1. Don’t play numbers with owner compensation. Pay yourself a market based wage and only take profit distributions when your company has matured enough to do so according to the four forces of cash flow.
2. The amount of productivity per dollar of labor is one metric that determines the success of your business
3. Don’t spend down your profit to avoid paying taxes. Getting 30 cents on the dollar is not a good strategy when you’re buying depreciating assets.

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. Get your owner salary correct (market based wage) first so that the books accurately reflect the state of your business.
2. Get your pre-tax profit before taxes to 10% as a minimum. Only hire when you push it up to 15%. Use profit thresholds to drive business decisions.
3. Determine a core (operating) capital goal for weathering up and down times in the market i.e. 6 months of overhead
4. Follow the four forces of cash flow like a finanical order of operations
   1. Pay your taxes – always set aside a percentage of profit for taxes
   2. Repay your debt – repay your debt with the rest of your profit
   3. Reach core capital target – contribute toward a goal amount of operating capital
   4. Take profit distributions – only when you have reached core capital target and repaid debt should you take profit distributions.

1. Being an expert and guide isn’t about having all answers. It’s about being a step ahead of your audience and showing them how you got where you are today. Its about being able to communicate new opportunities and unite people for a future-based cause.
2. The job of an expert is to create frameworks. Frameworks are a systematic synthesis of everything you’ve learned about a topic into bite sized chunks that the audience can understand.
3. Don’t create a improvement offer, create a new opportunity. Improvement offers say, I’m going to give you this product which is x amount better than the competition. New opportunity offers present a product as a totally new thing. This takes away the buyers sense that the price should be a certain amount and lowers the threshold for the person to buy it. Brunson gives 4 steps on how to create this type of offer in Secret #4.
4. To Create belief in the buyers mind about your product you have to learn to see their false belief and counteract them with stories. This may be the most powerful lesson from the whole book.
5. You have to sell people on the strategies before you can teach the tactics. Teaching tactics will ruin your pitch

Example of a Framework:

Brunson says there are 3 core groups of people in each marketplace:

• “The Diehard” is in love with the current product. Switching a Diehard to a new product requires a major identity shift
• “The Satisfied” uses the product they bought but isn’t in love with it. Switching the Satisfied to a new product requires a significant price or value benefit
• “The Frustrated” also use the product they bought, but they hate it. They’re actively seeking a better product that can fit their desires. Switching a Frustrated person to a new product requires finding them, gaining their trust, and giving them a small amount of education

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. My one sentence summary of my practice will be “We help the average joe who just wants to get our of pain achieve optimal whole-body health and wellness through specific chiropractic care and corrective exercise.”
2. I’m going to create, write down, and organize frameworks on specific topics that I am interested in. Then I’m going to test, name, and describe them, just as he outlines in Secret #1.
3. Brunson says to keep track of all the objections for your product. Then figure out what was the false belief that made them not want to buy your product. Then think of a story from your own life of how you overcame that false belief. Keep a list of stories for each false belief and grow your story inventory. Eventually, selling your product will come down to reading where the prospect is and telling the right story. He spends secrets 7-10 detailing how to create belief in your buyers with his frameworks.

This book was so tactical that it’s one your going to want to read yourself if you are interested in sales yourself. I’m still going through and trying to apply specific concepts from different chapters. Dan Silvestre has a fantastic summary of the book on his website for reference.

1. The most-important component of creating a sales machine is “pig-headed discipline and determination”. A lot of times in sales, its simply volume that we’re missing. If we are strategic, we are more likely to get more out of our efforts, but you still have to be extremely persistent.
2. Investing in your staff in the form of training, effective workshop meetings, and performance based bonuses can help sky-rocket your success. Being surrounded by the right people is paramount.
3. The ability to sell is vital when running a business. Being able to ethically see when someone needs your product and convert them on it is key. This skill is really the lifeblood of your business.

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. A good rule of thumb for time management is to keep a master list of everything you need to get done. Then, everyday, pick 6 things you will do that day. Each one should take, on average, one hour. If you have bigger tasks that take longer, either break them up into smaller ones or put less tasks in your day.
2. Hold workshops early when problems arise. Let the best solutions rise to the top and test them using data to measure if the problem is solved. If you strategically hold these workshops weekly or biweekly on the right problems you can see meteoric progress.
3. Choose your ideal client and pursue them radically, as detailed in the Dream 100 framework in strategy 9.

