Proven Performance Quotes

Never do a single thing in the anticipation to prove something to someone who has hurt you. If someone has hurt or offended you (whoever that person may be), never perform anything or strive for anything in your life with the mind of proving something to that someone/ to those people. May nothing that you do be done with any thought of them in mind. There is nothing that needs to be proven.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

Once we start basing our self-esteem purely on our performance, our greatest joys in life can start to seem like so much hard work, our pleasure morphing into pain.

Those who feel satisfied with their personal lives are more satisfied with their careers and perform better.

It’s not the people you fire who make your life miserable. It’s the people you don’t.

Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit. This is a distinguishing feature between winners and losers. Anyone can have a bad performance, a bad workout, or a bad day at work. But when successful people fail, they rebound quickly. The breaking of a habit doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of it is fast. I think this principle is so important that I’ll stick to it even if I can’t do a habit as well or as completely as I would like. Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.

This was my wake-up call. I opened my eyes to the depressing fact that there are other forces at work in medicine besides science. The U.S. health care system runs on a fee-for-service model in which doctors get paid for the pills and procedures they prescribe, rewarding quantity over quality. We don’t get reimbursed for time spent counseling our patients about the benefits of healthy eating. If doctors were instead paid for performance, there would be a financial incentive to treat the lifestyle causes of disease. Until the model of reimbursement changes, I don’t expect great changes in medical care or medical education.5

Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. This pattern shows up everywhere. Cancer spends 80 percent of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months. Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks. Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes

You will perform better, make better decisions, and have a better body when you get the sleep you require.

The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints of silence which had been enforced during the bard’s performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew

A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically.

When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism. The role happiness plays should be obvious—the more you pick up on the positive around you, the better you’ll feel—and we’ve already seen the advantages to performance that brings. The second mechanism at work here is gratitude, because the more opportunities for positivity we see, the more grateful we become. Psychologist Robert Emmons, who has spent nearly his entire career studying gratitude, has found that few things in life are as integral to our well-being.11 Countless other studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and less likely to be depressed, anxious, or lonely. And it’s not that people are only grateful because they are happier, either; gratitude has proven to be a significant cause of positive outcomes. When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience fewer headaches than control groups.

Principles are proven through performance.

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. You will be seduced by your own apparent infallibility. Remember that all scientific experiments are performed by human beings and the results are subject to human interpretation. The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth. Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.

For God also tells us that when you perform an action you believe to be a sin, it still counts as a sin even if it is proven to be permissible. Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of man.

Clearly, if leaders have a strong set of ethical values and live them out, then people will respect them, not just their position. Immature leaders try to use their position to drive high performance.

Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed.

Interventional cardiologists have gotten so used to treating chest pain with stents—metal tubes that pry open blood vessels—that they do so reflexively even in cases where voluminous research has proven that they are inappropriate or dangerous. A recent study found that cardiac patients were actually less likely to die if they were admitted during a national cardiology meeting, when thousands of cardiologists were away; the researchers suggested it could be because common treatments of dubious effect were less likely to be performed.

Habits are easier to perform, and more satisfying to stick with, when they align with your natural inclinations and abilities.

The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.

The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage, since very few organizations are very good at it. —Peter Drucker

But the point is not to do one thing. The point is to master the habit of showing up. The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you can’t learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize. As you master the art of showing up, the first two minutes simply become a ritual at the beginning of a larger routine. This is not merely a hack to make habits easier but actually the ideal way to master a difficult skill. The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things. By doing the same warm-up before every workout, you make it easier to get into a state of peak performance. By following the same creative ritual, you make it easier to get into the hard work of creating. By developing a consistent power-down habit, you make it easier to get to bed at a reasonable time each night.

Meditation has also been proven scientifically to untangle and rewire the neurological pathways in the brain that make up the conditioned personality. Buddhist monks, for example, have had their brains scanned by scientists as they sat still in deep altered states of consciousness invoked by transcendental meditation and the scientists were amazed at what they beheld. The frontal lobes of the monks lit up as bright as the sun! They were in states of peace and happiness the scientists had never seen before. Meditation invokes that which is known in neuroscience as neuroplasticity; which is the loosening of the old nerve cells or hardwiring in the brain, to make space for the new to emerge. Meditation, in this sense, is a fire that burns away the old or conditioned self, in the Bhagavad Gita, this is known as the Yajna; “All karma or effects of actions are completely burned away from the liberated being who, free from attachment, with his physical mind enveloped in wisdom (the higher self), performs the true spiritual fire rite.

Mission is about what will be achieved, vision is about why people should feel motivated to perform at a high level, and strategy is about how resources should be allocated and decisions made to accomplish the mission.

