Friday, November 24, 2017

free book: Ask Method



podcast interview:
#233: Ryan Levesque—Better Questions, More Sales | EntreLeadership

"In working with businesses across 23 different industries, Ryan Levesque—CEO of The ASK Method Company and best-selling author—has discovered what a big (think $100-million- dollars big) difference the smallest subtleties in language can make. Turns out it’s not enough to simply ask people what they want. You have to use the right words in the right way to elicit the most truthful response. "
Free Book | ASK METHOD ® | by Ryan Levesque

"Quiz" is much better than "Survey"

Open ended questions are in general better than yes/no.

book: Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Amazon.com: Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work eBook: Chip Heath, Dan Heath: Kindle Store

book's web site: Decisive - Heath Brothers Heath Brothers

Member Resources - Heath Brothers Heath Brothers
  • Widen your options
    • Narrow framing leads us to overlook options 
      • avoid “whether or not” decisions
      • find more options
    • Who has already solved your problem?
      • look for current bright spots (local) 
      • best practices (regional) 
      • analogies from related domains (distant)
  • Reality‐test your assumptions
    • confirmation bias: skewed, self-serving information
    • To combat that bias, we can: 
      • ask dis-confirming questions
      • zoom out and 
      • zoom in 
      • conduct small experiments
  • Attain distance before deciding
    • Short-term emotion tempts us to make choices that are bad in the long term
    • What would I tell my best friend? 
    • What would my successor do?
    • Clarify our core priorities, and go on the offensive for them
  • Prepare to be wrong
    • We are typically overconfident
    • should prepare for bad outcomes, 
    • as well as good ones 
    • set up "tripwires": trigger conditions to get our attention (M&M, Zappos $1000)
Chip Heath: Being Decisive - YouTube

Decisive Ch 1 - Widening Your Options - YouTube

Dan Heath: Being Decisive - YouTube


DECISIVE by Chip and Dan Heath | Animated Core Message - YouTube




Tuesday, November 21, 2017

person: Ray Dalio: Principles, Economy, Ideas

new book:
Principles: Life and Work: Ray Dalio: Amazon.com

new: short animated videos:
Principles by Ray Dalio


Principles by Ray Dalio - YouTube - YouTube


interview with the author, by Tony Robbins:
Success strategies from a self-made billionaire | tonyrobbins.com



"Ray founded the investment management firm Bridgewater Associates in 1975 out of his two-bedroom New York City apartment. Four decades later, Bridgewater has grown to be the largest hedge fund in the world, managing over 160 billion dollars, and making more money for its investors than any other hedge fund in history. Dalio himself has appeared on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world, as well as the Bloomberg Markets list of the 50 most influential people."

"The 5 things you need to be successful:
  1. Create audacious goals
  2. Diagnose the problems to determine the root causes
  3. Determine the design for what you will do about the root causes
  4. Decide to work with people who are strong where you are weak
  5. Push through to results"




Friday, November 10, 2017

book: Mastery by Robert Greene

MASTERY by Robert Greene | Animated Core Message - YouTube
Outsourcing + AI = high quality work for a fraction of the cost.
To become irreplaceable in this harsh marketplace, we need to attain Mastery.
Three essential mindsets to Mastery:

  • Primal Curiosity
  • Learning Above Everything Else
  • Unique Combination of skills



Robert Greene: "Mastery" | Talks at Google - YouTube

The key to transforming yourself -- Robert Greene at TEDxBrixton - YouTube


Mastery by Robert Greene - PhilosophersNotes | Optimize with Brian Johnson

PNTV: Mastery by Robert Greene - YouTube by Brian Johnson

Optimize Interview: Mastery with Robert Greene - YouTube  by Brian Johnson



Mastery: Robert Greene: 8601422197709: Amazon.com: Books
"Each one of us has within us the potential to be a Master. Learn the secrets of the field you have chosen, submit to a rigorous apprenticeship, absorb the hidden knowledge possessed by those with years of experience, surge past competitors to surpass them in brilliance, and explode established patterns from within. Study the behaviors of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Leonardo da Vinci and the nine contemporary Masters interviewed for this book. "

MASTERY BY ROBERT GREENE | ANIMATED BOOK REVIEW + FREE MASTERY BOOKS! - YouTube

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Decisions: Ben Franklin Method and more

Decide | Definition of Decide by Merriam-Webster
  • to make a final choice or judgment about
  • to select as a course of action 
  • to infer on the basis of evidence
Sacrifices vs. Decisions | Optimize with Brian Johnson
"The Latin root of the word decide literally means “to cut off.” 
When we make a true decision, we CUT OFF all other options and go ALL IN."


How to Make Good Decision, From Ben Franklin | The Art of Manliness
“My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; 
writing over the one Pro and over the other Con.
Then during three or four days’ consideration,
I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives,
that at different time occur to me, for or against the measure.
When I have thus got them altogether in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out.
If I judge some two reasons con equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out five;
and thus proceeding, I find where the balance lies; and if after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly.”
–Benjamin Franklin


A "spreadsheet variation" of Ben Franklin's method:
  1. Make your columns.
  2. List the important elements of your decision.
  3. List the importance factor of each element
  4. Grade the choices in relation to each element. 
  5. Multiply the importance factor by the grades for each choice
  6. Add up the totals
decision balance sheet decide like ben franklin
Here is a great book that explore making decisions from many interesting angles




Wednesday, November 1, 2017

"The Best Idea in psychology" | Daniel Kahneman

A very interesting observation by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate:

How to Launch a Behavior-Change Revolution - Freakonomics Freakonomics
"...
KAHNEMAN: There are driving forces that drive you in a particular direction. 
There are restraining forces. Which are preventing you from going there. 
.... behavior is an equilibrium between the driving and the restraining forces.

You can see that the speed at which you drive, for example, is an equilibrium. When you are rushing some place, you feel tired, or you’re worried about police. There is an equilibrium speed. A lot of things can be described as an equilibrium between driving and restraining forces. 

Lewin’s insight was that if you want to achieve change in behavior, there is one good way to do it and one bad way to do it. The good way to do it is by diminishing the restraining forces, not by increasing the driving forces. That turns out to be profoundly non-intuitive."

KAHNEMAN: Diminishing the restraining forces is a completely different kind of activity, because instead of asking, “How can I get him or her to do it?” it starts with a question of, “Why isn’t she doing it already?” Very different question. “Why not?” Then you go one by one systematically, and you ask, “What can I do to make it easier for that person to move?” 

It turns out that the way to make things easier is almost always by controlling the individual’s environment, broadly speaking. By just making it easier. Is there an incentive that work against it? Let’s change the incentives. If there is social pressure? If there is somebody who is against it, I want to influence B. But there is A in the background, and it’s actually A who is a restraining force on B. Let’s work on A, not on B. 

I have never heard a psychological idea that impressed me quite as much as this one, perhaps because I was at an impressionable age."

Kahneman had some more wisdom to add:

"KAHNEMAN: There is a real social problem that if you realistically present to people what can be achieved in solving a problem, they will find that completely uninteresting. You have to over-promise in order to get anything done. That is part of it ... 
Over-promising is part of the game, you know? You can’t get anywhere without some degree of over-promising."



"...Daniel Kahneman the world's most influential living psychologist..."
Daniel Kahneman Quote: “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”

Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don't know the odds. It's a big difference.