Survivorship bias distorts reality by showing only winners:<ul><li>Successes become highly visible while failures disappear</li><li>Hidden graveyards of failed attempts remain unseen</li><li>Common advice often suffers from this selective focus</li><li>Impossible skills seem achievable when we only see success</li><li>Accurate judgment requires examining the full dataset</li></ul>This bias affects multiple domains: business case studies, investment strategies, diet programs, and self-help advice. Without considering the entire sample—especially failures—conclusions will be dangerously skewed toward overoptimism.

Survivorship Bias

Confirmation bias makes us filter information through existing beliefs:
<ul>
<li>We unconsciously seek evidence supporting our views</li>
<li>Contradictory information gets downplayed or reinterpreted</li>
<li>Google searches with biased terms produce biased results</li>
<li>Echo chambers form when we surround ourselves with agreement</li>
<li>Even opposing groups both believe evidence supports their side</li>
</ul>
This bias explains polarization in politics, persistence of superstitions, and why changing minds is so difficult. Our brains act more like lawyers defending pre-existing positions than judges weighing evidence objectively.

Confirmation Bias

Whether we like it or not, we are puppets of our emotions. We make complex decisions by consulting our feelings, not our thoughts.

The sunk cost fallacy keeps us invested in losing propositions:<ul><li>Past investments are already gone and cannot be recovered</li><li>Rational decisions consider only future costs and benefits</li><li>Emotional attachment to previous investments clouds judgment</li><li>Fear of wasting prior investments leads to greater losses</li><li>Admitting failure feels more painful than continuing to invest</li></ul>This fallacy explains why people stay in bad relationships, continue watching boring movies, keep wearing uncomfortable clothes, and persist with failing projects. Recognizing that past investments are irrecoverable helps make better forward-looking decisions.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Availability bias makes easily recalled examples seem more important:<ul><li>Vivid examples outweigh accurate statistics</li><li>Recent events seem more probable than distant ones</li><li>Emotionally charged incidents distort risk assessment</li><li>Media coverage amplifies availability of certain risks</li><li>Personal experiences overshadow broader patterns</li></ul>This bias explains why people fear terrorism more than heart disease, worry about shark attacks more than car accidents, and overestimate the likelihood of lottery wins. Our risk assessment follows ease of recall rather than actual probability.

Availability Bias

The halo effect causes one positive trait to influence unrelated judgments:<ul><li>Attractive people are perceived as more intelligent and competent</li><li>Successful products create perception of company-wide excellence</li><li>Likable individuals receive benefit of doubt in unrelated areas</li><li>First impressions color subsequent evaluations of unrelated traits</li><li>Marketing effectively leverages this bias through brand association</li></ul>This mental shortcut explains why good-looking politicians get more votes, why we assume successful companies are good at everything, and why we're surprised when admired individuals have significant failings in other areas.

Halo Effect

If you think you can predict the future, think again.

Authority bias leads us to overvalue the opinions of authority figures:
<ul>
<li>Titles and uniforms trigger automatic deference</li>
<li>Hierarchy outweighs actual expertise in decision-making</li>
<li>Critical thinking shuts down in presence of authority</li>
<li>Expertise in one area creates assumed expertise in unrelated fields</li>
<li>Passing the buck provides psychological relief from responsibility</li>
</ul>
This bias explains why celebrity endorsements work, why corporate hierarchies perpetuate bad decisions, and why intelligent people follow harmful orders. Evolution programmed us to avoid challenging leaders—a tendency that requires conscious override in many situations.

Authority Bias

Outcome bias causes us to evaluate decisions based on results rather than process:<ul><li>Good decisions can produce bad outcomes through bad luck</li><li>Poor decisions can yield good results through good luck</li><li>Decision quality should be judged by the information available at decision time</li><li>Fortune and misfortune often override decision quality</li><li>Hindsight creates illusion that outcomes were predictable</li></ul>This bias distorts performance evaluation in business, explains why we celebrate lucky risk-takers over careful planners, and creates incentives for reckless behavior when it happens to succeed. Focusing on process quality rather than outcomes leads to better long-term decision-making.