The only effective means for bailing out the new are people who have proven their capacity to perform. Such people are always already busier than they should be. Unless one relieves one of them of his present burden, one cannot expect him to take on the new task.

The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.

If your goal is to build knowledge and skills, you need to add practice interactions. To decide how much practice your e-learning courses should include, consider the nature of the job task and the criticality of job performance and include more practice for highly critical skills.

Step 1 (Gather) involves embracing the toxic thought, habit, or trauma (cutting open with the scalpel). Steps 2 and 3 (Reflect and Write) are the processing steps (performing the surgery). Steps 4 and 5 (Recheck and Active Reach) are the reconceptualizing steps (closing up and healing).

Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement. Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. We have no process for determining whether we are performing better or worse compared to yesterday.

Furthermore, it’s not always about what happens during the workout. It’s about being the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it—even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity.

Sadly, the Christian church has not proven to be immune to performancism. Far from it, in fact. In recent years, a handful of books have been published urging a more robust, radical, and sacrificial expression of the Christian faith. I even wrote one of them—Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different. I heartily amen the desire to take one’s faith seriously and demonstrate before the watching world a willingness to be more than just Sunday churchgoers. That Christians would want to engage the wider community with God’s sacrificial love—living for their neighbors instead of for themselves—is a wonderful thing and should be applauded. The unintended consequence of this push, however, is that if we’re not careful, we can give people the impression that Christianity is first and foremost about the sacrifice we make for Jesus rather than the sacrifice Jesus made for us; our performance for him rather than his performance for us; our obedience for him rather than his obedience for us. The hub of Christianity is not “do something for Jesus.” The hub of Christianity is “Jesus has done everything for you.” And my fear is that too many people, both inside and outside the church, have heard our pleas for intensified devotion and concluded that the focus of Christian faith is our love for God instead of God’s love for us. Don’t get me wrong—what we do is important. But it is infinitely less important than what Jesus has done for us. Furthermore, it often seems that the Good News of

Every time you choose to perform a bad habit, it's a vote for that identity. The good news is that you don't need to be perfect. In any election, there are going to be votes for both sides. You don't need a unanimous vote to win an election; you just need a majority. It doesn't matter if you cast a few votes for a bad behavior or an unproductive habit. Your goal is simply to win the majority of the time.

I will do my best to make sure you have everything you require to see it through. What if you find yourself enamored with cheese and wish to become a fromager? I will make that happen. An actor? I don’t know how much more I could teach you as you’ve already proven adept at staging plays on your own, but I will attend every performance, and I will be the first to rise in what I imagine will be a thunderous standing ovation.

Strategic direction encompasses mission, vision, and strategy. Mission is about what will be achieved, vision is about why people should feel motivated to perform at a high level, and strategy is about how resources should be allocated and decisions made to accomplish the mission. If you keep in mind the what, the why, and the how, you won’t get lost in debates about what a mission is, what a vision is, and what a strategy is.

The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors. You assume you’re getting better because you’re gaining experience. In reality, you are merely reinforcing your current habits—not improving them. In fact, some research has shown that once a skill has been mastered there is usually a slight decline in performance over time.

Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed. This is one of the core reasons why it is so hard to build habits that last. People make a few small changes, fail to see a tangible result, and decide to stop. You think, “I’ve been running every day for a month, so why can’t I see any change in my body?” Once this kind of thinking takes over, it’s easy to let good habits fall by the wayside. But in order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through this plateau—what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential.

To be successful in creating a good habit, you must be sure the cue is obvious, the craving is attractive, the response is easy to perform, and the reward is personally satisfying. To successfully break a bad habit, the opposite is true. In this instance, you must make the cue invisible, make the craving unattractive, the response difficult to perform, and the reward dissatisfying. As we close out Part One, remember these four steps. The rest of this book goes into further detail on how to use these

I believe in making society more equal for our kids, she ploughing on, ignoring pointed coughs telling her to get on with it or shut up our kids, she emphasizes (the possibility of shared ownership), have been told they’re failures, thick, as you put it, before they’ve proven otherwise Exams are all well and good but not everyone performs well under pressure or manifests their intelligence at a young age, it can be acquired later, you know, nurtured by us, we have to be more than teachers, we have to look after them, believe in them If we don’t help then, who will?

Keep Plants Nearby Even if it’s just a small pot of green, plants can actually work wonders for your concentration. This has been proven after two studies performed in 2011 and 2013. According to psychologists from the University of Michigan, plants are part of the “attention restoration theory” which basically means it restores your focus on the work with just one quick glimpse. Don’t forget that the green color of plants is also excellent for the eyes so you’re basically “refreshing” your mind and vision through a simple plant. With you practically rejuvenated, your work productivity should increase.

