Cory Ames

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Book Reviews

Lost Connections: Uncovering The Real Causes of Depression—And The Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari

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[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ custom_padding=”0|0px|0|0px|false|false”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.19.17″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_margin=”-50px||”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.74″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]Author: Johann Hari pasted image 0 2 Category: Health & Wellness, Community Rating: 7/10 Check it out on Amazon.com

Summary:

Depression and isolation are running rampant. And, what we have believed to be “cures,” antidepressants, aren’t solving the issue like we thought they would. While there may be some short term relief, most taking the prescriptions find themselves still depressed. People struggling with depression and loneliness can do all that modern medicine is prescribing they should do, but even still, they can’t find relief. Why is this? — Problem of the book.
  • 1) How are people still depressed while taking antidepressants? How can they still be depressed even though they are doing everything modern medicine is prescribing?
  • 2) Why are so many people feeling depressed and anxious? What has changed over time?
  • 3) “Could something other than bad brain chemistry” be causing depression in people? If so—what is it?
Depression and anxiety are misunderstood, overmedicated and misrepresented (depression is not unhappiness). Through attempting to really understand, 1) Why people are still depressed even while taking antidepressants, 2) Why so many people are feeling depressed and anxious and what has changed over time, and 3) What other than brain chemistry and biology could be causing depression in people, we may be able to find real and long-term solutions. In fact, from Hari’s research (and personal experience) he came to find 9 proven causes of depression and anxiety, and their potential antidotes.

Questions & Implications:

  • Studies have shown that the effects of antidepressants are marginal—the majority of their effect on “recovery” were in someway related to placebo, being either a natural recovery cycle or the story the patient had been told about the medication. Getting better sleep can have more of a meaningful impact on a patient’s status than taking antidepressants. Not to mention, the side effects on antidepressants are/have been real; gaining weight, sexual dysfunction, etc.
    • Antidepressants aren’t as effective as has been promised. And the percentage of people on antidepressants who continue to be depressed is high—between 65 and 80 percent.
    • Antidepressants don’t work like we’ve been told to believe, so…we can assume there’s a story we have told about them that is untrue — why the inaccurate story? And what’s the incentive for the inaccuracy?

Actions & Takeaways:

