A valuable product or service is integral to starting your creative business. Still, to run and manage your business successfully, you need to consider other factors such as:

Things You Need To Know Before starting Your Business 

Branding Is About Loyalty—Not Just LooksYour branding should draw upon components of communication to give people an idea of what you’re all about and what to expect when working with you.It’s not just about logos, though the visuals on your business cards and Web site are a key aspect of branding. It’s really more about the client’s experience. You want to use your brand—logos, content development, publicity, and the like—to build credibility, convey a message, and encourage loyalty. You want prospects and clients to want you and only you.

Branding   

One of the nicest things about being your own boss is being able to negotiate your rate. Everything is negotiable; don’t be offended if a client asks you to come down a bit, but know that you have the power to negotiate just as much as a client.When you set your rate, make sure you go high enough so that if you decide to come down in price, you are still making enough money to turn a profit on the project.

Negotiations 

Your portfolio is the best example of your talents as a creator. To put a portfolio together, gather as many examples of your work as possible.Most clients only want to see 1-3 pieces so it’s important that when you want to show potential clients your portfolio make sure it is tailored to their job descriptions, this helps you put your best foot forward.The goal of a strong portfolio is threefold:<ul><li>You want it to highlight the range of services you offer</li><li>Show off your capabilities, and</li><li>Resonate with the prospect so they will hire you.</li></ul>

Portfolios 

Working 40+ hours per week for an employer while adding your own business to your plate is certainly a challenge. Without much time for charging your batteries, it is a recipe for creative burn-out. I found the following recommendations from Khierstyn Ross really helpful:

Moonlighting

<ol><li>Set aside 1 hr per day for your business (before or after work), and 1 day on the weekend.</li><li>Plan your week ahead of time.</li><li>Batch task (ex. Writing emails for the month)</li><li>Know what your priorities are before you start working on them.</li><li>Define what “done” looks like on a project so you can get momentum and check it off.</li><li>1 day off a week.</li><li>Consider hiring a VA for admin tasks.</li><li>Can you habit stack? Listen to the content at the gym/audiobook while driving.</li><li>Work on the important, not easy.</li><li>Have a “dailies”/”weeklies” list of non-negotiable things you need to do every day or week.</li></ol>

Moonlighting Tips

Tips that help small business owners, start and run their businesses successfully 

communication

Communication

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

startup

Startups

A Dozen Things You Need To Know Before Starting Your Creative Business

Things our brains enjoy to do  for instance<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Creativity</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Enjoyment</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Relaxing</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Connecting</li></ul>

Type 1 Task Productivity

Keeping on top of <ul><li>Tasks </li><li>Calenders</li><li>Emails</li></ul>

Type 2 Task

The definition of Productivity is using our time intentionally and effectively.Our brain categorizes our tasks in 3 different categories. Knowing the 3 different categories will help us to know how to be as productive as we can.

Brain Tasks

This one is keeping your life in order with this you need things like<ul><li>A calender</li><li>Email Management </li><li>To-Do List: Make sure that you put all your tasks and items into your To-Do List that is extremely important</li><li>File Management System: File management is very important for instance using google drive or apple drive.</li></ul>

First Model Layer

These are the second version of the productivity app.<ul><li>The Kindle App</li><li>A Read it later app for instant using Instapaper will be very helpful, the seperation of things.</li><li>Readwise</li></ul>

Second Model Layer

WOw I can be extremely more productive now! Follow me for more insights!

