Product innovation ability: innovation is not magic, innovation can be systematic

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 8 mins

One Sentence Summary: Innovation is the ability to systematically convert random attempts into replicable approaches; a good innovator has a menu of approaches to start problem-solving from 

Innovation outcome = 1. Time spent innovating * 2. Systems for innovating

• The better you can explain what you have done, the better I find you understand what you have done. In the beginning innovation was random / luck… but by slowly trying to explain how things happened after the fact has allowed me to start to see patterns. 

Patterns can be turned into repeatable approaches meaning what goes from close to pure luck can turn into consistent innovation! In other words, innovation comes from converting trial and error, via metacognition, into usable strategies

• Analogy: Innovation can be thought of as the process of converting unknown unknowns (don’t know what or how to do) into known unknowns (known approaches to figure out unknown solutions)

• Innovation outcome taxonomy:

  • L0: no time spent trying, just hope you have ideas incidentally

  • L1: time spent innovating but the approach is random - small and infrequent innovation

  • L2: time spent innovating but you have only one approach - medium and semi frequent innovation

  • L3: time spent innovating and you have multiple approaches that you layer together - large and frequent innovation

• "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." - John Steinbeck

• Jingle: want to get lucky, get systematic at innovation! 

• Below are some frameworks that I find helpful for part of my approaches to innovation. 

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From things others ask for => things you find from others => things you make up! 

• Taxonomy

  • L1: just a list of things people ask for

  • L2: pushing back on some of the list people ask for as some are not helpful

  • L3: L2 + incorporating ideas from others that make sense, eg from other products, academic research

  • L4: L3 + making up new ideas yourself

  • L5: L4 + making up new schools of thought that allow new ideas (eg infinite vs finite knowledge)

  • L6: L5 + building 'pictures, not looking at pieces' so that you can balance in a positive sum way many ideas. 

• Comment

  • In the early days of Edrolo IMO it was more L1 / L2

  • I think we are now doing significant amounts of L5 / L6… but also definitely L2 and L3 as well! 

  • Good innovation is being able to do L2-L6 well? 

Knowing about knowns and unknowns

• Taxonomy:

  • L0: known problem, known solution

  • L1: known problem, unknown solution

  • L2: unknown problem and therefore unknown solution

• Comment: 

  • Hard to build ⇔ Easy to build

  • Some solutions are hard to build, eg cure cancer. I find the main “L0: known problem, known solution” left are because they are super hard to build. 

  • However sometimes “L2: unknown problem and therefore unknown solution” are easy to build. 

  • For me, finding an unknown problem and making a solution is some of the best most fun going around! 

  • IMO we are now doing a bunch of L2 at Edrolo. 

Quantitative vs Qualitative vs Intuition

• Quantitative = look at the metrics of your product and / or external academic research and then deduce an idea from this of how to improve things. For example, in your onboarding you have a large drop from ‘acquisition to activation’, what should you do about this? 

• Qualitative = speak to users and figure out ideas from them. 

  • Here you can use the taxonomy above: 

    • L0: known problem, known solution

    • L1: known problem, unknown solution

    • L2: unknown problem and therefore unknown solution

  • Most of the time answers are not handed to you AKA “L0: known problem, known solution”, you have to work with the raw ingredients someone is saying and try and zero in on and then solve for “L1: known problem, unknown solution” OR “L2: unknown problem and therefore unknown solution”

• Intuition = out of your own mind you come up with new ideas

  • I find there are systematic approaches to this as well. I don’t find there is one approach, but one can definitely do better than just hoping. 

  • One approach I use is this problem solving framework I made up: 

    • Step 1: define the Job To Be Done

    • Step 2: MECE the Job To Be Done

    • Step 3: sequentially screen (put in order from first to last the pieces from your MECE)

    • Step 4: build a model of your MECE, likely in an equation (link)

    • Step 5: crunch some real world scenarios through your model to see how it performs

    • Step 6: synthesize

  • Another approach: 

    • Build 3-5x complimentary lenses to try and rate (see what is good, see any ego distortions you might have, see any blind spots you might have) what you have done. 

    • Examples of lenses:

      • First principles outcome for learning 

      • UX - how easy is this to use

      • Sales message lens - how do you explain this in one sentence 

      • Overton window - what will others see and will they get it on 1st impression and want to use

      • Vs other products - explain the key way you are different to existing solutions

Treasure Taxonomy - extracting treasure not trash from conversations and products

• Taxonomy

  • Level 1: summary - verbatim = just writing down what happened

  • Level 2: summary - key points = being able to extract the key points and articulate them in a significantly shorter manner. 

  • Level 3: synthesis - key point push back = you will disagree with part of an problem space solution / article / conversation AND have a reason why. No reason no disagreement! 

  • Level 4: synthesis - internal joining = you can take two components of the problem space / article / conversation and join them together to create something new. 

  • Level 5: synthesis - external ingredient = join an ingredient from the problem space / article with an external component to create new knowledge 

  • Level 6: create a model - internal joining = join pieces together into a new meta story

  • Level 7: create a model - external ingredients = joining what is in the problem space / article with external ingredients into a cohesive structure/ recipe

  • Level 8: Heston Blumenthal - joining multiple recipes (models) together into epic scrumptiousness! 

• Comment:

  • “You do not learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” John Dewy

  • In some respects I feel you do not learn from talking to someone, you learn from trying to be able to observe your and the other parties metacognition (ie why are they saying what they are saying) ideally really time. This is ‘real time reflection on your experiences’. 

  • Input * Metacognition = Output

  • Then you can try to discuss not just output but metacognition and that by attempting to illuminate this layer I find many other ideas come out! 

Pace of innovation = 1. Quantity (how often you generate innovation) * 2. Quality (size of innovation)

• “The only barrier to entry is the pace of innovation.” Elon Musk 

• You need to get better at 1. Quantity and 2. Quality constantly! 

• Magnitude of innovation

  • L1: one off win

  • L2: every now and then

  • L3: consistent but linear

  • L4: exponential growth = building and being able to use multiple different approaches to innovate simultaneously

• Comment

  • This blog is an attempt to lay out some innovation frameworks that will hopefully help me try to layer them together real time when I’m talking to someone, looking at another product or building a product. 

  • Over time I believe I’ve gotten significantly better at quantity and quality of innovation. 

Earned secrets = Innovation

• There are no lightbulb moments. There are however earned secrets.

• Lightbulb moment = a point of searing insight where you all of a sudden get a large break through

  • Time needed = None / very little. You have a sudden large breakthrough. 

  • Knowledge about problem space required = Low.

  • Improvement of solution over existing outcome = Large. 

• Earned secret = where you put in the work to learn about an area and slowly over time small incremental advances present themselves to you through extended analysis that over time accumulate to be a ‘large breakthrough’ over the existing solution. 

  • Time needed = Large. Eg years.  

  • Knowledge about problem space required = High. All else the more knowledge you have (aka the more ingredients you have) the more new recipes you can create.

  • Improvement of solution over existing outcome = Small for each individual gain. However what happens is that you have many small wins that added together come to a large improvement over existing solutions. So when you launch a product it looks like a ‘large improvement’ and people might think that you had this one sering insight that made the product, but the product is really the outcome of years of small cumulative wins. 

Innovation is not magic. Innovation is a process, innovation is inevitable, innovation is predictable

• Innovation Ability = 1. Knowledge ingredients * 2. Recall * 3. Transfer * 4. Model Ability * 5. Communication

• Have a read of the blog link above if you want more. I don’t have the energy to try and summarise it right now!

Innovation at different levels of the stack creates emergent opportunities

• If you are struggling to come up with new solutions try operating at a different level of the stack, ie zoom in or zoom out. 

• Taxonomy: 

  • L1: the end product - eg a lesson, eg a tesla

  • L2: the design (recipe) of the lesson so you know what you made and it’s repeatable

  • L3: the machine (factory) that can make the lesson at high quality at scale (even if each lesson is custom)

  • L4: the code the factor runs on, eg the language used. Tesla build a custom programming language for their self driving chip. Edrolo is building custom language to explain how we make content. I find making language so much fun! 

• Comment

  • I find you often start off getting better at only one level of the stack. Which level is normally random. But if you don’t move into innovating at multiple levels of the stack then you’ll likely severely handicap what you can do. 

  • IMO try to improve at all levels of the stack. 

Science vs Engineering vs Design vs Art

• Taxonomy - from Neri Oxman

• DA rearticulation: 

• Science => creating new code, language, concepts (eg infinite vs finite knowledge)

• Engineering => using the new tools from science to design new emergent solution (eg for a science lesson)

• Design => building the designs at scale (eg the machine to make lessons)

• Art => having UX be epic (eg the best looking and easiest to use product as well as systems for user testing)

• Comment

  • Ideally one is hard core innovating at all levels. 

  • This is a rearticulation of the innovation levels above. 

If you only take away one thing

• I literally just wrote all these frameworks out as fast as I could type. I think 5 years ago I don’t think I could have written any of them. 

• Some are my own creations, some adaptations from others, some just straight taken from others. 

• I spend way more time trying to innovate than I did 5 years ago. 

• I use way more frameworks to innovate than I did 5 years ago (not hard to use more than basically none). 

• I’m slowly able to make more and more frameworks for innovating. 

• I find innovation is fun. That innovation is not dumb (...luck).

Professional self development: an essential tool to cultivate yourself, an essential capability to build inside of companies.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 9 mins

One Sentence Summary: you don’t want to reinvent the wheel (have no Professional Development)… but you don’t want to not be able to invent new things (not be able to do Professional Self Development); Professional Self Development is a core component of being able to invent new things (to do things you’ve never done before). 

From Professional Development to Professional Self Development

• You aren’t born able to talk, do maths… or necessarily make new concepts (Professional Self Development). But someone made all the concepts you learn at school. 

• One goal of the education system = to be eventually able to educate yourself. 

• Professional Self Development = being able to educate yourself / invent new things

• Innovation is not magic. Innovation is a process, innovation is inevitable, innovation is predictable. Blog link 1, blog link 2. 

  • Professional Self Development = 1. Figure out what you want to improve at * 2. Time trying to develop * 3. Modalities of time (reading / thinking / talking / writing / building) * 4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained) 

    • See below for details

  • It might sound like ‘Professional Self Development’ = creativity / doing things you’ve never done before… and IMO this is not unfair. Can you have a system for creativity? IMO yes! 

• Jingle: get busy living getting good at Professional Self Development, or get busy dying doing only what others have done previously at work. 

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Professional Development (learning how to do things others have done before) Vs Professional Self Development (figuring out how to do things you have never done before)

• Some people ask ‘how good is your professional development program?’ I think this is an important question…

• … but I think perhaps an equally important, or even more important question is, ‘how good is your company at fostering Professional Self Development?’ 

• Professional Development = 1. Ideas invented outside your business + 2. Ideas invented inside your business

  • Good ideas come from everywhere, try to find the best ideas and implement them. Search externally, find the best ideas, then find how to apply them in where you work. If you want a framework for one way to do this consider using Bloom’s taxonomy

Example Professional Development for an idea like MECEing:

• 1. Remember: explain the idea of MECEing

• 2. Understand: show the idea of MECEing be implemented in a work context. 

• 3. Apply: ask the person to apply MECEing to a few case studies

• 4. Analyse / Evaluate / Create: then ask them to report back on how they used MECEing in 2 instances in the next fortnight. 

• For most businesses to thrive they’ll need to also invent things in house. 

  • Once something has been developed enough to be broadly useful then codify the idea and turn it into a piece of ‘Professional Development’. 

  • *note: i find most things are developments of existing ideas and / or joining together 2+ existing ideas. Very rarely is something entirely new. 

  • Something I’d consider to be ‘Edrolo-ish’ is the making of equations to explain things. As an example when making questions for secondary education we normally use a ‘question ingredient equation’. I’ve found the ability to create equations to explain some component of the world better massively valuable (it’s not the only way to explain something, but it helps increase your ability to articulate and hence understand). A blog on this is here. 

  • How professional development could look: 

    • 1. Remember: read this blog

    • 2. Understanding: show the idea of making equations to explain things in 1-2x examples at Edrolo

    • 3. Apply: get people in the professional development to use equations to explain in a few case studies

    • 4. Analyse / Evaluate / Create: then ask people to report back on how they used equations to explain 2 things in the next fortnight. 

Professional Self Development - IMO a necessity if you want to do things you’ve never done before

• I’ve written about one rearticulation of this previously - “Reportability vs Responsibility: people often think they want a new job, but what they want is more responsibility”

• One rearticulation of this is that as you progress through life IMO your mix of ‘Professional Development : Professional Self Development’ should change. 

• When you first start working post school / university it’s likely that 90% of what you need to do should be through training AKA Professional Development. 

• But if you want to make a big difference to the world often you need to do something that’s not been done before. So eventually I think you want to be able to get to a point where 90% of your development is coming from ‘Professional Self Development’, ie you levelling yourself up! 

• If we heavily rely on Professional Development, it creates a ceiling of what we can achieve. However, if we’re able to embrace Professional Self Development, we can break that ceiling, and the sky’s the limit. Onwards and upwards!

Professional Self Development = 1. Figure out what you want to improve at * 2. Time trying to develop * 3. Modalities of time * 4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained) 

• 1. Figure out what you want to improve at

  • I normally spend years on trying to improve at specific things. The longer the better :).  

  • Step one is figure out what you want to get better at (aka Professionally Self Develop at). 

  • Here are 3 areas I consciously try to improve at: 

    • 1. Running a business (for example much of the writings on CloudStreaks are about this)

    • 2. Building secondary education resources (I write weekly or more about this internally at Edrolo)

    • 3. The vision for Edrolo (I write and talk about this much internally at Edrolo)

• 2. Time trying to develop

  • I find that you almost invariably get better at the things you spend time trying to get better at…

  • … and that you almost invariably don’t get better at the things you don’t spend time trying to improve at. 

  • More time spent on ‘Professional Self Development’ = better than less time :). 

  • Amount of professional self development = 1. Quantity * 2. Quality

    • 1. Quantity = I spend 5-20 hours a week on Professional Self Development… this is wildly up from eg 25 year old Duncan. 

    • 2. Quality = this is about doing this well “3. Modalities of time * 4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained)”

• 3. Modalities of time

  • Main modalities: reading, thinking, writing, talking & building. 

  • If I’m trying to improve at something I consciously spend time on all of these modalities each week. 

  • For example if I’m trying to improve (Professionally Self Develop) at “2. Building secondary education resources” I’ll try do the following:

    • 1. Reading: I’ll listen to education related podcasts, read education related academic research, look at other products, read books, etc for a 3+ hours a week.

    • 2. Thinking: as an example after each podcast episode I listen to education I’ll pause and think about eg ‘how do we apply this idea to Year 7 Maths? how could we apply this idea to Year 7 Science? etc etc’. 

    • 3. Writing: I’ve personally found this to be the most valuable strategy for Professional Self Development. The ROI of writing is WAY higher than ‘1. Reading’ for me. If I want to improve at something (Professionally Self Develop) then I write about this thing every week. 

      • A big part of the problem is ‘what to write about?’. The discipline of writing every week means I synthesize properly each week. The cumulative outcome of writing each week for years is IMO other worldly. If I could give 5 years ago Duncan advice, it would be ‘write every week on how to build edrolo as a business and write each week on the product of edrolo (ie secondary education resources)’. 

    • 4. Talking: I spend time each week doing ‘freeform talking’ about the major areas I’m trying to grow. 

      • Freeform talking meeting = trying to explore an idea. (Edrolo internal: an example of this is Content Weekly meeting)

      • Decision meeting = consider options of what to do and make a decision about how to move forward. Eg you need to pass judgement on an idea (vs freeform is attempting to understand, add to, level up, etc an idea more. You can figure out how to use an idea later)

    • 5. Building: if I’m trying to get better at “2. Building secondary education resources” then I’ll try to spend time building some secondary education resources every week. Eg helping make questions for Year 7 Maths. 

  • Link to Bloom’s taxonomy:

    • 1. Remember: Reading

    • 2. Understanding: Thinking

    • 3. Apply: Writing

    • 4. Analyse / Evaluate / Create: Writing, Talking, Building

• 4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained) 

  • 4.1 micro = write / read / talk / build about a small piece of the picture. Try and see if you can make a new piece, etc. One rearticulation: what is the next step. 

  • 4.2 macro = write / read / talk / build where you are creating the picture and can see where things fit. One rearticulation: where are we going. 

  • 4.3 sustained = write / read / talk / build about the same thing for 5x+ weeks. For example talk about the idea of ‘conceptual vs procedural understanding’ for 10 weeks in a row. 

In many respects the quality of a company is the quality of its people. IMO typically the most value additive people are those best able to do Professional Self Development.

• “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” JFK. 

• Ok, yes, ask what professional development a company can do for you… but also see how much professional self development you can do for yourself and as such how much value you can add! 

