In the early days, scientists built giant boards of transistors, and manually switched them on and off as they experimented with making computers do interesting things. It was hard work (and one of the reasons early computers were enormous).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, scientists got sick of flipping switches and poured a layer of virtual gravel that let them control the transistors by punching in 1s and 0s. 1 meant \u201con\u201d and 0 meant \u201coff.\u201d This abstracted the scientists from the physical switches. They called the 1s and 0s machine language. Still, the work was agonizing. It took lots of 1s and 0s to do just about anything. And strings of numbers are really hard to stare at for hours. So, scientists created another abstraction layer, one that could translate more scrutable instructions into a lot of 1s and 0s.<\/p>
This was called assembly language and it made it possible that a machine language instruction that looks like this: 10110000 01100001 could be written more like this: MOV AL, 61h which looks a little less robotic. Scientists could write this code more easily.<\/p>
Soon, scientists engineered more layers, including a popular language called C, on top of assembly language, so they could type in instructions like this: printf(\u201cHello World\u201d); C translates that into assembly language, which translates into 1s and 0s, which translates into little transistors popping open and closed, which eventually turn on little dots on a computer screen to display the words, \u201cHello World.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Despite several layers of abstraction, Ruby (and all other code languages) forces programmers to make countless unimportant decisions. What do you name your databases? How do you want to configure your server? Those little things added up. And many programs required repetitive coding of the same basic components every time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy whole thing was, if I can put in 5 percent of the effort of somebody getting an A, and I can get a C minus, that\u2019s amazing,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly good enough, right? Then I can take the other 95 percent of the time and invest it in something I really care about.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So DHH built a layer on top of Ruby to automate all the repetitive tasks and arbitrary decisions he didn\u2019t want taking up his time. (It didn\u2019t really matter what he named his databases.) His new layer on top of programming\u2019s pavement became a set of railroad tracks that made creating a Ruby application faster. He called it Ruby on Rails.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The mentality behind Rails caught on. People started building add-ons, so that others wouldn\u2019t have to reinvent the process of coding common things like website sign-up forms or search tools. They called these \u201cgems\u201d and shared them around. Each contribution saved the next programmer work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In 2006 a couple of guys at a podcasting startup had an idea for a side project. With Rails, they were able to build it in a few days\u2014as an experiment\u2014while running their business. They launched it to see what would happen. By spring 2007 the app had gotten popular enough that the team sold off the old company to pursue the side project full time. It was called Twitter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it’s a great mistake to force children to learn mathematics,\u201d said renowned physicist Freeman Dyson, as I sat at lunch with him at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.<\/p>
Dyson believes that American schools teach kids to, metaphorically, drive on bumpy grass instead of to pilot cars on highways. Memorization of facts and figures is the primary culprit. What we really need, he says, is to teach kids to use tools that do math for us.<\/p>
Studies show that students who use calculators have better attitudes toward math, and are more likely to pursue highly computational careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) than those who don\u2019t or can\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
While we may need deep expertise in our industries to become innovators, we actually need only higher-order thinking and the ability to use platforms to do everything else. In a pre\u2013technology era, people with abstract knowledge were highly valued. But in the age of smartphones and Wikipedia, does it matter that you don\u2019t know offhand the name of the second-largest city in Botswana? What\u2019s important today is knowing how to use platforms to retrieve the information we need, whether it\u2019s the capital of Botswana or the result of 124,502 divided by 8.* In an age of platforms, creative problem solving is more valuable than computational skill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
