Tag: derek sivers

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.

Random Quotes: “The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried” – Stephen McCranie

Recent favorite:

Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate – Arthur Schopenhauer

This changed how I think about negative advertising:

Do you know why McDonald’s never ran a negative ad against Burger King, saying their burgers were all full of maggots? It might have worked for a year or two but then no one would have ever eaten another hamburger. – advertising exec in Tom Friedman’s That Used To Be Us

Others:

For warriors in particular, if you calm your own mind and discern the inner minds of others, that may be called the foremost art of war – Shiba Yoshimasa

Meditation is a powerful tool for calming your own mind. When I get in my 10-15 minutes a day, it makes a real difference (especially in the morning). And sometimes on weekends, I try to meditate for longer – 30 minutes to an hour. Often I fall asleep.

Work saves us from 3 great evils: boredom, vice and need – Voltaire

Greed does not have a memory – an economist on Planet Money

Human memory sucks. It is constantly deleted, edited, and curated. While we are willing to believe that such things happen, we forget that they happen to us, too.

Each of you has an economic pie over your heads that represents the value you’ve lost because you haven’t negotiated. You need to stop that pie from growing – bschool professor

Thanks to Medrano for the above.

Money is nothing more than neutral proof that you’re adding value to people’s lives. – Derek Sivers

Thanks to Cal Newport for the above.

Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina. – Jason Fried

A perpetual favorite for startups. Thanks to Matt for the above.

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. – Stephen McCranie

Reminds me of this Chris Dixon post. If you like Chris Dixon, here are my notes from his talk on why good ideas often seem like bad ideas.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority – Lord Acton

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something – Thomas Huxley

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day – Henry Ward Beecher

An analogue could be, “the last hour of today is the springboard for tomorrow.”

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win – Mahatma Gandhi