Ideal Work, Hedgehog Concept, Excellence

Ideal work: Good at + Paid well + Love to do

The order is important!

• it helps to have some predisposition, but need to put effort, learn to get good at, 
• find place that pays to do challenging work and learn to get better, 
• and the more you learn, the more you love doing what you are doing great (excellent)

Blue Badge - Scott Hanselman


Your images are a virus. They are EVERYWHERE on the Internet - Scott Hanselman

Jim Collins - Concepts

Amazon.com: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't (8601300383743): Jim Collins: Books


Good to Great - Wikipedia

• "Level 5 Leadership: Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what's best for the company.
• First Who, Then What: Get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to go. Finding the right people and trying them out in different positions.
• Confront the Brutal Facts: The Stockdale paradox—Confront the brutal truth of the situation, yet at the same time, never give up hope.
• Hedgehog Concept: Three overlapping circles: 
• What lights your fire ("passion")? 
• What could you be best in the world at ("best at")? 
• What makes you money ("driving resource")?
• Culture of Discipline: Rinsing the cottage cheese.
• Technology Accelerators: Using technology to accelerate growth, within the three circles of the hedgehog concept.
• The Flywheel: The additive effect of many small initiatives; they act on each other like compound interest."

The Hedgehog Concept




"What is the Hedgehog Concept? It’s a similar axiom to the One Thing. Based on the famous essay by Isaiah Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox” describes how the world is divided into two types. 

• The fox knows many things. The fox is a very cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies to sneak attack upon hedgehog. 
• The hedgehog knows one big thing, rolling up into a perfect little ball thus becoming a sphere of sharp spikes, pointing outward in all directions. 

The hedgehog always wins despite the different tactics the fox uses."

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World: Cal Newport: 9781455586691: Amazon.com: Books


Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - Cal Newport

"Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep—spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way."

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love - Cal Newport

"In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion” is good advice. Not only is the cliche flawed—preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work—but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.
...
Matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter, he reveals. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it."

"Durant sums up some of Aristotle’s thoughts... from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (“these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions”), Durant sums it up this way:
“…we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.” "

Aristotle quote: These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions...

Arete (moral virtue) - Wikipedia

"Arete (Greek: ἀρετή), in its basic sense, means "excellence of any kind".
The term may also mean "moral virtue"

this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the
fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential."

Amazon.com: Chess Not Checkers: Elevate Your Leadership Game (9781626563940): Mark Miller: Books
"The early days of an organization are like checkers: a quickly played game with mostly interchangeable pieces. Everybody, the leader included, does a little bit of everything; the pace is frenetic. But as the organization expands, you can't just keep jumping from activity to activity. You have to think strategically, plan ahead, and leverage every employee's specific talents—that's chess. Leaders who continue to play checkers when the name of the game is chess lose."