  • “…depression is—in fact—to a significant degree a problem not with your brain, but with your life.” (51)
    • Highly stressful events and long term stressors present in life can dramatically increased your likelihood of becoming depressed. On the inverse, stabilizing forces in your life; supportive friends and partner can reduce the probability.
    • Living in poverty, were long term stressors among those.
  • Causes of Depression are disconnections from things we innately need.
    • 1) Disconnection from Meaningful Work
      • 2011 and 2012 — Gallup poll of millions of workers across 142 countries concluded that “13 percent of us say we are “engaged” in our jobs—which means they are “enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and contribute to their organization in a positive manner.”” (64)
        • “63 percent say they are “not engaged,” which is defined as “sleepwalking through their workday, putting time—but not energy or passion—into their work.” (64)
        • “…24 percent are “actively disengaged.” They, Gallup explained, “aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish…Actively disengaged employees are more or less out to damage their company.” (64)
        • “Nearly twice as many people hate their jobs as loves their jobs.” (64)
      • Your position in the work hierarchy plays a very close relationship to your likelihood of becoming depressed…(the higher you are, the less likely, the lower, the more likely).
        • “If you worked in the civil service and you had a higher degree of control over your work, you were a lot less likely to become depressed or develop severe emotional distress than people working at the same pay level, with the same status, in the same office as people with a lower degree of control over the work.” (68) — It would seem that the missing component in workplace satisfaction was/is autonomy.
    • 2) Disconnection from Other People
      • Studies have shown that “loneliness preceded depressive symptoms. You became lonely, and that was followed by feelings of despair and profound sadness and depression.” (77)
        • Why does loneliness cause depression and anxiety so much?
          • A primal argument is made — all our instincts were honed not for life on our own, but life within a tribe. Loneliness can be thought of like a thirst for water. It’s an emotional reaction letting us know that we need to reconnect.
        • As societies, statistics are showing that we are trending away from “active involvement in community organizations,” between 1985 and 1994, this involvement dropped by 45 percent. (79)
        • Study asking a simple question, “How many confidants [people you could turn to in crisis] do you have?”
          • In 2004, the most common answer was 0. Several decades ago, the most common answer was three.
          • The sense of community and close friendships has only dropped. It’s more common that Americans believe themselves to have no close friends.
        • Difficulty is, that the more lonely people become, often the more difficult they are to spend time around. Likewise, lonely people are often skeptical of others, because they don’t feel they have anyone looking out for them. (82) — This is a snowball effect of loneliness — Strangely enough, it’s a situation where the thing we most need (connection) becomes harder to obtain. The thing we need most, we don’t want?
      • How do you end loneliness?
        • Studies have found that “to end loneliness, you need other people—plus something else. You also need…to feel you are sharing something with the other person, or the group, that is meaningful to both of you.” (83)
          • “A one-way relationship can’t cure loneliness. Only two-way (or more) relationships can do that.” (83)
          • You need “mutual aid and protection.”
            • Responsibility — A sense of connection is limited with one person feeling like they are being taken care of?
    • 3) Disconnection from Meaningful Values
      • It seems as if this is a large battle between intrinsic and extrinsic values.
        • Thinking extrinsically poisons your relationships with people.
        • Extrinsically focused people experience far fewer flow states. — Far less enjoyment of doing things for the sake of doing them.
        • You are always worrying and wondering what other people are thinking about you.
        • Materialistic people are chasing values that don’t fill our basic needs (of connection)
      • Key definitions:
        • Intrinsic motives — “…things you do purely because you value them in and of themselves, not because of anything you get out of them.” (95)
        • Extrinsic motives — “…things you do not because you actually want to do them, but because you’ll get something in return—whether it’s money, or admiration, or sex, or superior status.” (95)
      • Intrinsic Goals vs. Extrinsic Goals (96)
        • Achieving extrinsic goals doesn’t correlate to any increase in day to day happiness.
        • Achieving intrinsic goals does make people significantly happier—less depressed and anxious.
      • Values can change over time though…so when are people materialistic?
        • Coercion? Like advertising!
      • You have to escape the circumstances where you environment is encouraging materialism, these cripple your internal satisfactions — you have to then replace these environments with actions that will provide the internal satisfaction and encourage intrinsic goals. (103)
      • How to re-connect to the meaningful values
        • Start with your own values
        • Ask yourself if you are setting yourself up for success!
        • “Am I setting up my life so I can have a chance of succeeding at my intrinsic values? Am I hanging out with the right people, who are going to make me feel loved, as opposed to making me feel like I made it?…” (104)
    • 4) Disconnection from Childhood Trauma
      • “The greater the trauma, the greater your risk of depression, anxiety or suicide.” (112)
    • 5) Disconnection from Status and Respect
      • “The more unequal your society, the more prevalent all forms of mental illness are. Other social scientists then brok this down to look at depression specifically—and found the higher the inequality, the higher the depression.” (121) — Inequality & mental health, what might this imply for a country like the United States? Is capitalism, at least how it currently is, a recipe for mental illness amongst the people?
      • In unequal societies, people are questioning their own status. “Am I maintaining my position? Who’s threatening me? How far can I fall? Just asking these questions—as you have to when inequality grows—loads more and more stress into our lives.” (121)
    • 6) Disconnection from the Natural World
      • “…people who moved to green areas saw a big reduction in depression, and the people who moved away from green areas saw a big increase in depression.” (126)
      •  How might you remedy?
        • Nature walks, — studies conducted that had people in cities take walks in nature showed that moods improved as did concentration. For people who were depressed, “…their improvement was five times greater than the improvement for other people.” (127)
        • Exercise — significantly reduces depression and anxiety.
      • Biophilia — “…an innate love for the landscapes in which humans have lived for most of our existence, and for the natural web of life that surrounds us and makes our existence possible.” (128)
    • 7) Disconnection from a Hopeful or Secure Future
      • At direct contrast with various modern trends
        • Gig economy — These are inherently insecure, unstable jobs.
        • Lacking regulations of businesses, making it difficult for workers to organize and protect their rights.
        • What is reasonable security? What is security for the entrepreneur? Creating value
    • 8 & 9) The Real Role of Genes
      • “…genes increase your sensitivity, sometimes significantly. But they aren’t—in themselves—the cause.” (148)
      • The snowball effect comes into play here — the more lonely you are/feel, the more your brain continues to change.
      • The experience of being lonely, isolated and materialistic all change your brain—as does the healing from that. (145)
      • 37 percent of depression is inherited, severe anxiety between 30 and 40 percent. (Height is 90 percent inherited for perspective) (147)
  • Curing Depression is about Connection — Hari calls these “Reconnections”
    • 1) To Other People
      • Does trying consciously to make yourself happier actually work? (180) — The topic of SELF-HELP. Instead: How can I make my community better?
        • “If you deliberately try to become happy, you will not become happier—if you live in the United States. But if you live in Russia, Japan, or Taiwan, you will become happier.” (180)
        • In the West, our way of looking at life is more individualistic. In Asia, it’s more collective. “If you decide to pursue happiness in the United States or Britain, you pursue it for yourself—because you think that’s how it works. You do what I did most of the time: you get stuff for yourself, you rack up achievement for yourself, you build up your own ego.” (181)
          • Pursuing happiness in Russia, Japan or China is done by trying “…to make things better for your group—for the people around you. That’s what you think happiness means, so it seems obvious to you.” (181)
        • And, the data shows, the Western version of happiness doesn’t work…the more you believe happiness to be a social thing, the better off you are. (181) “…if we return to seeing our distress and our joy as something we share with a network of people all around us, we will feel different.” (181)
          • Community! — The role of community in personal well-being. Thinking we versus I.
        • The search for individual solutions is a trap. We dive further into our own egos.
    • 2) Social Prescribing
      • Wasn’t sure as to the difference here between connections to others and social prescribing.
        • However, seems to stress more social programs. Used an example of “dog shit alley,” where a group of depressed patients worked together to take this run down, dirty alley and turn it into a community garden.
    • 3) To Meaningful Work
      • Fact is, most people dislike their work. “…87 percent of us feel either disengaged or enraged by our jobs. You are twice as likely to hate your job as love it, and once you factor in e-mails, those work hours are spreading over more and more of our lives—fifty, sixty hours a week.” (201) — Work satisfaction
      • Example of a democratic cooperative — Baltimore Bicycle Works
        • Six full partners, all share the proceeds — at the time of Hari’s visit, there were 3 apprentices who spent a year training, working, etc.  who would then be evaluated after a year to become full partners if they were seen as a good fit. — Importance of Equity & Ownership 
          • “The goal is for everyone to feel equally committed to the cooperative, and able to find a way to make the best contribution they possibly can to it.” (206)
        • This style of work provides a “reconnection,” because you feel your are choosing it, you directly benefit from it, you have a respected status or status isn’t at play at all, and you are connected to evaluating the future. You know where you could be working 5 years from now — no pressure or insecurity. (208)
      • “A major study by scientists at Cornell University investigated 320 small businesses. Half had top-down control, and half let the workers set their own agenda in a model that was closer to the democratic system at Baltimore Bicycle Works. The businesses closer to the democratic model grew, on average, for times more than the others.” (209)
    • 4) To Meaningful Values
      • Decipher between what our your values and values that have been placed upon you, or expected of you from society.
      • This might be where a sorting of your personal philosophy may come to benefit. What do you believe? Are you acting in accordance with those values?
    • 5) Sympathetic Joy & Overcoming Addiction to the Self
      • Sympathetic Joy is a method for cultivating “the opposite of jealousy or envy…It’s simply feeling happy for other people.” (220)
        • The practice (220-221):
          • 1) Close your eyes and picture yourself. You imagine something good happening to you—falling in love, or writing something you’re proud of. You feel the joy that would come from that. You let it flow through you.
          • 2) Then you picture somebody you love, and you imagine something wonderful happening for them. You feel the joy from that, and you let that, too, flow through you.
          • 3) Then you picture somebody you don’t really know—say, the clerk who serves you in the grocery store. You imagine something wonderful happening to her. And you try to feel joy for her—real joy.
          • 4) You picture somebody you don’t like, and you try to imagine something good happening for that person. And you try to feel joy for that person.
          • 5) Then you picture somebody you really dislike, or someone you really envy
          • Do this everyday for fifteen minutes.
      • Psychedelics — Psilocybin experiment — Role in overcoming the addiction to the self / “breaking our addiction to ourselves”
        • “Some 80 percent of people who were given the highest dose of psilocybin said, two months later, that it was one of the five most important things that had ever happened to them.” (233)
        • Psilocybin & Smokers — “After just three session…80 percent of them quit, and were still off cigarettes six months later. That’s a higher success rate than any comparable technique anywhere.” (234)
        • Study — University College London, Psilocybin and treating Depression — (only a preliminary study), “…but they found that nearly 50 percent of patients saw their depression go away entirely for the three-month period of the trial.” (234)
          • These results were dependent on one thing, “Your likelihood of recovering from depression or addiction was dependent on how intense a spiritual experience you had during the drug experience. The more intense the spiritual experience, the better the outcomes afterward.” (234)
        • “…what both deep meditation and psychedelic experiences teach us is the ability to see how much of that self—that ego—is constructed.” (235)
        • “…these substances most often leave people with a profound sense of connection—to other people, to nature and to a deeper sense of meaning.” (236)
          • “They’ve recognized the connection between themselves and others…They feel more motivated to connect to others. They feel more motivated to care for themselves in healthy ways, rather than destructive ways.” (236)
    • 6) Acknowledging and Overcoming Childhood Trauma
    • 7) Restoring the Future
      • “It is a well-established fact that the poorer you are, the more likely you are to become sick in almost everyday. In the United Status, if you have an income below $20,000, you are more than twice as likely to become depressed as somebody who makes $70,000 or more. And if you received a regular income from property you own, you are ten times less likely to develop an anxiety disorder than if you don’t get any income from property.” (247)
        • Wealth, Mental Health, & Inequality — Poverty & Well-Being
        • If something like a Universal Basic Income was to help provide people with some sort of foundation…$12,000 a year even, would that then bring more people out of these “depression risk sector?” What’s the difference between complacency, and desperation? Would $12,000 a year, take people out of desperation? Or would it really turn us into more complacent people?
      • Canadian Basic Income Experiment — Dauphin (rural community in Manitoba) — Universal Basic Income 1970s (245 –
        • $19,000 (in U.S. dollars) per year by the govt. guarantee
        • 3 years into the experiment a conservative government took power in Canada and shut down the experiment.
        • What were the results?
          • Students stayed at school longer and performed better
          • Number of low-birth-weight babies declined as more women delayed having children until they were ready.
          • Parents with newborn babies stayed at home longer to care for them and didn’t rush back to work.
          • Depression and anxiety in the community fell significantly
            • Drop of 9 percent in serious mental health disorders and severe depression (in 3 years)
      • Great Smoky Mountains — Native American tribal group & Casino (250)
        • Everyone received $6,000 a year rising to $9,000 later
          • “Behavioral problems like ADHD and childhood depression fell by 40 percent.” (251)
      • Universal Basic Income
        • Implications, workers are empowered to say “no” to substandard jobs. Employers have to react with improving work conditions, increasing wages, etc.

