What do you do?
● Developers
● Support
● Project / Product managers
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Is there anyone
who hasn’t seen
Avengers:
Infinity War?
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Impressive
Qualities
(and very questionable ethics)
● Singular vision
● Dream big
● Don’t hold themselves back
● Ignore the haters
● Allies
● Plan for the unknown
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Singular Vision
AKA Focus
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Harvey Dent - Gotham’s White Knight
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Women’s Suffrage Movement
● Two groups
○ National Woman Suffrage Association
(NWSA)
■ Wanted national recognition
○ American Woman Suffrage Association
(AWSA)
■ Wanted to go state by state
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Am I Clear?
● Business: document the process to build a
physical product from scratch
● Family: call parents once a week
● Romance: ???
● Money: ???
● Spirituality: find a zen meditation group
● Health: run & practice acroyoga
● Personal: make a board game
The 7 Circles
from The ONE Thing:
(https://www.the1thing.com/)
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Dream BIG
Don’t hold yourself back
Think 0 -> 1
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Natural Talent Isn’t Always Good
● Child prodigies rarely change the world
● As they win awards they keep practicing.
They don’t learn to do anything new. They
consume existing knowledge; not produce
new insights.
● Achievement motivated
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Two Ways
to Innovate:
1. 1 to N
2. 0 to 1
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"If you don’t look back at yourself and
think, “Wow, how stupid I was a year
ago,” then you must not have learned
much in the last year."
- Ray Dalio
We squash a low status
member who challenges
the status quo - while we
applaud a high status
member who challenges
the status quo
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Idiosyncrasy Credits
● Before you can change a group you need
to earn a least a few idiosyncrasy credits
○ Do something impressive
○ Reinforce group norms
● Then you can spend your idiosyncrasy
credits being unusual.
Ex. I’m a morning person and I’m always on time.
When I meet people in the morning they know
I’m the type of person who is always on time.
Once in a blue moon when I’m not on time they
believe me that something happened.
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Build Allies
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Suffrage + Temperance
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Expect to go
Off-the-Rails
● Humans love to plan
● How do you plan?
○ Waterfall
○ Agile
○ Something else
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Goals
● We tend to complete the easiest ones first
● We never really get to the big hard goals
● Studies have shown if you do use goals
and they’re too big you actually become
demotivated
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Most Important Task (MIT)
● Each day has one MIT
● I have 2-3 hours of work time (without
meetings) every morning to get it done.
● Everything after that is gravy
Most Important Task
Popularized by ZenHabits
https://zenhabits.net/purpose-your-day-most-imp
ortant-task/
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Supervillains are
Super Efficient
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Be clear, don’t hold yourself
back, think in new creative ways,
if you have a crazy idea build up
good will, focus on common
ground, and give yourself enough
margin in life to handle
uncertainty.
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Thanks!
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Books
● Originals
● Smarter Faster Better
● Zero to One