Where exactly the Hogwarts Express came from has never been conclusively proven, although it is a fact that there are secret records at the Ministry of Magic detailing a mass operation involving one hundred and sixty-seven Memory Charms and the largest ever mass Concealment Charm performed in Britain. The morning after these alleged crimes, a gleaming scarlet steam engine and carriages astounded the villagers of Hogsmeade (who had also not realised they had a railway station), while several bemused Muggle railway workers down in Crewe spent the rest of the year grappling with the uncomfortable feeling that they had mislaid something important.

Imagine walking into a dark room and flipping on the light switch. You have performed this simple habit so many times that it occurs without thinking. You proceed through all four stages in the fraction of a second. The urge to act strikes you without thinking. By the time we become adults, we rarely notice the habits that are running our lives. Most of us never give a second thought to the fact that we tie the same shoe first each morning, or unplug the toaster after each use, or always change into comfortable clothes after getting home from work. After decades of mental programming, we automatically slip into these patterns of thinking and acting.

For example, if you wish to begin a meditation habit, decide on a process you always perform at a certain time every single day. Brushing your teeth at night is a regular ritual for most of us. Consider stacking this habit with meditation: “After I brush my teeth at night, I will meditate for one minute before going to sleep.” By stacking this habit, you never need to find time to practice your new habit. Remember the first Law of Behavior Change? It is the cue, and you want to make it obvious. Habit stacking and implementing intention are foolproof ways to make your cue obvious; they are even more powerful when used as a pair. Key Points 1.​Implement

It mattered very much to this young person. I was inclined to tell him that if he was worried, it probably was a sin, or at the very least, would weigh on him as one. For God also tells us that when you perform an action you believe to be a sin, it still counts as a sin even if it is proven to be permissible. Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of man." "All right, it's a sin," moaned Alif. "I don't care. I don't play Battlecraft. It's for teenagers." "I'm not looking for any particular answer. Don't feel you must agree. I want to know what you think." "I'm not looking for any particular answer. Don't feel you must agree. I want to know what you think." "I think people need a break. It's not like they're out there selling bacon and booze. They want to pretend for a few hours a day that we don't live in this awful hole getting squeezed by State on one side and pious airheads on the other, all while smiling our shit-eating grins so that the oil companies keep shoveling money into our pockets. Surely God wouldn't mind people pretending life is better, even if it involves fictional pork." "But isn't that a dangerous precedent? Fictional pork is one thing-one cannot smell it or taste it, and thus the temptation to go out and consume real pork is low. However, if we were to talk about fictional adultery-I know there are many people who do and say all kinds of dirty things online-then it would be another matter. Those are real desires manifesting themselves on the computer screen. Who knows how many adulterous relationships begin on the Internet and end in the bedroom?" Alif blanched. "And even if they don't," the sheikh continued, "who's to say the spiritual damage isn't real nonetheless? When two people form a relationship online, it isn't a fiction based on real life, it's real life based on a fiction. You believe the person you cannot see or touch is perfect, because she chooses to reveal only the things that she knows will please you. Surely that is dangerous indeed." "You could say the same thing about an arranged marriage," said Alif.

Understanding the narcissism epidemic is important because its long-term consequences are destructive to society. American culture’s focus on self-admiration has caused a flight from reality to the land of grandiose fantasy. We have phony rich people (with interest-only mortgages and piles of debt), phony beauty (with plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures), phony athletes (with performance-enhancing drugs), phony celebrities (via reality TV and YouTube), phony genius students (with grade inflation), a phony national economy (with $11 trillion of government debt), phony feelings of being special among children (with parenting and education focused on self-esteem), and phony friends (with the social networking explosion). All this fantasy might feel good, but unfortunately, reality always wins. The mortgage meltdown and the resulting financial crisis are just one demonstration of how inflated desires eventually crash to earth.

For years, exercise scientists have been convinced that the only way to increase mitochondrial density is with aerobic endurance training, but recent studies have proved otherwise. Not only is an increase in the size and number of mitochondria a proven adaptation to HIIT, but the mitochondrial benefit of HIIT goes way beyond size and number. For example, all your mitochondria contain oxidative enzymes, such as citrate synthase, malate dehydrogenase, and succinate dehydrogenase. These oxidative enzymes lead to improved metabolic function of your skeletal muscles—particularly by causing more effective fat and carbohydrate breakdown for fuel and also by accelerating energy formation from ATP. So more oxidative enzymes means that you have a higher capacity for going longer and harder. And it turns out that, according to an initial study on the effect of HIIT on oxidative enzymes, there were enormous increases in skeletal muscle oxidative enzymes in seven weeks in subjects who did four to ten thirty-second maximal cycling sprints followed by four minutes of recovery just three days a week. But what about HIIT as opposed to aerobic cardio? Another six-week training study compared the increase in oxidative enzymes that resulted from either: 1. Four to six thirty-second maximal-effort cycling sprints, each followed by four-and-a-half minutes of recovery, performed three days a week (classic HIIT training) or 2. Forty to sixty minutes of steady cycling at 65 percent VO2 max (an easy aerobic intensity) five days a week The levels of oxidative enzymes in the mitochondria in subjects who performed the HIIT program were significantly higher—even though they were training at a fraction of the volume of the aerobic group. How could this favorable endurance adaptation happen with such short periods of exercise? It turns out that the increased mitochondrial density and oxidative-enzyme activity from HIIT are caused by completely different message-signaling pathways than those created by traditional endurance training.