Key Points, Quotes & Definitions:

  • What has led to the depression, anxiety and antidepressant circumstance to be as it is?
    • Early trials & placebos —
      • 25 percent of the effects of antidepressants were due to natural recovery, 50 percent were due to the story you had been told about them, and only 25 percent to the actual chemicals. — Irving Kirsch — The impact of antidepressants was much lower than anticipated.
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Atomic Habits: A System for Getting 1% Better Every Day by James Clear

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Author: James Clear

Category: Productivity, Self-Improvement atomic-habits-james-clear

Rating: 6/10

Check it out on Amazon.com

Related Books & Resources:

Have you made your life up of good habits? Or…bad ones?

Have you ever tried to add a new habit, but failed? Ever tried to break a bad one, but it’s still apart of your routine?

Maybe it was trying to learn a new language, or start your day with a morning walk…but, for some reason they didn’t stick…

Turns out, it’s not you, your willpower or the cut of your jib.

Rather, you were working on the “wrong system” for habit formation.

Man, isn’t it great when something isn’t your fault? Ahh…what a release.

Like most everything else, habit making and habit breaking are both skills. Skills that we can be good at, or like most folks (myself included), can be horrid at.

I’ll often set goals, without thinking completely about how I will get there (the habits). Time passes and goals remain unachieved.

Sometimes, I will come up with some habits to put in place. But, I make it insanely difficult on myself. Like, I should bake a carrot ziti every single day or something.

Does that sound like you at all?

If it does, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear will be a fitting read for you.

Finally, our teeth will be flossed every morning, and our gratitude journals will be full. Rejoice!

You’ll become the master of self-improvement that you’ve always hoped to be.

Lessons from Atomic Habits by James Clear

The lessons extracted from this book are plenty, but rather simple:

  • Habits are important because they quality of our lives. Daily habits (or actions) make up how we spend our days. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.
  • Bad habits are easier to break and good new habits are easier to make if we learn about human behavior. Then, learn how to use that to our advantage.

Based on my reading, I want to provide you with a book summary that explains two things:

  • Why we should focus on habits, more so than goals
  • What is the framework for 1% improvement that James shares with us in the book?

Let’s get into it.

So, why focus on habits, more than anything else?

Clear makes the following claims to begin his book…

The quality of your habits dictate the quality of your life…

Why?

Our habits (actions) make up our days and days make up our lives.

And at some point your actions dictate who you are and what sort of “fruits” you do or don’t enjoy in your life…right?

Are you acting as a professional writer might (writing everyday)?

Or, are you still aspiring to write?

Do you binge on crappy food? Do you spend most of your day sitting? Or, do you get out and go on walks?

Our habits, both good or bad, will end up leading to results in our life that are likewise, good or bad.

It’s not always easy to see; skipping exercise once won’t make you out of shape, but if you routinely do so, that will. And worse, there may be detrimental health effects to pay.

Both our good habits and bad work like “compounding interest” as Clear explains.

Saving $100 / month may not seem like a lot, but if you start early enough in your life, and invest it in an account with annual returns of 4%, that cheddar will stack.

[Insert image representing savings and compound interest]

Likewise, if you eat enough midnight burgers in your lifetime, one day, you may be fat. And, if you write everyday you may just publish a book one day.

So, if we investing in our habits, we should yield big returns, right?

We will all be better looking, have more perfectly shaped penises, more money and have way more sex…you get it…

But, why don’t people invest in habits?

Why habits don’t have the “rep” they should

Continuing with the theme of”compounding interest,” Clear believes habits don’t get the sexy reputation of goals because habits don’t make a difference in your life until you hit a “critical threshold.”

You don’t write one morning of your life and publish a New York Times Best-Seller. That sort of ambition takes time.

Goals are more alluring. Like, making whatever money you want, installing  the new Windows 10 on your computer, or getting a short line at the DMV.

We forget success (yet we define it) won’t hit until plenty of consistent action has been taken.

Most people forget that success (in whatever way that’s defined) is not hit until a “critical mass” of action has been taken. And those actions, are our habits.

Goals are sexy, but habits get the results.

How goals and habits relate

Goals can act as our compass and our habits act as the process or the system we use to get there.

Habits are what lead to the outcomes (goals) we want to achieve.

As Clear states well, “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” (24)

Habits are the gears that turn the machine of you. What sort of output do you want? Look at how the machine is running.

Goals and fulfillment

It’s also important to note, that the fulfillment that comes with achieving goals is temporary.

Happiness is never found at the end of the tunnel, it’s found on the journey, man (emphasis on man).

Our habits, the actions we take everyday, are what have the most potential to be and should be what are most fulfilling in our lives.

If they aren’t, they wuddya doing?!?!?!

So we get it…right?

We focus on habits to make us more of who we want to be and allow us to spend our days how we would like, and those will lead to results that we enjoy.

Now that we have settled that, let’s talk about the process for making a good habit or breaking a bad, that Clear introduces us to.

The Framework for 1% Improvement (Extracted from James Clear’s Atomic Habits)

Before briefing us on his system, Clear first shares with us how habits work.

Through doing so, we should better be able to understand how we can succeed in the future and avoid tragic failure.

To paraphrase Clear, our brain builds habit to make the fundamentals of life easier.

Could you imagine if you had to re-figure out how to tie your shoes everytime you put them on? That would be obnoxious as fuck. We’d most likely all start wearing flip flops more often. A

Think about what that would do for people where it’s cold?!?

Thank the lord for habits, because now as functioning adults, we can tie our shoes like a bat out of hell and get on with our days.

“Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future (47).”

Forget getting caught up with double knotting your Jordans and focus on painting the next Starry Night.

This framework for continuous improvement is simple to understand.

You select the habit you want to add to your life. Then, you determine how to set yourself up for success by “hacking” the habit loop (the process for forming habits).

Finally, you track your progress, review your results and make adjustments.

Let’s look at each step in more detail.

1. Select the habit you want

Determine what type of person you want to be, and determine what that type of person does.

James calls these “identity-based” habits as oppose to outcome based habits (31).

“You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity (34),” as James tells us.

We must draw attention to our existing values and principles, who we wish to become, and discern what habits might bridge the gap for us.

Self-awareness is the first step.

To do this, James suggests making a list of existing habits and use the tactic of  “pointing and calling.” This is a tactic used by Japanese railway operators, literally pointing and calling out each of their actions as they go through a departure checklist.

Know what good habits you’ll make? What bad habits you’ll break?

Awesome, let’s set ourselves up to win. BIG TIME.

2. Set yourself up for success, understanding how habits work and how to “hack” them.

This is where we first learn about the “habit loop,”  a concept popularized by Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. [link].

The habit loop, an introduction to the science of habits, proceeds as follows:

  • There’s a Cue (noticing the potential reward of an action)
  • We then have a Craving (desire to complete the action to get that reward)
  • This ideally initiates a Response (action)
  • Which produces the sought after Reward, and that feedback returns to our brain.

[insert image of the habit loop]

Through understanding this, how can we hack this? This is where James introduces his Four Laws of Behavior Change.

The keys to hacking the habit loop. Quit battling a “lack of motivation” and set yourself up to succeed.

Law #1, Make Your Cues Obvious

Imagine you are trying to learn how to play guitar.

Will you pick up and play your guitar more if it’s out on a stand in your living room? Or, will you play more if it’s in it’s case in your closet.

Obviously, if the guitar is in plain site, we will play and think about playing more. This is in a nutshell, the essence of hacking our “cues.”