As the world evolves, so too should we constantly rethink our educational conventions in light of the new platforms we have. For example, today\u2019s children should be taught to use Excel spreadsheets\u2014and all their calculations\u2014instead of times tables. Rather than teaching a mile wide in every subject, we ought to first teach kids to use platforms, then let them go deep in the areas that interest them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The secret of the Finland phenomenon, Wagner discovered, was a platform it built by elevating the education level of its teachers. Finland\u2019s public school system was experiencing the same thing that made Harvard University\u2019s curriculum and network the envy of the academic world: it hired only teachers with incredible qualifications and it had them mentor students closely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Teaching in Finland became a prestigious profession where master\u2019s degrees were required to teach on every level. And only 10 percent of applicants are even chosen to begin teacher training. Once they had jobs, teachers often stayed in the profession until they retired. (Roughly half of American teachers leave in the first five years.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the most important benefit of having supereducated instructors is that a better-trained teacher is more adept at teaching children how to learn, whereas the coach-turned-geography-teacher will often teach how to memorize. Finnish education reflects that: it focuses on teaching students how to think, not what to think. That, says Wagner, is core to making school both interesting and valuable. As the saying, attributed to Dr. Seuss, goes: \u201cIt is better to know how to learn than to know.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cKids there have much more sense that they\u2019re going to have to construct their own future,\u201d Wagner says. They\u2019re taught to be entrepreneurs of their own lives. Instead of standing passively on an education assembly line and being handed reams of facts and figures, they are thrown into rooms of bricks and asked to build castles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
For so long, \u201cinnovation\u201d in education has amounted to more class time, more memorization, more tests. Smaller classes, but the same classes. Finland actually got better, through lateral thinking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Is it any wonder that nearly two-thirds of the patents filed over the last three decades came from twenty metropolitan areas with only one-third of the US population? More innovation, creativity, and art per person happens in large metro areas than other places; what Jonah Lehrer calls \u201curban friction\u201d and Richard Florida calls the \u201ccreative class\u201d turns cities into higher platforms for success-seekers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In a given domain\u2014be it surfing or accounting or political fund-raising\u2014the familiarity that leads to pattern recognition seems to come with experience and practice. Fencing masters recognize opportunities in opponents\u2019 moves because of the sheer amount of practice time logged into their heads. Leaders and managers who use their gut to make decisions often do so based on decades of experience, archived and filed away in the folds of their cerebrums.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIntuition is the result of nonconscious pattern recognition,\u201d Dane tells me. However, his research shows that, while logging hours of practice helps us see patterns subconsciously, we can often do just as well by deliberately looking for them. In many fields, such pattern hunting and deliberate analysis can yield results.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Through deliberate analysis, the little guy can spot waves better than the big company that relies on experience and instinct once it\u2019s at the top. And a wave can take an amateur farther faster than an expert can swim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
By the end of 2012 Google\u2019s Gmail service had become the most popular electronic mail provider in the world. That same year, Google\u2019s AdSense product accounted for more than $12 billion in revenue, about a quarter of the search giant\u2019s total revenues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201c20% Time\u201d is not Google indigenous. It was borrowed from a company formerly known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, aka 3M, which allowed its employees to spend 15 percent of their work hours experimenting with new ideas, no questions asked. 3M\u2019s \u201c15% Time\u201d brought us, among other things, Post-it Notes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Behind this concept (which is meticulously outlined in an excellent book by Ryan Tate called The 20% Doctrine) is the idea of constantly tinkering with potential trends\u2014having a toe in interesting waters in case waves form.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The best way to be in the water when the wave comes is to budget time for swimming.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On good wave days, an ocean swell will bring in a massive amount of energy from some faraway place, a moving, macrolump in the ocean. Within that swell are essentially ripples, small waves and big waves that come in groups and often repeat in patterns. Waves on waves on waves. Surfers call these patterns \u201csets.\u201d A set might consist of one or two or three surfable waves in a row, followed by some period of silence or small waves, before another set rolls in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Another academic duo, Peter Golder and Gerard Tellis of the University of Southern California, published a study in 1993 to see if historical evidence backed the claim that market pioneers were more likely to succeed. They researched what happened to 500 brands in 50 product categories, from toothpaste to video recorders to fax machines to chewing gum. Startlingly, the research showed that 47 percent of first movers failed. Only about half the companies that started selling a product first remained the market leader five years later, and only 11 percent of first movers remained market leaders over the long term.