Even if I could accept, just for an instant, that I have the power to change physical matter with my mind, and literally manifest all that I desire . . . I’m afraid I see nothing in my life to make me believe I have such power.” She shrugged. “Then you’re not looking hard enough.” “Come on, I want a real answer. That’s the answer of a priest. I want the answer of a scientist.” “You want a real answer? Here it is. If I hand you a violin and say you have the capability to use it to make incredible music, I am not lying. You do have the capability, but you’ll need enormous amounts of practice to manifest it. This is no different from learning to use your mind, Robert. Well-directed thought is a learned skill. To manifest an intention requires laserlike focus, full sensory visualization, and a profound belief. We have proven this in a lab. And just like playing a violin, there are people who exhibit greater natural ability than others. Look to history. Look to the stories of those enlightened minds who performed miraculous feats.

Onboarding checklists Business orientation checklist As early as possible, get access to publicly available information about financials, products, strategy, and brands. Identify additional sources of information, such as websites and analyst reports. If appropriate for your level, ask the business to assemble a briefing book. If possible, schedule familiarization tours of key facilities before the formal start date. Stakeholder connection checklist Ask your boss to identify and introduce you to the key people you should connect with early on. If possible, meet with some stakeholders before the formal start. Take control of your calendar, and schedule early meetings with key stakeholders. Be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others) and not only vertical ones (boss, direct reports). Expectations alignment checklist Understand and engage in business planning and performance management. No matter how well you think you understand what you need to do, schedule a conversation with your boss about expectations in your first week. Have explicit conversations about working styles with bosses and direct reports as early as possible. Cultural adaptation checklist During recruiting, ask questions about the organization’s culture. Schedule conversations with your new boss and HR to discuss work culture, and check back with them regularly. Identify people inside the organization who could serve as culture interpreters. After thirty days, conduct an informal 360-degree check-in with your boss and peers to gauge how adaptation is proceeding.

The key to preventing this is balance. I see the give and take between different constituencies in a business as central to its success. So when I talk about taming the Beast, what I really mean is that keeping its needs balanced with the needs of other, more creative facets of your company will make you stronger. Let me give you an example of what I mean, drawn from the business I know best. In animation, we have many constituencies: story, art, budget, technology, finance, production, marketing, and consumer products. The people within each constituency have priorities that are important—and often opposing. The writer and director want to tell the most affecting story possible; the production designer wants the film to look beautiful; the technical directors want flawless effects; finance wants to keep the budgets within limits; marketing wants a hook that is easily sold to potential viewers; the consumer products people want appealing characters to turn into plush toys and to plaster on lunchboxes and T-shirts; the production managers try to keep everyone happy—and to keep the whole enterprise from spiraling out of control. And so on. Each group is focused on its own needs, which means that no one has a clear view of how their decisions impact other groups; each group is under pressure to perform well, which means achieving stated goals. Particularly in the early months of a project, these goals—which are subgoals, really, in the making of a film—are often easier to articulate and explain than the film itself. But if the director is able to get everything he or she wants, we will likely end up with a film that’s too long. If the marketing people get their way, we will only make a film that mimics those that have already been “proven” to succeed—in other words, familiar to viewers but in all likelihood a creative failure. Each group, then, is trying to do the right thing, but they’re pulling in different directions. If any one of those groups “wins,” we lose. In an unhealthy culture, each group believes that if their objectives trump the goals of the other groups, the company will be better off. In a healthy culture, all constituencies recognize the importance of balancing competing desires—they want to be heard, but they don’t have to win. Their interaction with one another—the push and pull that occurs naturally when talented people are given clear goals—yields the balance we seek. But that only happens if they understand that achieving balance is a central goal of the company.