Read Morning Brew ☕️ https://morningbrewdaily.com/ali The whole point of a productivity system is to get your life in order and free up valuable brain space. No one wants to be spending tons of time organising emails or searching for a book quote that they forgot to highlight. There are broadly three levels of building an ultimate productivity system: keeping your life in order, capturing new info, and creating a system around it. You can stop at layer one or use all three. I cover it all in more detail in this video, including suggestions for apps that I like to use daily. 00:00 Intro 01:37 Ron: keep your life in order 01:37 Calendar 04:21 Email 06:12 To-do list 09:06 File management 10:32 Hermoine: capture new information 11:09 Kindle 11:47 Read-it-later app 14:53 Readwise 15:59 Capture app 17:04 Dumbledore: create a system 17:07 Building a Second Brain LINKS MENTIONED: 🧠 Check out the Dumbledore Level with my Building a Second Brain video - https://youtu.be/K-ssUVyfn5g 📘 Grab your own Essentiali planner - https://aliabdaal.com/essentiali/ 💡 If you have a suggestion for a future video, submit it here. If we use your concept, we'll send you $100 - https://aliabdaal.typeform.com/video-ideas MY FAVOURITE SOFTWARE: ✍️ The best summaries of books (Shortform) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/shortform 📚 How I remember what I read (Readwise) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/readwise 🎵 Where I get my Music (amazing for YouTubers) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/epidemicsound MY FREE ONLINE COURSES: 🚀 Productivity Masterclass - Principles and Tools to Boost Your Productivity - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/productivity 🎬 Video Editing with Final Cut Pro X - From Beginner to YouTuber - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/video-editing 🎓 How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/studying PART-TIME YOUTUBER ACADEMY: 🍿 My 6-week live online course - https://academy.aliabdaal.com CREATORPRENEUR 💰 My flag-ship course for scaling up your creative side-hustle - https://creatorpreneur.academy/course YOUTUBE FOR BEGINNERS COURSE 📸 This is for anyone who'd like to start a YouTube channel. You'll learn everything you need to get started as a YouTuber including how to script, shoot, and edit your first video - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/YouTube-for-Beginners 🎙 Deep Dive podcast - https://www.youtube.com/c/DeepDivewithAliAbdaal/ The podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover the philosophies, strategies and tools that help us live happier, healthier and more productive lives. You can find it by searching “Deep Dive” on any podcast app (eg: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts etc). MY FAVOURITE GEAR: 🎥 My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/AliAbdaal ⌨️ My Keyboard - Wireless Coral mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/keyboard 📝 My favourite iPad Screen Protector - Paperlike - https://go.aliabdaal.com/paperlike 🎒 My Desk Accessories + Todo List - Ugmonk - https://go.aliabdaal.com/ugmonk BE MY FRIEND: 💌 Sign up to my weekly email newsletter - https://aliabdaal.com/friendzone/ 🌍 My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/aliabdaal 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/aliabdaal 💙 The Friendzone Discord - https://discord.gg/Dh2kGavffd 🎮 Twitch - https://twitch.tv/aliabdaal WHO AM I: I’m Ali, a YouTuber, podcaster, soon-to-be author and ex-Doctor working in London, UK. I make videos that explore the strategies and tools that help us live happier, healthier and more productive lives. I also have a weekly podcast called Deep Dive (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChfo46ZNOV-vtehDc25A1Ug), and I write a weekly email newsletter that contains some quick thoughts + links to interesting things (https://email.aliabdaal.com). GET IN TOUCH: If you’d like to talk, I’d love to hear from you. Tweeting @AliAbdaal directly will be the quickest way to get a response, but if your question is very long, feel free to email me at hi@aliabdaal.com. I try my best to reply to things but there sadly aren't enough hours in the day to respond to everyone 😭 PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜

productivity

Productivity

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

Read Morning Brew ☕️ https://morningbrewdaily.com/ali 

The whole point of a productivity system is to get your life in order and free up valuable brain space. No one wants to be spending tons of time organising emails or searching for a book quote that they forgot to highlight. 

There are broadly three levels of building an ultimate productivity system: keeping your life in order, capturing new info, and creating a system around it. You can stop at layer one or use all three. I cover it all in more detail in this video, including suggestions for apps that I like to use daily. 

00:00 Intro
01:37 Ron: keep your life in order
01:37 Calendar
04:21 Email
06:12 To-do list
09:06 File management
10:32 Hermoine: capture new information
11:09 Kindle
11:47 Read-it-later app
14:53 Readwise
15:59 Capture app
17:04 Dumbledore: create a system
17:07 Building a Second Brain

LINKS MENTIONED: 
🧠 Check out the Dumbledore Level with my Building a Second Brain video -
https://youtu.be/K-ssUVyfn5g
📘 Grab your own Essentiali planner - https://aliabdaal.com/essentiali/
💡 If you have a suggestion for a future video, submit it here. If we use your concept, we'll send you $100 - https://aliabdaal.typeform.com/video-ideas

💌  Sign up to my weekly email newsletter - https://go.aliabdaal.com/subscribe-sundaysnippets

MY FREE ONLINE COURSES:
🚀  Productivity Masterclass - Principles and Tools to Boost Your Productivity - 
 https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/productivity
🎓  How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/studying
🎬 YouTube for Beginners - Everything You Need To Know To Start  - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/YouTube-for-Beginners