We want to make it as easy for ourselves to do the “right thing,” which in this case, is our new habit. This is the act of decreasing any friction between ourselves and taking action.

In doing so, we let the habit loop run it’s course.

The largest cues as James reminds us are time and location. He explains, for best results, “every habit should have a home (90).”

He goes on to say…”structure your life in a way that doesn’t require heroic willpower.” (93)

A few tips and tricks James introduces are:

  • “implementation intentions” — (a plan you make beforehand about when and where to do the habit), like “I will open my Fluent Forever language app to practice Spanish after I meditate each morning.
  • “Habit stacking,” — which is using momentum to make one habit a cue for the next (like in my last example, I’ve been meditating since I was 17, so I’m using the solidity of that habit to add in a new one.

Remember, environment is greater than motivation, so setup your environment for success.

Think about what sort of productive cues you have around you, vs. unproductive cues.

This is why I eat so terribly and drink 3x my weight’s worth during the holidays, all friction is setup one way.

Ask yourself, can I increase the convenience of doing this new habit I want to do? Or, is there anyway I can decrease the friction?

On the inverse, for the bad habits, make your cues disappear. Easiest example, do you want to stop eating junk food? Get it out of your house!

Onward.

Law #2, Make Your Cravings Attractive

Once we’ve made our cues obvious, we need to make them even more attractive.

We need to make it so compelling to do the good behavior it’s almost irresistible.

So, what do we do to make the habit more attractive?

Clear suggests a few of the following:

  • “Temptation Bundling,” which is linking something you often crave or binge over (i.e. watching TV) with something beneficial. This could be a nightly routine of stretching and yoga while you watch The Office.
  • Hacking “Social Norms,” which is making your desired behaviors the norm of a group or social circle you are part of, to make the positive change a means for you to fit into the “tribe.” Join a writers group if you want to build the habit of writing, etc.
  • Habit “Reframe,” this is a simple mental shift that you can work on brainwashing yourself with…is working out something you have to do, or is it something you get to do, that then has you feeling energetic, more inspired and and hopeful for the world’s course to right, where Donald Trump will no longer be President. Big differences.

Luckily for us, we are playing a momentum game here. The more you do your habit, the easier it becomes to do, and the more we want to do it.

Relatable to the concept of “Making Smaller Circles,” introduced in Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning.

Get the wheel turning and things will be easier.

Law #3, Make Your Responses Easy

This for me is a tipping point. One thing I have failed on time and time again in the past.

In it’s simplest form, this rule is about making the action you have to take as easy as possible.

So, it’s not; practice guitar everyday for 30 minutes. It’s not even practice the guitar for 10 minutes!

If we want to succeed, our habit should first be to pick up the guitar everyday.

How easy is that?

This rule is playing on the crucial component of momentum and feedback mechanisms.

When you “pick up the guitar,” a few things happen:

  • That action produces feedback.
  • You feel a positive sense of accomplishment,
  • You build your confidence,
  • Your brain begins to build the connection, that picking up the guitar is something you do, and enjoy.
  • Also, you’ll feel silly picking up the guitar and not playing, so you’ll most likely practice anyways. This is called Long-term potentiation (143).

Our aim is to dissolve the friction that exists when building a completely new habit.

How awkward does it feel to walk around with a camera when you are trying to pick up photography?

Make it easier to pick up the camera. Then, make it easier to take photos. One step at a time will produce the best results.

Focusing on “frequency” first, is they key to making a behavior automatic. It may sound tedious, but this is where we let our unconscious mind take over and habits take hold.

Make your habits easy, and be patient to take them through the evolution required to get you where you want to be.

Law #4, Make the Rewards Satisfying

The last law of behavior change is to make the rewards from doing the habit as satisfying as possible.

As Clear says, “What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided (189).”

There are a few ways we can do this, and a few ways our habits do it for us:

  • Habits like exercise, will reward themselves. We feel positive endorphins, we feel energized, simple enough.
  • With other habits, we can find ways to reward ourselves. Maybe it’s a piece of dark chocolate after a focused work session with your cell phone away. Get creative.

At it’s simplest, habit tracking (introduced next), can be the easiest way to make a habit more rewarding.

Checking off a box spikes the dopamine and gets you fired off.

Finally, track your progress, review your results, and continue evolving.

And finally, let’s take a note from the adage of management guru, Peter Drucker, “what’s measured gets managed.”

As Clear explains, “…people who track their progress on goals like losing weight, quitting smoking, and lowering blood pressure are all more likely to improve than those who don’t (197).”

There are plenty of apps that can help you do this. As well, a good ol’ spreadsheet will do some damage too. Just make it easy.

Finally, review this performance in a time period that makes sense for you. Maybe it’s weekly, or monthly. Either way, having a good sense for if you are “on track” or not, is important.

Conclusion: Better Habits Make Better Results

In every instance of the process of making good habits we are “greasing the wheels.”

We make things as attractive and rewarding as possible to do, while as well making the actions we take even easier.

We already have habits in our lives, for better or for worse. And, for this reason, I appreciated Clear’s book if only for the reason that it spiked my awareness.

Action seems to be better than inaction. And, there’s nothing wrong with starting small.

As Clear says, “you don’t rise to the level of your goals…you fall to the level of your systems.”

Where are you systems falling short?

To read more from James and learn more about him, visit jamesclear.com.

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

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pasted image 0Author: Cal Newport

Category: Mindfulness, Productivity

Rating: 7/10

Check it out on Amazon.com 

Related Books & Resources:

Table of Contents:

Summary & Review:

The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive. (Location: 168) Themes: Deep Work, Future of Work, Mentorship Program, Career

This book has two goals, pursued in two parts. The first, tackled in Part 1, is to convince you that the deep work hypothesis is true. The second, tackled in Part 2, is to teach you how to take advantage of this reality by training your brain and transforming your work habits to place deep work at the core of your professional life. (Location: 189) Themes, Deep Work, Work, Focus

Questions & Implications:

  • Will “Deep Work” (as Newport defines it) be the compliment to highly technical skills and expertise for what will remain valuable (from a market standpoint) for the worker as trends of automation, A.I., etc. continue?
  • Cultivating awareness and specifically self-awareness (through meditation and other means), draw even more value based on the potential of ingraining more deep work into your life.
  • Deep Work is a skill that must be practiced, cultivated and mastered — as a means of survival in the economy, not just a skill that is “nice to have.”
  • Why do we need such involved interventions? Put another way, once you accept that deep work is valuable, isn’t it enough to just start doing more of it? (Location: 1,051)
    • People fight desires all day long. As Baumeister summarized in his subsequent book, Willpower (co-authored with the science writer John Tierney): “Desire turned out to be the norm, not the exception.” The five most common desires these subjects fought include, not surprisingly, eating, sleeping, and sex. But the top five list also included desires for “taking a break from [hard] work… checking e-mail and social networking sites, surfing the web, listening to music, or watching television.” The lure of the Internet and television proved especially strong: The subjects succeeded in resisting these particularly addictive distractions only around half the time. (Location: 1,062)
  • Is there any “smart” use of social media? Or…is the potential fragmentation of your attention and concentration not worth the cost — Does your “Deep Work” suffer?

