Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators and Icons Accelerate Success

Initial Thoughts on Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators and Icons Accelerate success by Shane Snow

Smartcuts by Shane Snow provides the tools necessary to accelerate your journey to success by working smartly. It is not about taking shortcuts. We are living in an age of non-traditional ladder climbing. To compete and innovate, you need to take a non-traditional path.

To succeed in today's environment, you have to think like a hacker. If you want your business to grow fast, or you want to accelerate your career, you must hack the process. Hacking the process is a mindset you use to get to where you need to go quickly.

Shane Snow hopes that by the time you finish reading Smartcuts, you will believe the following:

“Serendipity can be engineered, luck can be manufactured, convention can be defied, and that the best paths to success — no matter how you define it — are different today from what they were yesterday.”

Reading a book summary is an excellent way to get the key concepts from business books. It’s also a great way to decide which books to buy to explore more deeply. Click the Readitforme link to join. Think of this subscription as your speed-reading superpower. You read the summary, therefore, you can digest and process the book faster.

Summary of Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators and Icons Accelerate success by Shane Snow

Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

Warp Pipe is a secret mechanism to accelerate success – to hack your success. How can you find a better route to success? Smartcuts is sustainable success achieved through smart work. Lateral thinking is your smartcut to success.

The fastest route to success is never traditional. You need a mentor to guide your journey. A mentor can help to shorten the ladder to success. If you cannot find traditional mentors, there are many invisible mentors around. These are people you can learn from by observing the details of their lives and emulating the traits that work for you. Every autobiography published, and YouTube video of a superstar created, will give you more access to role models. Study the lives of your invisible mentors – your role models.

“Socrates mentored young Plato, who in turn mentored Aristotle. Aristotle mentored a boy named Alexander, who went on to conquer the known world as Alexander the Great.”

A good mentor guides you on your journey and can help you skip several steps up the ladder. For mentorship to work, mentor and protege have to expose their vulnerabilities and form deep and organic relationships. Studies show that informal mentoring is more effective that structured mentoring programs.

Effects of Feedback

“Psychologists have argued about the effects of feedback interventions, or critiques, on behavior and performance. Various studies have shown that such interventions improved learning, while others “prove” that feedback has negative effects on performance.”

Whether feedback boosts or hinders performance depends on how much the feedback causes the individual to focus on herself rather than the task. The closer feedback moves us to ourselves, the more negative the impact. With negative feedback, separate yourself from the perceived failure and turn the experience into an objective experiment.

What the Second City Does to Accelerate Performer's Growth

1. Gives them rapid feedback.
2. Depersonalize feedback.
3. Lowers the stakes and pressure.

Smartcuts: Using Platforms to Accelerate Success

Platforms are tools and environments that let us stand on the shoulders of giants to achieve success faster. You build on the work of other great thinkers before you. Smartcuts is about how to be the best with less effort than anyone.

• How can you use platforms in a learning environment?
• What would be the best way to learn new skills?
• What is the least wasteful way to learn?
• How can you make learning fun?
• How can you make learning key skills easy?

 The Business of Platforms Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World

Smartcuts by Shane Snow gave me permission to let go of long cherished beliefs about how to get things.

“While we need deep expertise in our industries to become innovators, we actually need only higher-order thinking and the ability to use platforms to do everything else. What’s important today is knowing how to use platforms to retrieve the information we need…. In the age of platforms, creative problem solving is more valuable than computational skills.”

Smartcuts: Things to Master a Skill

1. Higher-order thinking
2. Ability to use platforms and know how to retrieve information.

“Part of learning the discipline is learning to communicate in the language of the discipline,”

says Dr. David Moursund, Emeritus Professor, University of Oregon. What Dr David Moursund says is similar to what the Foundation for Critical Thinking writes in many of their books.

For instance, if you want to learn problem solving skills, you must learn how to think like a skilled problem solver. Similarly, Keith Devlin, Stanford executive and World Economic Forum and American Mathematical Society fellow says,

“Get the thinking right and the skills come largely for free.”

It appears that when you learn how to use the tool first, mastering the skill is much faster. Hands-on learning and the use of tools often helps you to want to learn more and to get rapid feedback and grasp the skill. It’s a better way to develop a skill than memorizing information.

In the book, Snow mentions that Samantha John created a programming language for the iPad called Hopscotch. This app allows kids to generate their own games. Hopscotch is very easy to use. All the kids have to do is swipe. This type of learning is called constructionism or learning by making and manipulating objects.

A great way to develop a skill is to apply the skills to solve problems, create models, to enhance your understanding of the world. A great example is the educational system in Finland. Finland became the best in a short amount of time by focusing on teaching tools and problem solving instead of the memorization techniques that most schools use. They hired only teachers with a master’s degree. These actions allowed them to create a higher educational platform that give kids an advantage.

1. How to learn vs. how to memorize.
2. How to think vs. what to think.

They allow the students to construct their own future. They become entrepreneurs of their lives. Students have a compelling reason for wanting to learn.

As I was reading Smartcuts by Shane Snow, I was having a hard time getting a deeper understanding of what platforms are. I know that Snow says that they are tools and environments, but what does that mean? What kind of tools and what kind of environments? Fortunately, as I read more of the book, I found the answer.

“Platform can take the form of tools and technology like games and tires and calculators; they can also take the form of environments like pro racing leagues or super-standard schools. In either case, the platform amplifies the effort and teaches skills in the process of using it…. Platforms teach us skills and allow us to focus on being great, rather than reinventing wheels or repeating ourselves.”

The tools, technology, and environments that the author mentions in the quotation are used in the book. What tool or platform can you use to learn in-demand skills faster? What tool or platform can you use for your professional development? You simply build on the work of others. And you can accelerate your learning if you know how to train. You can study videos of masters of each skill. For instance, if you want to learn problem solving, you can learn the skill by applying a problem-solving model.

How to Catch the Wave

Surfers understand the concept of catching the wave very well. They pay attention to the waves building up, deciding which ones to ignore and which ones to catch. If they decide to catch a wave, they position themselves in the right place at the right time. You can apply the concept of catching the wave in other situations. Seek out opportunities. Place yourself at the right place at the right time.

Two Ways to Catch a Wave

1. Working hard
2. Recognizing patterns

Recognizing patterns is the better option, so that you can position yourself in the right place at the right time to capitalize on catching the wave. Pattern recognition is a great skill to have. To compete, learn how to pick out the right conditions. Watch the waves, get in the water and experiment. You have to get in the water, that’s the only way you can catch the wave. That means you have to schedule time for ‘swimming’.

It used to be common belief that those who caught a commercial wave had an unfair advantage over their competitors. Research now shows that not to be the case. Fast followers benefit from what is called the free rider effect.

“Pioneers clear the way in terms of market education and infrastructure and learn the hard lessons, so the next guys can steal what works, learn objectively from the first movers’ failures, and spend more effort elsewhere. The first wave clears the way for a more powerful ride.”

There are times when the first wave is the best wave to get in on, but how can you decide whether to get on the wave or second wave? The ability to recognize patterns can help. If you understand how to spot patterns in your field, you will know if the big wave comes alone, or if a second or third wave will follow soon after.

Learn to experiment with trends early on. Stick your toes in different waters until you learn how to identify the different kinds of waves. Deliberate practice is important, but it is going into the water, watching the waves, and experimenting that will lead to incredible success.

Superconnectors

Superconnecting is the act of making mass connections by tapping into people who already have many connections. You want to partner with people who already have a large audience that is similar to the one you are seeking. Then you have to build a relationship with that audience. Superconnecting is about learning what people need, then figuring out how to create something of value. Giving is the smartcut for partnering with Superconnectors and creating serendipity.

Have you read?

What Does Serendipity Mean, and Can You Plan it?

Momentum

When you catch the wave in business, to maintain success, forward motion is necessary. You need to make progress. Even a tiny win works wonders on a person. You just need to be moving. Momentum is a powerful predictor of success.

Newton's 3 Laws of Motion

1. An object at rest stays at rest.
2. Force is equal to the change in momentum (mV) per change in time. f=ma
3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

How can you build momentum? Spend time building up potential energy so that you can capitalize on unexpected opportunities that come your way. These opportunities can be amplified.

Simplicity

Simplification will often make the difference between good and amazing. People talk about innovation, but often than not they are talking about something new. However,

“Innovation is about doing something differently, rather than creating something from nothing (invention) or doing the same thing better (improvement)…. Disruptive innovation is when the introduction of a lower cost product steals market share from existing players…Every disruptive product is simplification.”

Get rid of the unnecessary from your life. There are times when you have to strip away the non-essentials. Focus on what you need to know and forget about everything else. Creativity comes easier within constraints. Finnish schools are much better because they offer less subjects but go deeper. They de-emphasize general knowledge and instead focused on vocational skills.

10 X Thinking

Ten times thinking is the art of the very large swing. You have to think radically differently. 10X goals force you to identify smartcuts.

“10X goals force you to come up with smartcuts. “I joke that this is a moon-shot factory,” Astro Teller says, of Google [x]  “Our belief is that if you can get people to let go of their fear, and to be more intellectually open, intellectually honest, more dispassionate about being creative, trying new things, and then being honest about what the results are instead of having all these other issues cloud their judgment, you can get to a radically better solution in honestly about the same amount of tine, about the same amount of resources, as making the 10-percent improvement.” Elon Musk calls this “getting to first principles.””

First principles give us permission to let go of old paradigms. You often hear about going for the low hanging fruit, but if you want to achieve great success, it is better to go for the higher hanging fruit. There is less competition than at the top. It is more challenging, and you need more expertise, and it provides fuel for 10X thinking. This allows us to realize our true potential.

1. How might your life change if you did 10X better?
2. How can you leverage technology to use 10X thinking?

To create something that's 10X better you have to be a great salesperson and marketer to convince customers why they should choose you over what they currently have access to. But if you make something 10X better you are producing a lot of new value.

Nine Principles of Smartcuts

1. Hacking the Ladder
2. Training with Masters
3. Rapid Feedback
4. Platforms
5. Catching Waves
6. Superconnecting
7. Momentum
8. Simplicity
9. 10x Thinking

Core Idea from Smartcuts

The core idea in Smartcuts is how to use tools and hacks to accelerate your success journey. How many people can I help to get bigger and better. Education can lift people out of poverty. How can I contribute to this movement.

Quotes I Like from Smartcuts

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde

The most accomplished people read books every day. They carve out the time in their schedule. When they face a problem, they often find the solution embedded in the pages of a book. Let me help you to solve your own problems. Click the link MoreReads: Blueprint to Change the World to buy.

Some of the Books Mentioned in Smartcuts by Shane Snow

• Chicken Soup for the Soul
• Success Principles, Jack Canfield
• Give and Take, Adam Grant
• Richistan, Richard Frank
• The Progress Principle, Seven J Kramer
• A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Films Mentioned in Smartcuts

• The Karate Kid
• Star Wars
• The Matrix
• Searching for Bobby Fischer
• The Crocodile Hunter

 Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking The Business of Platforms Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World Learning How to Learn Teach Yourself How to Learn Non-Obvious 2019