Outcome Bias

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains why incompetence often features high confidence:
<ul>
<li>Novices lack knowledge to evaluate their own performance</li>
<li>Expertise includes recognizing the complexity of a domain</li>
<li>Knowledge reveals how much more there is to learn</li>
<li>Confidence peaks early before declining and then rising again</li>
<li>True experts often underestimate their relative ability</li>
</ul>
This cognitive bias explains why debates between experts and novices are so frustrating, why incompetent people don't seek improvement, and why superficial knowledge creates greater certainty than deep understanding.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

Social proof drives us to follow others' actions as a decision shortcut:
<ul>
<li>Others' behavior serves as evidence of correct action</li>
<li>Uncertainty increases reliance on social signals</li>
<li>We unconsciously imitate those around us</li>
<li>Consensus creates assumption of correctness</li>
<li>Marketing leverages this bias through testimonials and popularity claims</li>
</ul>
This tendency explains why restaurants seat patrons in windows, why laugh tracks work, why bestseller lists boost sales, and why peer pressure remains powerful throughout life. When unsure what to do, humans instinctively look to others for guidance.

Social Proof

The anchoring effect causes initial values to disproportionately influence judgments:<ul><li>First numbers create a reference point for all subsequent values</li><li>Arbitrary anchors affect estimates of unrelated figures</li><li>Higher initial prices make subsequent prices seem reasonable</li><li>Negotiation outcomes correlate strongly with opening offers</li><li>Awareness of the bias doesn't eliminate its influence</li></ul>This powerful cognitive bias explains why car dealers show you the expensive model first, why minimum payment amounts on credit cards increase debt, and why starting salary significantly influences lifetime earnings regardless of performance.

Anchoring Effect

Think you make rational decisions? Think again. This eye-opening book reveals how our minds are riddled with systematic thinking errors. Author Rolf Dobelli distills decades of cognitive research into 99 short chapters, each exposing a common mental mistake and how to avoid it. From why we overvalue things we already own to how experts consistently fail with predictions, these cognitive biases affect every aspect of life—investing, business, relationships, and everyday decisions. Once you recognize these thinking traps, you'll catch yourself falling for them and make dramatically better choices.

A world-class thinker counts the 100 ways in which humans behave irrationally, showing us what we can do to recognize and minimize these “thinking errors” to make better decisions and have a better life Despite the best of intentions, humans are notoriously bad—that is, irrational—when it comes to making decisions and assessing risks and tradeoffs. Psychologists and neuroscientists refer to these distinctly human foibles, biases, and thinking traps as “cognitive errors.” Cognitive errors are systematic deviances from rationality, from optimized, logical, rational thinking and behavior. We make these errors all the time, in all sorts of situations, for problems big and small: whether to choose the apple or the cupcake; whether to keep retirement funds in the stock market when the Dow tanks, or whether to take the advice of a friend over a stranger. The “behavioral turn” in neuroscience and economics in the past twenty years has increased our understanding of how we think and how we make decisions. It shows how systematic errors mar our thinking and under which conditions our thought processes work best and worst. Evolutionary psychology delivers convincing theories about why our thinking is, in fact, marred. The neurosciences can pinpoint with increasing precision what exactly happens when we think clearly and when we don’t.Drawing on this wide body of research, The Art of Thinking Clearly is an entertaining presentation of these known systematic thinking errors--offering guidance and insight into everything why you shouldn’t accept a free drink to why you SHOULD walk out of a movie you don’t like it to why it’s so hard to predict the future to why shouldn’t watch the news. The book is organized into 100 short chapters, each covering a single cognitive error, bias, or heuristic. Examples of these concepts include: Reciprocity, Confirmation Bias, The It-Gets-Better-Before-It-Gets-Worse Trap, and the Man-With-A-Hammer Tendency. In engaging prose and with real-world examples and anecdotes, The Art of Thinking Clearly helps solve the puzzle of human reasoning.

Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss author and businessman. He began his writing career as a novelist in 2002, but he is best known internationally for his bestselling non-fiction The Art of Thinking Clearly (2011, English 2013), for which The Times has called him "the self-help guru the Germans love".

Rolf Dobelli

The Art of Thinking Clearly

Statistics show that six months after optimistically setting their intention, the majority of people—<a href="https://discoverhappyhabits.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/#2021-statistics">54%</a>—don’t keep their new year resolutions. The numbers are even more discouraging by the end of the year, when one study showed that only<a href="https://discoverhappyhabits.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/#2021-statistics"> 9%</a> of those who set New Year’s resolutions had success in seeing them through.These stats are not inspiring when determining whether to declare a resolution, yet perhaps there’s another way to look at the situation. The fact is that people who bother to set resolutions still have some advantages in reaching their goals over those who don’t.

New Year Resolutions

According to one study, even after six months, 46% of people who make a resolution are still successful in keeping it.This is the flip side of the six-month percentage above, but it’s a more motivating way to think about the effectiveness of the resolution setting. While it’s true that over half of those who make New Year’s resolutions ditch them halfway through the year, it’s equally true that close to half of all resolution setters are still on track to reach their goals by mid-year.

A Good Percentage of People Who Make Resolutions Still Succeed

96% of those who don’t create an annual resolution are unsuccessful in reaching those goals, from losing weight to returning to school. This percentage is far lower than the approximately half of people who made resolutions who did reach their goals.This may seem like just a matter of semantics, but these words hold real-world weight. Stating a goal simply determines the end toward which you will direct your effort.

Other Findings Of The Study

Let’s also revisit the earlier stat that I shared, which based on a 2016 study showed that of the 41% of Americans who make New Year’s resolutions, only 9% successfully keep them by year-end. For context, consider that at the time of that study’s publication, the U.S. population was 323 million.Crunching the numbers, you find that 12 million Americans actually did achieve their resolutions, and this number would be still higher based on today’s population. When nearly 12 million people succeed in something based on taking a simple action, the method isn’t exactly a bust.

Millions Are Able To Keep Their Resolutions

Real change—whether individually or organizationally—is always prompted by a new beginning or fresh start. Sometimes those new beginnings are forced on us, but even in the middle of the year, we get to create them. What resolutions might you revisit (or create from scratch right now) to help maximize your life and career opportunities? Don’t overthink this, just craft resolutions that feel good.

The Path To Real Change

Don’t give up so quickly on those old promises to exercise and eat better.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

Here’s why summer may be the perfect time to revive your annual resolutions

<ul><li>Within a year, startups began springing up to replicate AlexNet</li><li>Fast forward to 2022: Neural networks have changed every aspect of machine intelligence in software systems we all use daily, from recognizing our speech to recommending what's in our news feed</li><li>Today's systems still employ neural networks - but at a vastly different scale</li><li>Recent systems for understanding and generating human language, such as OpenAI's GPT-3, were trained on supercomputer-scale resources</li><li>These new systems require tens of millions of dollars in computation</li></ul>

The journey to this point began a little more than 9 years ago with a 2012 submission, called AlexNet, to the annual ImageNet LS

<ul><li>A neural network is first trained on a large general-purpose dataset using significant amounts of computational resources, and then fine-tuned for the task at hand using a much smaller amount of data and compute resources.</li><li>The use of pre-trained networks has exploded in recent years as the industrialization of machine learning has taken over many fields and data has increased.</li></ul>

Pre-trained neural networks give smaller teams a leg up

<ul><li>One of the risks associated with foundation models is their ever-increasing scale.</li><li>Pre-training on a large general-purpose dataset is no guarantee that the network will be able to perform a new task on proprietary data.</li><li>Dataset alignment and recency of training data can matter immensely depending on the use case.</li></ul>