Actions & Takeaways:

The Rules of Deep Work

Rule #1, Work Deeply

Rule #2, Embrace Boredom

Rule #3, Quit Social Media

Rule #4, Drain the Shallows

Building “Deep Work” as a Habit — The Checklist

  • Set the “Ultimate” Target, 3-5 hrs per day 5 days per week.
  • Determine a philosophy of “Deep Work” application that fits your circumstances and strengths. The 4 most common;
    • The Monastic Philosophy – This philosophy attempts to maximize deep efforts by eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations. Practitioners of the monastic philosophy tend to have a well-defined and highly valued professional goal that they’re pursuing, and the bulk of their professional success comes from doing this one thing exceptionally well. It’s this clarity that helps them eliminate the thicket of shallow concerns that tend to trip up those whose value proposition in the working world is more varied. (Location: 1,151)
    • The Bimodal Philosophy – This philosophy asks that you divide your time, dedicating some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leaving the rest open to everything else. During the deep time, the bimodal worker will act monastically—seeking intense and uninterrupted concentration. During the shallow time, such focus is not prioritized. This division of time between deep and open can happen on multiple scales. For example, on the scale of a week, you might dedicate a four-day weekend to depth and the rest to open time. Similarly, on the scale of a year, you might dedicate one season to contain most of your deep stretches (as many academics do over the summer or while on sabbatical). (Location: 1,156) The bimodal philosophy believes that deep work can produce extreme productivity, but only if the subject dedicates enough time to such endeavors to reach maximum cognitive intensity—the state in which real breakthroughs occur. (Location: 1,159) At the same time, the bimodal philosophy is typically deployed by people who cannot succeed in the absence of substantial commitments to non-deep pursuits. (Location: 1,170) Perhaps the biggest obstacle to implementing this philosophy is that even short periods of deep work require a flexibility that many fear they lack in their current positions. If even an hour away from your inbox makes you uncomfortable, then certainly the idea of disappearing for a day or more at a time will seem impossible. (Location: 1,188)
    • The Rhythmic Philosophy – This philosophy argues that the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to go deep. The chain method is a good example of the rhythmic philosophy of deep work scheduling because it combines a simple scheduling heuristic (do the work every day), with an easy way to remind yourself to do the work: the big red Xs on the calendar. (Location: 1,240)
    • The Journalist Philosophy – …in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule…This name is a nod to the fact that journalists, like Walter Isaacson, are trained to shift into a writing mode on a moment’s notice, as is required by the deadline-driven nature of their profession. (Location: 1,258)

 Build a Routine, that Follows the “Deep Work” Rules

  • Designate a “Deep Work” location — Home office, coffee shop (ideally the same one), library nook, etc. (This is important from a ritualistic standpoint of associating focus, deep work and no distraction with this location)
  • Set “rules,” for your Deep Work time — Is it no internet? Is it a words per twenty minute interval? Whatever is applicable to you, make it strict and specific and measurable or at least discerned with a yes/no.
  • Set an amount of time for focused work — this avoids having the work session turn into an “open slog”
  • Prepare your brain “fuel” — Is it a pre-Deep Work short walk? Air squats? Or a cup of coffee, or micro dose of LSD? As Nietzsche said: “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” (Location: 1,301)
  • At the beginning of the week (or during a Weekly Review), schedule in potential Deep Work blocks
  • Incorporate a “shut down routine” each day to administer time to recharge and refresh.
    • Get to Inbox Zero (Gmail) — Anything urgent? Can anything be boomeranged?
    • Review Calendar — +/- a few days, anything I need to remember? Any meetings, appointments, deadlines coming up that would prompt future action?
    • Record every lingering tasks in your official tasks hub (Asana, Evernotes, etc.)
    • Review every open task, project or goal and determine —  (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or (2) it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right.
    • Determine next actions and rough schedule for tomorrow.
    • Use an actual word or phrase to “lock in” the end of your day — “Shutting down!!”

Tracking Deep Work —

  • Track your Deep Work hours, ideally in plain site (whiteboard in the office, paper attached to the computer screen, etc.) — Great app recommended from Nathan Barry, Forest

How to Make the Most of Your “Deep Work” Time —

  • Focus on the “wildly important,” — The time you spend in deep work should be focused on the most important thought, challenges or problems you and/or your organization might be facing.
  • Attempt Memory Training — Memory training positively affects your ability to concentrate, taking on any task, practice, etc. that can facilitate a greater skill of concentration can benefit the results you see in your Deep Work sessions because you will be able to…well…go deeper.

On Selecting Tools — (Like Social Media) —

  • Newport calls this the The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection
    • Step #1, identify the high level goals in both your personal and professional life.
    • Step #2, Once you’ve identified these goals, list for each the two or three most important activities that help you satisfy the goal. (P. 195)
    • Step #3, The next step in this strategy is to consider the network tools you currently use. For each such tool, go through the key activities you identified and ask whether the use of the tool has a substantially positive impact, a substantially negative impact, or little impact (p. 195).
    • Step #4, Decide to only keep this tool if it has substantial positive impact on those activities and those far outweigh the negative impacts.

Alternative Options & Troubleshooting Deep Work —

  • The Grand Gesture — The concept is simple: By leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward supporting a deep work task, you increase the perceived importance of the task. This boost in importance reduces your mind’s instinct to procrastinate and delivers an injection of motivation and energy. (Location: 1,326)
  • Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction. (Location: 1,830)
  • Productive Meditation — Have a professional problem in mind, and “activate” your body. Go for a run, walk, etc. and stay focused on the “well-defined” problem.
  • Social Media & Networking Sites — A social media platform should only be used after 1) we’ve identified the factors and characteristics of a successful professional and personal life and 2) we’ve discerned that the tool in question does not conflict with, and greatly meets those factors and characteristics. We cannot fall into what Newport calls the “any benefit mindset,” that being if a social media tool provides any benefit at all it then justifies its use. That’s just flawed logic.

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So Good They Can’t Ignore You Summary, Quotes & Takeaways

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Are you wondering how to find work you love?

Or, at the least, a meaningful career? Or a sense of fulfillment in your working life?

If so, I highly recommend you read, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, by Cal Newport, an excellent book for those seeking career advice.

 

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On this page, I want to share with you a brief summary of the book as well as some of my favorite quotes and takeaways if you are interesting a digesting this read in a more bite-sized fashion.

Let’s get to it.

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Table of Contents:

I. A Brief Summary of So Good They Can’t Ignore You

II. How to Define Great Work

III. So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Quotes, Takeaways & Lessons

– Don’t Follow Your Passion

– Get “Good” to Get Better Work

– Getting Good Requires Effort

– Answering “What Should I Do With My Life?” 

IV. Conclusion: What do you think?

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What’s this book about? A Brief Summary of So Good They Can’t Ignore You

A quote from Steve Martin, one of the “Three Amigos,” was the inspiration for the title of Newport’s book. In a 2007 interview on the Charlie Rose show, Martin shared about what it’s been like, his ascension into comedic success…Martin claims the advice he gives on replicating a level of success that he achieved is not anything anyone wants to hear.

He said, “Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear…What they want to hear is ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script,’ …but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.'” 

Newport’s motivation for this book came from a question he had, “Why do some people end up loving what they do, while so many others fail at this goal?”

And while the title of the book is the answer to the question Cal opens up with, Cal’s walkthrough of his research from studying those who have found “great work,” and the implications of how to find it yourself, are highly insightful and incredibly useful for someone in an existential bout with the question, “what do I do with my life?”

Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, a blogger, and an author of some excellent books, another being Deep Work, a book I’ll surely write on later. I highly recommend checking out some of his other books and writing.

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What is “Great Work?”

To help with his definition of a “compelling career,” Cal calls on author Daniel Pink and references a TED talk of his, where he discusses his book, Drive, and claims that intrinsic motivation for your work comes from three things; autonomy (having control over what you do), competence (feeling you are good at what you do), and relatedness (feeling connection to those you work with).

