A note from Daniel

Monkeys & Pedestals Part 1: To help Google X-ers become better quitters, Astro Teller has come up with a unique mental model that has been woven into the fabric of X: monkeys and pedestals. Imagine that you're trying to train a monkey to juggle flaming torches while standing on a pedestal in a public park. there are two pieces to becoming successful at this endeavor: training the monkey and building the pedestal. One piece of the puzzle presents a possibly intractable obstacle in the way of success. And the other is building the pedestal. People have been building pedestals since ancient Greece and probably before.

Daniel Quit, page 112 · September 5, 2024 Save to shelf
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Daniel p. 247

Chapter 11 Summary: • Goals, when set, are a proxy for an expected-value equation, balancing the benefits that you're trying to gain against the costs you're willing to bear. • Inflexible goals aren't a good fit for a flexible world. • With better advance planning (like identifying monkeys and pedestals and kill criteria) and the help of a good quitting coach, you can make goals more flexible, setting at least one "unless" and planning regular check-ins on the analysis that initially led to setting the goal.
Daniel
Daniel p. 247

Chapter 11 Summary: • Goals can make it possible to achieve worthwhile things, but goals can also increase the chances that we will escalate commitment when we should quit. • Goals are pass-fail in nature. You either reach the finish line or you don't, and progress along the way matters very little. • Don't just measure whether you hit the goal, ask what you have achieved and learned along the way. • Set intermediate goals and prioritize goals that allow you to recognize progress along the way or acquire something valuable even if you don't reach the goal.
Daniel

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Ultra Successful p. 60

The False Constraints That Limit Your Potential: - How Quickly You Can Scale Whether it's your business or your career, there are unspoken timelines that people accept as gospel.They are all untrue: "You can only really grow at 10% a year." "You need to pay your dues for a decade before getting promoted." These artificial limits keep people moving at a crawl when they could be sprinting or pushing for more. The most successful people I know refuse to accept conventional wisdom about timelines, and oddly enough, they break them all the time.
Daniel

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