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Like early pioneers crossing the American plains, first movers have to create their own wagon trails, but later movers can follow in the ruts. First movers take on the burden of educating customers, setting up infrastructure, getting regulatory approvals, and making mistakes\u2014getting feedback and adjusting. Fast followers, on the other hand, benefit from free-rider effects. The pioneers clear the way in terms of market education and infrastructure and learn the hard lessons, so the next guys can steal what works, learn objectively from the first movers\u2019 failures, and spend more effort elsewhere. The first wave clears the way for a more powerful ride.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Google, Facebook, and Microsoft were each fast followers in their respective spaces in the technology sector, leaping past Overture, Myspace, and Apple, respectively (until Apple made a comeback).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
After leaving From First to Last in 2007, Sonny Moore went from sleeping in luxurious hotels around the world and playing sold-out stadium shows to living in a warehouse in Los Angeles in a matter of months.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
By that time, personal computers and cheap software were starting to match professional studios in recording and mixing quality, and digital instruments allowed the computer-savvy to create almost any sound imaginable. So, Sonny, fresh off a series of vocal cord surgeries, started recording music on his laptop. No band. No singing. No label. Just electronic instruments he could power with keyboard and mouse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Electronic musicians started offering to collaborate on tracks; Sonny connected online with DJs around the world who seemed to be popping out of nowhere. Before he knew it, Sonny found himself paddling straight into an electronic-music swell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
A casual observer might conclude that Sonny just happened to be in the right place at the right time, two times. That he was just lucky. But that\u2019s not what happened. Sonny actively experimented with trends when they were still early\u2014the Web, social networks, scream-singing, EDM\u2014sticking his toe in different waters until he recognized incoming waves. And it should be noted that he tried some things that didn\u2019t work (a solo career as a rock singer) and was quick to shift strategies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Conventional thinking leads talented and driven people to believe that if they simply work hard, luck will eventually strike. That\u2019s like saying if a surfer treads water in the same spot for long enough, a wave will come; it certainly happens to some people, once in a while, but it\u2019s not the most effective strategy for success. Paradoxically, it\u2019s actually a lazier move.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In the late 19th century, led by the national hero Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed\u2014the George Washington of Cuba, if you will\u2014rebellion gained the support of the United States, sparked the Spanish-American War, and led Spain to withdraw from the island. Yet even after Cuba gained independence in 1902, infighting, insurrection, and civil war plagued the Caribbean\u2019s largest island for decades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Castro and the remaining outlaws made camp in the Sierra Maestra, foraging for food and sneaking out of the woods at night to steal ammunition from Batista outposts. Led by the group\u2019s doctor, an idealistic Argentine named Ernesto Guevara (the Cubans called him Che) who, it turned out, had a knack for guerrilla warfare, the little band began sabotaging Batista facilities and taking small military squads by surprise\u2014hitting targets one-by-one and fading into the jungle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Imagine you\u2019re at a party and you don\u2019t know any of the other guests. You look around at the dozens of people and, if you\u2019re extroverted, you\u2019ll probably strike up a conversation with someone nearby. If you\u2019re a little more timid in unfamiliar territory like I am, you might wander around in hopes that someone strikes up a conversation with you. Now imagine that a friend of yours shows up. She happens to know everybody at the party and she decides to take you around and meet everyone whom you should know. You soon meet a dozen people, with very little effort. Your friend is a superconnector.* That\u2019s the role that mass media has played in our lives for the past two centuries\u2014superconnecting sources of information to relevant audiences all at once and superconnecting businesses to millions of potential customers through advertising.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
That was the kind of influence the Castro brothers attained when Che Guevara brought the contraband equipment to their mountain camp in February 1958. The device that helped turn the tide of the revolution, if you hadn\u2019t guessed, was a radio transmitter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The goal was to shed light on what was really happening in Cuba, and to inspire potential supporters to spread the \u201cFree Cuba\u201d message. Each day, Radio Rebelde transmitted reports of Batista troop movements and the military skirmishes the rebels had with them. Castro and his lieutenants gave speeches, local musicians played patriotic songs, and soldiers delivered personal messages to their families.<\/p>