And Newport argues that these sorts of “compelling careers,” often have “complex origins.” That being, developing a career that deeply serves those three characteristics mentioned by Pink, doesn’t just happen. Those types of careers are earned, cultivated and shaped over time. And, the overall arguement of Cal’s book, is that that type of career, can come to you faster, and with more certainty, if you pursue developing valuable skills (those valuable to the market you are in), above all else.

The takeaways I’ll share below will help walk you through how Cal builds this argument throughout his book.

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So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Quotes, Takeaways, & Lessons

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1.  Following your passion is bad advice, “the passion hypothesis”

The first and most important claim Newport feels he should correct is that finding great work comes from first discovering what you are passionate about, and finding work that matches that.

While modern-day media and successful personalities have made this seem to be the case (Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford an example of that), Newport argues that the majority of folks who are successful and love what they do cultivated passion after they developed competence, and, that this “courage culture” being created where young people have to take a ‘chance’ pursuing what they love distorts career expectations and leaves young professionals chronically dissatisfied with their work.

Citing multiple studies, Newport claimed, “…the happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do.”

If we assume we need to follow a pre-existing passion to find work we love, we either find nothing that matches such an expectation, or all try to be NBA stars (as for much of my life, basketball was the only thing I would say I was passionate about).

2. Get Good, to Get “Better” Work

Cal claims that better work is rare, and highly valuable. And, in turn, to find it we ourselves need to develop skills that are rare, and valuable. Cal calls these skills “career capital,” your currency with which you accumulate and leverage to find work opportunities that are increasingly more attractive. The more skillful you become, the more diverse career opportunities you’ll have.

To develop these valuable skills, Cal encourages us to develop what he calls the “craftsman mindset.” This is an approach to your work where you focus on the quality of work you are producing, and the value you are driving to your organization or the market you are apart of.

He contrasts this with the “passion mindset,” an approach where you focus on what you are getting out of the job you have.

3. Getting Good, Requires an Intentional Effort 

To truly get “so good,” you must apply a concerted effort. While in new positions and roles we inherently learn skills and grow, Cal says it’s important that we avoid a “performance plateau” when we hit a stage of being comfortable with our work. This is why he urges we implement what he calls “deliberate practice” into our work. That being, a deliberate focus at getting better at what we are doing.

4. To Answer a BIG Question like “What should I do with my life?” Start Small 

While we all want to answer that question, especially in our angst-ridden 20s, we must settle with the fact that this particular question may never have a definitive and clear answer.

However, to advance this question, in the last section of the book, Think Small, Act Big, Newport suggests finding a “mission” in our work can help. But to do so, we mustn’t start and finish with some grand vision of providing clean water for everyone on the planet, we must first dip our toes in as to what we could call “little bets.”

These “little bets” being small but significant actions we can take to test if there might be a way to turn a general idea like saving the children, into a mission-driven project.

Through taking small actions as a means for gathering feedback we can see if our idea “passes important tests.”

One of which, Cal introduces with the help of Derek Sivers (author and entrepreneur), is the “Law of Financial Viability.” As Sivers says, money is a “neutral indicator of value,” and to know that someone would pay us for our idea, is an easy way to see, is our idea worth anything?

If no one wants to pay for it, we have an issue.

And, as a final note, Newport reminds us that finding a worthwhile and serious mission takes time. As he found in his research, many successful, highly mission-driven professionals were not able to derive some deep mission until they were at the “cutting edge” of what they were doing. That being, after they had spent years learning and understanding the industry and field of work they were in, they may have finally been able to actually grasp what might be needed of them given their experience.

So as a default, feel very content learning more, pursuing curiosities and using that as fuel to develop highly tangible, rare and valued skills.

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1.  Following your passion is bad advice, “the passion hypothesis”

The first and most important claim Newport feels he should correct is that finding great work comes from first discovering what you are passionate about, and finding work that matches that.

While modern-day media and successful personalities have made this seem to be the case (Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford an example of that), Newport argues that the majority of folks who are successful and love what they do cultivated passion after they developed competence, and, that this “courage culture” being created where young people have to take a ‘chance’ pursuing what they love distorts career expectations and leaves young professionals chronically dissatisfied with their work.

Citing multiple studies, Newport claimed, “…the happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do.”

If we assume we need to follow a pre-existing passion to find work we love, we either find nothing that matches such an expectation, or all try to be NBA stars (as for much of my life, basketball was the only thing I would say I was passionate about).

2. Get Good, to Get “Better” Work

Cal claims that better work is rare, and highly valuable. And, in turn, to find it we ourselves need to develop skills that are rare, and valuable. Cal calls these skills “career capital,” your currency with which you accumulate and leverage to find work opportunities that are increasingly more attractive. The more skillful you become, the more diverse career opportunities you’ll have.

To develop these valuable skills, Cal encourages us to develop what he calls the “craftsman mindset.” This is an approach to your work where you focus on the quality of work you are producing, and the value you are driving to your organization or the market you are apart of.

He contrasts this with the “passion mindset,” an approach where you focus on what you are getting out of the job you have.

3. Getting Good, Requires an Intentional Effort 

To truly get “so good,” you must apply a concerted effort. While in new positions and roles we inherently learn skills and grow, Cal says it’s important that we avoid a “performance plateau” when we hit a stage of being comfortable with our work. This is why he urges we implement what he calls “deliberate practice” into our work. That being, a deliberate focus at getting better at what we are doing.

4. To Answer a BIG Question like “What should I do with my life?” Start Small 

While we all want to answer that question, especially in our angst-ridden 20s, we must settle with the fact that this particular question may never have a definitive and clear answer.

However, to advance this question, in the last section of the book, Think Small, Act Big, Newport suggests finding a “mission” in our work can help. But to do so, we mustn’t start and finish with some grand vision of providing clean water for everyone on the planet, we must first dip our toes in as to what we could call “little bets.”

These “little bets” being small but significant actions we can take to test if there might be a way to turn a general idea like saving the children, into a mission-driven project.

Through taking small actions as a means for gathering feedback we can see if our idea “passes important tests.”

One of which, Cal introduces with the help of Derek Sivers (author and entrepreneur), is the “Law of Financial Viability.” As Sivers says, money is a “neutral indicator of value,” and to know that someone would pay us for our idea, is an easy way to see, is our idea worth anything?

If no one wants to pay for it, we have an issue.

And, as a final note, Newport reminds us that finding a worthwhile and serious mission takes time. As he found in his research, many successful, highly mission-driven professionals were not able to derive some deep mission until they were at the “cutting edge” of what they were doing. That being, after they had spent years learning and understanding the industry and field of work they were in, they may have finally been able to actually grasp what might be needed of them given their experience.

So as a default, feel very content learning more, pursuing curiosities and using that as fuel to develop highly tangible, rare and valued skills.

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Conclusion: Following Your Passion is Bad Advice, Instead, Focus on Building Skills. Agree or Disagree?

Finding the right work is overrated. Instead, we should focus on working right as Cal argues and surely, we will be rewarded with better work in due time. And, for the most part, I agree. A simple idea, but highly insightful and helpful at a young age when determining what you should focus your greatest efforts and energies on can be perplexing.

Searching for your “dream job,” with no career capital in your pocket can leave you chronically dissatisfied…good career advice for any.

If you’d like, you can pick up Cal’s book on Amazon.com through this link, here.

What do you think?

Do you agree, or disagree? Let me know in the comments below.

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Anything You Want By Derek Sivers: Summary & 5 Key Takeaways

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Derek Sivers is my favorite kind of entrepreneur. And, I think you won’t be able to help but like him too…

Why?

Well, it’s not because we seem to agree on most things…(yes, that’s a large part), but it’s because of his confidence and conviction to be exactly the type of entrepreneur he wants to be.



Find it On Amazon

Not, what or who others expect him to be.