Summary

Strategy 1: Time Management Secrets of Billionaires

1. Touch it Once Rule: Act immediately to avoid repetition. Assess if you have time to address a task. If yes, tackle it immediately; if not, defer it until later.
2. Make Lists: Create a daily to-do list with a maximum of six high-priority tasks. Start with a master list and select six items daily.
3. Allocate Time: Plan how much time to dedicate to each task, ensuring your workday doesn’t exceed six hours to accommodate emergencies.
4. Plan Your Day: Schedule your day by the hour to accomplish your six important tasks effectively.
5. Prioritize: Arrange tasks in order of importance, completing the most critical ones first. Use an hourly calendar to assign time slots.
6. Throw Things Away: Evaluate if keeping a document is necessary. Discard unnecessary items or delegate them promptly.

Strategy 2: Instituting Higher Standards and Regular Training

In any effective business, training for employees needs to be scheduled regularly and systematized.

1. Lecture-Format Training: Ideal for subjects involving substantial information and data, particularly during the initial session. This format provides a structured overview and foundation.
2. Group-Questions Training: Enables employees to seek clarity and tailor information to their specific roles. Interactivity enhances engagement and retention, making the training more impactful.
3. Demonstration Training: Effective for teaching task-oriented skills, such as demonstrating a new script for cold calls. Follow-up role-playing sessions enhance comprehension and application of demonstrated techniques.
4. Hot-Seat Training: Focuses on improving employees’ skills in areas they’ve already received training. Through personalized feedback and targeted questioning, employees identify areas for improvement and refine their abilities.

Strategy 3: Executing Effective Meetings (Workshops)

Template for Workshops

Hold meetings with clear objectives. Should start with one problem in mind and have it on a whiteboard at the front.

Give each employee three minutes to come up with solutions. Everyone talks about their ideas. Vote on the best ones. Then implement the solutions with your best employees and track important metrics. Test it for a couple weeks and see if there is improvement.

Strategy 4: Becoming a Brilliant Strategist

Education-based marketing is the most effective strategy to get front of mind in the prospects head. Offering high-value education is the way to get in the door and your presentation shouldn’t pitch your product. It should:

1. Use market data to pinpoint the problem
2. Help the prospect feel the emotion of the problem
3. Provide evidence for a solution (making it a logical conclusion that their product is the solution without ever pitching it)

Strategy 5: Hiring Superstars

Holmes details the importance of hiring superstars in sales. Superstars are the people that thrive in their job from the get-go even without extensive training. They are confident, determined, and driven. He explains how to craft your hiring ad with this type of person in mind and how to interview them with a “trial-by-fire” type of approach.

Strategy 6: The High Art of Getting the Best Buyers

You need to have a “best-buyer” for your product. Clearly define who they are, why they are your best buyer, and figure out where to go get them.

Strategy 7: The Seven Musts of Marketing

Every outstanding marketing program, according to Holmes, contains seven “musts” that can turbocharge your sales efforts:

1. advertising
2. corporate literature
3. direct mail
4. public relations
5. market education
6. personal contact
7. the internet

Strategy 8: The Eyes Have It!

Holmes gives some types for utilizing visual appeal in your sales presentations:

• Each slide should contain only three to four bullet points.
• Use color to emphasize important information.
• Do not spend too much time on one section. Your audience stays more interested and focused when you move at a faster pace.
• Include factual information that teaches your audience something new at the beginning. This establishes relevancy and credibility for your product.
• Use stories with corresponding images or graphs. This helps your audience connect personally with the problems your product solves.
• Your presentation must focus on the individual customer’s needs and how you’ll help them solve a problem, not on the product’s great benefits.

Strategy 9: The Nitty-Gritty of Getting the Best Buyers

The “Dream 100” strategy, as outlined by Holmes, is a systematic approach to acquiring top-tier ideal clients. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

1. Choose Gifts and Create Your “Dream 100” Letter:
   • Select small, thoughtful gifts to send to your dream clients monthly to ensure brand recognition.
   • Accompany each gift with a personalized letter emphasizing the value proposition of your product or service.
   • For example, send a small stopwatch along with a letter highlighting the importance of time management and offering a free executive briefing on industry insights.
2. Create Your Dream 100 Calendar and Conduct Dream 100 Call Follow-Ups:
   • Develop a calendar outlining monthly promotional mailings to each dream client.
   • Include various promotional materials such as articles, press releases, surveys, promos, or newsletters.
   • Follow up each mailing with a phone call to further engage the client and answer any questions.
   • Use this opportunity to set up a meeting for a more detailed presentation of your offerings.
3. Present the Executive Meeting:
   • Secure a meeting with the prospective client and follow the educational marketing format.
   • Highlight key industry challenges or insights during the presentation.
   • Conclude with a subtle solution, emphasizing how your product or service can address the highlighted problems effectively.