The risks of foundation models: size, cost, and outsourced innovation

<ul><li>The cost of API calls, data storage, and cloud instances will scale along with usage.</li><li>Many companies that have used cloud APIs for machine learning today may eventually attempt to transition to self-hosted or self-trained models to gain more control over their machine learning pipelines.</li></ul>

Cloud APIs are easier, but outsourcing isn't free

<ul><li>Cloud APIs bring their own problems long-term. It's important to have a strategic exit plan so these APIs do not control your product destiny.</li><li>Keep tabs on what is coming out of the big corporate AI labs.</li></ul>

Be strategic and keep an eye on the big AI labs

Foundation models and cloud APIs bring opportunities, risks, and limitations for startups that want to innovate in AI and machine learning.

startup

Startups

artificialintelligence

Artificial Intelligence

softwareengineering

Software Engineering

How to Use Massive AI Models (Like GPT-3) in Your Startup

<ul>
<li>The hero myth - What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? We all hear the same list of qualities: passion, determination and vision. But the same qualities that are heralded as traits of the successful may lead to your startup’s demise.</li>
<li>The process myth - The conventional, "build it and then sell it" process doesn't work because entrepreneurs start out with a guess.</li>
<li>The money myth - More money isn't necessarily better. Investment removes the constraint of entrepreneurs needing to focus obsessively on what customers want. it enables you to pursue flawed business plans.</li>
</ul>

The Three Myths of Entrepreneurship

<ul>
<li>Get out into the field - Get out of the building, outside the company, outside your circle of friends... validate assumptions like scientists. Don't be attached to your vision.</li>
<li>Fail fast and embrace change - Do not waste time pursuing an idea that's not a true opportunity; fail fast. Be dispassionate enough to let go and move on.</li>
<li>Adopt the attitude of learning - The attitude of learning will enable you to successfully discover real opportunities.</li>
<li>Test your guesses with rapid, inexpensive, simple experiments - Don't start building without testing your guesses.</li>
</ul>

Core Principles of NISI (Nail It Then Scale It)

It is the ability to recognize new information and then change the way you view the world. It can help you be more agile and beat out your competitors who are stuck in the old way of doing business.

Cognitive flexibility

Sunk cost leads to irrational decision-making. when entrepreneurs stake their hopes and dreams on a startup, the resulting motivation can make it all but impossible for them to learn in an intellectually honest way - overconfidence trap: research shows experienced individuals tend to be overconfident in their judgement and ability to control the uncontrollable. stay determined but be humble along the way.

Motivation Trap

Recognize our weaknesses and blind spots. We tend to try and reuse ideas from other settings that may not be appropriate.  For example, A CEO with a marketing background may see the world through the lens of the "go big" marketing blitz strategy.

Familiarity Trap

<ul><li>Become an "expert-novice": hold knowledge and confidence, but always maintain a seed of doubt and thirst for more knowledge.</li><li>Reframe your startup's purpose: reframe the purpose of your venture to be learning about what the market wants, rather than proving that your idea works. this mental trick helps you avoid learning traps and focuses you on learning. </li><li>Seek a high volume of feedback: feedback helps correct overconfidence, increase pattern recognition, and help us see the truth.</li><li>Be data-driven: don't rely on beliefs and gut feelings. base decisions on data — even if it's limited data.</li></ul>

Tips For Starting Out

The goal of this phase is to clearly define and understand the customer pain and determine whether the customer pain is a market opportunity.The test of nailing the pain is whether customers return your cold calls. In this first step, we want to answer the question "Is this a pain worth solving?" No pain, no business.