This is a complex of my own. I’m technically an “entrepreneur” (I hate that word and I’ve said it 3 times already in this post), but I don’t feel completely aligned with the culture around entrepreneurship and small business.

Money and profits drive the motivations of many of these folks. Or, not so much money, but what they think it will give them; status, power, a feeling of “I’m ok.”

We could talk at length about ROI, about aligning incentives, and the funding your startup hopes to receive…or we could talk about what business and the creative spirit of entrepreneurship really is about, helping other people.

And it’s these things that I like most about Derek, and reading Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur affirmed that.

This isn’t an ordinary business book. Derek doesn’t talk ROI nor does he encourage you to “hustle, hustle, hustle.” In this book, Derek encourages you to abide by a few simple principles, principles that many entrepreneurs over look, and it all begins with making your journey through entrepreneurship…exactly what you want.

Through the beginnings of CD Baby to being dissed by Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs in a keynote, Derek’s stories help demonstrate the lessons he’s trying to share clearly.

A post like this is a digest for me of my notes, takeaways and in some cases necessary summary of what I read. So, I recommend reading the book first, before digging into these posts. You can find Derek’s book on Amazon, here.

This book of Derek’s is a quick read! You can finish it in one Sunday, like I did. 🙂

Derek-sivers-anything-you-want
Source: https://sivers.org/

Brief Background on Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers is an entrepreneur and musician. He founded the online business CD Baby, a platform for independent musicians to sell their music, and sold the company for $22 million dollars. This book, Anything You Want…is all about his journey of starting, growing and ultimately selling CD Baby, and all the lessons he learned as a product of that.

If you want to hear more from Derek, I highly recommend checking out some of his presentations, Ted Talks, and various keynotes here. Also, where I first encountered Derek, a great interview with Tim Ferriss, here.

Who might this book be good for?

  • The “non-traditional” entrepreneur – Does something feel “off” to you in traditional business culture? Do useless widgets and startup “buzz” irk you in some sort of insatiable way?
  • The aspiring (or early stage) entrepreneur – This very short book has moved to the top of the list of books I would recommend to anyone interested in getting “into” entrepreneurship or who has an idea they’d like to turn into a business. Wonderful, and most importantly, SIMPLE advice towards getting started right away.
  • The ambitious, non-entrepreneur – After finishing this book I recommended it to my sweet sweet girlfriend. She wouldn’t consider herself “business oriented” in the slightest. But, she has an appetite for creating useful things and helping people. I feel Derek has the ability to cross between many different demographics of folks (maybe that’s because of his eclectic background? Professional musician? Circus performer?).

What questions may it have you ask, or help to answer?

I think a book is only as good as the questions it inspires you to ask of yourself, or the answers it seemingly helps to provide for questions you already have.

Anyways, some of my favorite questions asked implicitly or explicitly from Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur:

  • What’s your personal philosophy? What to you believe, what makes you happy, and what do you value?
  • What’s the simplest (and perhaps smallest) way I can get started working on my “big vision” today?
  • “How can I best help you [my customer] now?”
  • Why am I doing what I’m doing? “Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t [or is] that enough?”
  • “How do you grade yourself?” What are your personal measures of success?
  • What’s a simple and clear problem you could solve for a group or community you are apart of, or deeply care about and understand?
  • What would you do, what systems would you have to improve or discard, if your business doubled tomorrow?

Oof! Plenty of good questions to spark some creative, deep thought.

But, without further ado, here are my takeaways, lessons and great fundamentals to entrepreneurship Derek shares from his business experience. As stated before, I do recommend you read it first!

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers: 5 Key Takeaways & Lessons

1. Deeply Understand, Contemplate & Evaluate Your WHY

Derek opens his book in saying, “Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing.” And, he quickly urges…

understand-your-why

“Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams. You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what’s worth doing.”

Perhaps my biggest takeaway from Derek’s book was this: identify what you value and what fulfills you and do that. Ensure your expectations, ambitions and desires are your own through and through. Not someone else’s.

The only thing that I would exchange, is Derek’s use of the word “happy.” I would imagine but cannot be certain, that he would say the happiness he is referring to is relatively synonymous with “fulfillment.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with stress or struggle. Everything has it’s shit. It’s a “choose” your shit sort of thing.

2. Business is about GIVING and Making Something Useful, Not Money

business-and-giving

“Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself. Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself. When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world. Never do anything just for the money. Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help.”

Ahh, this was something so refreshing to read, especially when you feel as if all signals and signs are pointing to the contrary…a shot from my Facebook feed…

why-tai-lopez

He is literally holding a stack of money in his hand…and wait…

What in the hell is that equation?!?!?!?

3 – 5 clients, multiplied by $ = $$$$$$

I can’t….I just can’t…

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh, that’s right…thanks Derek. It’s nice to be reminded that our creative ambitions and appetites are best used as a means to serve and solve meaningful problems for others.

As mentioned in the questions I listed above, Derek instructs to “Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing. Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t that enough?”

A worthwhile group of questions to check in on regularly.

3. Keep Things Simple!

A prominent theme, or mantra of Derek’s, “keeping things simple” seemed to cover many different aspects of what Derek was trying to teach about life and business.

  • Business Plans & Strategy – “A business plan should never take more than a few hours of work–hopefully no more than a few minutes. The best plans start simple.” Don’t hurt yourself back making a new venture more complicated than it needs to be. What’s the simplest thing you can do now? Get started there, worry about the future in the future.
  • Big Aspirational Visions – Too large of a vision or aspiration can be paralyzing. Derek encourages you “start small.” “Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy into actually solving real problems for real people. It gives you a stronger foundation to grow from.” “So please don’t think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.”

simple-photo-of-computer

4. Your “North Star” in Business is Who You Serve (Customers)

Everything begins and ends with who you are serving. Without any customers, you’d have no business, right?

Derek asserts, “Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you’ll do well.”

north-star-in-business

There are layers to using your customers as a guiding light for your business which Derek touches on in a few different ways:

  • You can’t be a “band-aid” – This is something I really like and have thought about a bit. Businesses should strive to be a permanent solution, not a temporary one. And sometimes, this means that they’d run themselves out of business. But, Derek urges, “Your company should be willing to die for your customers.”

You are in business to help others. Keep what’s in their best interest in mind at all times. So much so, that you look to completely solve the problem they have, not just provide a short-term fix.

While I struggle with the belief that the world doesn’t need another “SEO Company,” this has been my philosophy starting and running Open Book SEO, I educate my clients and customers to a point to where they don’t need me. If they ultimately don’t, I’ve done my job.

  • Business “Strategy” Comes from Your Customers – There’s an obsession with scaling, growth, and in the startup culture, getting “funded.” As Derek argued, every decision you make for your business and where it should head, who you are serving should come first. Does it improve their experience? Would expanded be better/worse for your customers? How could you expand and make it better?

If at any point there’s a sacrifice for the folks you are serving on the other end, you have a good idea of what your decision should be.

Re-calibrate with asking yourself, how could I best help my customers now? That should drive your business efforts.

  • Idea Testing? – There’s no way to know how good of an idea you have is, until it’s shared with the world. Derek says to “present each new idea or improvement to the world,” and if their response is anything less than, “Hell yes!” go back and improve and start the cycle all over again. But the key thing to note, your “good idea” is nothing without the feedback.

5. Don’t Act Out of Scarcity & Exclude Where Appropriate

act-together

Many entrepreneurs and business owners are running their businesses off of scarcity. I’ve been doing this for the last 12+ months or so.

I’ve felt anxiety about making money, deciding exactly what vision I had for what I was doing, and doing things the “right” way.

I’m sure in many interactions people could smell the desperation on me. Being reminded here from Derek about what’s important, I focused on the inverse, abundance.

