Here’s what I found interesting from God’s Debris by Scott Adams. It’s a short read, 132 pages and around 90 minutes or so. I won’t say much more about it, because to give a summary would be to ruin the fun of reading it.

I’ll add more context to these highlights soon, but for now here’s the raw dump.

Preface

My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest explanation is usually dead wrong. But I’ve noticed that the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be.

Page: 27
“Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions.

Page: 28
“They say that they believe because pretending to believe is necessary to get the benefits of religion.

Page: 29
When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing.”

Page: 29
“The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day. This is why people of different religions can generally live in peace. At some level, we all suspect that other people don’t believe their own religion any more than we believe ours.”

Page: 32
“Okay,” I said, “but who made the maps in the first place?” “The maps were made by the people who went first and didn’t die. The maps that survive are the ones that work,”

Page: 34
The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe we have no idea how to behave.”

Page: 37
Importance is not an intrinsic quality of the universe. It exists only in our delusion-filled minds.

Page: 38
“If you want to understand UFOs, reincarnation, and God, do not study UFOs, reincarnation, and God. Study people.”

Page: 48
“Whether you understand the true nature of your food or not, you still have to eat. And in my example it makes little difference if you don’t know a carrot from a potato. We can only act on our perceptions, no matter how faulty. The best we can do is to periodically adjust our perceptions—our delusions, if you will—to make them more consistent with our logic and common sense.”

Page: 51
You believe that DNA and probability are opposites. But both make specific things happen. DNA runs on a tighter schedule than probability, but in the long run—the extreme long run—probability is just as fixed and certain in its outcome.

Page: 54
“I think I’d know it if we were part of an omnipotent being,” I said. “Would you? Your skin cells are not aware that they are part of a human being. Skin cells are not equipped for that knowledge. They are equipped to do what they do and nothing more. Likewise, if we humans—and all the plants and animals and dirt and rocks—were components of God, would we have the capacity to know it?”

Page: 55
Usually the assumptions are right, or close enough to be useful.

Page: 56
“You are always part of the universe, by definition. So when your rocket goes beyond the current boundary, the boundary moves with you. You become the outer edge for that direction. But the universe is still a specific size, not infinite.”

Page: 69
Humans believe that organic things are more important than inorganic things because we are organic.

Page: 73
“If you are proven to be right a hundred times in a row, no amount of evidence will convince you that you are mistaken in the hundred-and-first case.

Page: 78
“When anything physical moves, it has a gravitational impact on every other object in the universe, instantly and across any distance. That impact is fantastically small, but it is real. When you have a thought, it is coupled with a physical change in your mind that is specific to that thought, and it has an instant gravitational ripple effect throughout the entire universe.

Page: 82
“In such a case, the so-called psychic’s powers would be useful and in some sense genuine, but they could never be reproduced under controlled experiments. In a lab setting, all patterns are removed.”

Page: 89
“The so-called speed of light is simply the limit to how far a particle can pop into existence from its original location.

Page: 91
“But these are curious bees. When they don’t understand something, they become unsettled and unhappy. In the long run the bees would have to choose between permanent curiosity—an uncomfortable mental state—and delusion. The bees don’t like those choices. They would prefer to know the true color of the church’s interior and its purpose, but bee brains are not designed for that level of understanding.

Page: 94
“We like to believe that other people have the same level of urges as we do, despite all evidence to the contrary. We convince ourselves that people differ only in their degree of morality or willpower, or a combination of the two. But urges are real, and they differ wildly for every individual. Morality and willpower are illusions. For any human being, the highest urge always wins and willpower never enters into it. Willpower is a delusion.”

Page: 100
“Yes, but good things do not return in a one-for-one manner. Individual actions are not directly rewarded. It is only on average that doing good improves the quality of life for you and the people around you.”

Page: 101
“Stress is the cause of all unhappiness and it comes in infinite varieties, all with a common cause. Stress is a result of fighting probability, and the friction between what you are doing and what you know you should be doing to live within probability.”