MY CREATOR COURSES
🎬 Check out my free 7 day email course on how to become a part-time YouTuber: https://aliabdaal.com/part-time-youtuber-crash-course/
🏆 Creatorpreneur - My flagship course for scaling up your creative side-hustle → https://creatorpreneur.academy/course
🗣 Camera Confidence - My self-paced course on how to improve your creativity, career, or communication skills → https://cameraconfidence.aliabdaal.com/

MY FAVOURITE GEAR
🎥  My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/AliAbdaal
⌨️  My Keyboard - Wireless Coral mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue) -https://go.aliabdaal.com/keyboard
📝  My favourite iPad Screen Protector - Paperlike - https://go.aliabdaal.com/paperlike
🎒 My Desk Accessories + Todo List - Ugmonk - https://go.aliabdaal.com/ugmonk

🎙 Check out my weekly podcast, Deep Dive - https://www.youtube.com/c/DeepDivewithAliAbdaal/ - It's also available on all podcast platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts etc.

MY FAVOURITE TOOLS
🚀 VidIQ - How I optimise my YouTube videos - https://go.aliabdaal.com/vidiq
✍️ Shortform - The BEST summaries of books - https://go.aliabdaal.com/shortform
📚  Readwise - How I remember what I read - https://go.aliabdaal.com/readwise
🎵  Epidemic Sound - Where I get my music (amazing for YouTubers) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/epidemicsound

MY KEY LINKS
🌍  My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com/
🐦  Twitter - https://twitter.com/aliabdaal
📸  Instagram - https://instagram.com/aliabdaal

WHO AM I:
I’m Ali, a YouTuber, podcaster, soon-to-be author and ex-Doctor working in London, UK. I make videos that explore the strategies and tools that help us live happier, healthier and more productive lives. I also have a weekly podcast called Deep Dive (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChfo46ZNOV-vtehDc25A1Ug), and I write a weekly email newsletter that contains some quick thoughts + links to interesting things (https://go.aliabdaal.com/subscribe-sundaysnippets).

PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜

📚 Check out my first book Feel-Good Productivity here: https://www.feelgoodproductivity.com/

Hey, I'm Ali, a doctor turned entrepreneur, and the world’s most followed productivity expert 😜 

On this channel, we explore evidence-based strategies and tools that can help us be more productive, and build a life that we love. 

If that sounds interesting, consider subscribing! See you in the next video x

Ali Abdaal

How to Build the Ultimate Productivity System (2023)

How to Build the Ultimate Productivity System (2022)

The core of what you are doing and how you are doing it. Knowing the why is the best step to start.Note for myself: As an individual, I need to know the core values that I uphold as well as the life goal that I want to reach. It's important to introspect and ask why I am doing what I am doing. Knowing it will give me more direction to go on and live the life that I will be living.

The Why

The intricacies of process and systems. It's an important phase of the Golden Circle. The WHY will never be executed without the details of the How. Usually people who are good with WHY need a person who is good on the How.

The HOW

The output or the product. The visible part and the one which has the features on it. This may seem easy but is a crucial part of the Golden Circle. Without the WHAT, the why and the how will be useless.

The WHAT

This is not included in the book, but I think this is common sense when you got the idea behind the Start with Why. The 3 parts of the Golden Circle should be well aligned to each other to make it work.

The ALIGNMENT

My take on the book of Simon Sinek. Why, how and what is not the only things that matter, it's  the alignment of these three. 

The inspirational bestseller that ignited a movement and asked us to find our WHY Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time—with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever. START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

books

Books

The inspirational bestseller that ignited a movement and asked us to find our WHY Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time—with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever.   START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?   People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.    START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.

Simon Oliver Sinek is a British-born American author and inspirational speaker. He is the author of five books, including Start With Why and The Infinite Game.

Simon Sinek

Start with Why

People plan for success but be confused and oblivious as to how they failed.Below I have compiled some of the main reasons why people may fall short of their goals

The 3 stages of Failure in Life/Work <and how to fix them>

These are HOW mistakes - They occur when you fail to build a set of tasks/ routines or when you forget to measure your growth carefully and get lazy with the details. A failure of Tactics is a failure to execute a good plan and a clear vision

Stage 1: Failure of Tactics

These are WHAT mistakes - They occur when you follow a strategy that fails to provide you with the result you hoped it would provide.A failure of Strategy is a failure to build a robust set of routines

Stage 2: Failure of Strategy

These are WHY mistakes -They occur when you don't set a clear direction for yourself or follow a vision that doesn't fulfill you in the long run or otherwise fail to understand why you do the things you do A failure of Vision is caused due to ignorance or have mediocre views on life

Stage 3: Failure of Vision

There are three primary ways to fix the failure of tactics<ol><li>Record your process/Routine</li><li>Measure your outcomes</li><li>Review and adjust your tactics often</li></ol><ul><li>Recording your process - Recording your process/ Routine gives you an overview of where your routine is failing you and where you can make an improvement </li><li>Measuring your outcome - Measuring your outcomes gives you a binary view of your routine -  Is it working for you or not. This helps you to alter your routine or make a new one altogether</li><li>Review and adjust your tactics - This is the CHANGE THAT TACTIC phase</li></ul>

Fix for - Failure of Tactics

There are three primary ways to fix the failure of tactics<ol><li>Deploy it quickly</li><li>Do it with dedication</li><li>Revise it rapidly</li></ol><ul><li>Deploy it quickly - Once you have a strategy/Routine ready, don't delay in deploying that strategy for the next Monday</li><li>Do it with dedication - Be diligent and trust your routine and follow it every day</li><li>Revise it rapidly -   Always keep an eye on your routine and adjust it as and when needed</li></ul>

Fix for - Failure of Strategy

There are three primary ways to fix the failure of tactics<ol><li>Take charge of your life</li><li>Determine your Non-Negotiable</li><li>Navigate criticism</li></ol><ul><li>Take charge of your life - People, most of the time follow the masses or so-called ideals set by society, parents, or social media, It is time to take charge of your life and set a vision you have for your life</li><li>Determine your Non-Negotiables - Your Non-Negotiables are those things you are not willing to budge on no matter what. This can be your values or your idea of life</li></ul>

Fix for - Failure of Vision

<ul><li>Navigate Criticism - The moment you take charge of life, there will be showers of criticism pouring over you. Navigate criticism with your wit and don't take them seriously unless otherwise, it is truly for your benefit and you find sense in it.</li><li> Explain your ideas to your parents and mentors only don't bother about anyone else</li></ul>

Fix for - Failure of Vision 

These ideas give me an idea of how i failed and tips on solving them

How do you know when to give up and accept failure and when to stick with your efforts in life and work? Read the article to learn more.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

The 3 Stages of Failure in Life and Work

A business needs to build a personal brand. It is misunderstood that brand design means a logo. Everybody has a logo. There are 10 zillion logos in the world. So if you design a great logo, that's not a brand. There are a few brand touch points like your website and email or print, broadcast e-commerce, social media, video, and digital marketing that show off your brand.

Brand Touchpoints to make you a Brand

If you want to make sure that your brand shows up in a consistent way across all of these points, then I have these nine elements of a brand design ecosystem.

First of all, we need to have a logo. It should probably have very few clours. Do not have more than three colours.

Logo

A font is a brand identity like a logo. Have a font or two. Fonts also have a personality, like Serif Fonts, Son Serif Fonts, or handwritten fonts. Fonts say a lot about your brand, so choose ones that are consistent.

Fonts

Colour has incredible psychological power. Colours mean things. The colour palette should have 3–4 or 5 colours so that you can talk about the strategy of what you do and what it is that you offer. Colours speak to consumers. Select colour not based on what is your favourite but on what consumers like and to which they respond.

Colour Palette

Companies like Louis Vitton follow a pattern on all their bags. Meanwhile, Apple has a brushed metal finish on its products.

Pattern and Texture

There are millions of styles of photography and you need to choose the one that suits your brand which needs to be maintained consistently.

Photography & Animation

Like photography, there are millions of illustrations. Select the right one that syncs with your logo and colour palette consistently to establish a visual vocabulary for your brand that is recognisable.

Illustration & Iconography

Many companies fail to identify sound as part of the brand. "Intel is one such company that has made its signature sound," Bum, Bum, Bum, that when one hears it immediately recalls the brand, "Intel Inside."

Sound

A particular layout or style needs to be maintained consistently across all your brand touchpoints.

 Layout

The Tone of Voice: What does your brand sound like, formal, joky, informal, serious, funny, etc. The copy of your website or tweet or your writing.