A great quote from Derek,

“If you set up your business like you don’t need the money, people are happier to pay you…set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way.”

A business built out of desperation won’t last. Or, maybe it will, but it will be damn painful running it.

Don’t forget that there’s always enough to go around. And, if you are helpful, focusing on giving vs. taking the money will follow.

And that comes to the second point here, of choice exclusion. Derek reminds us that we can’t serve everybody, but we should stay loyal to the 1% of people who we do serve. We should “imagine that you have designed your business to have no big clients, just lots of little ones.” And that “You don’t need to change what you do to please one client; you need to please only the majority (or yourself).”

Sometimes that’s difficult to forget. In my experience of running a digital marketing agency, I found often times our team would bend to the will of absurd clients. We didn’t know where we stood, and we let a few clients run our business vs. us tell them what we could do for them.

And this is the power and empowerment that comes with being confident about not serving everyone, remember that the are more than enough of the people who align with your values (who are willing to pay you), you just have to draw the right line in the sand, the one that truly does align with your philosophy and let them know.

Conclusion: Want More Derek Sivers?

Yeah, me too. I know I can’t wait for his new book, “Hell Yeah, or No.” If you are interested, you can check out his personal site, https://sivers.org/.

A great book at a perfect time for me. I’d say Derek’s healthy approach to entrepreneurship is perfect for the ambitious twenty-something who can be victim to an existential crisis or two.

A few of Derek’s guiding principles can take you a long way, and that’s what I feel they did, and will do, for me.

Have you read Derek’s book, Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur?

If so, let me know in the comments and post one of your favorite quotes. If you haven’t, go ahead and pick up the Kindle copy on Amazon, here.

 

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin (Summary, Review & Quotes)

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Looking for insight on The Art of Learning? 

You’ve come to the right place. 🙂

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

I had to read The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, by Josh Waitzkin multiple times through to catch every single perspective shifting piece of wisdom. To date, this is the best book I’ve read on the learning process and performance psychology.

Josh explains his process for learning through the narrative of both his chess and martial art careers. I highly recommend you read this book for yourself, but read further and you’ll get my largest takeaways related to the learning process, below. See this book on Amazon for purchase and more reviews

Before we dive into the takeaways, I should share some more on Josh.

Brief Background on Josh Waitzkin

Josh grew up in New York City where he began playing chess at the age of 6 in Washington Square Park. Josh became a furious chess player. Called a chess prodigy, Josh won multiple National Championship Titles in elementary school.  In 1993 Paramount Pictures released the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, made out of a book written by Josh’s father, which depicted Josh’s first run at winning a National Chess Championship.

josh-waitzkin-chess-master

After he accomplished all he wanted to in the chess world, Josh moved into the world of martial arts. At the age of 21, he started with learning Tai Chi Chuan. Josh went on to win multiple Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands National Championships as well as compete and win in  Push Hands World Championships in countries like Brazil and Taiwan.

Today, Josh still focuses on teaching others how to achieve peak performance, but in small quantities at a private Brazilian Ju Jitsu gym in New York.

Bio Source: http://www.joshwaitzkin.com/josh/ Photo Source: http://www.joshwaitzkin.com/photos/ 

THE ART OF LEARNING SUMMARY, TAKEAWAYS & KEY QUOTES

the-art-of-learning

Read More Reviews on Amazon

Josh’s take on learning is made up of universally applicable, timeless principles. This book contains not just lessons on learning, but many profound life lessons as well. If there was anyone you wish could be your mentor, I think it would be Josh Waitzkin.

  • Cultivate Presence of Mind – To perform at a high level, we must diligently and consistently, focus on being present. It’s not a state we can just “turn on,” if we aren’t practicing it. Our everyday lives must reinforce how we hope to perform, when we are called to perform at the highest level.

“The secret is that everything is always on the line. The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in competition, in the boardroom, at the exam, the operating table, the big stage. If we have any hope of attaining excellence, let alone of showing what we’ve got under pressure, we have to be prepared by a lifestyle of reinforcement. Presence must be like breathing.”

presence-of-mind

  • Bring your Unique Self

“Our natural voice is what grounds us as we encounter challenges and opportunities along the learning process.”

Me: You must become your style of: a CEO, salsero, bi-lingual, etc. spending your time trying to become someone else’s will only create exhaustion and make you weak in the face of disruption and challenge. Be very open-minded, but don’t lose yourself.

  • Begin with the Foundational Principles

“Tactics become easy once the principles are in blood.”

“The objective is to have the most basic principles, patterns, ideas, techniques, etc. feel like natural intelligence (or essence).”

“Deeply internalized concepts can be accessed without thinking.”

Me: Immerse yourself in the Fundamentals first. Perhaps the most present theme throughout The Art of Learning, Josh pushes for focusing on never jumping too far ahead. If you can’t dribble a basketball with your left hand, you shouldn’t be trying spin moves yet.

  • Depth over Breadth, understand the Macro from the Micro

“It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a mastery of what may be a basic skill set. Study positions of reduced complexity (micro), to develop and understand the principles or the larger picture (macro).”

Me: Similar concept to focusing on the fundamentals…but different in that it’s possible to learn the fundamental principles and concepts of any field through one situation. Josh uses the example of learning all the fundamental principles of chess, through focusing voraciously on one game-like scenario.

  • Develop a Growth Mindest

“Investing in loss is giving yourself to the learning process. A learner with a growth mindset will be more concerned with the learning…vs. the identity and ego concepts that are associated with losing.”

“When aiming for the top, your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve. You should always come off an injury or a loss better than when you went down.”

Me: Josh calls the growth mindest, “investing in loss.” Winning or losing is not important, what’s most important is what you learned from each experience.

  • All things are connected, and to see things this way will accelerate your ability to learn

“Truth be told, this is what my entire approach to learning is based on—breaking down the artificial barriers between our diverse life experiences so all moments become enriched by a sense of interconnectedness.”

Me:  There is always a connectedness between our many life experiences. There is potential to unearth a lesson anywhere, that can tie back to any practice.  A hike in the woods or a dance lesson with your girlfriend can help you to unlock a truth or push through a roadblock in your sport, skill or art.

This is also to say, how you do anything is how you do everything. It’s much easier to snap into focus and concentration while on the soccer field or in a meeting, if you live your life outside of your sport or work with a similar present, focus.

  • Take Diligent Notes

Me: This is more from some of Josh’s interviews, but Josh preaches the importance of taking notes and keeping records of your growth and learning process. If you aren’t tracking your development intentionally, making improvements is much more like guesswork.

JOSH’S PROCESS ON LEARNING IN ONE QUOTE

“My vision of the road to mastery—you start with the fundamentals, get a solid foundation fueled by understanding the principles of your discipline, then you expand and refine your repertoire, guided by your individual predispositions, while keeping in touch, however abstractly, with what you feel to be the essential core of the art. What results is a network of deeply internalized, interconnected knowledge that expands from a central, personal locus point. The question of intuition relates to how that network is navigated and used as fuel for creative insight.”

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Conclusion: LEARN HOW TO LEARN

Again, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance has been the best book on the learning process I’ve found to date.

Josh’s book has received acclaim from high performers like; Mark Messier, 6-Time Stanley Cup Champion, Cal Ripken, Jr. a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Jim Loehr, CEO of the Human Performance Institute.

The 4-Hour Chef, by Tim Ferriss has a great opening section on learning, and I would highly recommend that as well, but Josh’s book still stands out to me as the leader.

If you have read Josh’s book, what did you think? Were you not able to put the book down, like me? What was one of your favorite life lessons Josh shared?

Let me know in the comments below!