• Each division of a company is different, so what works somewhere doesn’t work everywhere. This is what I try to do for the parts of businesses I’m involved in: 

  • 2 hours of Professional Development every week. For example Content Weekly with associated reading, writing and talking. 

  • I personally think we want as many people as possible doing 4+ hours of Professional Self Development a week. 

• What do I personally do: 

  • 40-50 hours of execution a week. 

  • Help build ~2 hours of Professional Development for my team each week. 

  • Do 5-20 hours of Professional Self Development a week. As an example one of the main Jobs To Be Done of the CloudStreaks blog is ‘Professional Development’ for my team. 

• Edrolo Content Context: Product outcome = 1. People quality * 2. Recipe quality * 3. Machine quality 

  • IMO we want to level up each of these every year. 

  • I see a core component of “1. People quality” as Professional Self Development time and ability. 

If you only take away one thing

• Done well, I’ve found Professional Development to be fun, but with an ‘end’ or a limit.

• Done well I’ve found Professional Self Development to be funner, and with no defined end. The limit is you.

• Done well I’ve found Professional Self Development to massively improve my ability to help Edrolo, and to improve myself.

  • The best things are selfish and selfless. 

• Done well I think Professional Self Development should mean you grow faster, but also in ways that are more value additive.

• Getting good at Professional Self Development should mean you are able to get good at anything. 

Building decision making ability = Building the amount a business can do

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 9 mins

One Sentence Summary: Number of quality decisions a business can make = Magnitude of good a business can do. As such I believe a business should systematically build the decision making ability of its people (aka systematically build trust). 

If you don’t let people make decisions you'll have to make all the decisions, and that build up of decisions means you’ll be a mega roadblock! A good decision from you increases the number of decisions the rest of the  business can make. 

• Organisation Output = Decisions * Execution

• With each person hired you want the amount of decisions an organisation can do to increase. 

• A key approach to building trust = Allowing people to make decisions and stuff up. If people can’t stuff up then they aren’t really making consequential decisions. 

• Building decision making ability = Allowing people to make mistakes = Building the amount a business can do = Building trust

• More trust = More decisions = More impact. There’s no university course for making decisions. This is learnt through doing and you can’t ‘do’ if no one lets you ‘do’. The more you ‘do’ the better get at ‘doing’ which makes people trust you to ‘do’ more stuff.

• Jingle: If you don’t systematically grow people’s ability to make decisions, I think your manager should make the decision that you aren’t allowed to make decisions! 

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Organisation Output = Decisions * Execution

• Sometimes you know what to do and just need more of something. For example we need to make 10x the number of these widgets. 

• However, repetitive work is slowly being replaced by machines. 

• Eventually if you can’t make decisions then you’ll not be able to have a job. 

• For the majority of white collar work today, decisions need to be made all the time! In many respects, how many quality decisions a business can make = magnitude of good a business can do. 

With each person hired you want the amount of decisions an organisation can do to increase. 

• Trust taxonomy

  • Bad: each person hired decreases the amount of decisions an organisation can make. Increasing bureaucracy smothers people. Decreasing trust. 

  • Good: each person hired increases the amount of decisions an organisation can make linearly. Flat trust. 

  • Great: each person hired increases the amount of decisions an organisation can make exponentially. Growing trust. 

    • The larger the number of people the higher the chance of emergence. An emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as numbers increase. 

    • In company speak: the greater the number of people = 1. More ideas + 2. More mixing of ideas + 3. More ability to collaborate to build solutions = Higher chance of new emergent outcomes. 

• Comment

  • I find that organizations tend to atrophy. Ie be ‘bad’ and build more and more systems to try and not have things go wrong… but they are also stifling innovation and creativity! 

    • *aside: bad systems < no system < good system.

  • Many people’s natural response is to ‘care’, is to try to ‘protect’ the company to make sure things don’t go ‘wrong’. Obviously don’t allow risks that could kill the company… but don’t allow people not to take any risk... as you’ll often kill their time at the company (as they feel stifled). 

An equation for trust: Trust needed = 1. One way door vs Two way door decisions (reversible vs irreversible) + 2. Size of decisions

• Decision size taxonomy… size matters ;P 

  • L0: None

  • L1: Small

  • L2: Medium

  • L3: Large

• *aside: experience normally means over time that ‘larges’ go to ‘mediums’, then ‘smalls’... then it ain’t nothing at allz!

• Reversible / Irreversible decisions are related to ‘size’. If something is reversible then it should max be a ‘small’... but feeling like something is a small is often easier said than done. 

• How do you determine the size of a problem? One approach is the ‘amount of new’ for someone. Ie how familiar the problem is to the decision maker

  • High new = Large

  • Medium new = medium

  • Low new = small

  • None = I’ve done something very similar 5+ times. 

Responsibility vs Reportability - I don’t want to live in a police state, I want to live in a happy place. 

• The world today has more rules than ever before (eg laws)... but you can also do more than ever before. Good laws increase the possibility set of outcomes, not decrease. I’ve written about this before in ‘Positive Sum Principles’.

• Rules Vs Principles

  • Rules = no interpretation needed, they are black and white. Eg no stealing. 

  • Principles = interpretation needed. Eg give as much responsibility as you can to someone. 

• If you want to grow the number of decisions an organisation can make then you are normally setting and updating principles… and so is everyone. 

• Principal partitions:

  • -L1: removes downside of 1st order known area but as a ‘rule’ but is super rigid so it has 2nd order impacts of stopping / stifling other areas. 

  • L1: removed downside of 1st order known areas as a ‘principle’ so that interpretation is used to allow the downside to also not happen in similar situations.

  • L2: L1 + minimally interferes with any 2nd order ability to add upside. AKA flexible downside removal + minimal interference with ability to add upside. 

What kind of reporting do you have for the different sizes of decisions? 

• My general rule of thumb AKA principle is the following: 

  • For Larges: if the problem is a large let your manager know your plan before you do it for sign off. Don’t have the manager make the decision for you, just check your decision before going ahead. 

  • For Mediums: FYI your manager with eg an email when a decision is being made. If there is a red flag then the manager will reach out. 

  • For Smalls: just do it, no need to let your manager know know. 

  • If something you thought was a small turns out to be a large then let your manager know as soon as you think this about a decision you’ve made so they can be across it.  

  • Who figures out what a small vs medium vs large is? Ideally you! IMO we want to systematically build as much trust AKA ability for people to make decisions in a company as possible. 

    • Think with your Edrolo brain to identify the size of a problem and if you are the right person to address it (or if not you then who?)

    • Be a sponge to every situation - don’t be passive in your day to day. Watch the decisions made by others, consider how you would have done it, what the consequences are of each

    • Use every situation to level up your own decision making skills and achieve alignment

  • … however if anything goes wrong you need to let your manager know immediately. 

    • Hiding something going wrong is a core way to break trust. I don’t care what has gone wrong, I do care if anything is being hidden. 

    • If someone brings something that hasn’t gone right then I normally thank them for bringing it to me and say something like ‘what is your plan to address this please?’

    • Amount an organisation can do ≈ amount of quality decisions it can make ≈ amount of trust organisation has. 

    • Trust is built not if things go well or badly, but by how someone acts. If things go badly you must say so immediately. 

• In short, one key approach I have to improving Edrolo is to build decision making ability in others, to build as much trust in people as possible. 

When do you give people the opportunity to make a decision (aka build a unit of trust) vs When do you help them? 

• People normally level up (learn) through authentic experience. 

• So just because you might have high experience in a situation and have a strong idea of what to do so this decision is a ‘small’ for you, don’t necessarily rob someone of the opportunity to experience a ‘large’, ie don’t tell them what you’d do. 

• The more experience your organisation has the more trust it has / decisions it can make. 

• Time pressure Vs No time pressure

  • If you have time pressure for getting something done, help them with the decision (aka rob them of the ability to have an authentic experience of eg a ‘large’). This gets more done in the short term but decision ability / your trust in the other grows  slower so it means you get less done in the long term. 

  • If you don’t have time pressure for something done, then don’t help someone with the decision (aka give them the opportunity to have an authentic experience of eg a ‘large’). This gets less done in the short term as it will likely take longer / be a lower quality decision but in the long term you have grown trust and decision making ability so the organisation can do more. 

• Flailing is not failing. If you don’t allow people to flail then you are likely robbing them of the opportunity to grow. 

  • Productive flailing: 1. Problem space * 2. Figuring out what to do => 3. Unit of learning => 4. Unit of trust built

  • No flailing: 1. Shown what to do * 2. Follow instructions => 3. No unit of learning generated

• Different doesn’t always mean better

  • If someone solves a problem space different to how you would have solved it, this doesn’t mean it’s ‘better’

    • You can get from point a to point b via car, bike or parkour. The point isn’t how you got there, the point is that you got there

Recommendations vs Decisions - even if the decision isn’t theirs to make this doesn’t mean they can’t level up in decision making

• Most decisions need an owner, ie the ultimate person who makes the decision. 

• Let’s say that the decision is ultimately mine to make, if I’ve been working with two other people on this problem, I’ll normally ask them for their recommendation on what to do. This allows them the space to build ‘decision making skills’. 

• After this we don’t go with a vote, a camel is a horse designed by committee, but of course one should listen and also try to build decision making ability! 

• Almost always I’ll want to know someone’s recommendation. 

Building trust by giving people the opportunity to mess up

• I used to think that someone had to earn trust before you gave them responsibility to make decisions. 

  • *aside: obviously you don’t want to give someone responsibility for a decision that could kill a business… IMO even the CEO unless the decision is life or death. However if the CEO has run a business into a life or death situation then it’s likely the person shouldn’t be CEO! 

• “To have a friend first you must be a friend.” 

  • A key strategy I have for building trust: to build trust allow someone to have the opportunity to make decisions and mess up! 

  • Or, to have trust first you must allow someone to build trust. 

If you only take one thing away

• Trust = amount an organisation can do.

• Responsibility not reportability is a core approach to grow trust. 

• I don’t want a sh1t ton of systems in place, I want lots of people you trust trying to do good but being fine knowing that at times things will stuff up. 

• Give trust and ask people to show you they deserve it. 

• Get rid of those who break trust and don't let them embitter you. Be better, not bitter. A key approach to being better is to build ‘positive sum principles’. 

• Give more trust / responsibility to those who do well with trust. 

• Each person added to an organisation should increase what the organisation can do. 

• Often people think they want a new job, but what they want is more responsibility (link). What they want is the opportunity to make decisions, to be able to stuff up and as such have the possibility of building trust. 

• I want to build as much trust as possible. I want an organisation to be able to do as much as possible. I want to have to do as little as possible. I want to help, I don’t want to have to help.  IMO these things are the same!

Stress outcome = External (Environment) * Internal ( Experience + Tolerance + Resilience)

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

One Sentence Summary: It’s human nature that when we’re faced with a stressful situation we change the situation, but this only moderately increases the amount of stress we can handle. Instead, if we focus on improving our internal capabilities of resilience and tolerance, there’s no telling how tolerant of trying times we can try to be! 

Stress outcome = 1. External (environment) * 2. Internal (2.1 Experience + 2.2 Tolerance * 2.2 Resilience)

• I used to think stress management was all about having the right external environment, IE if things are too stressful then work to change the environment by e.g. lowering time pressure, e.g. reducing financial stress etc. 

• While this is clearly very important, I now think that it’s only part of the picture. 

• Our ability to change our external environment can be limited; our ability to change our internal environment is almost limitless. 

1. External environment - “If your environment is not to your liking, change it.” 

• It makes sense that if you’re in a stressful situation/environment, you should try to get out of it! 

• Sometimes, however, there are situations that we cannot completely avoid - there are limitations to how much we can alter our external environment (e.g. there are some factors about your work environment that you can change, but there are unfortunately some things you don’t have control over)

• In these situations, the best way to deal with stressful situations is to try and minimise your external sources of stress, and then try to improve your internal qualities of tolerance and resilience. 

2.1 Internal - Experience: “Life doesn’t get easier, you get better at it.”

• Slowly one can increase experience / wisdom. One example of increased experience is that what was once a ‘large’ stress eventually turns into a ‘medium’ stress and then a ‘small’ stress. 

• As an example, I remember when I was new to people management and had to performance manage someone (ie performance wasn’t good). At the time it was a ‘large’, I was stressed about it. I’ve now done this 10+ times and it's a ‘small’ or even a non event. Performance management is part of management, expect it, try to get good at it and try to do it in a caring fashion looking out for the common good. 

• Life example: the first romantic break up you go through can be pretty horrific, but you get through. Then it likely happens again, and while it’s still bad, you are probably not as thrown by it the second time. 

2.2 Internal - Tolerance: don’t be intolerant of tolerance, being tolerant to tolerance is a path to increasing tolerance

• How much stress you are under = 1. Number of ‘hits’ * 2. Size of each hit (large, medium, small)

• In the previous point I talked about the “2. Size of each hit (large, medium, small)”, for this point I’m just going to refer to “1. Number of ‘hits’”.

• At what number of hits does your tolerance response change? 

  • As an example - Duncan 5 years ago

    • 0-2 hits = dampen (able to effectively have no stress outcome. Take a medium and make it a nothing.)

    • 3-4 hits = neutral (can feel the stress. A medium = a medium)

    • 5+ hits = inflame (starting to get frazzled. A medium => a large)

  • I hope my tolerance has increased - Duncan today

    • 0-4 hits = dampen

    • 5-8 hits = neutral

    • 9+ hits = inflame

• Comment

  • I think one can slowly build one’s tolerance levels and shoulder more and more. 

  • But I also think that your Tolerance levels are affected by how Resilient you are on a given day...

2.3 Internal - Resilience: it’s not all just willpower

• I’m defining Resilience as a ‘micro’ self management that can vary from day to day vs Tolerance which hopefully increases year on year. 

• Some examples of things that affect my resilience:

  • If I haven't slept well then my resilience to a stimulus is much worse. 

  • If I don’t have enough relax time my resilience is down. 

  • If I don’t exercise then 1. My productivity goes down and 2. My resilience to stressor events decreases. 

  • Meditation I find really good for building self awareness of my headspace and also being able to get to calm. 

  • Eating healthy happy nutritious meals. 

  • Managing your energy correctly during work: 

    • “Eat your frogs in the morning.” Ie do the hardest thing first. 

    • Switch between high and low cognitive load tasks to manage your energy  (working with your environment, not against it). 

    • The use of Mental Chocolate to manage your energy / Resilience. 

• Tolerance Vs Resilience

  • On average the amount of ‘hits’ you can take hopefully goes up each year. So let’s say that it takes me 5 hits until I’m at ‘neutral’ currently. 

  • But if I’ve had a horrible sleep and not relaxed at all then today I might actually be at 2 hits till I reach ‘neutral’. 

  • So Resilience is how much volatility you have around your average Tolerance. 

• While your environment can only be changed to a limited degree, your tolerance and resilience can be improved massively (not infinitely - there is a cap to how much stress a person can handle) = increasing resilience and tolerance can increase the amount of stress you can tolerate more than changing your environment

• I also like this model which in some respects is a rearticulation of Resilience.

If you only take away one thing

• One path for meaning in life is to take on responsibility to change the world in some way. This can be raising a child, trying to upgrade the education system, etc etc. 

• Taking on responsibility => caring… and caring often means you can ‘stress’ about things. 

• So often the more you care about something the more possible it is stress. 

• The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. It’s hard to hate something you don’t care about, it’s hard to stress about something you don’t care about. 

• I find the trick is to try to change the world, to care, to take on as much responsibility as you can while staying within acceptable stress levels. And that hopefully, slowly one can handle more and more with less and less stress! So having your cake and eating it too! 

• Jingle: I used to think the path to a better life was to have a better external environment, now I think one key path to a better life is just to be better at life!

Some people want to be an olympian, I want to be a mental decathlete

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 5 mins

One Sentence Summary: I want to be the best at getting better, specifically the best at getting from Level 0 => Level 10. 

“Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally.” Sam Altman. 

• At first this sounded ridiculous to me… then I slowly changed to think it was ridiculous to not aim to be the best in the world at what you do professionally. 

  • *note: this isn’t necessarily how everyone wants to spend their life and I think that is totally fine. I only want to aim to be the best during my work hours, olympic athletes don’t train 7 days a week, so high performance needs no performance? I’ve written about Relax Mode vs Work Mode, I think I’m better at work mode than relax mode :(. 

• Anecdote: I remember when I started at a fund manager at 25 years old, my boss was 47 and knew more about basically everything. If I recall correctly he called himself a ‘post marxist neo keynesian’ and said that I ‘didn’t know much about post modern critical thought’. The truth was a lot worse than this, I didn’t know what marxism was, what keynesianism was, or postmodernism. It was classic Dunning Kruger, I didn’t know enough to know how little I knew. He was so far ahead of me in terms of knowledge acquisition and mental acumen that I had no idea how far ahead he was. 

