Book Byte #181 "Anatomy of a Breakthrough" by Adam Alter

How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most

📣 Curious Quotes from the Author

“Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work.”

“You can apply this simplification-by-restriction philosophy more broadly by automating as much of your life as possible. Automation restricts your options by eradicating decision points. Instead of choosing between a set of options, for example, you pursue a default option.”

“If you aren’t ready to embrace failure, you can try relaxing your definition of success. This approach traces its roots to the concept of satisficing. The word is a combination of satisfy and sacrifice.”

“Stratospheric standards are paralyzing, often unrealistic, and almost always hollow”

“Perfectionism is stifling, whereas excellence is mobilizing.”

“Mental difficulty is a sign of progress rather than stagnation.”

“Silence quells anxiety, and it inspires deliberation.”

📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea

The secret to making significant progress in both your personal and professional life is to comprehend how habit, action, and cognition interact.

Recognizing that creative barriers are a normal aspect of life is the first step in doing this. The common perception of great ideas coming easily is a fallacy, so we must embrace the reality and necessity of taking time and being persistent. We can make things better by recognizing the value of curiosity and being open to trying new things, and by breaking down our goals into smaller, more manageable chunks to help us stay motivated. We can then proceed from exploration to exploitation in this way, fine-tuning successful techniques through extensive initial trial.

We can go forward with newfound confidence by altering the way we relate to failure and feeling trapped.

🤝Collaborative Insight for Techies

Failure is the world’s greatest Lie. Most people believe failure is something to be avoided, something to be feared, something to be removed from society as best we can.

But failure brings to past many things we don’t normally think about. Failure is the greatest way to learn. Having failed at something insures that you will never forget the mistakes you made, because of how painful it was. Failure causes others to reassess and to look for a better change in the situation. The only way to get better at anything, whether it be your career, relationships or family, is to fail.

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