Within hours of his thorough defeat at Santa Clara, Batista had fled the country. On New Year\u2019s Day 1959, the rebels marched triumphantly into Havana and Fidel Castro declared Cuba free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Revolutions are a slow, deadly business. Before radio, 300 outcasts hiding in the jungle could not have overthrown a powerful military dictatorship. But with radio, those outcasts could connect to the 5 million oppressed Cuban citizens who secretly shared the rebellion\u2019s dissatisfaction, and turn the tide against the dictator, tanks and planes and all. The radio had superconnected the revolutionaries with the Cuban people, and together they achieved victory in astonishingly short time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Tapping networks is not as easy as simply shouting a message. Guevara became a successful superconnector not because he broadcast, but because he managed to build a relationship with the people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe number one problem with networking is people are out for themselves,\u201d says Scott Gerber, founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, who coined the term superconnector. \u201cSuperconnecting is about learning what people need, then talking about \u2018how do we create something of value.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is a twist on the classic networking advice, which advocates boldly meeting people and asking them for things. Building relationships through giving is more work than begging for help, but it\u2019s also much more powerful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
When Che Guevara began broadcasting Radio Rebelde\u2019s revolutionary message into Cuba\u2019s villages, the locals didn\u2019t instantaneously rise up to join the cause. If Fulgencio Batista\u2019s regime provided one thing, it was predictability. Yes, the people were oppressed. Yes, the poor starved and the mob ran amok. But as history has repeatedly shown, people with lives and families tend to favor predictability even in the worst of circumstances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRadio Rebelde truly became our means of mass communication, to talk to the people,\u201d Castro later recalled. But he and his crew knew that talk was not enough to win the people to the cause. Their countrymen\u2019s basic needs had to be met, and trust had to be gained. So, Guevara started teaching peasants how to read. The revolutionaries, largely an educated bunch, walked into villages and set up classes. They taught the poor how to farm, how to be self-sufficient. They taught them self-defense. The villagers began to see the rebels as their allies\u2014people actively improving their immediate circumstances. The rebels\u2019 service spoke much louder than Batista\u2019s pompous speeches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
No matter the medium or method, giving is the timeless smartcut for harnessing superconnectors and creating serendipity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m pretty sure that acquiring a billion dollars would solve all my problems. However, studies show that the wealthy\u2014especially those who fall into it through inheritance or the lottery or sale of a business\u2014are often not happier once they\u2019re rich. A meaningful percentage of them believe that their wealth causes more problems than it solves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
If you want to get really depressed about success, look at what happened to the heroic astronauts of the 1960s and \u201970s. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, returned home from the historic Apollo 11 mission and became an alcoholic. Severely depressed, his life unraveled. Aldrin burned through three marriages and wrote two memoirs about his misery. Neil Armstrong, the man who stepped out of Apollo 11 just ahead of Aldrin, spent his next few decades figuring out what to do with his life. He briefly taught some small classes at a university, then quit unexpectedly. He consulted a little for NASA and some random companies, and did a commercial for Chrysler, and quit all those things, too. He hid from autograph seekers and sued companies for using his name in ads.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
When there\u2019s no forward momentum in our careers, we get depressed, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile took on the question in the mid-2000s in a research study of white-collar employees. She tasked 238 pencil pushers in various industries to keep daily work diaries. The workers answered open-ended questions about how they felt, what events in their days stood out. Amabile and her fellow researchers then dissected the 12,000 resulting entries, searching for patterns in what affects people\u2019s \u201cinner\u201d work lives the most dramatically. The answer, it turned out, is simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless how small.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSuccess is like a lightning bolt,\u201d Phan once declared in an interview with Mashable. \u201cIt\u2019ll strike you when you least expect it, and you just have to keep the momentum going.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Innovation is about doing something differently, rather than creating something from nothing (invention) or doing the same thing better (improvement).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The key feature of disruptively innovative products is cost savings (either time or money). But the key ingredient behind the scenes of every disruptive product is simplification.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