Page: 102
“Why would I care about a replica of me? That’s a different guy.” “That distinction is an illusion. In your current life, every cell in your body has died and been replaced many times. There is nothing in your current body that you were born with. You have no original equipment, just replacement parts, so for all practical purposes, you are already a replica of a prior version of you.”

Page: 105
“There are two types of people in the world, my young friend. One type is people-oriented. When they make conversation, it is about people—what people are doing, what someone said, how someone feels. The other group is idea-oriented. When they make conversation, they talk about ideas and concepts and objects.”

Page: 107
Humans are only capable of receiving information. They create their own advice. If you seek to influence someone, don’t waste time giving advice. You can change only what people know, not what they do.”

Page: 109
“Most disagreements are like my example. Two people have different information, but they think the root of their disagreement is that the other person has bad judgment or bad manners or bad values. In fact, most people would share your opinions if they had the same information. If you spend your time arguing about the faultiness of other people’s opinions, you waste your time and theirs. The only thing than can be useful is examining the differences in your assumptions and adding to each other’s information. Sometimes that is enough to make viewpoints converge over time.”

Page: 113
“Honesty is like food. Both are necessary, but too much of either creates discomfort. When you downplay your accomplishments, you make people feel better about their own accomplishments. It is dishonest, but it is kind.”

Page: 113
“Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is also a way of signaling the importance of another person by showing your willingness to give that person your rarest resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce. Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”

Page: 114
Express gratitude. Give more than is expected. Speak optimistically. Touch people. Remember names. Don’t confuse flexibility with weakness. Don’t judge people by their mistakes; rather, judge them by how they respond to their mistakes. Remember that your physical appearance is for the benefit of others. Attend to your own basic needs first; otherwise you will not be useful to anyone else.

Page: 115
“Because they know what they want,” he said. “The ability to work hard and make sacrifices comes naturally to those who know exactly what they want. “Most people believe they have goals when, in fact, they only have wishes.

Page: 119
“People who do affirmations will have the sensation that they are causing the environment to conform to their will. This is an immensely enjoyable feeling because the illusion of control is one of the best illusions you can have.”

Page: 120
“Okay, imagine you’re a sea captain but you’re blind and deaf. You shout orders to your crew, but you don’t know for sure if they heard the orders or obeyed them. All you know is that when you give an order to sail to a particular warm port, within a few days you are someplace warm. You can never be sure if the crew obeyed you, or took you to some other warm place, or if you went nowhere and the weather improved. If, as you say, our minds are delusion generators, then we’re all like blind and deaf sea captains shouting orders into the universe and hoping it makes a difference. We have no way of knowing what really works and what merely seems to work. So doesn’t it make sense to try all the things that appear to work even if we can’t be sure?”

Page: 123
“Is awareness like intelligence?” I asked. “No. Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness. Your intelligence will stay about the same over your life. Awareness is entirely different from intelligence; awareness involves recognizing your delusions for what they are. Most people’s awareness will advance one or two levels in their lifetime.”

Page: 125
“You shouldn’t. There is no implied good or bad about one’s level of awareness. No level is better or worse than any other level. People enjoy happiness at every level and they contribute to society at every level.”

Page: 126
“You can’t wake yourself from a dream. You need someone who is already awake to shake you gently, to whisper in your ear. In a sense, that is what I do.”

Page: 127
“Ideas are the only things that can change the world. The rest is details.”

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

The importance of the buttons pales in comparison to the ability to get your users to want to push them, and want to talk about you.

First, Understand Human Nature

The buttons, apps, and platforms will change. They undergo a growth curve that levels off. If you understand the people using the platform — what motivates them to talk and to share — you become anti-fragile to changing social media landscape.

It’s easier to persuade people on social media than anywhere else, because we let our emotions dictate our actions on social media more than any other type of online platform. If you can identify a group of people or a time when people are emotionally unstable, you can tap into their sharing drive.