SUPPLEMENT DAILY DOSAGE Vitamin A 10,000 IU or 6 mg beta-carotene (choose mixed carotenes if available)     B-complex vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5: 50 mg B6: 50 mg, or 100 mg if nauseated (can be higher: if necessary up to 250 mg to prevent nausea) B12: 400 mcg Choline, Inositol, PABA: 25 mg Biotin: 200 mcg Folic acid: 500 mcg (increase this to 1000 mcg if you have suffered a previous miscarriage, if there is a history of neural tube defects in your family, or if you are over 40 years of age)     Vitamin C 1–2 g (take the higher dose if you are exposed to toxicity or in contact with, or suffering from, infection)     Bioflavonoids 500–1000 mg (helpful for preventing miscarriage and breakthrough bleeding)     Vitamin D 200 IU     Vitamin E 500 IU (increasing to 800 IU during last trimester)     Calcium 800 mg (increasing to 1200 mg during middle trimester when your baby’s bones are forming, or if symptoms such as leg cramps indicate an increased need)     Magnesium 400 mg (half the dose of calcium)     Potassium 15 mg or as cell salt (potassium chloride, 3 tablets)     Iron Supplement only if need is proven; dosage depends on serum ferritin levels (stored iron) If levels < 30 mcg per litre, take 30 mg If levels < 45 mcg per litre, take 20 mg If levels < 60 mcg per litre, take 10 mg This test for ferritin levels should be repeated at the end of each trimester, and we give further details in Chapter 11.     Manganese 10 mg     Zinc 20–60 mg, taken last thing at night on an empty stomach (dose level to depend on results of zinc taste test, which ideally should be performed at two monthly intervals during your pregnancy; see page 172–174 for details)     Chromium 100–200 mcg (upper limit applies to those with sugar cravings or with proven need)     Selenium 100–200 mcg (upper limit for those exposed to high levels of heavy metal or chemical pollution). Selenium is best taken away from vitamin C, but can be taken with zinc.     Iodine 75 mcg (or take 150 mg of kelp instead)     Acidophilus/Bifidus Half to one teaspoonful, one to three times daily (upper limits for those who suffer from thrush)     Evening primrose oil 500–1000 mg two to three times daily     MaxEPA (or deep sea fish oils) 500–1000 mg two to three times daily     Garlic 2000–5000 mg (higher levels for those exposed to toxins)     Silica 20 mg     Copper 1–2 mg (but only if zinc levels are adequate)     Hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes For those with digestive problems. There are numerous proprietary preparations which contain an appropriate combination of active ingredients. Ask your health practitioner, pharmacist or health food shop for guidance, and take as directed on the label.     Co-enzyme Q10 10 mg daily

Because it's a poor tradeoff to add complexity for dubious performance gains, a good approach to deep vs. shallow copies is to prefer deep copies until proven otherwise.

Fortune 500 companies are still using incentive programs that were proven ineffective almost a generation ago.

The situational diagnosis conversation. In this conversation, you seek to understand how your new boss sees the STARS portfolio you have inherited. Are there elements of start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success? How did the organization reach this point? What factors—both soft and hard—make this situation a challenge? What resources within the organization can you draw on? Your view may differ from your boss’s, but it is essential to grasp how she sees the situation. The expectations conversation. Your goal in this conversation is to understand and negotiate expectations. What does your new boss need you to do in the short term and in the medium term? What will constitute success? Critically, how will your performance be measured? When? You might conclude that your boss’s expectations are unrealistic and that you need to work to reset them. Also, as part of your broader campaign to secure early wins, discussed in the next chapter, keep in mind that it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver. The resource conversation. This conversation is essentially a negotiation for critical resources. What do you need to be successful? What do you need your boss to do? The resources need not be limited to funding or personnel. In a realignment, for example, you may need help from your boss to persuade the organization to confront the need for change. Key here is to focus your boss on the benefits and costs of what you can accomplish with different amounts of resources. The style conversation. This conversation is about how you and your new boss can best interact on an ongoing basis. What forms of communication does he prefer, and for what? Face-to-face? Voice, electronic? How often? What kinds of decisions does he want to be consulted on, and when can you make the call on your own? How do your styles differ, and what are the implications for the ways you should interact? The personal development conversation. Once you’re a few months into your new role, you can begin to discuss how you’re doing and what your developmental priorities should be. Where are you doing well? In what areas do you need to improve or do things differently? Are there projects or special assignments you could undertake (without sacrificing focus)? In practice, your