The Tone of Voice

There are many products in your industry. Do you want to remain one or you want to be the BRAND?

Vikas Nagori | There are many products out in your industrey, only few make it becoming a Brand. Join the journey of becoming a Brand

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

Buidling your Branding | LinkedIn

<ul><li>Almost 80% of consumers surveyed expect bad times in the year ahead for business conditions.</li><li>A survey by the Conference Board of CEOs reports that their confidence is at the lowest level since the pandemic began in 2020.</li><li>About 20% of the CEOs surveyed expected economic conditions to improve over the next six months, and</li><li>60% thought they would get worse.</li></ul> But this recession talk could lead to a recession becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Pessimistic talk

<ul><li>The economic headwinds are very real. Oil prices are up 60% this year, while gas prices are up over 50%. </li><li>Yet, what happens in the economy arises from subjective evaluation of how things will go in the future. Those evaluations are informed by data, not determined by them.</li><li>Fear can lead to economic difficulty. When we are consumed by recession talk, it can become more likely.</li><li>Businesses have become much more concerned about the outlook due to the rising cost of living, drop in demand, and increasingly aggressive interest rates.</li></ul>

Talk of a recession can make one happen

Americans’ feelings about the economy are off the charts. <ul><li>The airline industry is facing the problem of not having enough staff instead of not having enough customers.</li><li>Nike had higher earnings than analysts expected.</li><li>For households, this makes some sense. Many Americans are in a decent personal financial situation: They have seen increased home equity and are sitting on savings accumulated during the worst of the pandemic.</li></ul>

American consumers aren’t spending like a recession is around the corner

Almost 80 percent of consumers surveyed 'expected bad times in the year ahead for business conditions.'

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Are we thinking ourselves into a recession? How predictions and doomsaying can affect real economic behavior

Most of us think that scalable ideas have some “silver bullet” feature, some quality that bestows a “can’t miss” appeal. That kind of thinking is fundamentally wrong. There is no single quality that distinguishes ideas that have the potential to succeed at scale from those that don’t.

The rise and fall of Kmart

Most scaling failures are complicated. Identifying a list of potential problems before you scale up can improve the odds of success: <ul><li>Use incentives that can scale. This applies to creating healthcare or education policy, trying to grow your startup, or just helping your community get along better.</li><li>Make all of your decisions on the margin. Don’t be a prisoner to looking at averages, as data is always presented in averages. Instead, a marginal way is to pick the low-hanging fruit right away, then scale over marginal people, not over the million people who have already consumed it in the past.</li></ul>

The world of scaling needs a “common sense checklist"

Kmart used to be a highly successful discount department-store chain with over 2,300 locations in the U.S. Their famous in-store promotion was the BlueLight Special, where a great deal would be announced at unknown times. This helped them clear out unwanted stock and gave shoppers an adrenaline rush that made them spend more money. Kmart headquarters tried to scale it up by deciding where, when, and what product would be placed on the BlueLight Special across all stores. But customers in one store had different needs than customers in another store. Centralising the special ruined the brand.

Example of scaling problem

Moving from creating evidence-based policy to one of producing policy-based evidence is a call to researchers, policymakers and business people to consider the following: If scaling an idea, what constraints should be taken into account when doing the original research? For example, in the Chicago Heights Early Childhood program, researchers created a pre-school in a low-income Chicago neighbourhood to see what would produce the biggest educational gains. They hired the best teachers for their pilot program, but at scale, they’d have to hire 30,000 less-good teachers to stay within the budget.

Creating evidence-based policy vs. producing policy-based evidence

The voltage effect describes what happens when you move from the small to the large. Most ideas experience voltage drops, when a seemingly great idea loses power as it is scaled. How to fail at scaling<ul><li>You scale a program that was never tested.</li><li>Humans don’t scale. Any time there is a human at the centre of the program, it will fail.</li><li>Experts in their field assume that everyone else thinks hyper-rationally as they do, but people seldom think clearly in an area that is unfamiliar to them.</li></ul>

Voltage drop is shockingly common

When a small startup firm or institution has some success and wants to get bigger, they should consider the following: <ul><li>Be as diverse as you possibly can, as early as you can. </li><li>Types of diversity are observable characteristics, like gender and race and the socioeconomic status of how you were raised. </li></ul> This will allow for a much deeper and more diverse set of ideas and solutions to problems and, consequently, a more productive organisation.

Scaling considerations

The best example of a product that scaled unbelievably well is Jonas Salk and the polio vaccination. He had an innovation, tested it out on his own kids, and then he ramped it up to test all kinds of different kids. It worked well and then leveraged the healthcare system. The worst example is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E) program of Nancy Reagan. Police officers would go into school classrooms and teach kids about the dangers of drugs. The drug use didn’t fall and, in some cases, actually increased. The program was ineffective because it never had voltage to start with.

The best and worst examples of the voltage effect

False positives arise for many reasons such as bad measurement, wishful thinking or simply because the world is messy and it can be difficult to establish cause and effect. One reason why we don’t make as big an impact as we should is:<ul><li>We’re not really sure that this is going to ever scale.</li><li>We are unsure that this is the correct result.</li></ul> Results should be tested with, for example, Benford’s Law, to see whether the data have been fabricated.

False positives are a common cause of scaling failures

The secret to high-voltage scaling is understanding when to quit. People generally don’t quit soon enough. Usually, when someone wants to quit, it is because something went wrong. But, you should think more about the opportunity I’m giving up if I stick with it. If the opportunity changes for the better, I should quit more often.  If you’re considering quitting, force yourself to compare your performance with your peer group. Consider if you have a comparative advantage in this particular activity.

The upside of quitting

Economist John List is trying to start a scaling revolution. He discusses avoiding false positives, the cause of a given success and optimal quitting.

In a new book called The Voltage Effect, the economist John List — who has already revolutionized how his profession does research — is trying to start a scaling revolution. In this installment of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, List teaches us how to avoid false positives, how to know whether a given success is due to the chef or the ingredients, and how to practice “optimal quitting.”  

podcasts

Podcasts

Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner uncovers the hidden side of everything. Why is it safer to fly in an airplane than drive a car? How do we decide whom to marry? Why is the media so full of bad news? Also: things you never knew you wanted to know about wolves, bananas, pollution, search engines, and the quirks of human behavior.

Freakonomics Radio

494. Why Do Most Ideas Fail to Scale?

Society is on the leading edge of a technology tsunami. Advances in artificial intelligence, the internet of Things, virtual reality, robotics, nanotechnology, deep learning, mapping the human brain, and biomedical, genetic, and cyborg engineering will revolutionize how most of us live and work. Technology will be able to learn, as well as teach and program itself. We call this next big step the Smart Machine Age, or SMA. The SMA has the potential to be as disruptive and transformative for us as the Agricultural Age and Industrial Revolution were for our ancestors.

Smart Machine Age

In the last few decades, the American worker has been outsourced, off-shored, and automated on many factory floors and in many routine tasks. Up next is broader and more encompassing automation that will likely affect many more workers, including many professionals.While automation has been happening for decades, now technology is even beginning to replace knowledge workers—accountants, business managers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, researchers, architects, higher-education teachers, and consultants.

Get Ready For The Next Ride

Smart technologies will become ubiquitous, invading and changing many aspects of our professional and personal lives and in many ways challenging our fundamental beliefs about success, opportunity, and the American Dream. The best research to date indicates a high probability that technology will replace 47 percent of US jobs or displace as many as eighty million US workers within the next ten to twenty years.

The American Dream

In the Smart Machine Age or SMA—operational excellence may well become almost totally technology-driven, making human innovation the key to value creation. Organizations will need their people to be hyper-learners who can adapt to rapidly changing environments. These needs are unlike what was required in the command-and-control style organizations of the Industrial Age. Agility, adaptability, and responsiveness also will be required for most, and thus organizational efficiency will be necessary but no longer sufficient.

The Smart Machine Age: A New Game Requires New Rules

NewSmart is a measure not of what you know or how much you know but of <ul><li>- the quality of your thinking, listening, collaborating, and learning. </li><li>- how good you are at “not knowing” and decoupling your beliefs (not values) from your ego. </li><li>- how good you are at being open to continually stress-testing your belief about how the world works. </li><li>- how good you are at trying out new ideas and ways to accomplish your objectives and learning from those experiments.</li></ul>

A New Kind Of Smart

Humility is rarely associated with intellectual aptitude or professional success in Western societies, especially in the United States. Synonyms for Humility often include lowliness, meekness, and submissiveness—characteristics that would seem to be the antithesis of achievement and success. Our definition of Humility comes from our study of it as a philosophical, intellectual virtue and psychological construct. We define Humility as a mindset about oneself that is open-minded, and selfless.This enables one to embrace the world as it “is” in the pursuit of human excellence.

Humility: The Gateway to Human Excellence 

That doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, but it does mean thinking about yourself less (e.g., how you look, what other people are thinking or saying about you; how you’re coming across; how you’re being judged). It implies the lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one’s beliefs.

The Meaning Of Humility

The outward focus that follows from a Humility mindset is what’s in our best interest. Truly effective teamwork, collaboration, and innovation can’t happen when we’re defensive or when we’re too tied up in looking or feeling superior to our colleagues, teammates, clients, or customers.Humility is the gateway to human excellence in the SMA. It’s necessary in order to excel at the foundational NewSmart Behaviors which underlie the highest levels of thinking, learning, and emotionally engaging with others.

Focussing Outwards

You must slow down and make daily, thoughtful choices and exert effort to engage in the behaviours that will allow you to develop the skills you’ll need to survive and thrive.Quieting Ego is how we can deliberately work to reduce our reflexive emotional defensiveness; have empathy and open-mindedness; engage in reflexive Listening, and proactively seek other people’s feedback and perspectives to stress-test our own thinking.

Good intentions and Quieting The Ego

The most effective way to quiet our ego is through practising mindfulness. Quieting Ego through mindfulness results in heightened attention and awareness to experience and reality—in the present moment—that is open and receptive without bias or distortion. Meditation is one way to improve mindfulness, to quiet our egos, and to behave with humility. Another way to practice Quieting Ego is through gratitude. Studies of gratitude have discovered wide-ranging physical and psychological benefits associated with it.

Practising Mindfulness

A fundamental component of managing ourselves is the simplest to understand but not always the simplest to do: Slowing down. This seems counterintuitive to the cultural pressures in this day and age of doing more and more, faster and faster, with fewer and fewer resources. What we are talking about, again, is being mindful; slowing down to pay adequate attention and curbing our reflexive cognitive and emotional ways.

Managing Self: Thinking and Emotions

Managing our emotions and behavioural reactivity is also important to managing ourselves, and so is our ability to understand and react appropriately to other people’s emotions—which together constitute emotional intelligence (EI). This is so very important because so much of the value-added work humans will do in the SMA will be done in small teams. Sensitivity to other people’s emotions has been found to be a key to effective collaboration.

Managing Yourself

It’s hard for any of us to critique our own thinking and truly think critically. We’re just too wired to confirm what we already believe, and we feel too comfortable having a cohesive simple story of how our world works. We need to have thinking “partners” who force us to confront those biases, and we need to listen to them. The most effective way to think innovatively is to think with others in small teams made up of people who have experiences and training different from us.You need to listen to others to open your mind and push past your biases and mental models.

Reflective Listening

Listening is the way most of us learn. To be a good listener you have to be totally focused on the speaker with an open mind. You have to listen in a non-judgmental way, with the only goal being to try to understand what the other person is saying before you prepare and deliver your response. Good listeners ask questions to make sure that they understand before responding, or they paraphrase and repeat back what they believe that the person said and ask if they’ve understood correctly.

Listen To Learn

Accepting NewSmart and Humility as well as practising Quieting Ego, Managing Self, and Reflective Listening lays the groundwork for relationship building with others. What else can you do to help yourself better focus on and connect with other people? Here are five keys to connecting with others: (1) be present, (2) be genuine, (3) communicate affirmation, (4) listen effectively, and (5) communicate support. Trust doesn’t just happen—it takes hard work, and it requires slowing down and taking time to be genuine with and care about other people.

Otherness: Emotionally Connecting and Relating to Others

Old Cultural Ways:Individual wins, Play cards close to the chest, Highest ranking person wins, Listen to confirm, Telling, Knowing, IQ, Mistakes are bad, Competing, Self-promote. New Cultural Ways:Teams win, Transparency, the Best idea wins, Listening to learn, Asking questions, Being good at not knowing, IQ & EQ, Mistakes are learning opportunities, Collaborate, Self-reflect.

The NewSmart Organization

To manage and lead a team, you need to meditate so that you dissolve your ego. Buddhism for the corporate world.