Strategy 10: Sales Skills

Holmes elaborates on the importance of maximizing every interaction with dream clients by viewing sales as a multi-stage process. Here’s a breakdown of each stage:

1. Building Rapport:
   • Establishing a connection and building trust with the client is essential. This involves active listening, empathizing with their needs, and finding common ground.
2. Qualifying Your Buyer Based on Need:
   • Understand the client’s specific needs, challenges, and goals to determine if your product or service is a suitable solution. Qualifying helps prioritize resources and efforts towards prospects with genuine potential.
3. Building Value by Matching Your Product to Your Customer’s Buying Criteria:
   • Highlight the unique value propositions of your offering that align with the client’s needs and preferences. This involves demonstrating how your product or service addresses their pain points and delivers tangible benefits.
4. Creating a Strong Desire:
   • Foster enthusiasm and interest in your offering by showcasing its benefits and advantages. Use compelling storytelling, case studies, and demonstrations to evoke emotions and create a sense of urgency.
5. Overcoming Objections:
   • Address any concerns or objections the client may have regarding your product or service. This requires active listening, empathetic responses, and providing relevant information or solutions to alleviate doubts.
6. Closing the Sale:
   • Guide the client towards making a purchasing decision by presenting a clear and compelling call to action. This may involve negotiating terms, finalizing details, and securing commitment.
7. Follow-Up:
   • After closing the sale, maintain communication with the client to ensure satisfaction, address any post-sale concerns, and nurture the relationship for potential future opportunities. Follow-up reinforces trust, encourages repeat business, and facilitates referrals.

Strategy 11: Follow-up and Client Bonding Skills

Follow-up is vitally important in sales, Holmes focuses on three components:

1. Post-Purchase Dissonance:
   • Holmes highlights the concept of post-purchase dissonance, which occurs when a completed order is canceled due to dissatisfaction or changing circumstances. This underscores the need for sales professionals to anticipate and address potential buyer remorse or uncertainties post-purchase.
2. Importance of Subsequent Transactions:
   • Holmes emphasizes that the majority of revenue often comes from subsequent transactions rather than the initial sale. This underscores the significance of fostering long-term relationships with clients to maximize lifetime customer value.
3. Building Lasting Relationships:
   • Holmes suggests that transitioning from a salesperson to a trusted friend or advisor to the client is crucial for securing repeat business. By building rapport, understanding clients’ needs, and delivering exceptional service, sales professionals can establish lasting relationships built on trust and mutual benefit.

Strategy 12: All Systems Go

Strategy 12, “All Systems Go,” serves as a culmination of the previous eleven strategies, guiding you on how to measure and optimize your efforts for continued success. Here’s an overview of the key components:

1. Daily Affirmations:
   • Transform your goals into daily affirmations to embed them into your subconscious mind. By repeating affirmations regularly, you reinforce your commitment to achieving your objectives and maintain focus on your long-term vision.
2. Written Goals:
   • Document your goals to solidify them and stimulate your brain to start working towards their realization. Writing down specific, measurable goals, such as sales targets or business growth percentages, helps clarify your objectives and directs your actions accordingly.
3. Measurement and Improvement:
   • Regularly assess your effectiveness by measuring key metrics related to your goals. For example, track sales calls, follow-ups, and their outcomes to evaluate your performance. If results stagnate or fail to meet expectations, identify areas for improvement and adjust your strategies accordingly.

1. You’re not broken just because you struggle with anxiety.
2. Anxiety is simply an alarm system. The body is trying to tell you that something is wrong and you need to address it for your own safety. This alarm system can go haywire and become habitual, but it almost always starts with a legitimate trigger, whether concsiouc or subconscious.
3. Building a non-anxious life can be broken down into six daily choices that, with intentionality, can usher in waves of peace

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. Remember that I am not in charge of my life. I am not the master. I can’t control everything. Remember God’s role and that it’s a whole lot bigger than yours. Trust in that.
2. Be present and mindful. Turn off the music. Go for walks and think. Feel the pain of a workout. Feel the joy of connection with loved ones.
3. Push yourself to meet new friends and don’t only be complacent with current ones. Reach out to people and talk even when you don’t feel like it. Connection breeds peace. Lean on it.

Summary

Choosing Reality

Your body keeps the score. It knows things you may be consciously ignoring. It knows when you are about to lose your job. It knows you’re not taking care of your health. It knows when you’re not putting in the work you know you need to. Ignoring it is not a true option to have a peaceful life. Confront reality, listen to the alarms that your body is ringing, and address the source of the issue.

Choosing Connection

Dr. Doloney eloquently says that if your body will let you be lonely without waking you up at 3 AM to do something about it, it’s doing you a disservice. Your body knows the importance of connection. It’s not an option. It’s not a personality thing. You need deep connection and people that have your back in order to feel truly safe and at peace.

Choosing Freedom

Are you still doing Christmas the way your in-laws want you to? Does your boss run your life? Cultivating freedom in your life to make your own decisions is a prudent effort any way you can.

Choosing Health and Healing

Again, your body know when you’re not taking care of it. Taking care of your physical health is paramount to experience good mental health.

Choosing Mindfulness

We live a reactionary and distracted life these days. Finding even a moment to simply think to yourself can be rare. This constant stimulation and lack of presence plays a huge role in sounding our anxiety alarms. A simple daily meditation can make a world of difference. For me, choosing mindfulness looks like taking off my earphones when I workout every once in a while. Put down all electronic devices when talking to my wife at night.

Choosing Belief

This tenant turned out to be the biggest for me. I have grown up and remained a Christian my whole life. My faith has always been top priority but sometimes I become very entrenched in what I’m trying to do and forget that I’m not that master of my life. God can take the backseat and I can start thinking that everything is up to me. Remembering that I am not in control can be scary, but trusting in God’s plans leads to peace and an ever present feeling of joy.

The two root issues driving health care’s cost crisis—the appropriateness of care and pricing failures

3 Lessons

1. The driving root causes of surging medical prices are 1) excessively high costs of procedures and 2) the number of unnecessary procedures that are performed.
2. The unnecessarily high costs are due to a lack of pricing transparency, a sort of tug-of-war (the discount-markup game) between hospitals and insurance companies, and the number of unnecessary and predatory middle-men.
3. A large percentage of healthcare procedures are unnecessary. They are either performed for predatory profiteering reasons or more commonly because of a lack of standards between physicians of the same specialty.

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. If you are in an emergency situation, all you have to sign is the informed consent form. You technically do not have to sign and can even strike out the portion that says you will be liable for all payment.
2. Using a site like Healthcare Bluebook is a great way for patients to shop around for better-priced healthcare and create more of a free market
3. The downfalls of the healthcare industry aren’t simply greedy people at the top. It’s a whole system that is bloated in multiple areas with too many middlemen, a lack of price transparency to stimulate a free market, and too many unnecessary procedures. The author has promising hope for the future as there are companies now that are starting to disrupt the status quo. The book ends in a hopeful manner saying that change is in the future.

Summary – Why is Healthcare So Expensive

Screenings

• Early screening can be an effective way to catch diseases in their early stages, however, over-screening for disease can paradoxically become a bad thing. Vascular surgeons are a perfect example of this. Many times they will have screenings at places like churches and recruit patients for procedures. Oftentimes these procedures are based on questionable tests that are positive in a large number of people who don’t neccessarily need the procedure (high false positive rate). Dr. Makary says that surgeons can get isolated in their own ways. When two surgeons become isolated one may be performing surgeries on a large percentage of people that don’t need it without even being aware of this problem. He calls for benchmarks so that doctors should be informed if their rates of certain surgeries are deviated from an expected standard, indicating they may be performing unnecessary procedures.

Inflate–Discount Game with Insurance companies

• Because insurance companies pay for so many procedures, hospitals give insurance companies a discount on their services. Hospitals often raise their prices yearly to combat this issue, and in response the insurance company requests a steeper discount percentage. This cycle continues year after year causing the sticker prices of services to skyrocket. While an insurance company may only pay $5,000 for a surgery, the sticker price may be upwards of $25,000

PE firms and air ambulances

• This is an example of privatization gone wrong. Hostpitals used to own their helicopters but it was extremely expensive to run an air ambulance program. Eventually private equity companies took over this industry and developed a monopoly. Prices have raised to astronomical rates, causing patients to have to pay upwards of $50,000 for certain flights. These companies operate at a monstrous profit margin due to the lack of competition in the space.

Lack of Benchmarks i.e. caesereans on Fridays

• As mentioned before, Dr. Makary calls for the use of benchmarks to hold physicians accountable and inform them of their patterns. For example, physicians rates of caesareans were monitored and found to have a soaring rate on late friday afternoons. Is there a physiological reason for needed ceasareans at this time, or do doctors just want to get home on time on Friday? I have my guess. This isn’t even neccessarily malevolent. It may simply be unconscious bias in decision making but taking the massive amount of data we have and creating benchmarks for physicians can help inform doctors of times they may be performing innapropriate care.

Prescription benchmarks

• Opioid prescription is all over the place and physicians don’t have a good standard to look to when prescribing. One would think that specific surgeries have a set amount of opioids to prescribe, but the truth is it depends on the physician. To be quite frank, it often depends on when the doctor went to medical school and what was taught. This is crazy to me and seems like a simple reform. Dr. Makary said that their are organizations looking into creating prescription standards for different procedures so that there would be some level of standardization of care.

The Middlemen

• Pharmaceutical Benefits Managers (PBMs) are companies that manage the pharmaceutical benefit plans provided by Health Insurance. They are paid by the insurance company to negotiate deals with pharmaceutical companies and create a pricing structure that the health insurance will use for their patients. PBMs get paid for their services and they also make money on the spread. The spread is the markup from the price they paid the pharmaceutical company for a medication to the price they charge the insurance company. Dr. Makary says that this can soar up to 500% at times; meaning that a PBM may pay $10 for a drug and charge the Health Insurance (an indirectly the policy holder) $50 and pocket the spread of $40. He says that PBMs have clever ways to hide the spread and basically make it very hard for anyone to see this massive markup.
• Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) are companies that combine the purchasing power of companies and buy in bulk to get discounts on various equipment. For example, a GPO would negotiate with a hospital bed manufacturer to get the beds in bulk for many hospitals at a discounted price. This, in theory, could lower healthcare practice but in practice actually does the opposite. Manufacturers actually end up paying the GPOs to keep their equipment catalogued, raising the price of the product. As competition gets stiffer in an industry the manufacturer has to pay the GPO more and more to keep market share, continuously raising the price. In addition, since this is just a numbers game for the GPO, doctor’s get less and less say about the quality of their equipment. If an innnovative product comes onto the scene that a doctor wants, they better hope that the manufacturer has the massive capital to pay the GPO to catalogue it. Instead the mass of the GPOs usually just maintain the status quo.

1. Effectiveness is doing the right things well. It is a focus on contribution
2. Effectiveness is not the default state, but it can be learned.
3. Most people are not effective because they don’t know their strengths and they don’t know where they time is going.

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. Know thy strengths, and know thy time
   1. To know strength = Feedback analysis
      1. Take on new roles; predict your abilities; review 6 months later
      2. i.e. you volunteer at a chiropractic screening; predict your ability to make small talk with random people; review later to determine if your prediction stacked up with your actual performance.
      3. List some different roles and responsibilities and find what you don’t know if you are good at or not and go test it.
      Most people think they know what they are good at; they are usually wrong – Peter Drucker
   2. To know thy time = Time Log
      1. Track your work time for a week or two. Start with maybe just your 3 most important hours of work
      2. Set an alarm every hour and write down everything you got done in that hour. Even write down the little things.
      3. Then determine the amount of time each hour that was spent doing things that were a unique contributor to success. How much time did you spend doing things that only you could do; work that contributed, and used your strengths.
2. Create a stop doing list with your time log
   1. include all the common distractions, useless meetings, urgent but insignificant problems, and good but not great opportunities.
3. Create an offload list
   1. All the things that could be done by someone else just as well eif not better than by yourself.
      1. Cleaning, data entry, formatting documents, etc.
4. Create a To Do list
   1. After creating the stop doing and offload list, use your time audit to create a list of things that only you can do to make a unique contribution using your strengths.

4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkman was a refreshing read on the philosophy of time management. Burkman argues that our root issue is our belief that we can “get everything done”. This believe leads to what Burkman coins “Existential Overwhelm”, a state that likely everyone has felt when they felt like they were on a conveyor belt of task after task, thinking that the next completion will bring them closer to some arbitrary sense of meaning, but realizing the the completion of one task typically results in the creation of two more. 

His argument is to accept this dire fact not as a curse, but as a blessing. We necessarily cannot get everything done, which means that we neccesarily must be free to not get everything done. Therefore we must release ourselves from the guilt of not getting things done, and instead choose what is most important and do what we can to push that forward. 

test

I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones. ― Ray Dalio

The second main argument is that this striving to get everything done to attain some feeling of having succeeded is a terrible way to live in the first place. We work hard in highschool so we can go to college, we work hard in college to get a good job, we work hard at one job to get a different job so that eventually we can retire, and we retire to be able to do things that we should have been doing a long time ago. He argues that instead we must choose to ditch this lifestyle of future striving and work toward a lifestyle of enjoying the now. Our life is simply a collection of the events we actually experienced. If we went on vacation with our family but were working in the hotel room the whole time, we really didn’t go on vacation at all. We perpetually ignore the present for a future that never comes. 

So what is the solution to all this toiling for the future, striving to get everything done and being angry out ourselves when we don’t accomplish the impossible? Here is my practical takeways from Burkman’s book

1. Have a moment (possibly daily) where you realize and accept that you won’t get everything that you would like to done, and that this is okay. Set this frame of mind for the future. 

2. Tell yourselft that you will experience today, whatever it is. We plan for the future in predefined times, we live in the moment the rest of the time.

3. Keep a Open & Closed todo list. Ali abdaal calls this a might do and do list. 

– One is a long list of things you would like to do. The other is a list of things you are currently doing. Only allow 3-5 things to be on the closed list at any one time. Only move something from open to closed list when you finish on of the things on the closed list. 

– This keeps us from teetertottering between tasks and keeps us focused on what our past selves deemed important rather than succumbing to our emotional waves of motivation. 

4. Avoid the Efficiency Trap & Practice Strategic Underachievement

– Typically the more Efficient we get at something, the more we do (or are demanded to do) that thing. 

– For example, if we become able to answer double the number of emails in an hour, that doesn’t usually cut our work in half, it just doubles the expectation. 

– This doesn’t mean efficiency isn’t something to strive for. It certainly is in some areas. But it is not the end all solution and in fact is sometimes a trap. 

– Thus we need to avoid trying to become efficient at things that don’t push our ultimate goals forward but are instead going to speed the treadmill of tasks in our lives. 

– Strategic Underachievement is the realization that we are necessarily going to underachieve on most things in life. Thus, we might as well choose to underachieve on that thing. 

– If you cannot clean the kitchen perfectly, mow the lawn perfectly, and parent your child well at the same time, lets lower our bar and clean the kitchen and mow the lawn a bit less frequently. Only keep the bar high on things that truly matter.

– This is a neccessary decision that is often not made intentionally but executed randomly at the expense of things that matter.

5. Show up. Be present. And choose to experience life now. Plan for the future, but don’t be a slave to it. 

1. On of, if not the, core desires of a human being is to feel important.
   1. Making others feel important satisfies a core desire. This cultivates more good will than almost any other interaction. It is also a Christ-like way to live, showing other people how they are fearfully and wonderfully made in his image.
2. Being interested is way more important and impactful than being interesting.
   1. Most people are inherently focused on themselves. Being a showoff and succeeding in your own endeavors will almost never gain you friends. Instead show genuine interest in their lives, and you will experience a rich relationship that can’t be earned by performance.
3. Well-placed and thought out praise can almost always replace criticism.
   1. Hoover’s Story During an air show, the renowned WWII pilot Bob Hoover encountered a harrowing situation as both engines of his plane ceased functioning mid-flight. Despite the grave danger, Hoover skillfully maneuvered the aircraft to a safe landing, albeit with significant damage. Miraculously, no injuries were sustained. Upon discovering that the mechanic responsible for servicing his plane had inadvertently filled the tank with jet fuel instead of gasoline, one might anticipate a torrent of rebuke and reprimand from Hoover. However, his response defied conventional expectations. Instead of chastising the trembling mechanic, Hoover approached him with unexpected empathy. Placing a reassuring hand on the mechanic’s shoulder, Hoover uttered words that would leave an indelible impact: “To demonstrate my confidence in your abilities to avoid such errors in the future, I’d like you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”

3 Actionable Takeaways

1. Ruthlessly try to memorize peoples names and call them by it as much as possible.
2. Think of a Unique and Thoughtful Compliment for at least one person a day
   1. so often we gloss over the successes and talents of others. As soon as we watch someone do something impressive, we may start comparing ourselves to them. We move on to the next thing in our own ego-centric world. Make some space to make the other person feel their importance.
3. Ask people their story
   1. You should really know all of your friends stories for why they are where they are. Ask them questions about why they made certain decisions, what brought them to where they are now. Take genuine interest in their story and what makes them uniquely themeselves.

Deep Work is Valuable

• 3 types of people will succeed in the new economy
  1. High-skilled workers i.e. doctors, statisticians
  2. owners and investors of capitol i.e. trump
  3. Superstars i.e. james clear
  • In both the First and Third case, the worker who accumulates vast amounts of deep work will prevail.
• Winners in the New Economy must have two skills
  1. They must be able to learn quickly
  2. They must produce on an elite level
• Quality Work = Time Spent Working x Depth of Focus
  • you can get more done in less time if you work with greater depth

Key Takeaway: Deep work is essential for both learning and creating making you successful in the new economy

Deep Work is Rare

• Deep work is rare for four main reasons
  1. The Metric-Black Hole
  2. The Principle of Least-Resistance
  3. Busyness as a proxy for productivity
  4. The Cult of the Internet
  These issues make it so that shallow work is protected by the lack of accountability and questioned provided bu the fact that people thinj that you are productive simply for being busy

Key Takeaway: The fact that deep work is so rare is not great for companies but it is great for you. If you develop this skill you will stand out

Meaningful

• Deep work is meaningful from the neurological perspective, the psychological perspective, and the philosophical perspective
  • Neurological
  • Psychological
  • Philosophical
• Key Takeaway:

Part 2: How to Work Deep

Work Deeply

• Pick your Style of Deep Work (4 typical varieties)
  1. The Monastic
  2. The Bimodal
  3. The Rythmic
  4. The Jouranalistic
• Ritualize your deep work–how, where, and support (i.e. work on a specifically chosen goal at a specifically chosen place and plan for any needs–like bringing food)
• Make grand gestures
  • i.e. can be as big as renting a hotel room to focus or as small as buying coffee to stay and work.
  • Oftentimes the new environment can help us focus as well as not wanting to lose the sunken costs.
• Don’t work alone
  • He qualifies this and says working with people can be dangerous for our focus as well. He’s just saying not to discount the value of working with other people.
• Execute like a business
  • 4 disciplines of a business
    1. Focus on the Wildly Important
    2. Act on Lead Measures
    3. Keep a Compelling Scorecard
    4. Create a Cadence of Accountability
• Have a Structured and Non-negotiable Down-time
  • Downtime aids insights
  • Downtime helps recharge the energy needed to work deeply
  • The work that the evening wind down replaces is usually not important

Embrace Boredom

• Take certain structured breaks from technology no matter how much it is required of you. You can use tech as much as you need, but you must have certain times that you abstain from use no matter what. This retrains your brain to stop habitually turning to the shallow.
• Try working like Teddy Roosevelt
  • Teddy would devote 8 am – 4 pm to school work. He would workout, eat, and go to class during this time but he would squeeze every other last minute out into his school work. Anytime outside of this window he would spend working on other things which is why he was able to be such a Renaissance man
• Meditate Productively
  • When you are doing physically challenging but mentally void things like walking, spend that time working through a relevant problem that can be attacked by simply thinking.
• Memorize a deck of Cards
  • an interesting challenge that requires you to focus with depth

Quit Social Media

• Apply the Law of the Vital Few
• Quit Social Media
• Don’t use Internet to entertain yourself

Drain the Swallows

• Schedule every minute of the day
• Quantify the Depth of every activity
  • To do this, you ask the question, “How long would it take to train a smart recent college graduate to do this work”
• Ask your boss for a shallow work budget
  • get your boss to agree that some amount of shallow work is not profitable for yourself or the company. Many times this simply goes unquestioned, but when elucidated it becomes clear that the shallow work demands are futile
• Finish your work by 5:30
• Become hard to reach
  • You can make people have to work a little harder to reach you, you can send better emails that require less follow-up, and you can simply not respond to some messages