Phase 1: Nail the Customer Pain

<ul>
<li>Write down a monetizable pain statement - A monetizable pain represents a pain that customers recognize, have money to pay for, and are overly interested and eager to solve.</li>
<li>Write down a big idea hypothesis - An idea for a solution to the pain you observed, specific to the customer group, and why it is different from existing solutions.</li>
<li>Test your hypotheses - Be quick about it.</li>
</ul>

Steps To Nail Customer Pain

If 50% of customers return your call, you have found the monetizable pain and a potential beachhead for your product.If it is less than 50%, the low response rate may mean that you just haven't found the right customer niche or the right words to describe the pain to the customer. By talking to the customers who do respond, you can find clues about where to find the real monetizable pain.

The 50 Percent Rule

Once you've validated a customer pain, it's time to ask yourself "how big is the pain I'm trying to solve and is it worth it?"Many entrepreneurs we have talked to discover a customer pain, build a solution for the pain and then realize after the fact that they are actually tackling a rather small market.Evaluate:<ul><li>Market Size</li><li>Market Growth - A rising tide lifts all ships.</li><li>Competition - What differentiates you?</li><li>Laws & regulation</li><li>Sales cycle</li></ul>

Evaluating The Pain

In this stage, you cultivate a minimum feature set that you develop iteratively while validating with customers.As you iterate, in addition to refining the solution based on customer feedback, you should be improving your understanding of the market and defining the best segment for an initial beachhead. As much as possible, you should try to find new samples of customers to gain fresh, unbiased perspectives.

Phase 2: Nail the Solution

Write down a MFS HypothesisThe minimum feature set represents the smallest, most focused set of features that will drive a customer purchase.  There are a few tests that can be conducted:<ul><li>Test 1: The Virtual Prototype Test</li><li>Test 2: The Prototype Test</li><li>Test 3: Solution Test</li></ul>

Steps To Nail The Solution

"Since only one in every five to ten ideas works out, the strategy of limiting the time we have to prove that an idea works allows us to try out more ideas, increasing our odds of success."

Detach yourself from your biases, get on the customer's side of the table, look at the problem from their perspective, and make them feel that you truly want to learn how they feel about this problem and potential solutionsDo you have this problem? Does this solution solve your problem? What would the solution need to have, for you to purchase it?

Discuss potential solutions with customers

<ul><li>Develop an inexpensive, rapid prototype — something your customers can use and give them a picture of the solution you are proposing. </li><li>Be resourceful — ask suppliers for samples. Find partners. Avoid investment.</li><li>Prototype Road Show - Test your prototype in front of full buying panels of customers.</li><li>$100 game - ask yourself if you had $100 to invest in any features of this product, what features would you invest your money in</li></ul>

The Prototype Test

The price your customers are willing to pay is the measure of the degree to which you have nailed the solution.Breakthrough questions:<ol><li>"How much would you expect to pay or a solution like this?"</li><li>"Would you be willing to prepay for this product?"</li><li>"Would you be willing to purchase this today?"</li><li>"If I gave this to you for free, would you install it today system-wide?"</li></ol>

Testing The Price Point

Partner with your customers, usually through a pilot program, to take your solution through a final round of iteration to refine it into the solution customers want. At this point, your customers should be willing to begin paying for the product. You should begin closing paid pilots or be selling your product.If customers won't pay now, they probably won't pay later. While it's natural to shy away from or defer asking for payment, we're only avoiding the truth and doing ourselves harm.

Solution Test

The goal is to understand the process by which customers find out about and decide to purchase our product and to use our findings to develop a repeatable sales model and optimize our marketing and sales strategy. We should be continuing to explore and validate price points while closing paid pilots, nurturing early-stage customers, and turning them into evangelists. We should validate our go-to-market assumptions with paying customers.

Phase 3: Nail the Go-To-Market Strategy

The customer buying process is the map of your customers' activities from the moment they find out about your product through the purchase and use to the ultimate disposal of your product. It is defined by the job your customer is trying to get done and all the relevant activities that surround that job. To uncover this, ask customers about how they accomplish or try to complete that "job" with any relevant solutions, from beginning to end.