And I’m not kidding when I say “craziness.” The University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, has come out with a study that compares traders with psychopaths. The study reviewed the results from an existing study comparing 24 psychopaths in German high-security hospitals with a control group of 27 “normal” people. The funny thing is, this control group of “normal” people turned out to be traders. Stock guys, currency and commodity traders, and derivative types happened to be the normal control group that was stacked up against the high-security, barbed-wire-enclosed psychopaths. In the end, the performance of the trading group was actually worse than that of the psychopaths. The study indicated that traders, “Have a penchant for immense destruction,” and that their mindset would lead them to the logical conclusion of “beating one of the neighbor’s expensive cars with a baseball bat with the sole objective of owning the most beautiful car in the neighborhood.” In other words, traders are nuts. Indeed if you look up the textbook definition of a psychopath, here are some of the tidbits you’ll uncover: antisocial behavior, poor judgment and failure to learn from experience, inability to see oneself as others do, inexplicable impulsiveness … sounds like a typical trader who is struggling against the market and can’t figure out why.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes talent. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The next step is, then, for each member of the group, beginning with the founder, to ask: ‘What are the activities that I am doing well? And what are the activities that each of my key associates in this business is actually doing well?’ Again, there is going to be agreement on most of the people and on most of their strengths. But, again, any disagreement should be taken seriously. Next, one asks: ‘Which of the key activities should each of us, therefore, take on as his or her first and major responsibility because they fit the individual’s strengths? Which individual fits which key activity?’ Then the work on building a team can begin. The founder starts to discipline himself (or herself) not to handle people and their problems, if this is not the key activity that fits him best. Perhaps this individual’s key strength is new products and new technology. Perhaps this individual’s key activity is operations, manufacturing, physical distribution, service. Or perhaps it is money and finance and someone else had better handle people. But all key activities need to be covered by someone who has proven ability in performance.

Yohimbe Yohimbe is a popular herb for libido, especially among men. And for good reason. It has been proven to increase blood flow to the genital area in both men and women, which improves sexual function and performance.

You can adapt this strategy for nearly any purpose. Say you want to feel happier in general. Find something that makes you truly happy—like petting your dog or taking a bubble bath—and then create a short routine that you perform every time before you do the thing you love. Maybe you take three deep breaths and smile. Three deep breaths. Smile. Pet the dog. Repeat. Eventually, you’ll begin to associate this breathe-and-smile routine with being in a good mood. It becomes a cue that means feeling happy. Once established, you can break it out anytime you need to change your emotional state. Stressed at work? Take three deep breaths and smile. Sad about life? Three deep breaths and smile. Once a habit has been built, the cue can prompt a craving, even if it has little to do with the original situation.

Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.” Hundreds of studies have shown that implementation intentions are effective for sticking to our goals, whether it’s writing down the exact time and date of when you will get a flu shot or recording the time of your colonoscopy appointment. They increase the odds that people will stick with habits like recycling, studying, going to sleep early, and stopping smoking. Researchers have even found that voter turnout increases when people are forced to create implementation intentions by answering questions like: “What route are you taking to the polling station? At what time are you planning to go? What bus will get you there?” Other successful government programs have prompted citizens to make a clear plan to send taxes in on time or provided directions on when and where to pay late traffic bills.

the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.

A bowl of blueberries every other day has proven to dramatically reduce your chances of getting cancer or developing heart disease.

The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints of silence which had been enforced during the bard's performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew nor recognised racial or social divisions. At least, not yet.

Coachability and Adaptability Multiple times, I've seen reps who are either too insecure to admit that they cannot perform a new function or too fearful of change. They won’t let anyone coach them. If you're not coachable, you won't learn. If you won’t learn, you won’t adapt. Adaptability is a critical trait in any rapidly growing company. As your product, market, competition, and company changes, you'll need people who are flexible enough to adapt to the changing environment. They'll need to perform new tasks, learn new products, and develop new skills.

To summarize, the specific cravings you feel and habits you perform are really an attempt to address your fundamental underlying motives.

mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.”7

Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. We have no process for determining whether we are performing better or worse compared to yesterday.

There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us: Making our ideas concrete. Revealing new associations between ideas. Incubating our ideas over time. Sharpening our unique perspectives.

Six Simple Listening Tips Here are six simple tips for not only practicing good listening in your customer conversations but also for creating a high-impact customer experience by showing them that you’re engaged. 1. Don’t speak: This is easy to say but sometimes hard to do. You simply cannot listen if you’re speaking or poised on the edge of interrupting the other person. So what should you do? Just shut up and pay attention to what your customer is saying. 2. Make eye contact: Since a majority of our communication is non-verbal, looking at a person is one of the best ways to clearly demonstrate focus and attention. Even when you’re on a video call, customers can often tell (by the way your eyes dart around) if you’re looking at them on the screen or if you are distracted. Keep that gaze locked! (But a nice, friendly gaze… not a creepy one.) 3. Use visual/auditory cues: Smiling, nodding, and appearing pensive are all great ways to communicate understanding and acknowledgment. Even small auditory cues like the occasional “yes” or “uh-huh” can show your customer that you’re following along. 4. Write things down: Writing things down not only helps you remember key pieces of information later on, but it also demonstrates to the customer that you’re interested enough in their insights to memorialize them in writing. But what if they can’t see you taking notes, for example, on a phone or video call? No problem. Just tell them you are! After your customer finishes telling you something, simply pause for a moment and say “I’m just writing this down” to produce the same effect. 5. Recap: Nothing illustrates great attention to detail like repeating back or summarizing the insights the customer shared with you. This is especially powerful when the insights were shared earlier in the conversation. For extra impact, quote them directly using their exact words, prefaced by the phrase “What I heard you say was… ” Echoing someone’s exact words is a powerful and scientifically proven persuasive technique (we’ll be exploring this tactic in more detail as it relates to handling customer objections in chapter 7). 6. Ask good follow-up questions: When a customer answers your question, resist the temptation to say, “That’s great” or “Awesome!” and then move on to the next question. Asking killer follow-up questions like “Tell me more about that,” “Can you give me an example?” or “How long has that been going on?” is a great way to demonstrate your interest in the customer’s perspective and leave the call with high-impact insights. In fact, when it comes to addressing customer objections, a study by Gong.io found that top performers ask follow-up questions 54 percent of the time, versus 31 percent for average performers.6

Sound simple? My best advice is to try it. The way the human brain works, when you write down important points, your mind-body tends to keep that information in a very secure place … and best of all, you won’t forget it.

Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires. New versions of old vices. The underlying motives behind human behavior remain the same. The specific habits we perform differ based on the period of history.

TABLE 1-1 Onboarding checklists Business orientation checklist As early as possible, get access to publicly available information about financials, products, strategy, and brands. Identify additional sources of information, such as websites and analyst reports. If appropriate for your level, ask the business to assemble a briefing book. If possible, schedule familiarization tours of key facilities before the formal start date. Stakeholder connection checklist Ask your boss to identify and introduce you to the key people you should connect with early on. If possible, meet with some stakeholders before the formal start. Take control of your calendar, and schedule early meetings with key stakeholders. Be careful to focus on lateral relationships (peers, others) and not only vertical ones (boss, direct reports). Expectations alignment checklist Understand and engage in business planning and performance management. No matter how well you think you understand what you need to do, schedule a conversation with your boss about expectations in your first week. Have explicit conversations about working styles with bosses and direct reports as early as possible. Cultural adaptation checklist During recruiting, ask questions about the organization’s culture. Schedule conversations with your new boss and HR to discuss work culture, and check back with them regularly. Identify people inside the organization who could serve as culture interpreters. After thirty days, conduct an informal 360-degree check-in with your boss and peers to gauge how adaptation is proceeding.

Focus, too, on understanding the operating model, planning and performance evaluation systems, and talent management systems, because they often powerfully influence how you can most effectively have an impact.

It has been proven time and again that a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative comments provides children with the best education and motivation to be successful. The coach that is constantly pointing out the negative, and never providing praise when it has been earned, is dangerous for your child and will lead to their emotional breakdown.

The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints of silence which had been enforced during the bard’s performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew nor recognised racial or social divisions. At least, not yet.

The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.” This is why the “bad” workouts are often the most important ones. Sluggish days and bad workouts maintain the compound gains you accrued from previous good days. Simply doing something—ten squats, five sprints, a push-up, anything really—is huge. Don’t put up a zero. Don’t let losses eat into your compounding. Furthermore, it’s not always about what happens during the workout. It’s about being the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it—even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity. The all-or-nothing cycle of behavior change is just one pitfall that can derail your habits. Another potential danger—especially if you are using a habit tracker—is measuring the wrong thing.

Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness.

There is nothing magical about time passing with regard to habit formation. It doesn’t matter if it’s been twenty-one days or thirty days or three hundred days. What matters is the rate at which you perform the behavior. You could do something twice in thirty days, or two hundred times. It’s the frequency that makes the difference.

Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.

Automaticity is the principle that habits are formed by repetitive practice, not time passed. Questions to Guide the Reader 1.​What is Hebb’s Law and how does it apply to habit formation? 2.​Two people are both trying to establish a reading habit. One person reads as much as possible every day, while the other creates a long-term goal of reading three books within six months. Who will create their habit more effectively and why? 3.​What is the difference between being in motion and taking action? Action Plan 1.​Define the habit that is desired. 2.​Insert cues into your daily routine to perform the action desired. 3.​Practice, practice, practice. 4.​Remember not to stay in perpetual motion – you must take action.

If you want to establish a habit of going for a walk every day, make it easy for yourself! Schedule your walk at the same time every day. Set an exact amount of time you want to spend walking (e.g., 5, 15, 30, or 45 minutes). Then, be sure to get your shoes ready before your scheduled time, lay out your clothes, and have a water bottle ready. This will make it much easier to convince yourself to go – all you need to do is change, and you’re out the door. Prepping the pain points that require effort reduces friction and, therefore, resistance. If you stack these habits with some existing habits that form the structure of your day (discussed in chapter six) they are even more likely to become automatic. This process of removing potential obstacles before performing a new habit is called addition by subtraction. Humans are biologically addicted to convenience. Remember the primal cravings that drive

After that, every bit of research and every idea potentially relevant to the project went into Tharp’s box. Recordings of Billy Joel’s music videos, live performances, lectures, photographs, news clippings, song lists, and notes about those songs. She

The 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it easy. The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning. Focus on taking action, not being in motion. Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.

The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying. We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying. The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards. The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided. To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful—even if it’s in a small way. The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change

Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time. The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

You don’t need to measure everything. In fact, focusing on too many numbers tends to do more harm than good. So, let me challenge you, even if you have a dashboard in your company, to simplify. Let’s set the goal to identify 5–7 key metrics that measure the performance of your CCF.

90-day mark is a good rule of thumb), begin to discuss how you’re doing. This need not be a formal performance review, but it does need to be an open discussion of how things are going. What are you doing well, and what do you need to do differently? What skills do you need to develop to do the job better? Are there shortcomings in your leadership capacities that you need to address? Are there projects or special assignments that you could get involved in (without sacrificing focus) that could strengthen your skills?

visible, appealing, easy to perform, and gratifying for it to become a part of one's life, needs to become a part of one's life.

Chapter Summary The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors. Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time. The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

The point is to master the habit of showing up. The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you can’t learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize. As you master the art of showing up, the first two minutes simply become a ritual at the beginning of a larger routine. This is not merely a hack to make habits easier but actually the ideal way to master a difficult skill. The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things. By doing the same warm-up before every workout, you make it easier to get into a state of peak performance. By following

When you automate as much of your life as possible, you can spend your effort on the tasks machines cannot do yet. Each habit that we hand over to the authority of technology frees up time and energy to pour into the next stage of growth. As mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.

Chapter Summary The 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it easy. The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning. Focus on taking action, not being in motion. Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.

Other synonyms for expression include publish, speak, present, perform, produce, write, draw, interpret, critique, or translate.

The moment you first encounter an idea is the worst time to decide what it means. You need to set it aside and gain some objectivity. With a Second Brain as a shield against the media storm, we no longer have to react to each idea immediately, or risk losing it forever. We can set things aside and get to them later when we are calmer and more grounded. We can take our time slowly absorbing new information and integrating it into our thinking, free of the pressing demands of the moment. I’m always amazed that when I revisit the items I’ve previously saved to read later, many of them that seemed so important at the time are clearly trivial and unneeded. Notetaking is the easiest and simplest way of externalizing our thinking. It requires no special skill, is private by default, and can be performed anytime and anywhere. Once our thoughts are outside our head, we can examine them, play with them, and make them better. It’s like a shortcut to realizing the full potential of the thoughts flowing through our minds.

Strategic direction encompasses mission, vision, and strategy. Mission is about what will be achieved, vision is about why people should feel motivated to perform at a high level, and strategy is about how resources should be allocated and decisions made to accomplish the mission. If you keep in mind the what, the why, and the how, you won’t get lost in debates about what a mission is, what a vision is, and what a strategy is. Some fundamental questions about strategic direction concern what the organization will do and, critically, what it will not do. Focus on customers, capital, capabilities, and commitments:

The response is the actual habit you perform,

The punch line is clear: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.

The U.S. health care system runs on a fee-for-service model in which doctors get paid for the pills and procedures they prescribe, rewarding quantity over quality. We don’t get reimbursed for time spent counseling our patients about the benefits of healthy eating. If doctors were instead paid for performance, there would be a financial incentive to treat the lifestyle causes of disease. Until the model of reimbursement changes, I don’t expect great changes in medical care or medical education.5

To identify skill and knowledge gaps, first revisit your mission and strategy and the core processes you identified. Ask yourself what mix of the four types of knowledge is needed to support your group’s core processes. Treat this as a visioning exercise in which you imagine the ideal knowledge mix. Then assess your group’s existing skills, knowledge, and technologies. What gaps do you see? Which of them can be repaired quickly, and which will take more time? To identify underutilized resources, search for individuals or groups in your unit who have performed much better than average. What has enabled them to do so? Do they enjoy resources (technologies, methods, materials, and support from key people) that could be exported to the rest of your unit?

There’s one final benefit to the box: It gives you a chance to look back. A lot of people don’t appreciate this. When they’re done with a project, they’re relieved. They’re ready for a break and then they want to move forward to the next idea. The box gives you the opportunity to reflect on your performance. Dig down through the boxes archaeologically and you’ll see a project’s beginnings. This can be instructive. How did you do? Did you get to your goal? Did you improve on it? Did it change along the way? Could you have done it all more efficiently?

Chapter Summary The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying. We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying. The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards. The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided. To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful—even if it’s in a small way. The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.

It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it—even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity.