Canadian author and Farnam Street blogger
Shane Parrish is a Canadian author and podcast host best known for founding Farnam Street (fs.blog), a learning platform dedicated to mastering the best of what others have already figured out. A former intelligence analyst at Canada's Communications Security Establishment, he is the author of Clear Thinking and The Great Mental Models series, and hosts the Knowledge Project podcast, featuring long-form conversations with world-class thinkers on decision-making, leadership, and wisdom.
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Perspective often comes from distance or time. If you’re trying to solve a problem and you’re stuck, try shifting your vantage point. Examples of this are moving up and contemplating the bigger picture, moving down and seeing more details, or assuming the perspective of other stakeholders — customers, suppliers, partners, government. Many problems become clearer if you extend the timeline. What does this situation look like in the weeks, months, and years ahead? Assuming different perspectives allows you to gain a more complete understanding of what’s really going on.
People search for competitive advantages while ignoring the one hiding in plain sight:
Doing what you said you'd do.
People are inconsistent. They don't follow through. They don't follow up...
This means the simple act of being reliable sets you apart.
It's not talent or genius or connections, it's the boring stuff. Reliability is rare.
As more and more people know what model you’re using to manipulate them, they may decide not to respond to your incentives. As your competitors gain knowledge of the model, they respond in kind by adopting the model themselves, thus flattening the field. The model may have been mostly useful in a factory setting, and not in an office setting, or a technology setting. Human beings are not simple automatons: A more complete model would hone in on other motivations they
applied inversion. Here is a brief explanation of his process: Identify the problem Define your objective Identify the forces that support change towards your objective Identify the forces that impede change towards the objective Strategize a solution! This may involve both augmenting or adding to the forces in step 3, and reducing or eliminating the forces in step 4.
The Five Whys is a method rooted in the behavior of children. Children instinctively think in first principles. Just like us, they want to understand what’s happening in the world. To do so, they intuitively break through the fog with a game some parents have come to dread, but which is exceptionally useful for identifying first principles: repeatedly asking “why?