money was in their pocket, their productivity
dropped not just back to normal levels, but even below them. So before offering
extra cash, you’re better off not incentivizing at all.
Dan controlled this with a pizza group and a compliment
group. It turned out the latter performed the best throughout the week, all
thanks to a simple “Well done!” text they received from their boss in the morning.
Whatever comes from the inside is a lot more powerful than
any carrot or stick could possibly be.
My personal take-aways
Short, to the point, enlightening, fun and entertaining. No fluff, no clutter. This is everything a book should be. Just yesterday I took a walk and thought: “Hmm, actually it hasn’t mattered much what I’ve done in life so far, I always had fun doing it.” My guess was that if you give everything you do your best shot, you’ll always consider it worth your while. Sure seems to be true for me. Hypothesis confirmed!
Nudge shows you how you can unconsciously make better decisions by designing your environment so it nudges you in the right direction every time temptation becomes greatest and thus build your own choice architecture in advance.
This book was co-authored by two professors. One is Cass
Sunstein, who taught law for 27 years and worked in the Office of Information
and Regulatory Affairs under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2012. He recently made
his debut on Four Minute Books the wonderful, but totally unrelated The World
According to Star Wars.
His partner in nudging, Richard Thaler, is a professor of
behavioral economics at the University of Chicago, where Sunstein also taught.
Thaler has worked with Nobel prize laureate Daniel Kahneman, and both have
pushed the envelope of the science of decision-making quote a bit. He was even
featured as himself in the Hollywood blockbuster The Big Short (great movie
about finance).
What makes this choice-book different is its focus on
environment design, rather than improving your inner strength, willpower, etc.
to make better decisions.
Here are my 3 favorite lessons:
A nudge is a subtle cue or context change that pushes you to
make a certain decision without forcing you to.
One of the most powerful nudges is the default.
When states use nudges well, they can improve entire
countries.
Need a nudge in the right direction? This ought to do it!
Lesson 1: Nudges are tiny hints or changes, which push you
in one direction, but leave all options open.
Have you ever been talked into going out by a friend, at
first not wanting to go, but after she teased you a bit and you dressed up, you
ended up having a really good time? That’s a nudge in action.
Used right, a nudge is a very small action or change in
environment, which makes it easier for you to make the decision that’s best for
you, without forcing you to decide a certain way.
For example, if the cafeteria put the fruits next to the
registrar, and not the candy bars, you’d eat more bananas – simply because
they’re easier to pick up. When the cashier at McDonald’s asks you “Do you want
fries with that?” that’s also a nudge (but one in the wrong direction). The
little flag some mailboxes have that turns up when mail is inside the box?
Another nudge.
We’re being nudged all day, sometimes towards good
decisions, sometimes towards bad ones. The cool thing is, you can design your
environment in ways that more good nudges will happen, for example by
installing blocking software to restrict access to distracting websites.
Lesson 2: A default is a very powerful nudge, as it requires
you to actively object it for it not to work.
Sometimes, it’s possible to design situations where decisions
need to be made in a way that if you decide automatically, you naturally make
the right choice.
For example, if you send an email through Gmail and type
something like “please find attached” or “I’ll attach the file” in the email’s
body and you then forget to upload the actual attachment, Gmail automatically
prompts you with the question “Did you want to send an attachment with this?”
It’s a very situation-specific nudge, but it can save tons of time and
frustration in the long run.
This particular type of nudge is called a default. Default
nudges are set up in a way that if you do nothing, you’ll still do the right
thing by sticking to the preset standard.
At scale, companies can use this by automatically enrolling
their employees in their matching-retirement plan programs, unless they
explicitly object to participating. This helps a lot of lazy people save for
retirement, because they would never have enrolled if they’d had to actively do
it themselves.
Similarly, gyms and magazines abuse this by automatically
renewing your subscription, unless you cancel it. Again, nudges can be used
both ways.
Lesson 3: States and other large institutions can use nudges
to improve societies and countries as a whole.
Here’s a really basic way of describing how states work: if
the majority of its members make good decisions, the welfare of the state
grows. If the majority makes bad decisions, it declines.
For example, 75% of Americans make bad food choices and are
therefore either obese or overweight. Imagine all of these people would eat
healthier. Obesity would go away, and thus the expensive health problems that
come with it. The country would save billions of dollars in treatments, surgery
costs, health insurance expenses, etc. It’d be a win-win. Same with smoking.
Sure, a nudge at scale costs a bit to set up, but its
effects usually kick in fast. For example, since it’s become mandatory to
report carbon emissions, the emissions themselves have gone down significantly
– just because companies have to be transparent. No law says they have to emit
fewer carbon dioxide, yet because critics can point fingers, businesses
naturally compete to be eco-friendlier.
Another cool state-side nudge is the dollar-a-day program,
which gives teenage mothers $1 each day they don’t get pregnant again. $365 may
sound like a lot, but is much cheaper than having to take care of a newborn or
trying to relocate it to a good family.
If they use nudges right, governments and large institutions
can spur wise decisions at scale and thus, make life better for everyone!
My personal take-aways
What a cool way of reframing the whole decision-making
process. As I said in the introduction, this book really is different, just
topically related to all the other decision-making books, which is precisely
what makes it so powerful. Thumbs up!