Humility Is the New Smart Your job is at risk—if not now, then soon. We are on the leading edge of a Smart Machine Age led by artificial intelligence that will be as transformative for us as the Industrial Revolution was for our ancestors. Smart machines will take over millions of jobs in manufacturing, office work, the service sector, the professions, you name it. Not only can they know more data and analyze it faster than any mere human, say Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig, but smart machines are free of the emotional, psychological, and cultural baggage that so often mars human thinking. So we can't beat 'em and we can't join 'em. To stay relevant, we have to play a different game. Hess and Ludwig offer us that game plan. We need to excel at critical, creative, and innovative thinking and at genuinely engaging with others—things machines can't do well. The key is to change our definition of what it means to be smart. Hess and Ludwig call it being NewSmart. In this extraordinarily timely book, they offer detailed guidance for developing NewSmart attitudes and four critical behaviors that will help us adapt to the new reality. The crucial mindset underlying NewSmart is humility—not self-effacement but an accurate self-appraisal: acknowledging you can't have all the answers, remaining open to new ideas, and committing yourself to lifelong learning. Drawing on extensive multidisciplinary research, Hess and Ludwig emphasize that the key to success in this new era is not to be more like the machines but to excel at the best of what makes us human.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

creativity

Creativity

Smart machines are replacing more and more jobs. Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig show how to develop abilities that machines don't have so we can thrive in this Smart Machine Age. Underlying them all is a sense of personal humility: honestly recognizing our limitations and working to mitigate them. In nearly every industry, smart machines are replacing human labor. It's not just factory jobs-automated technologies are handling people's investments, diagnosing illnesses, and analyzing written documents. If we humans are going to endure, Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig say we're going to need a dose of humility. We need to be humble enough to let go of the idea that smart means knowing the most, using that information quickest, and making the fewest mistakes. Smart machines will always be better than we are at those things. Instead, we need to cultivate important abilities that smart machines don't have (yet): thinking critically, creatively, and innovatively and building close relationships with others so we can collaborate effectively. Hess and Ludwig call this being NewSmart. To develop these abilities, we need to practice four specific behaviors: keeping our egos out of our way, managing our thoughts and emotions to curb any biases or defensiveness, listening to others with an open mind, and connecting with others socially and emotionally. What all these behaviors have in common is, again, humility-avoiding self-centeredness so we can learn from and work with other humans. Hess and Ludwig offer a guide to developing these NewSmart abilities and to creating organizations where these qualities are encouraged and rewarded.

Edward D. Hess

Katherine Ludwig

Humility Is the New Smart

Culture is a system of behaviours that you hope most people will follow, most of the time. No large organization ever gets anywhere near 100 percent compliance on every value, but some do much better than others. It’s actually a minor miracle if a culture isn’t dysfunctional. Our aim here is to be better, not perfect.

What Culture Is

Culture is not like a mission statement; you can’t just set it up and have it last forever.There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard. This is also true of culture. If you see something off-culture and ignore it, you’ve created a new culture. Meanwhile, as business conditions shift and your strategy evolves, you have to keep changing your culture accordingly. The target is always moving. Culture isn’t a magical set of rules that makes everyone behave the way you’d like.

What Culture Is Not

Creating a culture is more complex than just trying to get your people to behave the way you want them to when no one is looking. Remember that your employees are far from uniform. They come from different countries, races, genders, backgrounds, even eras. Each one brings to your organization a different cultural point of departure. To get all of them to conform to and be reasonably happy with a common set of norms is a challenging puzzle.

Creating A Company Culture

Culture clearly has a powerful effect. So how do you shape it, how do you set it deep in people’s minds, and how do you fix it when it goes wrong?The right answer for your company depends on what your company is, what it does, and what it wants to be. Your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there. It’s the set of assumptions your employees use to resolve the problems they face every day. It’s how they behave when no one is looking. If you don’t methodically set your culture, then two-thirds of it will end up being accidental, and the rest will be a mistake.

The Effect Of Culture

Culture isn't what you say, it's what you do.

Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want? To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions. It is the set of assumptions employees use to resolve everyday problems: should I stay at the Red Roof Inn, or the Four Seasons? Should we discuss the color of this product for five minutes or thirty hours? If culture is not purposeful, it will be an accident or a mistake. What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, a man convicted of murder who ran the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture. Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture. What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted? Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do. This book aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be—and others want to follow.

What You Do Is Who You Are

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