Taking Action

The Hard Way

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1.0
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 Introduction

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 Undoing Decades of Bad Learning
Habits
● Easy to get addicted to the feeling of learning
something new
● Your current feedback loop stops too soon:
○ BEFORE you take action
○ BEFORE you store info in long term memory
● Create a new loop and destroy the old one

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1.1
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 xx

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 Staying in The Flow
● Wear a uniform
● Reduce task switching
● Only work on problems you are excited
about
● Make your work your life

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2.0
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 When Lightning
Strikes
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 Build The Action Reflex
● Don’t force yourself to take action when you
are in a compromised state
● Start by building small daily habits
● Limit your focus
● Reduce stress and wait for a spark to get you
started taking action on a project

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2.1
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 Know What
Sparks You
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 Know What Drives You
● Safety/Variety
● Significance/Connection
● Growth/Giving

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 How Passive Learning Works
● Safe -- no risk of failure
● Significance and Growth from buying and
consuming
● Variety from shallow dipping into a large
number of superficial treatments of a subject

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 How Active Learning Works
● Safe -- success is taking action and learning
from mistakes quickly
● Significance, Growth and Contribution from
consistently implementing what you learn
● Connection from collaboration and feedback
● Variety from variable rewards as you take
action and get results
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 Passive Learning

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 Active Learning

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2.2
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 Follow The Flow

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 Curiosity Powers Action
● Only sustainable source of energy
● Only way to get an edge over other faster
learners
● Use to power long term research projects
● “You can’t connect the dots ahead of time”
● Research how your past curiosity based
projects helped you significantly
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2.3
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 Preventing
Overwhelm
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 Working Memory
● Just and handful of things at once
● Requires time to reload when you switch
tasks
● Stress hormones take a while to subside
○ Better to avoid before they are released

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 Managing your Biochemistry
● Adrenaline
● Norepinephrine
● Cortisol

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2.4
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 Fear of Failure

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 Fear of Failure
● All great creative fail many times
● Your failures will not be remembered
● You will be amazed how few people care
○ Newspapers make failure seem like a big deal
○ Most failures are never talked about or marketed
○ 99% of successful products are known widely because
of paid marketing, not word of mouth

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 Fear of Failure For
Future Leaders
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 Failures Are An Asset
● Leaders must be relatable to followers
○ Embarrassing failure stories bring you down to earth
○ Help build confidence of followers
■ Have a stockpile of failure so you can show them how
you got out of a similar rut
● Self deprecating humor
○ Easiest target is yourself, get’s people’s guard down
● Stories for your memoir
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2.5
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 Prime Your Body
For Action
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 Diet and Exercise
● Which foods do you digest well?
○ Typically vegetables, fish and light meat
● Which foods do you not digest well?
○ Typically carbs, red meat
● Cardio and Gym/weights
● Outdoor work
● Walks and nature
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3.0
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 One Page Plan

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 One Page Plans
● Reduce overwhelm
○ Limit amount of preparation
● Iterate weekly
● Keep everything in one place
● Prioritize and focus

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 List of Big Problems Vision of Final Result

Unsorted Important Ideas Random Ideas

Visual model of Process

(Flowchart)
Prioritized list of ideas

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3.1
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 Planning
Schedule
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 Biz/ Personal Relation- Health Meta/Org
Career ship

Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

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3.2
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 One Page Review

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 Biz/ Personal Relation- Health Meta/Org
Career ship

Feedback Loops/Motivation Improvements

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3.3
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 One Focus Per
Day
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 A Simple Practice
● Start the day with a single goal
○ Visualize process and goal in the morning
● Organize around critical bottlenecks
● Eliminate costly decision making
● Force yourself to prioritize ruthlessly
● Doesn’t have to be a permanent practice
● Momentum plugin for Chrome
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3.4
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 Flow Redundancy

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 The Right Balance of Options
● 2-3 options for boredom
○ Different levels of energy/mode of work
● The goal is effortless action
● Focus on getting in the flow early in the day
○ Stay in the flow by changing as needed
● Options can balance short, medium and long
term learning goals
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