Smartcuts

Shortcuts vs. Smartcuts.

Shane shares a quick biographical sketch of Ben Franklin and Frank William Abagnale, Jr. (made famous by Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can).

Ben Franklin hacked his way to extraordinary, enduring success while Abagnale conned his way to federal prison.

Shortcuts are amoral.

Smartcuts are shortcuts with integrity—working smarter while creating real value in the world.

This book is all about Smartcuts, of course. :)

Shane kicks the book off with an awesome story about BYU students who play a game called Bigger or Better in which they start the night with something tiny like a toothpick and then go from house to house trying to trade up to something a little “bigger or better.”

The toothpick might be traded for a piece of gum at the first house which might be traded for a pack of Post-It Notes from the next which might then be traded for a magazine which…

If you continue that process 12-14 times over the course of a night, you might wind up with a TV or golf clubs or something else remarkably better than the toothpick with which you started.

Crazy.

That’s the power of small wins.

It’s from the first chapter called “Hacking the Ladder” in which Shane also describes the “untraditional” approach of Presidents and how they rarely “climbed the ladder” of success from congressman to senator to the highest office. More often, they hacked it—using success in one domain to trade up to another.

Check out the book for more on those stories, of course.

For our purposes: Let’s focus on the power of small wins.

And, let’s explore it some more with the next Big Idea on the power of momentum:

It’s all about Progress.

NO MATTER HOW SMALL.

We want to create small wins. Followed by more small wins. Followed by more small wins.

Shane likes to use the metaphor of those Olympic rings at a playground. You start at one end then go to the other. The key? MOMENTUM. You don’t want to get stuck mid-way.

Same with our creative pursuits.

We want to break our huge goals down into smaller goals and break those smaller goals into even smaller goals and then go crush it—creating progress… REGARDLESS HOW SMALL!

What’s your big goal in life right now?

Now, what’s one tiny little thing you could do to make progress on that goal RIGHT NOW?

<— That’s a process worth repeating again and again and again. (It’s also the essence of the dominoes from The ONE Thing, The Compound Effect and The Slight Edge.)

This is from a chapter on “Rapid Feedback.”

Shane shares the story of how The Second City comedy academy produces so many extraordinary comedians—including Stephen Colbert, Dan Aykroyd, Tina Fey, Seth Meyers and Steve Carrell.

The key: “The Second City teaches its students to take such things [failures] in stride, to become scientists who see audience reaction as commentary on the joke, not the jokester. To turn off the part of their brains that says ‘I fail’ when they get negative feedback. …

With this process, The Second City transforms failure (something that implies finality) into simply feedback (something that can be used to improve). Hundreds of times a week.”

They are trained on how to fail fast and often AND how to perceive the negative feedback as simply data—WITHOUT taking it personally.

Daniel Amen talks about a similar idea in his new book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (see Notes) where he says: “Do you learn from your failures or ignore them? New brain-imaging research suggests that when some people fail their motivation centers become more active, making it more likely they will be able to learn from their experience. When others fail the brain’s pain centers become more active—it literally hurts—making it more likely they will do whatever they can to avoid thinking about the episode, which means they are more likely to repeat the mistake. Learn from your mistakes and use them as stepping stones to success.”

Dr. Amen tells us we need to get CURIOUS not furious.

Essentially, we need to train our brains to get *excited* about the feedback rather than freaked out about it.

The best way I can think of to do that?

Grab Tool #1 from The Tools–box and train ourselves to GET EXCITED about pain.

As Stutz + Michels advise us, we need to remember that our infinite (!) potential is on the other side of our pain—outside of our comfort zone. As such, the only logical thing to do is to “Reverse Our Desire”—rather than incessantly try to *avoid* pain (the very thing that will help us actualize!), we need to train ourselves to lean into it.

The *moment* we notice ourselves recoiling from a fear, we can remember the importance of disciplining ourselves to reverse our desire and walk through their process.

Take a deep breath. Experience the fear/pain/whatever, silently say to ourselves (technically they say to silently SCREAM to ourselves!) “BRING IT ON!!!” then see ourselves moving through the pain and say, “Pain sets me free!”

Again and again and again.

The Second City crew basically practiced their version of this HUNDREDS of times per week. That willingness to ingest and digest so much rapid feedback led to equally rapid growth.

It’s a powerful Smartcut.

Here’s to the growth mindset + experimenter’s lab coat as we collect data and remind ourselves to BRING IT ON!!!

This is from a chapter on Momentum in which Shane talks about the importance of positioning yourself well for a potential big break.

He juxtaposes this guy who got uber-fired up (!) seeing a double rainbow and had a quick hit of fame that he couldn’t sustain and Michelle Phan, who had a huge burst of attention after doing a video on Lady Gaga but was able to sustain it because she had created a “reservoir” of other amazing content (whereas our rainbow friend simply had not-so-useful videos on his channel).

Michelle had worked hard for years to create value. Created a reservoir of awesome. Got a big hit and used that momentum to catalyze a ton of other goodness.

That’s what we want to do. And, that’s what Sal Kahn did as well.

Most of us have heard of the Khan Academy at this point. But did you know Sal had produced 1,000 (!!!) math lessons *before* Bill Gates found him and got behind him and his work?

1,000. That’s a lot.

(Like a TON.)

Back to you. How’s YOUR reservoir?

P.S. This is essentially what I’m doing. My reservoir, of course, is a backlog of a LOT of content. 300+ PhilosophersNotes and counting, 500+ YouTube videos, soon-to-be 500 podcast episodes, hundreds of Micro Classes and a growing collection of Optimal Living 101 classes.

I’m deliberately creating a huge reservoir while striving to serve as profoundly as I can while mastering my craft and getting the basic fundamentals of the business solid. Although I’m not focused on the “big hit” at this point, I am excited to position myself well such that when/if it arrives I’ll be prepared—yet, I’ll never *need* that hit to continue to succeed.

P.P.S. This is the essence of what Nassim Taleb calls the “barbell strategy” in his great book Anti-Fragile (need to do a Note!). He tells us we need to SIMULTANEOUSLY be super conservative AND super aggressive. We need to make sure we’re doing the little things that keep us in the game (in my case, showing up consistently and being profitable!) AND going for the 10X opportunity (in my case, creating the greatest collection of wisdom I possibly can and seeing if I can help a Billion (!) people optimize their lives and help change the world in the process :).

You?

As we discussed in Steal Like an Artist (see Notes), if we want to be interesting, it’s best to be boring.

Here’s how Austin Kleon puts it: “I’m a boring guy with a nine-to-five job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog. That whole romantic image of the creative genius doing drugs and running around and sleeping with everyone is played out. It’s for the superhuman and the people who want to die young. The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.”

We LITERALLY waste energy making a bunch of tiny choices.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams and I joked about our t-shirt collection in our interview. (He has the same style in a few colors. I have one style in one color: white.)

In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Scott tells us: “I never waste a brain cell in the morning trying to figure out what to do when. Compare that with some people you know who spend two hours planning and deciding for every task that takes one hour to complete. I’m happier than those people.”

Whether it’s simplifying our wardrobe or morning rituals, it’s a good thing to streamline.

How can you make your life a little more boring today? :)

P.S. Shane also tells us:

“That’s 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.”

“Here’s a fact: Creativity comes easier within constraints. … They give us boundaries that direct our focus and allow us to be more creative.”

That’s a Big Idea from the final chapter/hack on 10X Thinking featuring Elon Musk and his commitment to colonize Mars. (!) In the process of going after that crazy awesome goal, he created the first private company to send a rocket into space at a fraction of NASA’s cost.
Truly astonishing.

What’s your big goal? What’s a 10X version of it?

Remember that, altho technically more difficult, 10X goals are often, paradoxically, easier to accomplish that 10% goals. Once you stretch yourself to 10X thinking you, like Elon Musk’s rockets, leave the gravitational pull of more pedestrian ideas and enter rarefied air with fewer competitors and more opportunities to attract big support.