Find The People Who Will Build The Roads

Look for people who evangelize the influencers that you want to one day become and build a relationship with them. These are your “road builders.” They are your sharing army. They will do the heavy-lifting for you.

Similarly, to get media coverage, look for writers who have covered influential people in your industry. Once you find them, look for the crack in their armor — the channel where it’s easiest to get a nugget of their attention.

Once you get their attention, follow them closely. If they ask for help with something you can help with, help them:

• Answer their question directly
• Recommend an article, product, video, etc.
• Introduce them to someone that can help them – you’ll get credit for being the social lubricant
• Promote their book, product, course, etc.

What this looks like in practice:

Slowly but surely I made connections with all of the road builders through comment threads, personal messages, or by reaching out to them on their own networks. Once they interacted with me on one of my posts I sent a private message thanking them for their support. This was all it took. My wall became a flurry of activity. The status updates that I published shot to the top of the feed for a huge variety of people from fitness professionals to workout fanatics. The trick was not finding the influencers; it was finding the people who share the influencer’s work.

Becoming “The Guy”

We’ve entered the age of the coach. The most valuable asset that any marketer can have is not to provide information, but to become a trusted entity so that they become “the guy” when someone is looking for a solution to their specific problem.

Become “The Guy.” Becoming “The Guy” is not about knowing everything. Rather, it’s about being where conversations happen in your industry and becoming the voice of the network. Becoming the voice of the network means you are articulating the spoken and unspoken desires of people in your industry (both creators and consumers).

As your “The Guyness” scales, you will find that it’s less about getting people to do stuff and more about helping them to get each other to do stuff.

Think of yourself like Wikipedia. If someone comes to you with a question about your industry that you don’t have a good answer for, you should know someone who does. And you should point them to that person. By doing this, you strengthen yourself as the go-to person for information, regardless of whether it physically comes from your mouth or not.

Personal relationship recommendations are the best way to buy attention. You pay attention to a movie trailer you otherwise wouldn’t watch…if your brother sends it to you. You read an article from your Mom about a topic you’d never even consider reading, simply because Mom sent it. This is obvious…but step back slightly and realize that what creates large platforms is figuring out what you can do that drives those personal relationship recommendations at scale.

Practical Tips for Becoming “The Guy”

Every day, promote someone else, even if they’re not in your industry. Remember, you are not the be-all and end-all in your industry. You are the lubricant that helps people do what they already believe and desire.

If you do five to ten people favours every day (and a favour could be as small as congratulating him when he releases a book and sharing word of it on your Facebook) then you’ll soon find yourself in a position of power.

Be consistent in this helpful attitude. Share a piece of advice related to your area of expertise every single day. Include a simple call to action at the end of every tip. Everyone in your extended network needs to know what you do. You need to leverage weak ties.

No one really cares about your business, at least not at the start. Don’t share much about what you do on a products and services level. Instead, share:

• Jokes
• Motivational quotes
• Thought-provoking stories
• Personal funny/relatable stories.

Remember: your goal is to become “the guy.” Talk around your industry, not directly about it 24/7.

Understand the Real Reasons People Share

The majority of people don’t create – they share. And the primary reason why people share your information and your name is to show off what they already do or know.

The brutal truth is that the perception of quality is more important than actual quality. In fact, it’s hard to create original content these days unless you have proprietary data of some kind — research, studies, personal experience.

But that doesn’t matter, because few people share content based on their assessment of its quality. Instead they share because:

1. It’s funny
2. They want to become part of a group or strengthen their position within one
3. They are consciously or unconsciously using the information to selectively self represent

None of those reasons touch on the quality of the information, unless you’re trying to signal to a group of quality-obsessed people that you too enjoy high-quality content.

Allow others to publicly justify their own thoughts and passions through your material.