• In hindsight, talking to him about the world was like being a ‘one legged man in an ass kicking contest’. I literally didn’t even have the tools to step to the plate. 

• IMO the way I talk about education academic research and pedagogy is unrecognisable from even 18 months ago. Eg 18 months ago Duncan wouldn’t understand the conversations Today Duncan has about pedagogy. This is kind of like 25 year old Duncan having no idea about postmodernism. 

• Jingle: some people want to be an olympian, I want to be a mental decathlete. 

1. Problem solving ability = 2. Generic problem solving ability * 3. Broad useful Knowledge * 4. Problem space knowledge (blog on a previous generation of this equation here)

• 2. Generic problem solving / innovation skills

  • See below for a more extensive list.

  • I think ‘generic innovation skills’ are the tools with which you can go from L0=>L10 in a new area. I know this is mixing terminology a bit, but I think you want to get to L100 in ‘generic innovation skills’ as, again, they are the way to get from L0=>L10 in a new area. 

• 3. Broad useful knowledge

  • I have found knowing something about politics is super important, knowing something about economics, about sociology, about as many different types of people as possible, mental health, management, emotional intelligence, etc etc.

  • Basically getting to ~L1-L5 knowledge in as many fields as possible can have mega 2nd order positive impacts for me. It’s also much fun! 

  • I wrote a blog with some thoughts on how I try to read: Diverse Reading vs Undiverse Reading AKA Building Knowledge vs Digesting Facts. 

• 4. Problem space knowledge = industry specific knowledge

  • While I think it’s good to be at L1-L5 knowledge in as many fields as possible I do think there are some fields where you want to be L100. For instance, Edrolo a company I co-founded is in the education space, I want to know more about education academic research than anyone else and I want to go to more schools and observe more classrooms than anyone else ever. I want to be the best in the world at this. 

Decathlete was just after the olympic sport, not a specific go at 10 being the right number skills or areas to be good in. Below is a list of ‘generic innovation skills’ I put together, not necessarily some definitive list. I’d back all of these skills as super important for problem solving / innovating… but that doesn’t mean they are the most important ones or the only ones I think... one needs. One needs lots. 

• Generic innovation skills list: 

  • Job To Be Done identification

  • Extracting treasure, not trash. 

  • Sequential screening (mapping process from start to finish)

  • MECEing

  • Finding multiple complementary lenses to also MECE through (eg bigger problems likely should have multiple lenses)

  • Making equations, another blog on making equations (aka thinking strategically)

  • Crunching equations that represent the real world inside of spreadsheets. IMO you can convert anything into an equation and crunch it in a spreadsheet, it’s obviously an abbreviation of sorts but it’s normally very enlightening. 

  • Making visualisations of the problem

  • Making taxonomies

  • Being able to map previous generations of thought

  • Making user personas and getting to understand each persona and why they act the way they do better than the actual people in the persona grouping. I try to understand the people we are trying to help better than they understand themselves! 

  • Synthesis => writing ability. A blog on this, another blog on this, another blog blogging… and another. Yeah, I think your ability to ‘write’ is the best indication of your ability to think / synthesize, innovate. 

No Hacks: “There is no easy way. There is only hard work, late nights, early mornings, practice, rehearsal, repetition, study, sweat, blood, toil, frustration, and discipline.” – Jocko Willink

• I’m unsure of how to jump levels. I am aware of how to systematically upgrade, you just do the work! 

• Reading, thinking, talking, writing and building. 

• IMO no one is born ‘the best in the world at anything mental’. IMO what the best do isn’t hard, it’s the outcome of hard work. 

• If you don’t work, nothing will. 

• If you are wondering, I read the equivalent of one book's worth of information before 8am every day. I wrote about 500,000 words in 2020… and people say I can talk under water! 

• Aiming to be the best, the only acceptable goal? For some, I hope so. 

• For myself, doing the work to try to level up to be the best = lots and lots and LOTS of fun! 

Knowledge compounds exponentially: an explanation for the matthew effect

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 3 mins

One sentence summary: Knowledge doesn’t just compound, it compounds exponentially, what you can learn is a function of what you know. The more you know the more valuable each incremental unit of learning is. 

The Matthew Effect is well documented in Education

• While this image is referring to reading, the same effect is seen in maths, science, sport, emotional intelligence, art, etc! 

You’re probably also familiar with the magic of compound interest

• Bill didn’t start saving until 10 years after the others so he can’t achieve the same results. Sorry, Bill. 

A tangible example of knowledge compounding

• Let’s say Person A likes footy and Person B doesn’t like footy, meaning the existing knowledge base of Person A is much bigger than Person B. 

• Both Person A and Person B read the same article on footy. 

• The outcome is that Person A increases their knowledge base by more than Person B from the same unit of knowledge acquisition (in this case reading the same article). 

• Knowledge base = number of facts * value of each fact

• So the person with the higher knowledge base will compound away if both Person A and Person B do the same work from this point going forward. Ie the gap between Person A and Person B will only ever increase even if Person A and Person B do the exact same quantity and quality of upgrading going forward. 

• A rearticulation: if I read a book today I get much more value from it than reading the same book ten years ago as I know much more today so I’m able to see more things in the book and join each thing onto more of my existing knowledge. 

• Jingle: what you can learn is a function of what you know. The more you know the more you can learn. What you can do is a function of what you have done. The more you have done, the more you can do. 

One model for knowledge: the value of each piece of knowledge is the number of other pieces of knowledge that it can be attached to. 

• Most knowledge isn’t discrete, the value of each piece of knowledge is the number of relationships it has with other pieces of knowledge. 

• Some pieces of knowledge are very limited, eg today is Sunday. The interesting things to learn can often be connected onto an almost limitless number of other ideas… oh and humanity is coming up with new stuff every day! 

• As an example I think I’ve used the idea of fractions in 1000+ ways. I think I’ve used the idea of ‘growth mindset vs fixed mindset’ in 100+ ways. I think I’ve had 5 generations of thought on what relaxing is! 

• Edrolo note: 

  • The compounding of knowledge talks to the nature of knowledge being more infinite than finite. 

  • Normally, the more knowledge you have the better you are at making connections. Or on this visual, the better you are a developing ‘wisdom’ through connections.

Improving knowledge = Quantity * Quality. Some thoughts on quality. 

• Modalities of knowledge levelling up: reading, thinking, talking, building & writing. 

  • Quantity: “Read 500 pages every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.” – Warren Buffet

• Quality: I think one should have a good balance of each of these modalities. In hindsight I was massively under investing into the writing modality until ~5 years ago. I think one should write for 10% of one’s work week. 

• Some blogs on this. 

  • Diverse Reading vs Undiverse Reading AKA Building Knowledge vs Digesting Facts

  • Some writing about writing: A blog on this, another blog on this, another blog blogging… and another.

A rearticulation: increased knowledge base ≈ increased reading comprehension ability

• For now I’ll define: Reading comprehension = how much you can ‘ascertain’ from reading a passage

• The more you can ascertain the better you are at reading comprehension. Or in the terminology of above, how many facts you can find AND how many outside facts you can join each of the facts found in the article onto. 

• This is also another articulation of how much ‘information’ you can find from this blog. Effectively what you can see in the world is a function of what you have already seen in the world. The more time you have spent trying to see, the more you can see. I believe the world can become only ever more interesting, only ever more detailed, only ever more beautiful… if you put in the effort to upgrade your knowledge, to upgrade yourself! 

• As an example: if you know something about politics, economics, sociology, mental health, finance, management, startups, etc etc then the chance you’ll be able to see more when you read a book is high vs if you don’t know anything about these fields. 

If you only take away one thing

• The more I know, the less I know. 

• Compounding knowledge helps you big time! The sooner you get going the better. 

Ability to see data points in the world around you ≈ Ability to innovate

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

One sentence summary: the first step of innovation is seeing data points (information); the better you are at seeing data points in the world, the greater your ability to innovate. 

Innovation Vs Figuring Out The Problem To Solve Vs Problem Solving Vs Rote Learning

Jingle: I used to think that everyone saw the same ‘information’, but now I realise the information people need is the knowledge that they can grow their ability to see information… so information => information! 

• The best way I know to build one's ability to see information / data points is to write a blog each week on the area you want to see more data points in. To write a blog you need to find something to write about AKA you need to start seeing data points. I’ve found the discipline of writing a blog a week slowly but systematically increases my ability to see data points / information in the given field!  

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Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning

• I like this representation of deductive vs inductive reasoning.

• Here is my adaptation.

• The above model is also a rearticulation of the ‘build, measure, learn’ loop from The Lean Startup. 

• In many respects ‘observation = information’. 

• My articulation of: ‘information’ = data points you can pick up from the world (oftentimes through observation). 

  • For example, if you are doing user testing of your product what information (data points) can you pick up from the users, what do you see them doing or better yet, not doing?

  • For example, if you are analysing a product what information (data points) can you pick up from what the product is doing? 

• Either all components of this model are equal… or they are not all equal. 

  • I’m going to posit the most upstream component of innovation is one’s ability to see ‘information’. As such the ability to see information is the most important component? 

Innovation Vs Figuring Out Problem To Solve Vs Problem Solving Vs Rote Learning

• Innovation = 1. Can see information (data points) * 2. Can figure out problem to solve * 3. Can solve the problem

  • Innovation = 1. Can see information (data points) => Information * 2. Can figure out problem to solve => Pattern / Hypothesis * 3. Can solve the problem => Theory

Types of information / data points to see

• Areas: people and non people

  • People = you are speaking to a customer, what information can you see? 

  • Non people = you are analysing a product, what information can you see? 

• Finding information levels from user testing

  • L0 = Known problem, known solution => gimme as users tells you the problem and the solution. Things are normally not this easy! 

  • L1 =  Known problem, unknown solution => intermediate. Users says something is not right but not what to do to fix it. 

  • L2 =  Unknown problem and therefore unknown solution => hard. User doesn’t know of the problem / Job To Be Done. 

  • Comment

    • When speaking to a customer rarely do they tell you what the problem is and what the solution is. Sometimes you will just see a confused look on their face, and then you try and zero in on this ‘problem’ and then propose some possible solutions. 

    • Questioning is key in trying to zero in on the problem, phrasing questions to ask the user what was confusing, why it was confusing, what would have made it less confusing all give you information. (data points)

    • Other times they don’t even know there is a totally different approach. 

• Another articulation of what people can see

• Someone good at seeing data points will be able to see all 4 levels, someone bad can see only 1 level. 

• I’ve found one can cultivate your ability to see data points / information more. 

• Another articulation of what people can see

  • I don’t know much about footy. If I’m watching a game of footy I just see people running around passing the ball. 

  • However the coach likely sees multiple levels of team strategy happening on both sides, but also how different individuals are reading the play and hopefully ‘skating to where the puck is going’ etc. 

  • So while both I and the coach are watching the same thing, the footy coach is likely seeing 10x+ the number of data points / information I am. 

• Something I wrote in the past: Treasure Taxonomy

  •  Finding ‘information / data points’ in one articulation is how good you are at finding ‘treasure’. 

  • The taxonomy (see below for full details):

    • Level 1: summary - verbatim = just writing down what happened

    • Level 2: summary - key points = being able to extract the key points and articulate them in a significantly shorter manner.

    • Level 3: synthesis - key point push back = you will disagree with part of a problem space solution / article / conversation AND have a reason why. No reason no disagreement!

    • Level 4: synthesis - internal joining = you can take two components of the problem space / article / conversation and join them together to create something new.

    • Level 5: synthesis - external ingredient = join an ingredient from the problem space / article with an external component to create new knowledge

    • Level 6: create a model - internal joining = join pieces together into a new meta story

    • Level 7:  create a model - external ingredients = joining what is in the problem space / article with external ingredients into a cohesive structure/ recipe

    • Level 8: Heston Blumenthal - joining multiple recipes (models) together into epic scrumptiousness!

• Comment

  • I can ask two people to do the same 1 hour user testing session and one person will come back with 3x the quantity of information found and also normally 3x the quality. So from the exact same 1 hour, one person is literally getting ~10x the value (quantity * quality) of information. 

  • I can ask two people to analyse a product for 2 hours, one will come back with a product schematic (recipe), equations to explain quality and how to level the product up (aka the full existing picture with pieces and how to make a new better picture). The other will come back with a few random pieces of the existing picture and no ability to join them together. 

  • In short there can be massive differences in people’s ability to see information / data points. And that this can be cultivated massively! 

How do you get better at seeing data points / finding information? 

• Like most mental pursuits, I think one starts at Level 0 in ability to see information, but that one can level up. 

• Building ability for people data points

  • Learning from others

    • Watch using testing sessions on YouTube

    • Listening to counselling sessions for people at work, in relationships, etc from podcasts. 

    • Finding key resources that explain how people you are trying to help operate. Eg if you are trying to help teachers, read books where teachers talk about their experiences. 

  • Learning from yourself

    • Do user testing sessions with another and then compare what you both came up with at the end of it. 

    • Replay events of the week from each person’s perspective. 

    • Write a blog about ‘people’ each week. When I know I have to write a blog about people I slowly get better at looking for data points of what to write about. I’ve found that slowly my ‘eyes open’ and the number of data points I see increases. I’ve gone from ‘I have nothing to write about’ to ‘I see things to write about many times a day’. 

    • Writing summaries from experiences in your day.  Having to create One Sentence Summaries with nested dot points helps to centralize your thoughts into one sentence.  This makes you explore the data you have observed and synthesize them into one thought, to say more with less is quite a skill!

• Building ability for non people data points

  • Build pictures, not find pieces when looking at products. 

  • Build models to explain products. 

  • Analyse products and then compare what you did vs others. 

  • Write a blog about ‘product’ each week. When I know I have to write a blog about product I slowly get better at looking for data points of what to write about. I’ve found that slowly my ‘eyes open’ and the number of data points I see increases. I’ve gone from ‘I have nothing to write about’ to ‘I see things to write about many times a day’. 

• Comment

  • I didn’t realise this, but in some respects I’m looking for data points at all hours at work. 

  • The best method I’m aware of for building the ability to see data points is writing a blog each week on whatever area you want to increase your ability to see data points / information in. Just because one might be good at seeing information in one area doesn’t mean they’ll be good in all areas. 

If you only take away one thing

• When you are born you can’t talk. Information / data points actualise into words. Why would you be born good at seeing data points / information? 

• I believe I was ~Level 0 at seeing data points when I was 22. As I was able to learn to talk, I think I’ve been able to systematically level up my ability to see information / data points. 

• Doing this effectively makes the world more ‘colourful’ and increases your ability to impact the world (ie the world is more fun). 

Positive Sum Mindset vs Zero Sum Mindset

Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 9 mins

One sentence summary: Having a Positive Sum Mindset is key to being able to view events as ‘wins’. Being able to see events as wins is key to believing in yourself, levelling up your ability and helping improve the world. 

Definitions

• Positive Sum Game = is win / win

• Zero Sum Game = is win / loss

• Positive Sum Mindset = looking for how to view a situation in a positive sum light, ie win/win. 

• Zero Sum Mindset = assuming the world is zero sum, ie win/loss

• Win = levelled up = will be better in the future than today = don’t give up

• Loss = didn’t learn  / level up = future doesn’t look good = high risk of giving up

Examples

• Chess

  • Zero Sum Mindset = what matters is if I win or lose the game

  • Positive Sum Mindset = what matters is if I levelled up eg being able to use more strategies

• Work meeting

  • Zero Sum Mindset = what matters is the order of who added the most value in the meeting

  • Zero Sum Mindset = what matters is if my idea in its initial form was accepted otherwise I didn’t add any value in the meeting

  • Positive Sum Mindset = what matter is if I added value and if on average I’m adding more value over time 

• Secondary education

  • Zero Sum Mindset = how do I rank vs other students in my class

  • Positive Sum Mindset = am I growing vs myself yesterday

• Meta structure

  • It doesn’t matter if you win or lose (Zero Sum Mindset)...

  • … what matter is if you level up (Positive Sum Mindset)

I think in most circumstances you can have a positive sum mindset and that this can allow a ‘loss’ to be turned into a ‘win’. 

• Jingle: to have a positive life, have a positive (sum) mindset. 

• Jingle 2: You don’t need to “think positive” if you have a positive-sum mindset because everything is positive!

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You can have a Positive Sum Mindset (approach) to a Zero Sum Game - Chess

• Chess has a winner and a loser (ok you can draw but let’s leave that out for now)... but even if you ‘lose’ the game you can still have ‘won’ (levelled up). 

  • Winning the battle ≠ Winning the war

• Let’s say two people play 100 games of Chess and Player 1 wins 67% of the time and Player 2 wins 33% of the time. Does this make Player 2 bad at Chess? 

• Let’s also assume that in Chess you start at Level 1 and can level up indefinitely. 

• And that, on average, the percentage win rate of a player is determined by the difference in the levels of the players. 

