Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

May 30, 2012

Devon Sampson Human Psychology , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“When people try to achieve happiness on their own, without the support of a faith, they usually seek to maximize pleasures that are either biologically in their genes or are out as attractive by the society in which they live. Wealth, power, and sex become the chief goals that give direction to their strivings. But the quality of life cannot be improved this way. Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.” (8)

“The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer.” (31)

“Attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.” (32)

“It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. Complexity is the result of two broad psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement towards uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies.” (41)

“Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Sleep, rest, food, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that return consciousness to order after the needs of the body intrude and cause psychic entropy to occur. But they do not produce psychological growth. They do not add complexity to the self.” (46)

“We can experience pleasure without any investment of psychic energy, whereas enjoyment happens only as a result of unusual investments of attention. A person can feel pleasure without any effort, if the appropriate centers of the brain are electrically stimulated, or as a result of the chemical stimulation of drugs.”

“Loss of self-consciousness does not involve a loss of self, and certainly not a loss of consciousness, but rather, only a loss of consciousness of the self. What slips below the threshold of awareness is the concept of self, the information we use to represent to ourselves who we are.” (64)

“When not preoccupied with our selves, we actually have a chance to expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward.”

“Paradoxically, a self-centered self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals, instead of learning about new ones.” (85)

“To avoid [psychic entropy], people are naturally eager to fill their minds with whatever information is readily available, as long as it distracts attention from turning inward and dwelling on negative feelings.” (119)

“The more a job inherently resembles a game – with variety, appropriate and flexible challenges, clear goals, and immediate feedback – the more enjoyable it will be regardless of the worker’s level of development.” (152)

“Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback, rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.” (162)

“If a person does not know how to control attention in solitude, he will inevitably turn to the easy external solutions: drugs, entertainment, excitement – whatever dulls and distracts the mind.

“But such responses are regressive – they do not lead forward. The way to grow while enjoying life is to create a higher form of order out of the entropy that is an inevitable condition of living. This means taking each new challenge not as something to be repressed or avoided, but as an opportunity for learning and for improving skills.” (172)

“One way to describe the skills that every man and woman has is to divide them in two classes: the instrumental and the expressive. Instrumental skills are the ones we learn so that we can cope effectively with the environment…Expressive skills, on the other hand, refer to actions that attempt to externalize our subjective experiences…When involved in an expressive activity we feel in touch with our real self.” (188)

“Inner conflict is the result of competing claims on attention.” (225)

“Action helps create inner order, but it has its drawbacks. a person strongly dedicated to achieving pragmatic ends might eliminate internal conflict, but often at the price of excessively restricting options…the goals that have sustained action over a period [may] turn out not to have enough power to give meaning to the entirety of life.” (226)

“Activity and reflection should ideally complement and support each other. Action by itself is blind, reflection impotent.”

The 48 Laws of Power (Law #28: Enter Action with Boldness)

May 22, 2012

Devon Sampson Motivational Psychology, Social Dynamics , , , , , , Leave a comment

“If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.” (227, Judgment)

“In seduction, hesitation is fatal – it makes your victims conscious of your intentions. The bold move crowns seduction with triumph: It leaves no time for reflection.” (228)

“Although we may disguise our timidity as a concern for others, a desire not to hurt or offend them, in fact it is the opposite – we are really self-absorbed, worried about ourselves and how others will perceive us. Boldness, on the other hand, is outer-directed, and often makes people feel more at ease, since it is less self-conscious and less repressed.” (233)

“Boldness directs attention outward and keeps the illusion alive.”

“Audacity separates you from the herd. Boldness gives you presence and makes you seem larger than life. The timid fade into the wallpaper, the bold draw attention, and what draws attention draws power.” (228-229)
 

We cannot keep our eyes off the audacious – we cannot wait to see their next bold move.

 
“Understand: If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold of you, then, root it out. Your fears of the consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse. Your value is lowered and you create a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt and disaster. Remember: The problems created by an audacious move can be disguised, even remedied, by more and greater audacity.” (234)

“Boldness should never be the strategy behind all of your actions. It is a tactical instrument, to be used at the right moment. Plan and think ahead, and make the final element the bold move that will bring you success.” (235)

“Timidity has no place in the realm of power; you will often benefit, however, by being able to feign it. At that point, of course, it is no longer timidity but an offensive weapon: You are luring people in with your show of shyness, all the better to pounce on them boldly later.”

The Art of Seduction – Robert Greene (The Ideal Lover)

May 19, 2012

Devon Sampson Social Dynamics , , , Leave a comment

 

The cultivation of the pleasures of the senses was ever my principal aim in life. Knowing that I was personally calculated to please the fair sex, I always strove to make myself more agreeable to it.
-Casanova

 
“(Casanova’s) method was simple: on meeting a woman, he would study her, go along with her moods, find out what was missing in her life, and provide it. He made himself the Ideal Lover.” (33)

“Most people believe themselves to be inwardly greater than they outwardly appear to the world. They are full of unrecognized ideals: they could be artists, thinkers, leaders, spiritual figures, but the world has crushed them, denied them the chance to let their abilities flourish. This is the key to their seduction – and to keeping them seduced over time.” (35)

“Appeal only to people’s physical side, as many amateur seducers do, and they will resent you for playing upon their basest instincts. But appeal to their better selves, to a higher standard of beauty, and they will hardly notice that they have been seduced. Make them feel elevated, lofty, spiritual, and your power over them will be limitless.”

You must be observant to discover their ideal, particularly to non-verbal cues. What are they secretly missing, what are they overcompensating for?

“Nothing is more seductive than patient attentiveness. It makes the affair seem lofty, aesthetic, not really about sex.”
 

A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed, with a look of dismay on his face. The lady urges him on: ‘Come, my friend, it’s getting light. You don’t want anyone to find you here.’ He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash.

Presently he raises the lattice, and the two lovers stand together by the side door while he tells her how he dreads the coming day, which will keep them apart; then he slips away. The lady watches him go, and this moment of parting will remain among her most charming memories.

Indeed, one’s attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance of his leave-taking. When he jumps out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens his trouser-sash, rolls up the sleeves of his Court cloak, over-robe or hunting costume, stuffs his belongings into the breast of his robe and then briskly secures the outer sash – one really begins to hate him.

~The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

 
Symbol: The Portrait Painter – “Under his eye, all of your physical imperfections disappear. He brings out noble qualities in you, frames you in a myth, makes you godlike, immortalizes you. For his ability to create such fantasies, he is rewarded with great power.” (39)

How to Maximize Your Retention When Reading Non-Fiction Books

May 16, 2012

Devon Sampson Human Psychology , , , , , 2 Comments

Recently, I came across a book titled 10 Days to Faster Reading by Abby Marks-Beale that has changed the way I look at reading non-fiction.

I was relieved to find out that I was already using some of her strategies, such as taking notes and eliminating environmental distractions, but mostly, 10 Days to Faster Reading made me acutely aware of the various mistakes I was making – and how to correct them so I could increase my reading retention.

For example, we humans have a tendency to subvocalize – sounding out each word in our heads. It turns out that this is much slower than when our minds just take in words as thoughts (without subvocalizing). The latter process is what we do when we’re truly “in the zone” – subvocalizing only serves takes us out of the zone.
 

 
The book also emphasizes the importance of context when reading non-fiction; having a specific idea about what you’re looking to learn in a particular book will make relevant content stand out much more. Using the book’s index (if it has one) is another way to find relevant content more quickly as well.

Ultimately, the point of reading non-fiction is not to finish the book cover-to-cover, it’s to learn specific concepts that you can apply to your daily life, so make sure that you’re doing that as efficiently as possible.

Josh Kaufman does an excellent job summarizing the 10 key ideas in 10 Days to Faster Reading, you can skim it in about 10 minutes and get all of the important concepts.
 
10 Days to Faster Reading – Personal MBA summary

From the Bedroom to the Boardroom: A Brief Review of “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff

May 15, 2012

Devon Sampson Business, Human Psychology , , , , , , Leave a comment

(Click on the image to view and/or download Chapter 1)
 
Whenever I post about a book here, I am implicitly giving it my highest recommendation (except for that one time I posted about Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason”…my bad).

But recently, I read a book so outstanding, so ingenious, and so practical that writing somewhat-out-of-context notes about it would be a colossal injustice.

“Pitch Anything” is already one of my favorite business books ever. It outlines a method of pitching in business settings that’s almost reminiscent of the seduction techniques outlined in “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists” by Neil Strauss. Indeed, reading about things like frame control, prizing, and alpha behavior definitely gave me flashbacks to 2008 when I first read Strauss’s bestseller.

But “Pitch Anything” differentiates itself from “The Game” by its frequent use of academic neuroscience research to support his ideas, as well as the fact that he’s successfully pitched billion-dollar proposals and made millions of dollars personally using the method.

Did I mention it’s well written, peppered with truly interesting examples, and legitimately funny?

I’m totally smitten with this book, and that’s a major accomplishment considering all of the books I’ve read this year.

You can check out the first chapter for free by clicking on the image.

Finally, for specific information about his method and his book, here’s an interview with Oren Klaff that covers a lot of the key ideas of “Pitch Anything”:
 
Pitch Anything: Oren Klaff – The Mixergy Interview
 

Steve Jobs (A Biography) – Walter Issacson

May 11, 2012

Devon Sampson Business, Philosophy , , , , , , , , Leave a comment


Note: The following passages are all direct quotes from the book. I didn’t want to completely litter this summary with parentheses so I left in ambiguous pronouns that obviously refer to Jobs. All italics are Issacson’s, all bold sections were highlighted by me.

 
“He was more philosophical than the other people I worked with,” (Atari boss Nolan) Bushnell recalled. “We used to discuss free will versus determinism. I tended to believe that things were much more determined, that we were programmed. If we had perfect information, we could predict people’s actions. Steve felt the opposite.” (43)

Jobs’s father had once taught him that a drive for perfection meant caring about the craftsmanship even of the parts unseen. (74)

(Apple partner Mike) Markkula wrote his principles in a one-page paper titled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy” that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer. “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company.” The second was focus: “In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.” The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” he wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.” (78)

Throughout his career, Jobs liked to see himself as an enlightened rebel pitted against evil empires, a Jedi warrior or Buddhist samurai fighting the forces of darkness. IBM was his perfect foil. He cleverly cast the upcoming battle not as a mere business competition, but as a spiritual struggle. “If, for some reason, we make some giant mistakes and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years,” he told an interviewer. “Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation.” (136)

On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, “Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?” (170)

Jobs had latched onto what he believed was a key management lesson from his Macintosh experience: You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. “It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players,” he recalled. “The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.” (181)

His diet obsessions reflected a life philosophy, one in which aestheticism and minimalism could heighten subsequent sensations. “He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint,” (Jobs’s daughter Lisa) noted. “He knew the equations that most people didn’t know: Things led to their opposites.” (260)

(Jobs and ex-girlfriend Tina Redse) had a basic philosophical difference about whether aesthetic tastes were fundamentally individual, as Redse believed, or universal and could be taught, as Jobs believed. She accused him of being too influenced by the Bauhaus movement. “Steve believed it was our job to teach people aesthetics, to teach people what they should like,” she recalled. (265)

In (Jonathan) Ive, Jobs met his soul mate in the quest for true rather than surface simplicity. Sitting in his design studio, Ive described his philosophy:
 

Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything and how it’s manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential. (343)

 
“When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don’t understand creativity…On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology…I’m one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline.” -Steve Jobs (397)

Like many companies, Sony worried about cannibalization. If it built a music player and service that made it easy for people to share digital songs, that might hurt sales of its record division. One of Jobs’s business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will,” he said. (408)

His desire to delight the user led him to resist empowering the user. (563)
 
There were many times when he reflected on what he hoped his legacy would be. Here are those thoughts, in his own words: (567-570)
 

My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary.

 

Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’ why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

 

I hate it when people call themselves “entrepreneurs” when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business. That’s how you really make a contribution and add to the legacy of those who went before.

 

“(Firing people) was hard. But somebody’s got to do it. I figured that it was always my job to make sure that the team was excellent, and if I didn’t do it, nobody was going to do it.

 

What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us. I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It’s about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how – because we can’t write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me.

Excerpt from Robert Greene’s “The Descent of Power”

May 10, 2012

Devon Sampson Uncategorized Leave a comment

I highly recommend you check out “The Descent of Power”, a 22-page essay by Robert Greene which can be viewed for free on Scribd. The following excerpt was especially poignant in my opinion:
 

I wanted to tell you about a dream I had a couple of months ago—I mean the kind of dream you have in your sleep. I dreamt that it was the year 2070 and that I was walking on the crowded streets of some city. People seemed oddly happy and there was a feeling of lightness in the air, as if something had really changed in the world and we had figured out a better way to live. What was most strange about this dream was that in the midst of it I was conscious of thinking back to the year 2010, so long ago. For some reason it occurred to me that that moment in time was some kind of turning point. That was when things began to right themselves, I told myself, but few people saw or understood this. If only we could have realized back then what was happening, where we were headed. How sad.

In the middle of this strange thought, I woke up. The dream and its intense mood stayed with me for quite some time. It made me think—this is clearly how it is in history. People never appreciate the moment they are living in. We can look back at all of the tumultuous, exciting periods in history with an air of nostalgia, but it’s an illusion. Those in that moment have no such perspective and no such appreciation. If only we could now have that perspective and realize that we are living through one of the great transformational moments and that the old is finally dying away.

 
The Descent of Power—Thoughts on The Great Transformation and How to Master It by Robert Greene (an ebook).

The Ultimate Studying Soundtrack

May 8, 2012

Devon Sampson Original Content , , , , , Leave a comment

The music I am about to share with you is BY FAR the most potent ever designed for the purposes of doing productive knowledge work (ie: reading, writing, studying, homework, etc.) This will drastically increase your productivity, not to mention make you much more stoked about life.

If you know of a great studying soundtrack that I missed, share it with us in the comments section!
 

#1 – The Social Network Official Soundtrack

 
Composed by Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) and Atticus Ross, this soundtrack can make even the most menial tasks seem grandiose and important. While most of your projects aren’t going to IPO for billions of dollars, The Social Network soundtrack does a sublime job of convincing you that they just might.

Download:
-”A Familiar Taste”
-”In Motion”
-”Pieces Form the Whole”
-”Intriguing Possibilities”
-”Complication with Optimistic Outcome”
 

 

#2 – Rounders: Music From the Motion Picture

 
Rounders was essentially a movie about a card shark who owes money and then eventually finds a way to make up the money; yet the soundtrack made it seem like the most important thing in the world, and it can have the same effect on your labor of love. Seriously, this is the ultimate music for making your life seem cooler than it actually is.

Download:
-”Rounders”
-”The Catch”
-”Railbirds”
-”Finger Up Your Spine”
-”The Apple”
 

 

#3 – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack

 
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross composed this soundtrack as well, and once again they do a stellar job of convincing you that your work is more than worthwhile. This album has more of a curious detective theme rather than that of a computer programmer.

Download:
-”Pinned and Mounted”
-”A Thousand Details”
-”Great Bird of Prey”
-”The Heretics”
-”Infiltrator”
 

 

The Personal MBA – Josh Kaufman (Value Delivery)

May 8, 2012

Devon Sampson Business , , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.”

-Michael LeBoeuf, business professor

 
The opposite of falling short of expectations is not “meeting expectations” – it is exceeding expectations.

There are two main types of Value Delivery systems: direct-to-user and intermediary.

The trade-off you face when you’re considering an using an intermediary is that you won’t have to do as much work and your sales can actually increase, but you’ll have less control over the Value Delivery process and you face Counterparty Risk – the chance that the intermediary will screw up at the expense of your reputation.

The shoe company Zappos often surprises its customers by having the shoes arrive at their customer’s houses days ahead of schedule. They could advertise the fact that they do free expedited shipping, but they don’t – they think the surprise is more valuable.

“A customer’s perception of quality relies on two criteria: expectations and performance. You can characterize this relationship in the form of a quasi-equation, which I call the Expectation Effect: Quality = Performance – Expectations.

“Customer expectations have to be high enough for a customer to purchase from you in the first place. After the purchase is made, however, the performance of the offering must surpass the customer’s expectations in order for them to be satisfied…If performance is lower than expectations, the perception of quality will be low – no matter how good the offer is in absolute terms.” (137)

That being said, you need to provide the baseline essentials that you promise in a Predictable manner.

The three primary factors that contribute to a Predictable experience:
-Uniformity (delivering the same characteristics every time)
-Consistency (integrity across your entire product line, not doing contradictory projects that violate expectations – ie: New Coke)
-Reliability (being able to count on the delivery of the value without error or delay)

Throughput is the rate at which a system achieves its desired goal (calculated by Rate/Time). Three types of Throughput are:
-Dollar Throughput (how quickly it takes your business to make a dollar of profit)
-Unit Throughput (how much time it takes to create an additional unit for sale)
-Satisfaction Throughput (how much time it takes to create a happy, satisfied customer)

“If you don’t know your Throughput, make it a priority to find out – measuring Throughput is the first step towards improving it.” (141)
 

The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.

-Susan Sontag, author and political activist

 
“Scale is the ability to reliably duplicate or multiply a process as volume increases. Scalability determines your maximum potential volume.” (143)

“As a general rule, the less human involvement required to create and deliver value, the more scalable the business.” (144)
 

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think: there are no little things.

-Bruce Barton, advertising executive best known for creating the Betty Crocker brand

 
“Toyota’s approach [to manufacturing] is based on the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which emphasizes the continual improvement of a system by eliminating muda (waste) via a lot of very small changes.” (145)

“Small changes to your Value Delivery process can save you a ton of time and effort in the long run.”

“Scalable systems amplify the results of small changes. Small changes to scalable systems produce massive results.” (146)

Perfecting your Value Delivery system is the key to 4-Hour Work Week-style automation.

The primary benefit of creating a system is that you can examine the process and make improvements.
 

If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.

-W. Edwards Deming, production management expert and pioneer of statistical process control