Pressing the share button has become a way to show off to the world what you want others to think of you. This means that profound information doesn’t share well. Nobody wants to show off that they’re ignorant towards a subject unless that subject is truly spectacular.

Commenting on Other People’s Platforms

Don’t make people work harder than they need to. Keep your writing short, simple, and easy to read.

If you’re getting into a debate with someone, remember that your main point isn’t to convince that person that they’re wrong. It’s to convince the vast majority of people who simply consume that argument that you are the more trustworthy person.

Try this: scan the comments in a thread on your platform and look for one that opposes a viewpoint that you agree with. Take as long as you need to compose a full, well-thought out, and well-articulated response. Post it once, and leave. Never engage in back and forth because if you do, you lose power.

Stick to One Platform

If you want to write, create videos that support your blog. If you decide to make videos, use the blog posts to support the video. If you podcast, then use your writing and video to support your podcast. Have one central gathering place and use all other types of media to feed into it.

How to Approach Writing Posts

Spend your time writing 1-3 really good posts each month and promote the heck out of them. Find groups related to your niche and network, attend events, reach out to other bloggers and add value, do anything you can to get an audience back to your site. Once you have a good readership, you can choose whether or not to post more often.

Every post must have at least one actionable step that the reader can immediately take to solve the problem from the post.

A blog post with three tax tips isn’t special. Any accountant can write that. A blog post about how you saved a client thousands of dollars is effective. Better yet, add a picture of the postcard they sent you from the vacation they can now afford. I’d hire you.

1. Answer questions sent in by readers. Whenever you get a question, answer it publicly on your blog or social media outlet (or both) and be sure to mention that a reader sent in the question.
2. Reach out to well-known bloggers. Ask permission to repost their old material giving them sole credit as the author and a link back to their site. Most industry experts have years’ worth of old material that collects dust. They’re ecstatic when somebody wants to republish it. When the post is live, send them a message with the link saying thank you. They might just share it, passing on some of their credibility to you. This is largely how I built up my platform in the early stages.

Personal Relationships

Automate and outsource other aspects of your life. Hire a personal chef and pay somebody to clean your house if you have to. Never automate your personal interaction.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

Do you feel like you’re getting much done in your workday? Even if you said yes, how impactful is the work that you’re doing? Are you spending at least a portion of your days in deep focus, working on projects and tasks that create lasting value for you or the company you work for? Or do your days become cluttered with short, repetitive tasks that are more reminiscent of moving information around instead of outputting value?

The average knowledge worker that answers those questions honestly will not like the answers. It’s nothing to be ashamed of – at least in the view of Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work. Hyper-connectivity and distraction are the root of the problem – but we are to blame for being dragged down by them.

I read Deep Work, funnily enough, in what Cal would call a block of deep work itself. I estimated how long it would take to read and scheduled it into my calendar, then I sat down and read. And read. And read. I finished the book in a day and pulled quite a bit out of it. Here’s what I got.

What’s the big idea?

If it wasn’t already obvious, Cal puts forth the idea of deep work, and defines it as:

…the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy.

The problem, he argues, is that the average (or even above average) knowledge worker is nowhere close to this idea, even if they think they’re doing a good job. He uses himself as an example, noting that even when he was years into the practice of deep work, the act of writing this book forced him to go even deeper into the topic itself. In the same year he wrote the manuscript for Deep Work, he also put out 9 peer-reviewed papers. The year before? He put out 4 – and didn’t even write a book.

He contrasts deep work with shallow work:

Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

The larger point to pull out of this dichotomy is that there are a few archetypes of workers that will thrive in the future, and none of them fill their days with a lot of shallow work. As Tyler Cowen says, “The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?”

So, does everyone need to completely rearrange their lives and schedules to start going deeper in work? Not everyone, says Cal. Let’s look at a CEO:

A good chief executive is essentially a hard-to-automate decision engine, not unlike IBM’s Jeopardy!-playing Watson system. They have built up a hard-won repository of experience and have honed and proved an instinct for their market. They’re then presented inputs throughout the day—in the form of e-mails, meetings, site visits, and the like—that they must process and act on. To ask a CEO to spend four hours thinking deeply about a single problem is a waste of what makes him or her valuable. It’s better to hire three smart subordinates to think deeply about the problem and then bring their solutions to the executive for a final decision.

How does Cal know?

If you know anything about Cal, you know he’s a value output machine. From his blog, to his professorship, to his papers, it seems that he produces a deluge of high-value work every single year. Here’s how he summarizes his work:

As a longtime devotee to depth, I’ve been able to publish close to 50 peer-reviewed papers as an academic (earning over 2500 citations), write five books as an author (selling over 200,000 copies), and build a popular blog (300,000 page views last month) — all without working at nights and rarely working on weekends. The secret is my fanatic commitment to deep work.

Why should you care?

Here are a few choice quotes from the book outlining why deep work matters:

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.

The second reason that deep work is valuable is because the impacts of the digital network revolution cut both ways. If you can create something useful, its reachable audience (e.g., employers or customers) is essentially limitless—which greatly magnifies your reward. On the other hand, if what you’re producing is mediocre, then you’re in trouble, as it’s too easy for your audience to find a better alternative online.

Though an increasing number of people will lose in this new economy as their skill becomes automatable or easily outsourced, there are others who will not only survive, but thrive—becoming more valued (and therefore more rewarded) than before.

What should you do?

If you’re committed to deep work, the first thing to do is figure out your deep work philosophy:

1. Monastic: Isolating yourself for large chunks of uninterrupted time on the scale of weeks or months
2. Bimodal: Splitting your weeks and months into the deep and shallow
3. Rhythmic: Splitting your time into the deep and shallow on a day-by-day basis
4. Journalistic: Quickly flipping back and forth between deep and shallow whenever you can fit a block of time in (Cal doesn’t recommend trying this one first)

Chances are good that if you’re the average knowledge worker, the rhythmic philosophy is the way to go. Here’s an example of a typical implementation:

It was the glacial writing progress during this year that drove Chappell to embrace the rhythmic method. He made a rule that he would wake up and start working by five thirty every morning. He would then work until seven thirty, make breakfast, and go to work already done with his dissertation obligations for the day. Pleased by early progress, he soon pushed his wake-up time to four forty-five to squeeze out even more morning depth.

After you decide on your working philosophy, you must ruthlessly commit to scheduling deep work blocks into your calendar and sticking to them. The process may seem foreign and difficult at first, but over time your brain settles in and starts to make meaningful progress on work that simply cannot be completed in shorter periods of time.

You must commit to working deeply, but simultaneously commit to disengaging completely:

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets… it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

…shutting down with a strict shutdown ritual that you use at the end of the workday to maximize the probability that you succeed. In more detail, this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (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. The process should be an algorithm: a series of steps you always conduct, one after another.

Surprisingly, disengaging from work completely and focusing on other pleasures can move you further forward in your work endeavors than grinding out more hours:

The scientific literature has emphasized the benefits of conscious deliberation in decision making for hundreds of years… The question addressed here is whether this view is justified. We hypothesize that it is not.

On top of that, it’s possible to do a restorative activity, like taking a walk in nature or going for a run and make forward progress on your problems. Cal calls this productive meditation, and describes it here:

The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally—walking, jogging, driving, showering—and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem. Depending on your profession, this problem might be outlining an article, writing a talk, making progress on a proof, or attempting to sharpen a business strategy. As in mindfulness meditation, you must continue to bring your attention back to the problem at hand when it wanders or stalls.

Finally, for those that think the deep work philosophy is too restrictive, too scheduled, and leaves no time for freedom, Cal bakes in a clever backdoor:

I maintain a rule that if I stumble onto an important insight, then this is a perfectly valid reason to ignore the rest of my schedule for the day (with the exception, of course, of things that cannot be skipped). I can then stick with this unexpected insight until it loses steam. At this point, I’ll step back and rebuild my schedule for any time that remains in the day.

More: Deep Work: Rules for Success in a Distracted World

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

Introduction:

• Move away from business needing you in order to function
• Is your self-talk focused on making it through the day?
• Is your day a jumble of events, or is it orderly (personal management problem)
• Systems must be in place before freedom and money come
• To begin, you first need to see them everywhere you look
• Things we do automatically (breakfast, driving, etc) are this way because at some point in time we paid attention
• Elementary and fundamental shift in perspective
• No turning back – once seen, cannot be unseen
• Nothing new – just tweaking your perception
• There will be some heavy lifting
• Documentation is key – written goals and procedures
• Separation, repair, dissection of systems
• Ongoing maintenance of systems

Chapter 1 – The Mindset

• Present moment appreciate is vital – but spend some time ensuring future will be in control as well
• Happiness is found in our control over our personal systems
• Make changes to things you CAN affect vs. things you cannot
• Pay attention to the mechanical details of life

Chapter 2 – A System of Systems

• Author uses Centratel telephone answering service, a company he owns, as illustration
• Preventative systems keep normal systems running

Chapter 3 – The Attack of the Moles

• Quality improvement – increased price by 300% in his business. Lost 1/3 of his customers, revenues doubled
• Despite growth, profitability remained the same
• Are you sabotaging your ability to create systems?
• Are you doing well in systems in some areas of your life and not in others?

Chapter 4 – Gun to the Head Enlightenment

• Centratel about to fail – finally found peace in the inevitable chaos
• Abandoned past assumptions because there was nothing to lose
• Sees everything in a system framework at this point
• Centratel = Primary system composed of subsystems
• Inefficient subsystems create failed primary system
• The world is very efficient already (cars, phones, macro social networks, economy)
• Human body is filled with different systems that work in parallel
• Things that go wrong stem from something wrong in a subsystem
• Our lives are made of countless linear systems
• You need an objective in business in order to develop systems
• Turn business into self-perpetuating organism that doesn’t have files
• Create methodologies for each system that you can break down
• Refine these systems. Create new ones, delete old ones
• Document organic processes to order them into something repeatable
• Systems apply to human routines as well. Room layout, morning routines, etc

Chapter 5 – Execution and Transformation

• Action is a builder of confidence – inaction is the cause of fear
• Strategic Objective – short document outlining philosophy of company/life
• General Operating Principles – keep these in mind, guiding decision makers
• Working Principles – documentation of each subsystem
• Most flawed system first, then next most flawed
• Critical systems made redundant
• Health – use 3 items documents similar to business
• Paying bills – online bill pay instead of hard copy checks

Chapter 6 – Systems Revealed and Managed

• Discover, examine, optimize your systems
• Your are a system of systems – social, health, business, etc
• Peace and prosperity enter as you work through this process
• Everything is a linear system that constantly executes
• An errant procedure in a system causes it to unravel and get out of control
• Repair inefficient mechanisms one by one
• Minor system change versus redoing entire system
• Address problem then take action to improve system
• You must document your system improvements as they happen
• Fix one system after another, do not kill fires
• This must become the priority over day to day business actions
• As you get better at tweaking, you will see them everywhere
• Relationship management system – reason why people don’t call back, remember birthdays, break promises

Chapter 7 – Getting Fit

• One by one, isolate and perfect systems
• Make your systems visible
• Bring 1 by 1 to foreground
• Adjust them
• Document them
• Maintain them
  • Pull individual processes out of the mess and fix them
  • You are the watcher of your life, looking over systems
  • Most fail by not taking action, not by misapplying a system

Chapter 8 – Critical Documentation

• Strategic Objective
• General Operating Principles
• Working Principles and Procedures
• Refining these systems creates compounding returns
• Strategic Objective – one page, life & business separate
• GOP – 2-3 pages, general decision-making guidelines
  • Extract these from everyday experience, may take a month+ to create
• Working Procedures
  • Nitty gritty outline of exactly how a system operates
  • Start with the most critical systems
• Documents are tangible, in reality vs. in your brain
• They remind you of systems focus and keep you from straying
• Get outside the temporary mental setbacks
• Self-rescues always increase self control
• You can depend on mechanical realty to guide you
• Work the System elevates you past the events of the day
• Manufacturing systems are perfect examples of this

Chapter 9 – Project Engineers

• You must internalize the systems mentality
• Build a vivid systems improvement analogy and connect to it
• Author uses position as a project engineer at electric company
• Avoid getting caught up in the work – instead, monitor from outside
• Author has systems for CRM, family, fitness, etc

Chapter 10 – Strategic Objective and GOP

• One types page, first draft should take a few hours
• GOP, over a month or so
• Then, working procedures – majority of time spent here

Chapter 11 – Working Procedures

• Make organic, human processes as reliable as mechanical processes
• Apply system improvements to working procedures
• Repeat over and over and over again
• If they aren’t tangible, they don’t exist
• Anyone can make a system improvement at any time
• Cast procedure in concrete = WRITE IT DOWN
• Create so someone off the street can do the job, more or less
• If you see an area of improvement, fix it immediately
• Working proc. Should evolve, but stabilize over time
• Creating procedures is HIGHEST priority list over day to day work
• Have people delegated and ask them how to improve procedures
• Computer based organizer
• Procedure to create procedures – scale it out
• Must be created with employees
• Automatically modify procedures – no bureaucracy!
• components flawless = org. flawless
• Way in front of 98% of competition by doing this
• Every process needs a working procedure
• Nonrecurring = DO NOT CREATE PROCEDURE
• Presentation, style, tone, display of procedures are consistent

Chapter 12 – Good Enough

• If you’re going to work, WORK. No multitasking
• Better than “good enough” = waste of time/money
• Shoot for 98% perfection – extra 2% worthless
• Are you seeing useless detail about processes?
• Reconciling checkbook to nearest cent. Who cares?

Chapter 13 – Errors of Omission

• What are your top five mistakes in life? Do they stem from inaction?
• Not taking action as an error of omission – recognize this
• Figure out what you are NOT doing that is creating failures in life
• Are you @ mercy of outside system that costs time/$?
  • Fix, replace, eliminate

Chapter 14 – Quiet Confidence

• Lack of quit courage precedes a downfall, incites errors of omission
• g. do things when absolutely don’t want to – build courage
• g. live up to word when convenient not to = build courage
• View laziness as an object, detach mechanically
• Ask why you are lacking quiet courage in the moment to spur action

Chapter 15 – Point of Sale Thinking

• Do not delay actions that could be done immediately
• Handle as things come up – build confidence and avoid overwhelm
• Do/Delegate/Discard
• Automate/systemize
• Multitasking is a fail strategy
• How much of what you do really matters?
• Stop consuming non-valuable information
• DO IT NOW MINDSET
• Measure your body in order to cultivate POS thinking

Chapter 16 – Extraordinary Systems

• Attract and keep people due to great working system
• Give them opportunity and turn them loose
• Smart, honest, clean living people that will attach to your vision
• Leaders of successful businesses are system engineers
• Hiring:
  • Did they show up on time?
  • Aptitude test
  • Did applicant look @ company, have questions
  • Did they listen to you or wait to speak
  • Use gut feelings to disqualify, not to qualify people
  • Be more efficient than your competitors

Chapter 17 – Consistency

• Think in systems wherever you go
• As an employee, your boss is your customer
• Relies on personal habit of consistency
• Clean and organize in your own life – consistently

Chapter 18 – Communication

• Quality of communication = quality of life
• Self-talk-excessive and can become a problem
• Act more, self-ruminate less
• Keep promises – you can become 100% reliable and watch your life change
• Make communication tools available to your staff
• Never bash others behind backs – people know what you’re up to
• Are you acting as if showing up is a favor? Change this mindset

