52 tips from The Little Book of Talent, in my words (“think like Buddha, work like Jesus”)

the-little-book-of-talentI forget most of what I read unless the knowledge is shocking or hilarious or about sex or is life altering. Maybe I don’t forget it right away, but time wins in the end. It’s always deleting what I’ve learned. I hate it. Because it wastes time, our most precious resource, and I hate wasted time more than I hate people who are perpetually late, and cafes that are too cool for wifi.

So I’ve developed two methods to retain knowledge, especially the important bits. Method one is good ol’ memorization (using Anki and Evernote). Method two is more complicated but it’s helpful in my quest to become a good writer: to rewrite things, whether quotes or short stories or essays.

When I stumbled upon The Little Book of Talent (thanks Derek!), the 52 tips were perfect for method two. The book is a companion to Daniel Coyle’s other book, The Talent Code, which I also read and summarized.

So, from The Little Book of Talent [Kindle], here is a rewritten version of his 52 tips!

1. VISUALIZE a “future you” who’s mastered your desired skill (like Michael Phelps visualizes each performance down to likely drops of water)
2. REPEAT the best performances of that skill for 15 minutes a day (if you’re a comedian, learn to recite a Louis CK routine, word-for-word and pause-for-pause)
3. STEAL from anyone better than you (this is why musical families produce musical prodigies)
4. RECORD your progress (like a daily journal)
5. BE STUPID, act silly to experiment and expand what’s possible
6. BE POOR: use simple, sparse environments to focus and motivate you (like the founders of Google starting in a garage)
7. HARD OR SOFT? Determine if you’re learning a hard skill (like a tennis forehand) or a soft one (like writing)?
8. For hard skills, be the KARATE KID: wax on and wax off. Be precise, slow, and careful
9. For soft skills, be a SMALL CHILD: experiment, explore, and challenge yourself
10. DO HARD: prioritize hard skills. In the long run, they’re more important
11. FORGET PRODIGIES. Believe you’ll only get there through effort and persistence
12. FIND THE RIGHT COACH: someone who is tough, blunt, active, usually older, and enjoys teaching fundamentals (I am reminded of John Wooden’s reputation)
13. LIVE in the sweet spot, which happens when you’re fully engaged and struggling just enough (what Mikhail C calls flow)
14. MEASURE # of tough reps finished, not # of hours spent
15. CHUNK IT. Reduce each skill into small, coherent chunks
16. MASTER A CHUNK at a time (like a difficult run in a song, or an algorithm in programming)
17. FRUSTRATE yourself. When you’re frustrated, remember: that’s when you’re improving most
18. Practice a little each day, instead of a lot in spurts
19. PLAY: Don’t do drills. Create and play games
20. PRACTICE ALONE
21. Create IMAGES for each chunk to improve your memory
22. Make a mistake? Stop everything. Pay attention. Understand what you did wrong. Then do it right.
23. VISUALIZE your neurons creating connections, getting thicker
24. VISUALIZE your neurons speeding up, getting more efficient
25. PLACE LIMITS and rules on yourself to challenge your skills
26. DO IT SLOW, as slowly as possible
27. CLOSE YOUR EYES and do it. Use your left hand if you’re right handed.
28. MIME IT
29. When you do it right (finally!): notice it. mark it. replay it in your mind
30. Take NAPS
31. EXAGGERATE: make it much bigger, or much smaller
32. SET NEW GOALS just out of reach. Stretch for them
33. WRITE IT DOWN: to learn from a book, write it down, summarize it, organize it
34. With mistakes, use the SANDWICH technique: do it right. do it wrong. then do it right again
35. Practice the 3 x 10 method: do a rep, rest 10 minutes, do a rep, rest 10 minutes, do a rep, rest
36. TEST YOURSELF DAILY
37. Plan your practice using the REPS framework: Reach and Repeat; Engage; Purposeful; Strong, Speedy Feedback
38. STOP WHEN TIRED. Don’t create bad habits
39. Practice immediately after a performance, when the mistakes are fresh (this is my favorite tip)
40. Before sleep, visualize your perfect performance (what Phelps and his coach called “playing the tape”)
41. End each practice with a REWARD (remember the habit loop: trigger, action, reward)
42. How to be a better teacher: connect emotionally, don’t give long speeches, communicate precisely and concretely, make a scorecard, maximize struggling, teach them to learn without you
43. RINSE & REPEAT. Rinse & repeat. Rinse & repeat…
44. Fight the battle anew every day (a frequent message in The War of Art)
45. For every hour of competition or performance, spend FIVE HOURS in practice
46. Instead of fixing bad habits, build good new ones
47. Teach it
48. Give a new skill EIGHT WEEKS to develop
49. When you plateau, change it up!
50. BUILD GRIT and love the grind
51. Keep your goals to yourself
52. Think like Buddha (calm, patient) and work like Jesus (strategic, steady)

That’s the list! Here’s my 1-page summary of The Talent Code.

TED talk notes: Robert Neuwirth on our informal economy and Chrystia Freeland on the super rich

Every week, I share my notes from great TED talks. Here’s the complete list (it takes awhile to load).

This week we have Robert Neuwirth on the informal (mostly untaxed, unregulated) economy and Chrystia Freeland on a rise in the super rich.

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Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

  • Lagos — no streets for stores, so lady sells stuff from boat, comes to your home
    • garbage dump — 2K people work there scavenging materials
  • “alif” — a place in the world where everything exists (e.g., imagine a hyper-crowded flea market next to a camp)
  • he calls this System D — the DIY economy, the economy of self-reliance; government hates DIY
  • we’re focused on the “luxury economy” ($1.5T market) but this excludes 2/3 of the world’s workers
  • P&G’s largest market segment is actually the informal economy: tiny stores, street hawkers selling detergent (and it’s the only segment that’s growing)
  • Nigeria is the “big dog in Africa” — 1 in 7 Africans are Nigerian
    • M-Tel — only sells airtime, sells through street vendors
    • tons of Guangdong (China) phones going to Nigeria
  • for large brands, “piracy is research” — not going to buy their products anyway, and lets them learn where their products are hot
  • Siemens paid $2B in bribes, yet we demonize the little guys

* * * * *


Chrystia Freeland: The rise of the new global super-rich

  • as income inequality increases, social mobility decreases
  • today we live in the era of superstars in every industry — even dentists!
  • while the rise in the top 1%’s wealth is astonishing, rise in 0.1% is even more extreme
  • how GM employs 100K, FB only employs thousands
  • today productivity increases are decoupled from wage increases

* * * * *

Here’s the full list of TED notes!

The future is only an illusion…

The future is only an illusion inferred from our present state. What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is most important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does. Only then does your life become fulfilled. And do not ask yourself questions about time. Jesus did not explain a thing about the eternity of life, but his influence brought people to the eternal. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

…from Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom [Kindle].

Here’s more Emerson.

My daily habits checklist

A checklist of habits that I try to follow daily

Inspired by Ben Franklin’s thirteen virtues, I created a habits checklist to complete each day. It lists my top daily habits. Tackling them gives the day some structure, like when to pop out of bed and when to go for a run. It helps establish priorities: writing is the most important, and the day always improves with a little meditation. This miniature system, of sorts, is my crutch for discipline and consistency without a regular job.

For now, I’ll publish my progress here every week. The habits overlap what’s described here, with the exception of two items: reading a book, and memorizing quotes. Book reading is a monthly goal. I worry that turning it into a daily habit could reduce the joy it gives me. At the same time, I know the goal will be reached, and has been for several years. My feeling about memorization is similar (this has become much easier with the adoption of Anki software).

What are your habits? How do you track them? I’d love to hear from you, and to “habituate” together! (can I use the word this way?)

The Power of Habit: more notes from one of my favorite books

I am reading again The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg [Kindle]. It’s my favorite behavior change book. Here’s a summary.

A reader alerted me to some supplemental content: a reader’s guide to applying the book’s ideas, and a thorough study guide for teachers.

So I read them and took notes:

  • try different rewards until you find one that makes the habit stick
  • for a reward to work properly, it must create a CRAVING over time (the way you might crave an episode of Rick and Morty ;)
  • all cues (aka triggers) fall into 5 categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, action that came immediately before
  • an effective cue should be simple and clear and fall into only a few of the 5 categories. for example, a good cue for exercise could be to hit the gym at 4pm (a time cue), when you return home from work (preceding action cue)
  • an activity becomes a habit only when mental activity decreases over time (so you’re not actively thinking about it)
  • focus on keystone habits, which are habits that influence other habits. for example, a keystone habit in families is to eat dinner together. i find that meditating for 5 minutes is my keystone habit. it simply makes my day better: i am calmer, get more done, less rushed, more focused, etc etc
  • “willpower is the most important keystone habit for success”

See my cheatsheet-summary-review here. If you want to change something annoyingly sticky in your life, read this book!