  • Zero level difference = 50:50 win:loss (eg both players are at Level 1)

  • One level difference = 67:33 (eg one player is at Level 2 and one at Level 1)

  • Two level difference = 75:25 (eg one player is at Level 5 and one at Level 3)

  • Three level difference = 80:20 (eg one player is at Level 7 and one at Level 4)

  • Four level difference = 90:10 (eg one player is at Level 5 and one at Level 1)

• In our example let’s say the following: 

  • Player 1 started on Level 2 and Player 2 started on Level 1. Ie one level difference and on average 67:33 win:loss rate.

  • Both players levelled up over the 100 games, with Player 1 finishing on Level 10 and Player 2 finishing on Level 9. 

  • However, the average level difference between Player 1 and Player 2 across the 100 games remained at ‘one level difference’ meaning Player 1 wins 67% of the time. 

  • In this example both players are much better than they were at the beginning despite the win:loss ratio being static. 

• Positive Sum Mindset vs Zero Sum Mindset outcomes for Player 2

  • Positive Sum Mindset = even though I ‘only’ won 33% of the time, what really matters is that I’ve gone from L1 => L9. Playing with Player 1 is good for me. 

  • Zero Sum Mindset = I’m not improving my win percentage, I’m bad at Chess, Player 1 will always be better than me. 

What is one key way to level up? 

• Have a Growth plan = 1. If you don’t succeed try again + 2. With a new / updated strategy

• One key way to level up is through adding strategies for Chess (or anything). See Improved ‘intelligence’ = strategy added

• As an example here are a bunch of strategies for Chess. Imagine playing chess with all these strategies vs someone who has zero strategies… it’s like you are a ‘genius’. 

• IMO Master (genius) = 1. Has lots of strategies * 2. Can use the strategies well

• Novice = 1. Doesn’t have many / any strategies * 2. Can’t use strategies well

• Meta comment: 

  • I think you can apply this approach of trying to have a ‘Positive Sum Mindset’ to many places. Dont’ worry about winning or losing, worry about if you have levelled up. 

The give up point (negative sum override point)... the point is you should never give up

• Positive sentiment override = normally 75% = if you work for 4 hours, and 3 hours are good but 1 bad, you don’t mind about the 1 bad hour (you have positive sentiment override for it) because of the 3 good hours. 

• The often talked about ‘give up point’ = if you win less than 25% of the time often people stop trying (ie won’t play the next game). 

• I’ve written about this here, but trying without a ‘growth plan’ is ‘hoping to get better’. This isn’t ideal! 

• You might say that to have people continue trying, give them a ‘win’, ie lose a game of chess to them on purpose. But winning without knowing why (no Growth Plan) can be very counterproductive. 

• Positive Sum Mindset = levelling up rate is what matters

• Zero Sum Mindset = win rate is what matters

• I’ve found it’s often counterproductive to give people ‘false’ wins, it’s often very productive to give them strategies for how to level up. Then explain whether they won or not that it’s about if they levelled up. IE foster a ‘Positive Sum Mindset’.  

• With a ‘Positive Sum Mindset’ win rate isn’t relevant. IE you might win 0% of 10 games of chess but level up hard therefore want to play again! AKA the give up point doesn’t exist. 

• With a ‘Zero Sum Mindset’, giving up is about win rate AKA the give up point is typically about 25% or lower win rate. 

• You see this a lot with elite sports people, when they were younger they wanted to play with the best people who were older than them (ie the max difference in levels between them). Playing with someone who was eg four levels above them might have meant they won 10% of the time but that they levelled up way harder than if they only played with people at a similar level to them. 

  • Note, If you can play practice games with ‘big league people’ that might be great to level you up… but the big league people might not want you on the field for actual games until you have levelled up enough to make it somewhat competitive!

Work example - Positive Sum Mindset vs Zero Sum Mindset

• Let’s say you are in a meeting with 4 people at work. 

• Zero Sum Mindset = what matters is who added the most value and ranking the order value added from 1st to last = you are comparing yourself to the group

• Positive Sum Mindset = what matters is if you added any value and that if on average the amount of value you add is going up over time = you are comparing yourself to you yesterday. 

• How you might help encourage a ‘Positive Sum Mindset’ in others: 

  • L1: After a meeting talk to someone about the value they added

  • L2: After a meeting talk to someone about the value they added + Some of the metacognition around where the value came from 

    • Input * Metacognition = Output’

    • Input * Strategy = Output

  • L3: After a meeting talk to someone if they missed a point try to explain why you believe this is the case + How they might want to approach that situation with a different strategy in the future. 

Because the world has broken free from being resource constrained, everyone can experience material success

• Previously the world was zero sum and resource constrained, there was a fixed number of berries and beasts on the land and if someone else was able to capture more food, there was less food for you

• We are now resource unconstrained, nature works for us (agriculture): by collaborating we’ve gone from 90% of humans being subsistence farms to ~1.5% of humans feeding all of humanity. 

• As discussed above, other people growing does not preclude you from also growing

• Because we live in an unconstrained world, this also means that others material success(usually through growing) does not mean you can’t also experience material success (usually through growing)

  • There is no lack of opportunity as long as you can work to earn it!

  • Therefore, there is no reason not to have a positive sum mindset! It allows you to grow and get more in the long run

Emergence - many of each level combine to form the level above it, which is more than the sum of its parts.

• If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others. No journey is long with good company. 

• If you want to make a big difference to the world, on average it’s much easier with many people vs few. 

• IMO what matters is the quantum of improvement of the group, not the ranking of who added the most value. 

• In short, one key to building a large group of people that operate where ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’ is through have a strong ‘Positive Sum Mindset’ culture (vs ‘Zero Sum Mindset’). 

  • If you’re all adding value to the same project, each person’s value contribution will compound on each other

  • Not only can everyone grow and succeed (i.e. there aren’t any limits), but if you grow together, you’ll succeed more than if you were to just grow by yourself

Education example - Year 7 Maths

• I believe the standard story for education is unfortunately ‘zero sum mindset’. As an example in Year 7 Maths often half the class thinks they are good at maths and half the class thinks they are bad at maths. 

• Positive Sum Mindset = growth of myself vs myself yesterday

• Zero Sum Mindset = myself vs others

• The structure of traditional maths tests are often zero sum, they are an infrequently done one off judgement of student’s ability. Students just get  one single percentage. This leads students to think in very binary terms, Eg if you get 100% things are really good, but if you get 50% things are really bad. There isn’t an ability to see growth because they’re only done once per topic and even if you improve your score between chapters, what is due to growth Vs a different topic isn’t clear. They actively develop students to have a zero-sum mindset

• Can you make explicit ‘Positive Sum Metrics’ for students and teachers? I think you can… but that is not for discussion today. 

*Aside: Places where minimum levels of performance are required vs Places where there is no floor

• Let’s say that the minimum level to do a sufficient+ job is L10 but you are operating at L5. It’s best then that you go and level yourself up to L10 before doing much work in that space. 

• You effectively play in the little leagues before you get to play in the big leagues. Yes this is going against some of what I said above! 

• If you can play practice games with ‘big league people’ that might be great to level you up… but the big league people might not want you on the field for actual games until you have levelled up enough. 

If you only take away one thing

• Giving up will get you nowhere. 

• Having a positive sum mindset might get you anywhere!

• I’ve found that learning how to play zero sum games with a positive sum mindset is key to growing yourself and others. 

Growth mindset * No growth plan = Fixed mindset

Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 3 mins

One Sentence Summary: 

• Growth mindset * No growth plan = Fixed mindset / no growth. 

• Growth mindset * Growth plan = Growth / optimism about the future. 

• Growth plan = 1. If you don’t succeed try again + 2. With a new / upgraded strategy.

Definitions & Predictions

• Growth mindset = think mental abilities are not fixed, that you can growth / level them up with effort. Eg you can improve at maths with effort. 

• Fixed mindset = mental ability are fixed, eg someone is born good / bad at maths. 

• No growth plan => eventually fixed mindset

• Growth plan => eventually growth mindset

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Einstein 

• If you give up, guess how much improving you’ll do? 

• Improvement = 1. Quantity * 2. Quality

  • Growth Plan = 1. If you don’t succeed try again (quantity) * 2. With a new / updated strategy (quality) 

  • Improved ‘intelligence’ = strategy added

• Growth plan levels - individual perspective

  • L0: don't try - if you don’t work nothing will

  • L1: just try hard - work hard, but also try work smart

  • L2: think you can improve but don't have a strategy for doing so - hope is not a strategy 

  • L3: if you don't succeed try again with a new strategy 

  • L4: think about what you did and why the strategy didn't work, consider multiple strategies, strategically choose the best strategy to try on the next attempt. 

• Growth plan levels - manager perspective

  • -L1: show how to solve the problem (ie a unit of procedural help (vs conceptual understanding built), robbing opportunity to grow... but can do this if time pressure)

  • L0: don't help

  • L1: say 'try again but with a new strategy'

  • L2: 'please explain to me the strategy you used and why you think it didn't work.' 'what is a way to level up this strategy or what is a better strategy to try?'

  • L3: if the person stuck after L2 then offer three possible strategies and say 'which do you think you'd like to try and why?'

In many respects these blogs are ‘strategies’ / little learnings / a little theory for how to approach a small piece of life

• This blog is a strategy about how to approach growing yourself. 

• The blog is a learning for how to approach things if they don’t work out on the 1st attempt. Oh, and, “The first version of everything is sh1t” - Hemingway. 

• Growth mindsets are great. But growth plans are essential. 

  • Levelling up = Acquiring a new strategy

  • Levelling up = Upgrading a strategy 

  • No plan = hopeless

  • Plan = hope

• To level up all you need to do is strategise strategies. 

Is “Growth plan > Growth mindset”?

• You are not going to succeed at everything. The only way to succeed at everything is to not try anything new! 

• Improvement = 1. Quantity * 2. Quality

  • If your quantity of trying goes to zero then you can’t improve. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

  • So what matters most is if people continue to try?!?

• The table above posits that:

  • ‘No growth plan’ eventually leads to fixed mindset and stopping trying / giving up irrespective of starting mindset (ie Growth Mindset or Fixed mindset)

  • ‘Growth plan’ eventually leads to a growth mindset and people continuing to try irrespective of starting mindset (ie Growth Mindset or Fixed mindset)

• As such ‘Growth plan > Growth mindset’?

If you only take away one thing

• They teach the idea of a ‘growth mindset’ a bunch, I think they should teach the idea of ‘growth plans’.

Defence mode Vs Understanding mode

By Warren Steinberg and Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

One Sentence Summary: One key way to see our blind spots and ego distortions is to listen to others who point them out (Understanding mode), we can’t see them if we 1.don’t listen and 2. try to justify our view (Defence mode).

Defence mode

• If someone has a different view to you it can be tempting to tell them why you have your point of view effectively going into ‘Defence mode’. 

• How things might play out: 

  • You: here is a product / idea I’ve been working on

  • Other: that part is interesting, but I think I’d consider doing it differently

  • You: let me explain why I did that

• Outcome: 

  • 1. 1. You aren’t really listening to the other (who might have something very valuable to contribute)., who might have something very valuable to contribute

  • 2. The other doesn’t feel like you have listened to them. 

  • 3. You have missed a chance to make a potential upgrade. 

Understanding mode

• How things might play out: 

  • You: here is a product /  idea I’ve been working on

  • Other: that part is interesting, but I think I’d consider doing it differently

  • You: let me see if I understand you correctly, do you have View A because of Point X? 

  • Other: yes

  • You: very interesting, I hadn’t properly considered Point X. I think it’s also worth considering Point Y. What do you think of Point Y? 

  • Other: very interesting, I like Point Y. 

  • You: I think if we try and balance Point X and Point Y that View B might be the best solution, thoughts? 

  • Other: this sounds eminently reasonable to me. 

• Outcome

  • 1. You are proactively listening and rearticulate to confirm you have understood their point. 

  • 2. The other feels like you have listened. 

  • 3. You have capitalised on an upgrade opportunity have capitalised on and upgrade opportunity and make an update to your product / idea for consideration. 

We are not at war with our customers… we are trying to help them! 

• We are not at war with our customers, we are trying to understand them. We are trying to help them. 

• We are not trying to win an argument in an internal meeting, we are trying to improve a product. 

• It’s not about being right or wrong, it’s trying to level up your understanding. 

• It’s not whether the feedback is right or wrong, it’s what can be learned from it. This is high level strategic thinking. 

• You don’t learn anything from people who agree with you. So if you don’t spend time trying to understand others point of view how can you improve yours? 

• Defence mode = no new learnings

• Defence mode = other doesn’t feel listened to and damage to relationship

• Understanding mode = relationship building mode

• Understanding mode = new learnings/upgrade opportunity

• Understanding mode = positive sum

• Understanding mode = other wants to help you more

Abstracted ‘Defence mode’ vs ‘Understanding mode’

• Defence mode = trying to justify decisions to others

• Understanding mode funnel = 

  • 1. Confirming understanding of what other by eg rearticulating their point (FYI I’ve found rearticulation is a seriously powerful skill to cultivate) 

  • + 2. Integrate any new learning into your model for explaining the problem space 

  • + 3. Update synthesis on your idea / product as required 

  • + 4. Put forward V2 for another round of ‘feedback to check for’ 1. does the other understand and  2.can they help you find other blind spots and ego distortions.

  • + 5. Continue to foster relationships for future support and feedback. 

• Make sure your Understanding mode funnel is open!

Defence mode… undefendable

• I honestly don’t know when it makes sense to do defence mode unless you are a lawyer.

• Very bad: Defence mode

• Bad: Understand mode, then Defence mode

• What I think makes sense:

  • 1st: Understand mode

  • 2nd: if you have a different view, put forward your view in a manner for consideration. No defence mode.

If you only take away one thing

• “The good learn from everything and everyone, the average only from themselves and the stupid already know everything.” Socrates. 

• Getting good at learning from others is a key way to help  others. 

• Getting good at Understanding mode is a key way to help  others. 

• Getting good at learning from others is a key way to improve  yourself. 

• Getting good at Understanding mode is a key way to improve  yourself. 

Being easy to work with is the outcome of hard work

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

One Sentence Summary: Your work outcome = Value of your input * How easy you are to work with; it feels to me most upgrade talk is around improving value; IMO being good to work with is as important; anything times zero is zero.

Being easy to work with is... good

• How easy you are to work with grab bag = 

  • 1. Messaging tries to provoke thought, not tell people how it is 

  • + 2. Indirect approach first (not direct approach first) 

  • + 3. Can agreeably disagree 

  • + 4. Intellectually flexible bending towards the common good (not narrow self interest) 

  • + 5. High order strategic thinker (tries to see the bigger picture, not focus on individual pieces) 

  • + 6. Consciously build work relationships (small talk is no small matter) 

  • + 7. Conversation conventions - thoughts on how not to derail meetings

  • + 8. Good energy (eg Serious with a smile)

  • + 9. Assume positive intent (see below)

• Comment 

  • This is obviously a non-exhaustive list… I don’t think there is a panacea to being easy to work with. I plan to try and upgrade my ability to add value at work indefinitely. I also plan to try and upgrade how good I am to work with indefinitely. 

  • Jingle: if you haven’t worked hard at being easy to work with you are likely hard to work with. 

Being easy to work with makes everything easier

• People work on improving strategic thinking. People work on improving knowledge of an industry. I think you should also work on being easy to work with… constantly! 

• Your work outcome = 1. IQ (value added) * 2. EQ [emotional intelligence] (how easy you are to work with)

  • Anything times zero is zero. 

  • The higher the amount of value you add the more you’ll be able to get away with being hard to work with… but why would you want that? 

  • I’ve often found that being good to work with for others is being good to work with for yourself. 

• Good you are to work with gradations

• In short, I think being hard to work with will impact your ability to grow and add value in the long term as well as, of course, the enjoyability. So, being good to work with isn’t just a ‘nice to have’, it’s a big deal! 

Assume positive intent - Conscious annoyance vs Unconscious annoyance 

• Assume positive intent = that someone didn’t try / intend to annoy you. 

• Most days at work someone will annoy you. Almost always they didn’t come to work setting out to annoy you…

• … I’ve come to believe most weeks at work I’ll annoy someone without intending to do so. 

• Conscious annoyance vs Unconscious annoyance

  • IMO consciously being annoying (eg aggravating someone) is not ok at work. You get exactly the behaviour you allow, you do not allow this. 

  • However, unconscious annoyance is inevitable at work. It’s not ok to get bent out of shape if someone unconsciously annoyed you. 

    • *aside: one should try and look for possible 2nd order outcomes of one's actions, just because you didn’t intend to annoy someone isn’t enough. If it’s foreseeable that your actions would be annoying then just because you didn’t intend to be annoying isn’t IMO enough. 

• If you are annoyed about the behaviour of someone… try not to don’t be annoyed as they likely didn’t intentionally annoy you. 

  • If you are annoyed and get annoyed…

  • … then the other person can get annoyed because you are annoyed...

  • … then you get further annoyed…

  • Ah a wonderful self fulfilling negative feedback loop. 

• Instead, either 1. Don’t sweat the small things or 2. try to let the other person know, in a positive sum way, that how they put something might have been interpreted in an annoying light. 

If you only take away one thing

• Being easy to work with is a ‘soft skill’... but why would you want to be hard to work with? 

• You don’t need to be best friends with everyone at work, but it’s ideal to be the best person to work with at work! 

I contain multitudes: one should have multiple modes

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

One Sentence Summary: it’s not optimal to be one way all the time, try to figure out what mode best suits each set of circumstances! 

“Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” Bertrand Russell

• I used to think I should figure out who I was. 

• Now I don’t want to be something, I want to be anything... and nothing. 

• I don’t want to be ‘one colour’. I want to try to be as many different colours and shades of colours as possible… but also sometimes to be no colour. 

• Rearticulated: I want to try and build many different modes and figure when I should be in which mode. 

• Jingle: A broken clock is right twice a day. If you have only one mode you’ll not be in the wrong mode all of the time… just most of the time ;). 

• “The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.” – Kakuzo Okakura

Many modes for being a marvelous mortal

• Work mode Vs Relax mode 

  • Eg in work mode getting things done in a timely fashion and making high quality decisions matters. 

  • Eg in relax mode you can do things but you don’t have to do things… and who really cares what movie you watch? 

• Internal work mode vs External work mode

  • What might be the optimal way to discuss a product internally might not be the optimal way to discuss it with a client.

  • The way you dress for a day at the office could be different to how you’d dress for client meetings.

• Participant mode vs Observation mode

  • I used to only know about ‘Participant mode’ in conversations. 

  • About 5 years ago I learned about ‘Observation mode’ where instead of spending your time thinking about what to say you spend your time thinking about what others are saying and why. 

  • I’ve found this means I can almost never get bored. Observing others, why they are saying things and how the conversation is going is so much fun!

  • It’s much easier to take in what someone is saying when you’re not preoccupied with how you’re going to respond!

• Responsibility mode Vs Play mode

  • I think one approach to a good life is taking on responsibility to make a difference somewhere. 

  • But I don’t think you need to be taking on responsibility all day every day. 

  • They say you are only old when you have forgotten what it’s like to be young. I think one element of being young is ‘no responsibility’ and as such epic ability to play. 

  • Yes, maybe you need to be responsible Monday - Friday, but being able to be in no responsibility aka ‘Play mode’ is IMO one key to staying young at heart. 

• Planned mode Vs Unplanned mode

  • I think you should have times where there are plans. 

  • But at times where ‘the plan’ is serendipity, aka planned unplannedness. 

  • IMO planned unplannedness isn’t a oxymoron… rather it’s moronic not to have ‘Planned mode’ and ‘Unplanned mode’.

  • We all know the feeling of guilt that comes when procrastinating when we should be doing something important.

  • Planned unplanned time gives you the space and permission not to feel guilty for doing nothing, but rather lean into and enjoy it, leaving you properly refreshed and prepared to jump back into ‘planned mode’ later.

• Serious mode vs Silly mode

  • Sometimes you love with ‘love’. 

  • Other times you love by poking a bit of gentle fun at someone. 

  • Also, at work you can be serious but with a smile. 

• Sales mode vs Partner mode

  • Or Partner mindset vs Sales mindset

  • Sales can feel like trying to get someone to do something. 

  • But if you are in a partnership you are both working towards the same goal. So for instance if you are building a maths resource for schools, IMO you shouldn’t be selling it to the schools but explaining why you would like feedback from the schools so you might enter a partnership to together improve education. 

• Understand mode Vs Defend mode

  • Let's say you have View A and someone else has View B. 

  • If someone has a different view to you it can be tempting to tell them why you have your point of view effectively going into ‘defend mode’. 

  • Instead, I’d counsel it’s better to start with ‘Understand mode’. How Understand mode could go: 

    • You: ‘just so I make sure I understand, are you saying you have View B because of Point A?’ 

    • Other: ‘correct’

    • You: ‘interesting, one thing I found important was Point B. What do you think of Point B?’

    • Other: ‘ah, I don’t think I really considered Point B, but I think it’s valid.’

    • You: ‘I think Point A makes sense, but I feel you should consider both Point A and Point B, not just Point A. When considering both Points I think the better balance is View A. Do you have thoughts about this? 

    • Other: ‘interesting, I think now maybe View A is a better balance than View B’.

  • In short, I find starting with Defend mode often leads to combative negative sum discussions. Normally I start with Understand mode. 

• Listen mode Vs Help problem solve mode

  • Sometimes someone wants to talk things out, the best thing you can do is be a relatively passive listener. Trying to help them ‘problem solve’ can be putting the cart before the horse. 

  • Other times problem solving mode is best. 

• Intervene mode ⇔ Leave alone mode ⇔ Support mode ⇔ Push mode

  • What is best to do for someone at work depends. Sometimes you support them, other times you push them saying ‘come on, lift’. Other times just leave them alone. Finally, sometimes you need to intervene and eg take something off someone's plate. 

• Helping mode Vs Growing mode

  • I used to think that good managers were the best at levelling up their direct reports. 

  • Then I thought good managers were the best at supporting their direct reports to level themselves up. 

  • Now I think good managers do both… but at the right time in the right way. It’s super easy ok ;). 

• Assumption mode Vs No assumption mode (Beginner's mind mode)

  • Assumption mode = see what you want to see

  • Beginner’s mind mode (no assumptions mode) = see what actually is happening (true focus) 🧘. This in some respects is countering for all the context you have. Being able to see the world as others see the world is one of the most important things to being able to help others. 

• Consciously leaning against biases to try be unbiased mode Vs Not consciously leaning against basies

  • People like Danny Kaheman have found all these cognitive biases wired into our biology (source code). 

  • IMO you don’t get a choice whether you have these biases, you just get a choice for what you want to do with them. 

  • Here is a list of 50 of them. 

  • One of the most well known - Confirmation bias = the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.

  • Confirmation bias + Proactively lean against confirmation with ‘anti confirmation bias’ = Hopefully unbiased 

Ok, so there are lots of modes we can shift between. How do you know what mode you should be in when?

• Practice and reflection!

• We can learn from our past experiences by reflecting on what went well/what didn’t – not just for ourselves, but for all parties involved.

• If something didn’t go well, or one party was unhappy with the outcome, consider why?

• Would another mode have been more effective at achieving a positive outcome for everyone? Maybe not, but maybe yes?

• Play out in your head how the scenario might have gone if you’d used a different approach.

• If you think it could’ve been better, try that next time and see what happens!

Good intention ≠ Good outcomes. Doing the wrong mode at the wrong time is often worse than doing nothing. 

• Mode modalities: 

  • -L2: wrong mode at the wrong time

  • -L1: only have one mode and it’s not wrong but it’s not right 

  • L0: don’t do anything

  • L1: right mode at the right time

• As an example, at work I used to try really hard to help. This often translated into being in ‘problem solving mode all the time’. I don’t think I should be in ‘Problem solving mode’ all the time…

• … in a funny way I’ve found a key approach to improving at work (aka problem solve improving) is to increase the number of modes I am aware of and able to do. 

• Outcome = 1. Stimulus * 2. Mode * 3. Quality of execution 

  • 10 years ago Duncan at work was in ‘problem solving mode’ all the time and focused on ‘trying to have quality execution’. 

  • Today Duncan tries to think ‘what is optimal mode for this stimulus and then how do I execute this mode well’. 

If you only take away one thing

• To improve at work people often talk about improving productivity, improving your knowledge of the field, etc etc. 

• I think one key approach to improving at work and life is to build as many modes as possible and learn how and when to use them! 

• I don’t want a monochrome life, I want a marvellous life full of all the colours of the rainbow, a life of many modes. I hope to contain multitudes. 

The only way to fail is to fail to learn

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

One Sentence Summary: in the present good and bad things will happen, but bad things in the present can be good long term if you can learn from them. 

• *Note: for the purpose of this blog I’m going to be talking about work, but I think these ideas can apply in other areas. 

“The good learn from everyone and everything, the average only from themselves, and the stupid already know everything.” Socrates

• I find that the ability to learn from ‘bad events’ is one of the most powerful things one can cultivate. 

• If you can learn from a ‘bad event’, then often it stops being ‘bad’ and can actually turn into a ‘learning event’... so something good can have happened or you can have learned something! 

• “A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it” - John Lennon

• But if something good happened in the present and you want more of this goodness in the future then best to learn about the good too :). 

• Jingle: The only way to fail is to fail to learn. If you can learn from any circumstance then you can win all the time? 

Being ‘present’ is not all it’s cracked up to be; reflection is your friends 

• Spending time with your mind in the past is helpful, contrary to what some new-age might suggest 

• There is much to be gained from letting your mind time-travel: hindsight, foresight; reflection and contemplation

You = Your experiences * How you process them

• IMO at any given point you can choose to change how you process things… But that doesn't necessarily mean it is easy. 

• As such you can change who you are?

• "The events of your past are fixed. The meaning of your past is not. The influence of every experience in your life is determined by the meaning you assign to it. Assign a more useful meaning to your past and it becomes easier to take a more useful action in the present." James Clear

• “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” Stephen R Covery

• “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Serenity prayer. 

• Can you change your mind? Yes. If you can change your mind then who are you? 

• If you can change something, why worry? If you can’t change something, why worry? 

Learned helplessness vs Learned help yourself-ness

• Learned helplessness = no strategy / plan

  • This notion comes from attribution theory in psychology. When we attribute things to an internal (i.e. stemming from within the self) and stable (i.e. fixed; unchangeable), we believe we can’t change; we learn to be helpless.

  • Leaned help yourself-ness = have strategy / good at building strategies

• Rearticulation: Plan = Hope. No plan = Hopeless. 

• Plan = Learning = Strategy for how to approach a similar circumstance in the future better (blog link on strategies = improved intelligence)

• Bad work event => don’t learn from it / don’t build strategy (plan) for what to do if the event occurs again => learned helplessness => get a fixed mindset that you can’t improve => hopeless

• Bad work event => do learn from it / do build strategy (plan) for what to do if the event occurs again => learned help yourself-ness => get a growth mindset that you can improve => hope

• Can't build strategies ⇔ Can build strategies (blog link)

  • L0: don't know about the concept of strategies

  • L1: can only do strategies given by others

  • L2: can build strategies in one vertical

  • L3: can build strategies in multiple verticals

  • L4: have strong ability and as such belief that can build and upgrade strategies almost everywhere. With almost any bad work event you can strategise it out (aka learn from it) and long term turn the ‘bad event into something that works for you, not something that scares you’. 

Esteem = Percentage Win Rate… but can all events be wins long term? 

• Definitely some events in the present don’t go well at work and if you had your time again you’d do them differently. At the time they might be chalked up as a ‘loss’. 

• But if you can learn from the ‘loss’ and were to have your time again you could turn that ‘loss’ into a ‘win’, then the loss wasn’t for nothing. In fact the loss led to future wins… so in some respects it was a ‘win’. 

• So if you either ‘win’ or ‘learn’... and learning is actually a win of sorts, then with a strong ability to learn you have ‘winning’ or ‘winning’. 

• So it’s possible for your win rate to be 100%? So you can have strong self esteem in the longer term?

• “The most fertile source of insight is hindsight.” - Morris Kline

• “Time heals all wounds” 

Increasing vs Decreasing Esteem

• Some continuums for ya!

• If you have strong belief and ability that you can build strategies to improve how you operate then your enthusiasm / self belief / etc can grow :).

If you only take away one thing

• Some circumstances are life and death, hopefully your work is not! 

• Just because something can’t physically hurt you doesn’t mean it can mentally hurt you (eg hit your self belief). 

• The best defence is a good offence. 

• If you know no matter what work throws at you and how poorly you might perform in the moment; that if you can learn from an event you can eventually be better because of the event. Then while the short time might sting, the long term should sing!

A recipe for relaxation: Work Mode vs Relax Mode

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 

• Summary: 4 mins

• Details: 11 mins

One Sentence Summary: In some respects optimal ‘Work Mode’ is the opposite of optimal ‘Relax Mode’; for a good life I think one should become good at both ‘Work Mode’ and ‘Relax Mode’ and be able to switch easily between modes. 

Relaxing = Recharging

• I find the harder you work the more you need to recharge. If you have used your phone a lot, what happens to its battery? It's drained more! 

• If you want to get a lot done at work, then IMO you need to relax properly each day. 

• Relaxing in the right proportion isn’t time wasted, it helps you get more done at work! 

• You mean I get to (hopefully) have fun at work and I get to have fun at the end of the day relaxing AND this is the best overall thing for work output? I think it so :). 

Relaxing = Setting your mind up to sleep well

• One of the key things for going to sleep is not having a busy mind full of thoughts. 

• Working hard often means lots of thoughts about work. 

• One outcome I find from relaxing well is getting all the thoughts out of your head so you can sleep. 

• How good are you at anything after a bad sleep? 

• Relaxing in the right proportions isn’t time wasted, it helps you sleep well… which helps you be better at everything! 

• Jingle: getting good at relaxing is one key to getting good at life! 

• Rude jingle: if you eff up at sleep, you eff up at life. And that’s effed! [summer heights high reference]

• People think you should concentrate at getting good at work, I think you need to be as good at relaxing as you are at working… because the better one is at working IMO the harder it is to relax. 

• There is an old adage of ‘work hard play hard’. I think a better adage is ‘work well, relax well, sleep well’

Work Mode vs Relax Mode - opposites… but yin and yang… the counter balances to each other?

• Mindstates: 

• Conscious Thinking / On - thinking about what you want to (eg you choose a work task and focus only on this). I think this is an optimal work mindstate. 

• Unconscious Thinking - thinking about something you don’t want to (eg thinking about work when you are not at work and don’t want to be thinking about work. Eg at work and doing Task A and unwantingly thinking about Task B intermittently)

• Conscious Off - this can happen in meditation, you focus on eg your breath to stop thoughts and emotions and by consciously concentrating on your breath. However this requires effort of eg concentrating on your breath. 

• Unconscious Off / No Effort Off - you could be speaking to a friend, having a walk, watching TV, listening to a song, etc and you are ‘present’ with what is in front of you. No effort needs to be expended to only focus on one thing. I think this is an optimal relax mindstate. 

Context: I spent a decade figuring out what Work Mode was and trying to do it well. I only realised I should try to figure out Relax Mode ~5 years ago. In some respects, I found the better I was at Work Mode, the worse I was at Relax Mode. 

• How good are you at Relax Mode?

• How good are you at concentrating (Work Mode)?

• How good are you at switching between modes?

• Structured relaxation is not being lazy, it's critical. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity. 

• A rearticulation: work is about high expectations, relax is about no expectations. 

• Another rearticulation: Olympic athletes don't train 7 days a week. So high performance (Work Mode), requires no performance (Relax Mode). 

• Ok one more: most people have never pushed the accelerator all the way down. Some people don't know how to push the brake. The faster you go (Work Mode), the more you need to slow down (Relax Mode). 

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Details

To work well one should sleep and relax well. To rest well one should sleep and relax well. To sleep well one should work and relax well. 

• I thought about trying to make fancy colours for this… but I thought it would take too long… I’d rather relax :) 

• IMO Work, Relax and Sleep are mutually reinforcing. Ultimately I believe you need all of them to be in a good place. 

  • Over the short term you can sustain one of them in a bad place. 

  • But for quality long term outcomes I think you want all of them in a good place. 

• You recharge your phone once a day, should you not recharge yourself once a day? 

  • If you haven’t recharged your phone overnight how is it the next day? 

  • If you haven’t pulled an all nighter at work / had a bad sleep how are you the next day? 

• To me recharging = combination of Relax + Rest… ok coupled with a job you like (blog link for recipe for quality jobs)

  • IMO if you don’t like your job it’s hard to relax well. 

  • And if you don’t relax well...

• For me: Work + No Relax + Sleep => try to sleep but have a horrible sleep => crap at work the next day

  • IMO Relax ≠ Waste. 10 years ago Duncan thought any time not working was a ‘waste’. I’ll tell you what that thought is… a waste! 

Relax Mode vs Work Mode (there are many other modes like fun / play mode but I’m concentrating on these in this blog)

• What is ‘in the zone’ for work, or flow, is opposite to relax ‘in the zone’. You could almost call it ‘out of the zone’. 

• Conscious Thinking / On = In the zone / in flow

• Unconscious Off = Out of the zone / chill

• Of course these are over simplifications, but I find them useful. Eg in Relax Mode you can do things, you just don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to go on the walk, to read the relaxing book (for me, having to read a relaxing book = not relaxing), etc 

Another lens: Purpose vs Play vs Peace

• I’ve talked about this lens here before.

• One thing I say is ‘I aim for 5 days of purpose per week, 1 day of play and 1 day of peace’. 

Mindstates (modes, despite the alliteration I don’t want double use mode :( )

• States: 

  • MS1: Conscious Thinking / On - thinking about what you want to (eg you choose a work task and focus only on this). I think this is an optimal work mindstate. 

  • MS2: Unconscious Thinking - thinking about something you don’t want to (eg thinking about work when you are not at work and don’t want to be thinking about work. Eg at work and doing Task A and unwantingly thinking about Task B intermittently)

  • MS3: Conscious Off - this can happen in meditation, you focus on eg your breath to stop thoughts and emotions and by consciously concentrating on your breath. However this requires effort of eg concentrating on your breath. 

  • MS4: Unconscious Off / No Effort Off - you could be speaking to a friend, having a walk, watching TV, listening to a song, etc and you are ‘present’ with what is in front of you. No effort needs to be expended to only focus on one thing. I think this is an optimal relax mindstate. 

• IMO one can train oneself to get better at the different mindstates. IMO one can use different props to help be in each mindstate. 

  • Training attention: one articulation of meditation is ‘attention control training’ AKA mindstate training. 

    • Most meditation involves concentrating on your breath, doing a body scan, repeating a mantra, etc. IMO these are the same concept actualised in different ways. The concept is ‘concentrating on something’ that lets you slowly let go of whatever thoughts and emotions you have kicking around your mind. If you can meditate well what you are left with is calm.

      • One articulation of Calm = 1. Absence of thoughts + 2. Absence of emotions 

    • If you meditate eg every day you slowly get better at reaching calm, ie your calm ability strengthens. This means when the ‘seas are rough’ you can bring out your calm ability and settle things. 

    • What I find you are also doing is building your ability to focus on what you want, not to have your ‘monkey mind’ constantly throwing unwanted thoughts to think about. 

    • People often refer to this as ‘being present’.

      • One articulation of ‘being present’ = 1. Able to concentrate on what you want - 2. Not having other thoughts constantly pop up

    • Being present at work = can focus on the task you want and not have ideas going off and then somehow ending up doing something different and only realising you are not working on what you wanted to be 5 mins later! 

      • As an example if you have email notifications on IMO you are hijacking your ability to stay on task. You’ll be doing a task and see the notification and get tempted to click on it and see what is going on. 

      • I find an active monkey mind is like having email notifications going off in your mind all the time. I’ve been meditating for 10 years now, I didn’t realise that I used to have ‘internal mind ‘email notifications’ constantly going off’. 

      • Having wildly less ‘internal email notifications’ going off is a bliss of sorts :). It also allows me to concentrate way better on what I want! 

    • Being present while relaxing = can focus on what your friend is saying / the nature in the park / the song / etc. 

      • It’s hard to relax if you are constantly having ‘internal mind notifications’ of something you need to do next week going off, or something that didn’t go well last week going off. 

  • Props to help with ‘Relax Mode’

    • Relaxing of course isn’t just doing nothing. IMO Relaxing = 1. Doing relaxing activities * 2. A relaxed mindstate (Unconscious Off / No Effort Off). 

    • By this definition: Work = 1. Doing work activities * 2. A work mindstate (Conscious Thinking / On)

    • I try to relax for 2 hours before sleeping. This 2 hours = 1. Enjoyable + 2. Done well get’s my mind into neutral so I can sleep (lots of thoughts = Duncan can’t go to sleep). 

    • Example of Duncan 2 hour before bed relax recipe = 1. Listen to a song and dance about + 2. Eat dinner mindfully + 3. Meditate for ~15 mins + 4. Watch mindless (relax) TV / go for a walk / get massage / stretch / Mindless (relax) reading

    • I try to do a day of relaxing each weekend, this is typically Saturday that I call ‘Duncan Day’. 

      • One example of a saturday relax recipe = 1. Sleep in + 2. Cuddle + 3. Lazy brunch + 4. Meditate + 5. Mindless TV during which I fall asleep + 6. Nap + 7. Something in nature (walk, swim, etc) till I get bored + 8. Get massage + 9. Yummy not healthy dinner + 10. Talk sh1t with a friend + 11. Mindless TV watching + 12. Sleep. 

        • If I’m thinking too much when I’m walking then I’ll put on some music eat up some mind bandwidth to get to ‘Unconscious Off’. 

      • Another example of saturday relax recipe = 1. Sleep in + 2. Binge watch something mindless + 3. Order ubereats 3x times

        • IMO this is not a waste of a saturday, this is often the best use of a saturday! 

        • Relaxing = Recharging

        • For myself, I want some time doing something (eg work, play time), and some time doing ‘nothing’ (eg relaxing). 

        • For myself it’s a waste not to spend saturday this way. IMO if you don’t relax well you are at a much higher chance of burn out. 

        • If you want to go hard at work and not burn out then one key strategy is to relax well. 

        • Get good at relaxing so you can be good at working! 

      • Some more possible relaxing activities: cooking, gardening, shopping, cleaning, golfing, surfing etc. 

      • Rearticulation: the point to me is that you have a relaxed mind during ‘relax time’. I’m agnostic to how a relaxed mindstate happens, just hopefully that it does happen. If you eg don't like your job you'll eg maybe have self doubt. So getting work right is important, but so is relaxing.

Mindful vs Mind Full vs Mindless

• Mindful = MS4 Unconscious Off / No Effort Off

• Mind Full = MS2 Unconscious Thinking

• If you are going for a walk in nature and you are seeing nature and not having a head full of ‘internal email notifications constantly going off’ then IMO people say you are ‘mindful’. 

• Your favourite TV show: 1. you come in tired and stress => 2. Watch you fav TV show => 3. Relaxed and happy. 

  • Your fav TV show = Often Mindless TV = Light entertainment that isn’t serious or dense, it’s the equivalent of ‘talking sh1t with your friends’ in TV form = Escapism = Mindstate changing magic trick = A prop to get you to ‘MS4 Unconscious Off / No Effort Off’

• So mindless TV = magic trick to be mindful (not thinking about anything but the TV show)

• Or in short form: Mindless TV = Mindful

  • Yes I love this. Twisting logic to have opposites equate is much fun… mindful this mind puzzle! 

When ‘relaxing’ isn’t ‘relaxing’

• There was a time when I termed anything not work as ‘relaxing’. 

• But not work time might have been reading a hectic dense book on eg education. 

• But not work time might have been watching dense TV on politics. 

• But not work time might have been writing something like a CloudStreaks blog. 

• I realised that these things for myself were actually work by a different name. 

• It used to hurt me to watch mindless TV. It felt like ‘waste’. Now I get that Mindless TV can have a purpose. 

• Now I get to watch mindless TV and enjoy it and not feel guilty, it’s not a guilty pleasure, it’s a pleasure... as it’s a relaxing treasure :) 

• You could call relaxing productive procrastination :) 

• In relax time: 

  • Before: Mindless TV in relax time = 1. Enjoyable + 2. Guilty 

  • Now: Mindless TV in relax time = 1. Enjoyable + 2. Pleasurable 

• As above, the point to me is that in relax time you have a relaxed mind which I’ve articulated here as ‘S4 Unconscious Off / No Effort Off’. I’m agnostic to how this happens, just hopefully that it happens. I didn’t use to really understand what relaxing was (a mindstate) and didn’t see the purpose of it. This blog is some thoughts on articulating what relaxing is and some strategies to try and hopefully achieve it. 

If you only take away one thing: 

• Sleep is not a luxury, sleep is a necessity. ~8 hours sleep a night = more done at work in an enjoyable fashion. 

• IMO done well, relaxing is not a luxury, relaxing is a necessity. IMO 2 hours relaxing a day + 1 day relaxing a weekend = more done at work in an enjoyable fashion = better sleep

• I used to be proud of minimising time from work to pillow. 

• Now my goal is 2 hours of relaxing before bed. 

• I used to mainly watch dense TV for an hour before bed (eg a documentary on politics). IMO this was consuming information and had my mind in ‘thinking mode (MS1: Conscious Thinking / On)’ not ‘MS4: Unconscious Off / No Effort Off’ so when I stopped watching my mind didn’t want to go to sleep. 

• Balance is key. Having time to recharge will lead to higher quality outcomes in places like work.

Units of learning: The best way to show progress

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 6 mins

One Sentence Summary: A unit of work should = a unit of learning. A unit of learning should = simple accessible one sentence summary.

What allows humans today to build an iPhone vs not possible 100 years ago is accumulated ‘units of learning’. 

• IMO one core way to measure the progress of someone at work is the new units of learning they generate. 

• IMO one core way to measure the progress of a company is the new units of learning generated.

• “The only sustainable barrier to entry is the pace of innovation.” Elon Musk. 

  • IMO one core way to measure innovation is ‘units of learning’. 

  • IMO one core way to increase the pace of innovation is to optimise for generating ‘units of learning’. 

• Jingle: You make what you measure. Simple then, just measure innovation ;)

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Details

Job continuum: know what to do ⇔ don’t know what to do

• What is a unit of progress for “know what to do” vs “don’t know what to do” jobs?

• Unit of progress for “know what to do” job = unit of known output = often quantity * quality = value = charge by the hour

• Unit of progress for “don’t know what to do” job = unit of unknown output = unit of learning = value = charge by unit of learning

• How do you show a ‘unit of learning’? How do you charge by a ‘unit of learning’? 

The only way to fail is to fail to learn

• Unit of work = Unit of investigation = Unit of learning = 

  • Option A: unit of what to do 

  • OR Option B: unit of what not to do

• Learning what not to do is often as valuable as what to do.

• “Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance.” Shane Parrish

• One articulation of a business = the accumulation of valuable learnings

  • More learnings = better business

  • One goal I have is to double the number of codified and implemented learnings at Edrolo each year. While IMO it’s not possible to precisely measure learnings, that doesn’t mean you can’t optimise for generating units of learning! 

  • Each company is a ‘collection of learnings’. Value change of company = Incremental learnings added

• You keep the ‘wins’ (learning what to do) and you stop the ‘losses’ (learning what not to do). 

• What I try to do is maximise units of learning. This means each unit of work is the minimum size needed to get a validated unit of learning. 

• What I used to think: get as much done as possible

  • This led to => speed but low observing what I was doing real time => low learnings

  • This led to => unit sizes of work being way too big as bigger size unit of work I thought meant I got more done => way too long between learnings

  • This led to => not taking enough time after a unit of work to reflect (you don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences) => low learnings

• What I now think: generate as many units of learning possible

  • Smallest unit of work size to get unit of learning

  • Don’t go so fast you aren’t able to spend the time to observe what you are doing (simultaneous systemising aka attempting to see metacognition real time)

  • Take the time to reflect properly after a unit of work

  • Make units of learning understandable, implementable and scalable => one sentence summary. 

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" 

If you generate a learning but you don’t write it down, did you generate a learning at all?

• “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Newton 

• I’m not really worried about having a perfect system to put all learnings in place and systematically interlink etc. I am however worried about not learning anything from learnings! 

• Einstein taxonomy

  • L1: smart

  • L2: intelligent

  • L3: brilliant

  • L4: genius

  • L5: simple

• IMO one should try and distil each learning into a simple ‘one sentence summary’. This is the simplest way I know to codify flexibly learnings. 

  • I find making a one sentence summary super hard… but super valuable. 

  • “If you can't explain it to a 6-year-old, you don't understand it yourself.” Einstein. 

    • IMO good one sentence summary = learning understandable to a 6 year old. 

  • It might take you 10 hours to generate a unit of learning… but IMO done well you can hopefully explain it in 10 seconds. 

  • “Simplicity = Complexity solved” Kat Gentry 

• Framework for building units of learning

  • A unit of work => the minimum amount of work needed to generate a unit of learning

  • Writing => understanding + codifying the unit of learning after a unit of work

  • One Sentence Summary => the work needed to make the ‘Writing’ which generated the learning easily understandable by others and therefore repeatable and scalable 

If learnings are the core unit of value, then ‘One Sentence Summaries’ are the best way to show progress? 

• If you are doing a job where you ‘don't know what to do’ and as such are figuring out what to do, then one core way to show ‘progress’ is ‘Unit Of Learning through One Sentence Summaries’. 

• I think a great way to update people on your progress AND to help others learn from your progress is to write out the key learnings as One Sentence Summaries. 

• Most projects have weekly or fortnightly updates. IMO in this there should be a ‘units of learning section’ which is eg 1-5x One Sentence Summaries. 

• Most people have a weekly email they write as a ‘project update’ for themselves. IMO in this there should be a ‘units of learning section’ which is eg 1-5x One Sentence Summaries. 

How to build units of trust at work

• IMO trust is built, faith is given. 

• If you are doing a job where you know what to do then a unit of trust = can follow the instructions at quality and on time

• If you are doing a job where you don’t know what to do then a unit of trust = 1. Given a problem space * 2. Can make progress (aka generate units of learning)

• Flailing is not failing. 

  • Productive flailing: 1. Problem space * 2. Figuring out what to do => 3. Unit of learning => 4. Unit of trust built

  • No flailing: 1. Shown what to do * 2. Follow instructions => 3. No unit of learning generated

• IMO one measure of a company is how many units of learning it can generate. In some respects this means what is the maximum amount of productive flailing is going on? 

• Productive flailing = Building units of trust & Units of learning

• Increased trust => Increased ability to give people opportunity => Increased ability to innovate => Company grow faster => Happier people at company => Happier world

If you only take away one thing

• Human progress = units of learning (aka knowledge)

• To grow faster, optimise for units of learning

• To increase the quality of your learning, get good at distilling learnings into ‘One Sentence Summaries’. 

• To help others learn from your learning, learn to make quality ‘One Sentence Summaries’. 

Self Esteem = Percentage Win Rate

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 16 mins

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. 

• Will try (aka take the shot) = have sufficient+ self esteem

• Outcome = 1. Will try * 2. How well you try

• If you don’t try then the outcome can never be good. 

• As such it’s conceivable the most important thing you can do for yourself is to build your self esteem. 

• As such it’s conceivable the most important thing you can do for others is to build their self esteem. 

• IMO for positive sum games it’s possible for almost everyone to win ‘every game’ (details below).

• One part of self esteem = getting a win / recent win rate

  • IMO you can give yourself and others authentic wins. 

  • If someone did a good job say so = win

  • If someone didn’t do a good job try help them see a way to do a good job next time = win (they don’t feel a loss and feel positive about the future, aka have self belief (esteem))

• Jingle: Team work makes the dream work. To be the dream team, build an esteem team!

Overview 

• Zero sum vs Positive sum games

  • Zero sum game = winner and loser = most sport, board games… and unfortunately often how secondary education is viewed.

  • Positive sum game = everyone can be a winner = most developed world workplaces 

    • For example:

      • In a meeting at work we want everyone to add value. 

      • IMO what matters is the quantum of value added, not ranking who added the most value to least value. 

      • IMO what matters is that someone added value at all and that hopefully the amount of value they add on average over time increases. 

    • What I think this means is that in positive sum games it’s possible for everyone walk out with a unit of ‘esteem’ / ‘win’. 

• What esteem looks like in Zero vs Positive sum games:

  • Zero sum game

    • Win = esteem built

    • Loss = esteem burnt

  • Positive sum game

    • Did you add value in meeting = esteem built (not did you add the most esteem in the meeting)

    • Is your proposal better than the existing outcome = esteem built (not that someone else could have made a proposal even better than what you did)

    • Comment: IMO Edrolo is a positive sum game, the goal is to get as much value being added by Edrolo as a whole, not rank the order of who adds the most to least value. 

• Will ‘give up’ levels:

  • Zero sum games: it varies but typically at 25% or less win rate (aka negative sentiment override)

    • 75%+ win rate = bullet proof esteem

    • 50% win rate = will engage in game = have self esteem (believe)

    • 25% win rate = will quit playing the game unless = no self esteem

  • Positive sum games: 

    • If value added = esteem built

    • If growing vs themselves yesterday = esteem built

    • If someone doesn’t believe they are improving or have the ability to improve in the future = esteem burnt

• Building vs burning units of self esteem = 1. How the game is set up + 2. Internal mindset + 3. External feedback 

  • 1. How the game is set up = game is setup with attainable units of progress AKA wins AKA unit of self esteem being built

  • 2. Internal mindset = growth mindset (vs fixed mindset) OR know can you can improve through adding strategies to yourself

  • 3. External feedback = 

    • If someone eg added value or had a proposal that that is better than the existing outcome say so

    • If someone tried but didn’t add value then say good job on trying, here is how I might think about adding value (ie input * metacognition = output ie some metacognition feedback to help add value AKA a strategy to use)

Growth mindset ≠ High self esteem

• Growth mindset = that you abilities are not set, that with effort you can improve

• Fixed mindset = your abilities are set

• IMO just because someone knows about ‘growth mindsets’ and tries to have a growth mindset does not mean they have good self esteem. If you don’t succeed (ie improve at / level up) what you are trying then you eventually give up and have a ‘fixed mindset’ of sorts. 

• Improvement = Growth mindset * Ways to improve = High self esteem

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Details

Positive Sentiment Override Vs Negative Sentiment Override 

• Nobel prize winning economist Danny Kahneman came up with the concept of ‘positive sentiment override’. 

  • This is where 3:1 positive:negative outcomes mean that if a negative occurs you have positive sentiment override for it. 

    • Eg 1: if you work 8 hours a day and 6 hours are enjoyable but 2 hours are not enjoyable you don’t care about the 2 not enjoyable hours because of the enjoyable 6 hours. AKA you have positive sentiment override for the 2 not enjoyable hours. 

    • Eg 2: let’s say you have a regular meeting with people, if someone adds value 75% of the time but no value 25% of the time you still think they are a value additive person overall because 75% of the time they add value. AKA you have positive sentiment override for the times no value is added. 

  • *aside: I did an exploration of positive vs negative sentiment override for ‘reputation’ AKA the external view people have you in this blog. 

Self esteem and positive sentiment override

• One articulation for self esteem = the amount of times you have a positive effect on the world vs times you aren’t able to have a positive effect

  • We can also look at this as: Percentage win rate = Positive effect made on the world / Instances you have been able to try make a positive effect on the world

  • The more value you are able to add, the more self esteem you will build

• Your percentage win rate is very similar to how positive/negative sentiment override ratios work

  • Negative sentiment override: 3:1 negative:positive track record OR 25% win rate means you don’t believe in yourself. You are ‘bad’ at this. Normally people give up in areas with 25% or less win rate. No self esteem and will stop trying. 

  • Neutral sentiment override: 1:1 negative:positive track record OR 50% win rate means you think you are ‘ok’, and will continue to try. Neutral self esteem.

  • Positive sentiment override: 1:3 negative:positive track record OR 75% win rate means you believe in yourself. You expect to ‘win’ / add value. Strong self esteem. 

  • Game changer sentiment override: 1:5+ negative:positive track record means or ~83%+ win rate. You assume you’ll add value. Bullet proof self esteem / confidence. 

Growth mindset vs Win Rate

• Mindset recap

  • Growth mindset = think you can improve your ability by effort (eg levelling up through strategy acquisition)

  • Fixed mindset = think one’s abilities are fixed (eg you are innately good / bad at something)

• Having a growth mindset does not mean you have a high win rate

  • I.e rote learning the test vs having flexible knowledge about the test material

  • But even if you get the concept of ‘growth vs fixed mindset’ and you have a 0% win rate it’s very hard not to ‘give up’. 

• To help explain, here is a simplified model looking at self esteem and mindset as binary variables

• So you need to be able to help people get ‘wins’ and / or give yourself a plan to get some wins. Therefore: Optimal growth = 1. Strong self esteem * 2. Growth mindset

• It isn’t good enough to just have a growth mindset or strong self esteem 

• To recap: IMO in positive sum games everyone can ‘win’. IMO most games today are ‘positive sum’. 

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.” Henry Ford

• There is a wonderful book called ‘The Inner Game Of Tennis’. One articulation of this book is that ‘doing well at tennis is all about managing your internal self confidence / esteem’. 

  • *aside: one of the parts I love of watching tennis is that IMO you can see the ‘self esteem’ of players fluctuate. From backing themselves to overthinking it and messing stuff up (eg hooking the shot). 

• The concept of ‘flow’: flow state (also known colloquially as being in the zone) = the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

• One articulation of flow at work = high quality thinking / creativity

• IMO one core component to be in ‘flow’ is quality ‘self esteem’, AKA ideally ‘positive sentiment override+’. 

• IMO just like in tennis, if you are doubting yourself you are likely self sabotaging your thoughts AKA “hooking the shot” with your thoughts. 

• “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Michael Scott. 

• I often put it more bluntly at Edrolo: ‘believing in yourself is not optional’. I don’t mind if you add value in a meeting or not, but I do mind if you don’t believe in yourself and as such don’t try to add value. 

  • If you don’t believe in yourself you often don’t take the shot. 

  • Zero sum games ≠ positive sum games. IMO in positive sum games everyone can ‘win’. 

  • I don’t care how many shots people take and miss ‘aka not win’. I don’t care if the win rate is 0%. I care if there are no shots taken. 

  • To me what matters is that someone is trying to ‘add value’ and that on average the amount of value they add is on average improving. 

  • IMO in zero sum games like sport, board games etc win rate = esteem. IMO unfortunately a lot of secondary education is perceived like a ‘zero sum game’. 

  • IMO in positive sum games like hopefully most businesses in developed countries self esteem = value added. That you can add any value, not the percentage of times you say something is value being added.

Building self esteem in yourself and in others

• If self esteem = percentage win rate, the way to improve self esteem is to improve your win rate and the win rate of those around you

• The vast majority of workplaces are a positive sum game, in the sense that, workplaces are a group of people working together toward a common goal

  • All the individual input into reaching the common goal is collectively a win for everyone involved

• Examples of what a win is in the workplace for individuals

  • Winning = adding value in the meeting

  • Losing  = trying to be seen as adding the most value in the meeting

  • Winning = trying to add value

  • Losing = not saying anything at all AKA not taking any shots

• Examples of creating wins for others

  • Winning = creating an environment where new ideas are encouraged

  • Losing = creating a single player environment in a multiplayer game

  • Winning = reflecting on why one idea is adding more value than others

  • Losing = not reflecting on metacognition collectively

• You get exactly the behavior you celebrate / encourage. 

  • Either in the meeting or after 1:1 I’ll try and say to someone if they added value or tried to add value “really found this point valuable” or “thanks for saying X, even though I don’t think we’ll include it in the plan it’s really good to see you thinking this way.” 

Improving = building self esteem. Adding strategy = Improving. 

• One articulation I have for improving = getting strategies from others and / or making them for yourself. 

  • In a field each strategy you add normally improves your abilities. Blog link.

  • When you realise you can improve in almost all mental fields by adding strategies you will increase your win rate (aka your self esteem level)

  • What matters is not what your current levels are (eg IMO in almost all new mental pursuits we all start at Level 0) but how good you are at levelling up/improving 

• Having a plan to level up = getting more strategies = higher win rate = increase in self esteem. 

• If you find yourself with low self esteem, it won’t feel good 

  • But if you don’t have a plan to improve then they’ll stay not good. 

    • “If you are going through hell, keep going.” - Churchill. 

    • Don’t stop and set up camp in hell. 

  • If things are not good then build a plan to improve, eg find strategies from others and / or build them for yourself. 

    • In a bad place * No plan to get out of bad place = Learned helplessness = No self esteem

  • Learned help yourself-ness = know building a plan will help = can find strategies from others and / or build them for yourself. 

Another lens on how to define self esteem 

• What DA used to think: Self Esteem Level = How good you are in an area (ie what level you are at)

• What DA thinks now: Self Esteem Level = How good you are at levelling up (ie rate of change)

  • You are always going to take hits on your journey 

    • What matters is if you dust yourself off and try again in a more strategic fashion until you improve at leveling up = high self esteem

    • If you stop trying and give up, then you can’t level up = low self esteem 

• In almost all mental pursuits people start at Level 0 but can level up

• One strategy I have to help level up people

• Give them problems 1-2x levels beyond where they are and then DON’T help them. 

• Failing is not failing if growth occurs. If you show them the ‘answer’ then you rob them of the opportunity to level themselves up. 

• IMO the ultimate metaskill is being able to level oneself up (aka add strategies for oneself), by not giving the answer it allows oneself to level themselves up

• I used to think that good managers level up their direct reports. Now I think that good managers grow their direct reports ability to level up. 

How to give feedback on poor job while improving self esteem

• Innovation = esteem (believe you can improve) * growth mindset * metacognition skills (ability to improve)

• Innovation = doing something new you have never done before = higher chance of failure = learning opportunities

• Downside culture = what you are willing to walk past. 

  • You should not walk past bad behaviour or poor project outcomes, if someone did a poor job with a project you should say so but you need to be super careful not to break their self belief / esteem. 

  • Before giving feedback you should assess, did this person to a poor job due to the level they are at or because of how the environment was set up (E.g Were the boundary conditions defined?, was everyone aligned on the JTBD?, was there space given to respond to all input/questions?, was enough time given for the task? etc)

    • If can be difficult to set up the environment correctly, especially when in a fast moving environment where there are many moving pieces amongst our own blindspots and ego distortions

    • If the environment was set up correctly and a poor job was performed, then constructive feedback needs to be given on the performance

  • An example of how you might consider providing feedback on poor quality work: 

    • 1. Thanks for the effort. 

    • 2. Thoughts on output and how output can be improve. 

    • 3. “Input * Metacognition = Output”. Thoughts on metacognition and how to think about problem solving (metacognition) differently.

    • 4. That what they are doing is called ‘the path of improving’. Everyone starts at Level 0, hopefully you can level up indefinitely. Don’t beat yourself up, figure out how to level up!

    • 5. Then you set them another project where the ideas discussed here can be implemented and the chance of a ‘win’ is very high. AKA give someone an authentic win. Does wonders for their self esteem :). 

• Peter principle = promoting someone to the point of incompetence

  • But also sometimes someone is just out of their depth. Their level of ability isn’t at point where as much value can be added as others. 

    • E.g If someone is in a L5 areawhen what they can handle is L3. 

  • Someone consistently doing a poor job even if you’ve tried to help them level up isn’t good for anyone. 

    • Eg the output is low quality, the person doesn’t believe in themselves and you don’t look forward to interacting with the person. 

  • If someone is out of their depth in an area, then what is needed is leveling up to get them to positive sentiment override winrate in the area

If your esteem (eg win rate) is low then build a plan of what to do about it

• If you have low esteem (eg poor recent win rate) it is not acceptable to not build a plan to get to high esteem. 

• Low self esteem = often self fulfilling :(

  • You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

  • Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.

• Strategies = systematic ways to improve (aka build self esteem)

  • Build yourself a plan to get more strategies

  • What a plan may involve

    • Asking for help. 

    • If you are in over your head, eg needing to do L5 work but currently have ‘only’ levelled up to L3 then get to L3 space and do the upgrades you need to be able to operate at a L5 space. 

    • Looking externally i.e reading widely, completing courses etc

    • Reading, Writing, Discussing

Thoughts on building esteem in secondary education products - giving people ‘wins’ = try more = improve more

• I used to think about trying to maximise the amount of learning over a period of time. 

• But I now think that if someone's self esteem is broken they’ll give up before the period of time for learning has run to completion.

  •  So one lens I now use to articulate how to  maximising the amount of learning, is to maximize the amount of esteem that is built over a  lesson

    • Max esteem built = max time trying eg Maths = max amount learned

• What this can mean is that you start question difficulty easier to get students to have a few ‘authentic wins’ for the lesson and then you ramp difficulty faster. 

  • If you win a bunch in the first half of a lesson = you are still trying in the second half of a lesson and will take a few losses but not give up. 

  • If you lose a bunch in the first half of a lesson = often students give up and there is no second half of the lesson

• To be clear, the end point of a lesson doesn’t change, eg the ultimate level of difficulty. It’s just I used to think the optimal path was linearly increasing difficulty. I now think it’s more likely a ramp of difficulty. 

• IMO an easier on ramp to question difficulty is not ‘lower learning outcomes’, ‘it’s building self esteem / belief, increasing the amount of time students try, and as such over a lesson increasing the amount of learning that occurs’. 

• To finish first first you must finish! 

If you only take away one thing

• Most of the current world isn’t zero sum, what matters is the amount of value added, not ranking first to last how much value people added. 

• This means hopefully everyone can ‘win’. 

• What matters is that the amount of value you add hopefully increases over time. 

• IMO one can systematically level oneself and others up. 

• But, one should also be looking to manage one's self esteem and that of others. Give yourself and others authentic wins.

“The ability to change your mind is a super power.” Ray Dalio

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time:  4 mins

Changing my mind used to feel draining / bad, like admitting I was wrong. But I’ve decided changing your mind when the circumstances make sense is one of the best feelings there is. IMO it’s not embarrassing to change your mind, it’s embarrassing to be wrong and stick with it!

You shouldn't have an opinion on everything; but you can't have an opinion on nothing if you want to try and improve the world.

• IMO one key hack to a good life is to try and find a way to improve the world for them to work on doing this (eg improving education). 

• For the place you are trying to improve the world IMO you need to have an opinion on what to do... but it's not ok not to change your opinion if facts / circumstances / etc change and necessitate it. 

  • "When events change, I change my mind. What do you do?

  • When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

  • When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

  • When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?" Keynes

• Changing mind levels… or levels of levelling up:

  • L0: no opinion

  • L1: not yet confident enough to know what your opinion is but doing the work to build an opinion

  • L2: have an opinion and reasons to justify

  • L3: openly change your opinion and explain why

  • L4: can map the history of what your opinion has been and why it has changed over time. 

• IMO we need to celebrate changing our opinions. 

  • "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." Churchill 

  • “If you want to be right often, you need to change your mind often.”

The ability to change your mind is a super power. Understanding how and when to change your mind is superlative.

• We’ve gone from public hangings to euthanasia in less than 100 years. If that isn’t ‘changing your mind’ then i’m not sure what is. 

• IMO a prerequisite to be a politician should be explaining 2x+ important things you’ve changed your mind about and why. 

• IMO a prerequisite to doing a good job in white-collar work is changing your mind when the circumstances mean it makes sense. 

• We want pragmatists (find what works and do it), not ideologues - blog link. 

• Categories of changing viewpoint and the emotional feel:

• Quote inspiration: 

• Expect the unexpected. 

• “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes

• “Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year.” - Charlie Munger.

• "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Einstein

• IMO if one isn’t experiencing a change of view in each of the above categories at least once a year one is probably getting high one one's own supply!

• IMO the core foundation to a good life is the closest possible understanding of reality. For your understanding of reality is what everything else is built upon. If you have a poor understanding of reality it’s like your decisions are built on a foundation of quicksand. 

  • If this is the case then any viewpoint update that is moving closer to reality should feel good. 

  • IMO one wants to celebrate any move closer to reality and normalise public changing of view points. You get exactly the behaviour you celebrate. 

  • As such hopefully how all viewpoint updates should feel if moving closer to reality? 

If you only take away one thing

• Changing your mind isn’t something to be ashamed of. Done for the right reasons, changing your mind is something to be proud of.

Improved ‘intelligence’ = strategy added

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time:  10 mins

Summary: Creating strategies is the ultimate metaskill to know for the unknowable future.

IMO ‘intelligence’ is not fixed. IMO in almost any area ‘intelligence’ can be levelled up. 

• IMO one can systematically level up in almost all pursuits in life. Be it music, poker, art, sport, maths, communication, collaboration, emotional intelligence etc. 

• One key way I have to level up in a field is to acquire strategies from others and / or build strategies myself (AKA build if/then statements myself). 

• I didn’t use to know this! 20 years ago Duncan thought that people were naturally inclined to be good or bad at things, not that one could get better in almost any field through systematically adding strategies. 

• For example: someone playing poker with no strategies vs someone with 5 strategies will likely lose 80% of the time. 

• I think one of the most important things that one can know is that one can improve in almost any field by adding ‘strategies’. Be it monopoly, maths, sport, music, art, communication, design, humour etc. When one embraces this, one knows to search out strategies from others and build strategies for oneself to level up. I’ve found this to be a game changer. 

IMO ‘intelligence’ is a skill, IMO one can get ‘smarter’ in almost all fields. One core way I know to improve in a given field is to add a strategy. 

• Strategies ≠ Tools

  • A tradesperson who knows 1000s of strategies for using a few tools > a tradesperson with 100s of tools that they don’t know how to utilise

• Strategy acquisition stages: 

  • L0: don't know there are strategies to get better. Think things are luck or natural ability.

  • L1: know that strategies can be used to improve but can only learn strategies that others teach you.

  • L2: can teach yourself a strategy in a place where you are set up to learn the strategy. “The maze was made for you.” 

    • Rearticulation: there is a puzzle created by someone specifically that if you solve you ‘discover’ the strategy they intended for you to discover, eg getting out of an escape room. IMO this is what good teaching of existing ideas looks like, eg Year 7 Maths. 

  • L3: can make new strategies for yourself. “No maze setup.” Can create your own escape room!

• Examples:

  • Sport: eg AFL, it’s not the fastest runner or the strongest person who is the best  player, it's often the person with the most strategies (the person most prepared for the greatest number of possibilities).

  • Art: people work on their craft and can systematically self improve eg make strategies for how to approach things well. 

  • Edrolo: we don't try to make better content; we systemically level up through creating more and more strategies. 

  • Each space is unique, so the secret to levelling up in any space is to develop the metaskill of creating strategies.

• When you are free or not:

  • L0: can’t figure out how to find strategies from others in any vertical

  • L1: can figure out how to find strategies others came up with in one vertical

  • L2: can make new strategies for yourself in one vertical (eg drawing, eg sport, eg friendship, eg maths, eg music, etc)

  • L3: can find strategies from others and make new strategies for yourself in 2x verticals

  • L4: “free” - can find strategies from others and make new strategies for yourself in any vertical

• Jingle: IMO it’s stupid to think intelligence is ‘fixed’. IMO use strategies to go from stupid to intelligent in most fields! OR strategise your way from Stupid to Smart :)!

If you are doing something that has never been done before (aka innovation) the only approach is to build strategies for yourself. 

• IMO for almost all mental pursuits everyone starts at Level 0. Be it speaking, maths, collaboration, empathy, humour, engineering, investing, etc. 

• IMO one way to level up is to add strategies. IMO it’s possible for someone to get good at levelling up, AKA adding strategies to themselves. 

• If you have been able to do it in one field there is a higher chance you'll be able to do it in a second. Each field you've done it in the increased chance you'll be able to do it in another field.

• Again, if you are doing something that has neve been done before the only approach is to build strategies for yourself. Normally I’ve found people can transfer the metaskill of building strategies for yourself from other fields into new ones. 

• In effect in a new field you want to go from novice to master as fast as possible. Ie you want to get good at adding and / or building strategies as fast as possible...

• … so you want to be a “master novice” ;) 

• *aside: in some respects these blogs are strategies / mini theories with which to try and navigate the world better. 

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Details

The meta skill is your ability to add skills to yourself… AKA build new strategies for yourself to improve in a given field.

• IMO in the existing secondary education system most people think the goal is to get the question right or get 100% on the test. They don’t mind how they get 100%, just that they hopefully get 100%. 

• While an oversimplification, I find this useful. 

  • Approach 1: rote learning AKA memorising the if/then statement someone else made AKA procedural understanding AKA memorising a strategy from someone else

    • People don’t really understand the content. They just know ‘if I see this question, then I do this’

  • Approach 2: conceptual understanding AKA building the if/then statement yourself AKA making a strategy for yourself.

    • People understand the content and flexibly use the concept in a new place through recall and transfer. 

• If one does a lot of memorisation then IMO one can get an extremely high ATAR, eg 99+. 

  • For non Australian readers: ‘ATAR = Australian Tertiary Admission Rank’ is the primary criterion for domestic student entry into undergraduate courses in Australian universities. 

• IMO for the vast majority of university degrees such as commerce, engineering, science, law, medicine etc one can score extremely highly with memorisation. 

• What this means is that IMO it’s possible two people can look exactly the same on a resume, for example got the same ATAR, went to the same university, did the same degree and got the same grades… but have done it in completely different ways. 

  • Approach 1 person - has zero ability to teach themselves new strategies.

  • Approach 2 person - has very high ability to teach themselves new strategies. 

• Slowly all repetitive jobs (physical and mental) are being replaced by machines. So all jobs will involve you ‘doing new things you’ve not done before’ AKA ‘going into problem spaces you don’t know well and teaching yourself new strategies to get better’. 

  • In this world IMO ‘approach 1’ person has very low value and ‘approach 2’ person has very high value. 

  • Nurturing your ability to create strategies = future-proofing yourself

One thing I now look for in interviews: if people have been able to build new strategies for themselves in ideally 2+ fields

• If the interviewee is a fresh university graduate I’ll ask:

  • Field 1: their uni degree

    • Question: Do you think you got better at studying while at university and if so why? 

      • Comment: I’m looking for them to volunteer strategies they have built and if they are ‘conceptual, not procedural’. Then I drill down. Normally with 2-5x subsequent questions I can orthogonally check if I’m understanding correctly and get to a high confidence level. 

    • Question: If you could give yourself some advice at the start of university degree what would it be? 

      • Comment: again I’m looking for ‘strategies’

  • Field 2: I’ll also look for something they are interested in outside of their university degree and then look to see if they have been able to build strategies for themselves to level up. 

    • Question: is there a passion, hobby or interest you have. Eg drawing, sport, science, part of a play, reading, etc. 

    • Question: have you thought about how you try to improve in this field? If so can you talk to me about this? 

• If someone who has worked before:

  • Field 1: their most recent job

    • Question: do you think you have improved at your existing role vs 2 years ago and if so can you talk to me about a couple of the ways you think you have improved? 

      • Comment: again i’m looking for ‘strategies’. When I find things I drill down. 

  • Field 2: same as above. 

• Overall: 

  • I’ve found that now I’m looking at the world with the ‘can they make new strategies for themselves to systematically level up’ lens I’m slowly able to see it much more. 

  • Also, clearly this lens isn’t everything, but it’s an important part of the bigger picture IMO. 

One definition of innovation = building new strategies for a problem space. 

• We need people to do things that they have never done before. 

• In effect to go from Novice to Master. 

• For the purposes of this lens on what levelling up is I’m going to say the following. 

• Novice: has no strategies for the field

• Competent: has 1-5x strategies

• Proficient: has 6-10x strategies

• Expert: has 11-20x strategies and is good at making new strategies themselves

• Master: 21x+ strategies and can make new strategies at will

• For more and more jobs people are doing something that hasn’t been done before, so there is no university degree you can do or training you can get. You have to figure it out yourself, AKA find strategies to level up! 

• I’ve found that the meta ability to level yourself up in one field is normally transferable to another field.

  • What this means is that if someone has been able to level themselves up in eg sport then they are far more likely to be able to take the metaskill of strategy building and apply it in a new field of eg secondary textbook creation. 

  • In short, if you are hiring people to do something that no one has done before, I now think one of the core things to look for is someone’s ability to have levelled themselves up AKA created strategies for themselves in ideally 2x+ other fields as this means there is a high chance they’ll be able to do it in a completely new field! 

• Revisiting the example of the two approaches to getting high grades: 

  • ‘Approach 1 - rote learning aka no strategy creation’ vs ‘approach 2 - conceptual understanding aka strategy creation’

  • IMO an ‘approach 1 - rote learning aka no strategy creation’ person is very unlikely to be good at doing a job where they are doing something they haven’t done before. 

• IMO an ‘approach 2 - conceptual understanding aka strategy creation’ person is very likely to be good at doing a job where they are doing something they haven’t done before. 

• No ceiling! Infinite new places to apply strategies!

• Each new strategy you add is another s-curve. For a blog on continuous ‘s-curves’ see here.

Some smaller ideas for ya

• Some areas have luck and some don't 

  • If you are playing a luck game with zero strategies with 2 people the outcome of who wins is 50:50. 

    • More strategies is good. So if you have eg 5x strategies you might shift to win:loss 80:20… but if the other person gets the same 5x strategies you are back to 50:50

  • Some games have zero luck, there is no dice rolling. 

    • Even if you are the best poker player in the world you can still lose to a complete novice in any game… but over 100 games you are likely to win the vast majority of them. 

    • For Edrolo we have close to zero luck in making secondary resources that are in house. Being good = having strategies = wins

• Zero sum vs positive sum games

• Most of sport and board games are zero sum. Someone wins and someone loses. 

• However many areas of life are positive sum games, everyone can win! 

  • I believe good friendships are this, mutually positive sum. 

  • I believe a good job is this. As an example, from my perspective at Edrolo in eg a meeting we want everyone to add value. It’s not about ranking who added the most value to the least value, it’s about maximising the overall quantum of value that gets created in a meeting (eg strategies found). 

• Objectivity ⇔ Subjectivity

• IMO some areas of life have high objectivity: eg like water quality. Is the water clean or is it infested with disease? 

• IMO some areas of life have high subjectivity: eg what music you like. What might be a hit song today might have been nothing 10 years ago. 

• IMO Edrolo operates in an area of high objectivity, eg Year 7 Maths, Year 7 Science and Year 7 History have a curriculum that is set. 

  • While the way we teach this curriculum has some subjectivity, it is still operating within the objective bounds of the curriculum

• Comment

  • One possible recipe for a good job = 1. That doesn’t involve much luck (ie being good means you get good outcomes) + 2. Is a positive sum game + 3. High objectivity 

Visualising ideas: a way to see things you otherwise wouldn’t

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 7 mins

Summary

• I’ve found visualising thoughts is a core way to level up my ability to communicate. A picture / visualisation tells 1,000 words

• I’ve found visualising thoughts is a core way to level up my ability to problem solving (AKA visualising into a model IS problem solving).. 

• They teach you to read, write and do basic maths at school. IMO they should teach you to problem solve and communicate in visuals. I believe learning to problem solve and communicate in visuals has massively improved my life...  not just work!

• Jingle: visuals, not just pretty, a way to increase the beauty of your work! 

In some respects: your ability to problem solve = your ability to visualise problems

• Visualising a problem space almost always helps me see a problem in an orthogonal way and as such, new possible solutions. It honestly feels like a magic trick. 

  • “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

  • For me, thinking visually is thinking in a different way. Thinking in a different way normally allows me to find new and different solutions. 

  • *Aside: in education academic research IMO they’d call thinking in visualisation a form of ‘abstract reasoning’. Developing abstract reasoning skills is a core way to increase creativity and problem solving. 

  • So… want to come up with a cool new idea? Try visualise the problem!

• I can't fly. If you were to ask me to make a visualisation in the past, it was like asking me to fly. Slowly over time I've been able to get better at visualising and am flying to new heights.

• I used to think that making visualisations was the preserve of geniuses. Now I think making a visualisation is the way to have a genius insight. 

• Levels of visualising:

  • L0: can’t make visualisations of idea

  • L1: can modify existing visualisations you have encountered

  • L2: can join together two different visualisations you have encountered

  • L3: can make custom visualisations

  • Comment

    • When people are starting to build visuals to develop their ideas I normally say ‘pick one of the categories below and apply it to your problem’. Slowly over time people become proficient in more and more visual models and then start making their own models! 

    • “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” Piccaso. 

• Examples of visualisation (see the actual visuals below): 

  • Continuum

  • Multiple continuums

  • Golden mean (the middle is good and edges bad)

  • Table

  • 2x2

  • Concentric circles

  • Venn diagram

  • Multiple overlapping circles 

  • Flow chart

  • Stacked pyramid

  • 2 axes with 1 variable

  • 2 axes with 2 variables

  • 3 axes with multiple variable

  • Places different solutions on multiple outcomes

  • Custom stuff. 

3D explanations - don’t be one dimensional

• I often try to explain things from three different perspectives: 1. Words, 2. In an equation and 3. Visually (what this blog is on)

• I find that the three approaches normally allow new emergent ways of understanding / solutions. It’s so awesome! 

• So it looks something like this: 

  • 1=1. Just using words to explain

  • 1+1=3. Using words and equation to explain

  • 1+1+1=6. Using words, an equation and a visualisation to explain. 

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Details

Writing as thinking vs Writing as communicating

• Yes of course writing is communication. I used to think that writing was like doing an English essay, one wrote out what one already thought. This can be the case, but to me I also find that that writing can be to figure out what you think. In fact, writing is the primary approach I use to figure out what I think / develop my thoughts. 

• Now, if there is a problem I don’t understand as much as I’d like to I ‘just start writing about it’ and slowly I figure things out. Link

• This blog hopefully makes some sense and has reasonably cohesive order… it sure as hell doesn’t start like that. I just wrote myself a note saying ‘visualising ideas helps you develop and understand ideas better’. 

• For me, writing = high quality thinking…

• … but ‘writing’ isn’t just words, it’s also making models / equations, taxonomies… and making visualisations (and more). 

 Visualisations as thinking vs Visualisations as communicating

• I now set myself a challenge, make a visualisation of the core parts of the problem you are trying to solve. You’ll see that many of these blogs have visuals. 

• Most ideas are constantly evolved. You have your current best version of what to do until you upgrade it further. I normally think of this in generations. This means that most ideas can be improved indefinitely. Unlike school, IMO for the best ideas you can’t get ‘100%’ on them. Examples: 

  • How to give feedback on this point to someone?

  • How to make a Year 7 Maths resources as awesome as possible?

  • How to be a good friend?

  • Who does the best egg and bacon combo?

• I’ve found that making a visualisation levels up my understanding of a problem / solution:

  • Making visualisations is often a higher order thinking where concepts and ideas can be manifested. If I can’t visualise an idea in some way, I normally don’t have a strong enough understanding

  • Visualisations = abstracting reasoning = creativity in problem solving

• They teach you to read and write in cursive at school, IMO they should teach you to communicate through visuals :). 

• If the future of work is ‘knowledge work’ then it’s taking ideas to reality. If visualising significantly helps you understand a problem. Then visualisation is a core way to make ideas (fantasies) into realities. 

1,000 words can be crap or mind bending. A visualisation can be confusing or blow your mind

• IMO there is no limit to the quality of words. IMO the difference between 1,000 good and 1,000 great words is 100x. 

• IMO there is no limit to the quality of visualisations. IMO the difference between a good visual and a great visual is 100x. 

• People say ‘you should learn to code’. Well I think you should learn to code if you are going to be a developer. 

• If you are a communicator (you are you communicate with yourself and other people), then I think you should learn to communicate in visuals. 

• Communication with Words + Visuals > Communication with Words only

• Problem Solving with Words + Visuals >  Problem Solving with Words only

Examples of visualisations 

• Continuum

  • One variable

• Many variables that relate on a continuum.

• Golden mean - good in the middle and bad on the ends

• Table

• 2x2

• Concentric circles

• Venn diagram

• Multiple overlapping circles

• Flow chart

• Stacked pyramid

• Chart with 2 axes with variables moving

• One variable straight line

• 2 variables straight line

• 1 variable not straight line but with areas

• Joining two visual models

• Juxtapose two visual models

• Placing different outcomes on 2 axes

• Custom stuff

If you only take away one thing

• Building visuals = problem solving

• Building visuals = one key form of communication

• Want to problem solve and communicate better? Get good at making visualisations.

Anti Confirmation Bias: to be unbiased you need to bias your bias

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

Summary

• Confirmation bias = the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.

• Anti confirmation bias = IMO what is needed to counter ‘confirmation bias’ to attempt to be unbiased

• Confirmation bias = overweighting information on why your idea is correct and underweighting information that goes against your idea

• Anti confirmation bias = looking for how your idea can be wrong (AKA ego distortions)

• Anti confirmation bias = looking for what you have missed (AKA blind spots)

• Jingle: to be unbiased you need to bias your bias.

We come preloaded (baked into our source code) with a number of cognitive biases. 

• IMO you don’t get to choose whether you have cognitive biases, you just get to choose how you deal with them. 

• ‘Anti confirmation bias’ is my attempt to counter ‘confirmation bias’. 

• Here is a nice list of some well known cognitive biases.

The closest possible connection to reality is the basis upon which a good life, business, etc is built.

• For your own ideas… IMO default is confirmation bias, AKA you see your ideas as better than they actually are.

• “We see the world the way we want it to be, not the way it actually is.”

• IMO you want to ‘lean against’ ‘confirmation bias’ with ‘anti confirmation bias’. 

  • Effectively if you are thinking about your idea or doing user testing etc I think you want to try and consciously spend more of your time thinking about why your idea is wrong and what you could be missing than trying to see why you are right. 

  • A rough rule of thumb I have: 

    • ⅓ of the time on why your idea is right

    • ⅓ of the time why your idea is wrong

    • ⅓ of the time on what your idea is missing

  • If you can do this then hopefully you can have a relatively strong understanding of reality.

Some ways to try and route out confirmation bias AKA how to do anti confirmation bias

• If I’m doing user testing or just speaking to someone about the idea and I only have 5 questions at the end I’ll ask something like the following: 

  • Preamble: we are obviously looking to build this product to help people. We’ll find out one way or another if we are helping… but the sooner the better. So, if ok, please let us know what you think. ‘Our baby might be ugly’, we need to know ASAP so we can try and improve the product / idea! 

  • What did you like? 

  • What didn’t you like? 

  • What would you change? 

  • Is there anything you think we have missed? 

  • Would you recommend this to someone else, if so who please? If not, why please? (This is an NPS question as is an orthogonal way of asking if they actually like the product. )

  • Comment: 

    • I find that this sequence of questions can allow someone to be more frank with you, as you are warming them up, making the space to say something good, then actively asking for constructive feedback which makes the space for someone to say things. 

    • IE people are often much more comfortable saying something constructive if they have first said something positive! 

    • There are many many more questions you can ask, but basically I try to spend ⅓ of time on why the idea might be a good one, ⅓ on where we could be wrong (ego distortion) and ⅓ of the time one what we are missing (blind spot). 

• If I’m trying to develop an idea myself I try to lean against ‘confirmation bias’ through thinking about things like this: 

  • "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Einstein 

  • “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes

  • “Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year.” - Charlie Munger. 

If you only take away one thing

• You have nothing to fear from the truth (how reality actually is), but that doesn’t mean the truth won’t hurt! 

• I find the sooner you sooner you have an accurate reflection of how good your idea is the less the hurt… and the more the joy!