Chapter 19 – BPT and MPT

• Biological prime time = where you are most active and alert in the day. Hard to change this, accept and work with it
• Mechanical prime time = what you do during BPT
• Typically a sine wave throughout the day for BPT, one period in morning and one at night – midday lower energy
• MPT = work on 3 documents during this time
• Ask yourself moment to moment – is this action creating a business or is it perpetuating a job?
• Use MPT to remove yourself from business day to day activities
• Maintain MPT: What should I be doing NOW to grow business?
• How can I delegate/automate rote aspects of my job?
• Most alert periods of the day are spent on MPT tasks
• When not in BPT, other tasks + exercise, social, etc
• Be careful: You still have bad habits. Don’t ‘get feel good about this message yet
• Immerse yourself in what must be done right now – enlightenment.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

What Is The Main Point Of This Book?

Telling the story of Eddie Huang, this memoir explores the childhood challenges of racism and stereotyping he and his family faced, ultimately illustrating how the aggressive attitude instilled in him from those experiences led him to do many positive things.

What Does This Book Share That Similar Books Do Not?

The ultimates thesis how it’s good to be different and remain prideful of one’s culture and heritage, even through marginalization. I think a lot of books try to tackle that, but this author does so in a funny and relatable style, sharing experiences that many readers may have had themselves. Born to immigrant parents living in the U.S, Huang discusses various events in his life, from hooking up with a girl in college for the first time, dealing with bullies, trying to start a business, to not feeling fulfilled in a boring job. He uses all those normal situations to accent what he has learned, while proudly and intentionally embodying his heritage.

Who Should Read This Book?

• Anybody who’s experienced being marginalized for who they are and wants to get past that.

• Anybody who’s felt like they’re a really creative, interesting, and weird (in a good way), but who’s going down a very normal and perhaps boring path. There’s a part of the book that describes how Huang went to college and then law school, eventually working as a lawyer. However, what he actually enjoyed doing was just being funny, hustling, and making food. He realized he needed to break away from the common path. I think people in a similar situation would like this a lot.

Who Should NOT Read This Book?

People who are a little more conservative. He’s very aggressive and open about his perspectives; he’s definitely a liberal person. If you’re more old-school, you might not appreciate the style in which he shares his story.

What Skills Will This Book Help You Develop?

It actually helped with my confidence and gave me a good feeling. It discussed how it’s possible to get out of a situation of feeling marginalized, to not feel trapped on any given path, and to pursue anything you’re interested in. That was really inspiring.

What Part Of The Book Was Most Illustrative Or Memorable?

The story that stood out to me the most was when Huang was struggling academically at school. He’s obviously a smart person, but he wasn’t getting good grades, which is an experience I had as well. Even though he’s a brilliant guy–ultimately writing this book–at the time, he couldn’t write well whatsoever.

What ultimately helped Huang develop his scholastic writing skills was his interest in Hip-Hop. He would listen to the greats of the early ’90s, like ‘A Tribe Called Quest’, and ‘Wu-Tang Clan’: people who were using vocabulary and language in a great way. He actually used Hip-Hop to better understand the English courses that didn’t make sense to him, due to the way his teachers explained it to him. He was leveraging what actually interested him to help him level-up and make progress in his education, as opposed to just relying on the standard path that wasn’t really working for him.

If You Only Have 10 Minutes, Which Part Should You Read?

Go right to the section where he’s already grown up and done with law school. That’s when you see his hustle really begin. Huang’s whole childhood is very interesting in how it formed who he is, but when he finishes law school and becomes a lawyer, he realizes he hates it and quits. He then gets involved in some side businesses—some legal and some not—ultimately leading to the start of his first restaurant. That’s the most inspiring part, because he’s such a scrappy entrepreneur.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -