Once we realize that the boundaries between work and play are artificial, we can take matters in hand and begin the difficult task of making life more livable.
A few of us are extraverts. A few of us are introverts. But most of us are ambiverts, sitting near the middle, not the edges, happily attuned to those around us. In some sense, we are born to sell.
Psychological detachment from work, in addition to physical detachment, is crucial.
In the new world of sales, being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than producing the right answers. Unfortunately, our schools often have the opposite emphasis. They teach us how to answer, but not how to ask.
And the first step in bulldozing these obstacles is to enumerate them. As Peters puts it, “What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.
Here’s Ohga: “At Sony, we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance, and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.
What an individual does day to day on the job now must stretch across functional boundaries. Designers analyze. Analysts design. Marketers create. Creators market.
What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.
Rewards do not undermine people’s intrinsic motivation for dull tasks because there is little or no intrinsic motivation to be undermined.
People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity.
Mastery of design, empathy, play, and other seemingly “soft” aptitudes is now the main way for individuals and firms to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Temporal landmarks slow our thinking, allowing us to deliberate at a higher level and make better decisions.
We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation.
There’s no going back. Pay your son to take out the trash – and you’ve pretty much guaranteed the kid will never do it again for free.
If you’re an educator, know that all times are not created equal:.
High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes.
Sales and theater have much in common. Both take guts. Salespeople pick up the phone and call strangers; actors walk onto the stage in front of them. Both invite rejection – for salespeople, slammed doors, ignored calls, and a pile of nos; for actors, a failed audition, an unresponsive audience, a scathing review. And both have evolved along comparable trajectories.
The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive – our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.
The best endings don’t leave us happy. Instead, they produce something richer – a rush of unexpected insight, a fleeting moment of transcendence, the possibility that by discarding what we wanted we’ve gotten what we need.
So get rid of the unnecessary obligations, time-wasting distractions, and useless burdens that stand in your way.