Notes on Smartcuts by Shane Snow

Based on Noah Kagan's recommendation on his interview with Tim Ferriss, I just finished reading Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow.

The book was a fun, quick tour of various techniques used by unconventional "hackers" who achieved success much more quickly than traditionally thought possible.

I liked the beginning of the book more than the end, which seemed too light on new ideas and content. My favorite part of the book was the story of the perseverance of Jimmy Fallon.

Intro
Smart shortcuts to doing stuff way faster
Lateral thinking
Not following rules
Smartcuts not just shortcuts which can be amoral
Smartcuts are shortcuts with integrity
Short
Leverage
Soar

Part 1 short

1 hacking the ladder
Presidents younger than senators
BYU scavenger hunt game bigger or better
Psychology of small wins
Just keep the game going
Pivoting accelerates growth
Ladder switching in career
Use credibility to switch ladders to bypass dues

2 training with masters
Jimmy Fallon
Justin bieber had the best mentors who brought him up
Doctors learning patient handover from racing pit crews
Formal mentorship bad idea; informal personal relationships better
Learn and copy from masters yourself from books and videos of masters
Learn attention to detail
Study videos of masters obsessively and memorize facts and details of them

3 rapid feedback
Startup funeral: Funerals for startups to share what learned when failed
Past failure does not help with future ones according to studies
But succeeding makes you more likely to succeed
Failures caused more of own failures
Seeing others fail makes u do better
Doing well makes u do better
Failure paradox, attribution theory of failures to external things but success to internal things 
When others fail we attribute failure to others but when others succeed we attribute success to luck
Separate ego when you get feedback
Rapid scientific experiments

Part 2 leverage

4 platforms: the laziest programmer
Abstraction
Selective slacking
Ruby on Rails
Teaching kids how to learn instead of what to learn and memorize

5 waves
Waiting for the right wave
Pattern recognition 
Fast follower

6 superconnectors
Giving

Part 3 soar

7 momentum
Progress makes u happy
Big success needs u to continue progress even after big winning
Just keep moving
Build up potential energy so can leverage it when u get big break

8 simplicity
Innovation is about doing something different or simpler not just bigger
Simplify decisions to avoid unnecessary ones

9 10X thinking
Elon musk

Epilogue

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