Motivation Minute

So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Cal Newport)

• Find your passion after you put in hard work and build skills
• Stretch yourself deliberately throughout the learning process to reach your full potential
• B…

Creativity, INC (Ed Catmull)

• Creativity is not as similar to spontaneity as you might think
• Your story is king - design products to perform their intention so well that people forget the technology …

Rise of the Robots (Martin Ford)

• Robots will in the relatively near future pose a sizeable threat to the job landscape
• Industries we thought were immune to robot takeover are at risk - in fact, any …

Contagious (Jonah Berger)

• Viral ideas aren’t born - they’re made
• Word-of-mouth is the most effective and relevant advertising strategy
• Find a way to make your product stand out to make it a frequent…

EntreLeadership (Dave Ramsey)

• It’s a significant challenge to walk out solid leadership while also running a business
• Simple success principles: rent until you can pay in cash, keep out of debt, sti…

Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

• Progress is both horizontal (scaling from 1 → n) and vertical (going from 0 → 1)
• Home in on the very important truth that very few people agree with you on
• Not all monopoli…

• Profit rarely just happens to you.  Make a habit of setting it aside consistently (even just 1%)
• Profit is for you.  Not the business.  Don’t always reinvest your profits in the business.
• Prioritizi…

• Luck can be one of the least understood random forces in our life
• Rare events are always unexpected.  The longer until we see them, the more overconfidence we develop
• Looking long-term helps zoom ou…

• Habits are a 3-part cycle: Cue, Routine, and Reward
• Habits emerge without our permission but are able to be changed
• You don’t always have to completely drop bad habits.  Just adapt them for positive…

• Planning is always guessing.  Focus on a simplistic short-term plan for huge long-term results
• “Scratch your own itch”.  Build a product that you are motivated to use
• There will always be doubters a…

• Unconditionally adding value to others can be the key to becoming a successful giver
• Successful givers are prestige-focused, practicing “powerless communication”
• Motivation is the #1 factor of succe…

• Key elements of today’s tribes are leaders, followers, and common ideas.
• Great leaders go beyond managing resources.  They create change you believe in.
• By the time you think culture is ready for yo…

• 3 keys to financial success - thrift, wealth, planning
• Smaller/consistent monetary gains beat get-rich-quick schemes
• Time can be one of the greatest money multipliers for those who start early

Re…

• The signal is the truth.  Noise is anything that distracts from it
• Successful predictions synthesize seemingly insignificant, disconnected ideas
• Data is not the only factor driving forecasts.  Accur…

• Steve Jobs in three words:  Intense.  Binary.  Perfectionist.
• Apple innovated game-changing products - from the iPod and iTunes to the iPhone and Mac
• Simplistic and highly functional design meshed w…

Key Takeaways - Success is not a random accident - Learn to trust the process over the end product - The cumulative benefit of a slight edge life far outweighs any single effort

The Slight Edge (Jeff…

Key Points

• Technical experience is a weak indicator of business strength
• Focus on working on your business as opposed to in it
• Prototype your processes.  Drive your business towards a clone-able mod…

Key Points

• People thrive on praise - use it strategically before correction
• Be careful to value others above yourself
• Quickly admit your faults while minimizing corrections directed at others

How…

Key Takeaways

• If you don’t prioritize your life someone else will
• Less is more - prioritize only the top 10% of your life’s important activities
• Intentionally add 50% buffer time and opt to under-pr…

Key Points

• Success is dependent on how well you can challenge the status quo
• Business is not a virtue - in fact, it indicates laziness
• Structure your “information diet” with a selectively ignorant a…