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May 28 · Issue #70 · View online
Short pieces of advice from books
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Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, and radio and TV personality. He quit his first career—as an almost-rock-star—to become a writer. He has worked for The New York Times and published three non-Freakonomics books. He lives with his family in New York City. Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, was awarded the John Bates Clark medal, given to the most influential American economist under the age of forty. He is also a founder of The Greatest Good, which applies Freakonomics-style thinking to business and philanthropy.
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“The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.”
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“Ideas nearly always seem brilliant when they’re hatched, so we never act on a new idea for at least twenty-four hours.”
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- Figure out what people really care about, not what they say they care about.
- Incentivize them on the dimensions that are valuable to them but cheap for you to provide.
- Pay attention to how people respond; if their response surprises or frustrates you, learn from it and try something different.
- Whenever possible, create incentives that switch the frame from adversarial to cooperative.
- Never, ever think that people will do something just because it is the “right” thing to do.
- Know that some people will do everything they can to game the system, finding ways to win that you never could have imagined. If only to keep yourself sane, try to applaud their ingenuity rather than curse their greed.
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“Resources are not infinite: you cannot solve tomorrow’s problem if you aren’t willing to abandon today’s dud.”
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If you like Book Freak, try my other newsletter, The Magnet
The Magnet is my newsletter about things that interest me, what I’ve learned, interviews, recipes, quotations, tips, and more.
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