There are a lot of great inventors and improvers in the world. But those who hack world-class success tend to be the ones who can focus relentlessly on a tiny number of things. In other words, to soar, we need to simplify.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,\u201d President Barack Obama told Michael Lewis for his October 2012 Vanity Fair cover story. \u201cI don\u2019t want to make decisions about what I\u2019m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
What he\u2019s talking about has been proven in experiments led by Dr. Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota, experiments that show that making lots of tiny choices depletes one\u2019s subsequent self-control. Students who were forced to decide between products for long periods of time had significantly less willpower afterward than classmates who answered random questions instead. Vohs had batches of kids make choices, then do things they didn\u2019t want to do, like practice homework or drink vinegar water or hold their arms in ice water. Those who hadn\u2019t just spent time making decisions performed several times better than those who did. Apparently, patience and willpower, even creativity, are exhaustible resources. That\u2019s why so many busy and powerful people practice mind-clearing meditation and stick to rigid daily routines: to minimize distractions and maximize good decision making.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Apple\u2019s iPod won the MP3 player war with breakthrough simplicity, both in physical design and how the company explained it. While other companies touted \u201c4 Gigabytes and a 0.5 Gigahertz processor!\u201d Apple simply said, \u201c1,000 songs in your pocket.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s a fact: Creativity comes easier within constraints.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Constraints make the haiku one of the world\u2019s most moving poetic forms. They give us boundaries that direct our focus and allow us to be more creative. This is, coincidentally, why tiny startup companies frequently come up with breakthrough ideas. They start with so few resources that they\u2019re forced to come up with simplifying solutions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Constraints made New York City an architectural marvel. Manhattan Island\u2019s narrow shape forced the city to build up, to rethink and renew; it impelled architects to reinvent stone buildings into steel skyscrapers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Geniuses and presidents strip meaningless choices from their day, so they can simplify their lives and think. Inventors and entrepreneurs ask, How could we make this product simpler? The answer transforms good to incredible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
After nearly failing out of high school and college, Grammatis had hacked the ladder to his position at SpaceX on the back of what he called \u201can epically large project,\u201d wherein he sent balloons and sensors up into the atmosphere to sniff for pesticide residue. He did it by shunning his classes (there was no physics program at the college he managed to get into) and reading a lot of articles on the Internet. He was a smart kid, a practitioner of David Heinemeier Hansson\u2019s selective slacking, and, it turns out, good at engineering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In 2010 only 2 billion of earth\u2019s 7 billion people had Internet access.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
10x Thinking is the art of the extremely big swing. To use a baseball analogy: instead of trying to get on base\u2014or even aiming for a home run\u2014it\u2019s trying to hit the ball into the next town. No amount of weight lifting or swing practice will get you there. Such a goal requires you to think radically different. The apostle of 10x Thinking is a man with perhaps the coolest name ever: Astro Teller. Teller is the goatee-and-ponytailed head of a rather secret Google laboratory in California called Google. He holds a PhD in artificial intelligence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn order to get really big improvements, you usually have to start over in one or more ways. You have to break some of the basic assumptions and, of course, you can\u2019t know ahead of time. It\u2019s by definition counterintuitive.\u201d Incremental progress, he says, depends on working harder. More resources, more effort. 10x progress is built on bravery and creativity instead. Working smarter. In other words, 10x goals force you to come up with smartcuts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In the 1800s 10 percent style thinking for faster personal transportation translated into trying to breed stronger horses. First principles would suggest instead thinking about the physics of forward movement, then building up from there, leveraging the latest technology\u2014like the internal combustion engine. Most \u201cinnovation\u201d inside industries and companies today focuses on making faster horses, not automobiles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u2018People say it\u2019s all about who you meet, but to me it\u2019s about who you make part of your circle that really matters.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI challenge my kids to be better than they were yesterday,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you look at your life in daily increments to try to succeed daily, that builds over time.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These highlights are from the Kindle version of Smartcuts: The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15162,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\n
"Smartcuts" Highlights<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n