Map the customer-buying process

Look for leverage points within the buying process at which you can influence customers' purchase decisions.Example: Apple didn't just revolutionalize the sale of MP3 players by making a better MP3 player. They also reinvented the entire buying process for digital music, which before iTunes was difficult and overwhelming. This opened up a segment of customers who previously had shied away from purchasing digital music and MP3 players.

Develop a Sales Model

<ul><li>Map the key categories of the market infrastructure</li><li>Identify the top three partnerships in each category</li><li>Understand the motivations and needs of each player</li><li>Create measurable and time-bound objectives for each potential partner and a strategy to leverage the infrastructure based on your interactions with customers</li><li>Assign an owner to each partner</li></ul>

Defining a Market Infrastructure Strategy

Close and launch paid pilot-customer relationships and utilize them to refine the product, go-to-market strategy, and serve as references.If you properly nurture reference customers, at the end of the pilot you will have a robust solution, a deep understanding of your go-to-market strategy, and a reference for future sales.

Pilot-Customer Development

<ul>
<li>Your business model is the map of how you create value and deliver it to customers. In this phase, we will conduct financial analysis to verify business viability, launch your product and go-to-market strategy, and then develop a dashboard to monitor your progress forward.</li>
<li>Predict Business Model with Customer Data: Ask questions like "how would you want to buy something like this?" direct, distributor, partner. What would they need to feel comfortable making the purchase? What would a potential deal look like?</li>
<li>Validate Financial Model: Evaluate margins, fixed costs and variable costs.</li>
</ul>

Phase 4: Nail the Business Model

The very process of growing will change your company in fundamental ways that will make what you did in the early days obsolete in the later days.The process of "nailing it" is recursive.As startups grow, the nature of how they operate begins to change. As a company grows, a shift occurs from facing an unknown problem/solution at the onset, which required radical exploration, to facing a known problem/solution that requires execution. As a company gets bigger, the nature of what it has to do to be successful changes.

Phase 5: Scale It

New markets are created by a disruptive technology that serves new customers or an opportunity that was previously unnoticed or underserved. Whether or not it is a new market doesn't necessarily depend on your technology or product, but rather how the technology or product is applied. For example, a 1.3-inch hard drive in the PDA market (established market) vs the video-game market (new market).New markets are high-risk, high-reward. They are dangerous for startups because you are exploring uncharted territory, defining a new category, educating consumers, and trying to change behaviours.

New Markets

Established markets are markets where products exist and where you intend to compete by offering a product that serves a niche within the existing market or is a complement to an existing product.Consider attacking the low end of the market first. Customers at the top of the market aren't willing to risk their business on an unproven startup. In contrast, customers who are fighting the big players in the industry are constantly looking for an edge and are more willing to work with a startup that could give them an advantage.

Established Markets

Many investors and entrepreneurs will admit that most successful companies faced a crisis before they succeeded.The value of a good crisis is that it forces you to focus and renew your commitment to make the time to really nail the product and reshape the company.

Crisis And Focus

<ul>
<li>Models - intelligent, well-spoken, credentialed. pays lip service to the process but under the surface believe they already have the answer.</li>
<li>Packrats - chases down and tries to satisfy every last customer. unable to fire the customers that distract from the real value proposition.</li>
<li>Junkies - focus all of their energy on pleasing investors and bankers instead of focusing on the customer and building real value.</li>
</ul>

Avoid becoming a Model, Packrat, or Junkie

When it comes to the image you create as a startup, once you start selling, go big or stay home within the niche you have targeted. This doesn’t mean you have to burn all your capital, but you do want to communicate that you are established and reliable when you start trying to capture the early majority. For my time at Knowlix, this meant spending the money to obtain a moderately central space at the tradeshow their customers attended, creating a professional booth, and then pulling out all the stops to establish buzz around the booth.

Branding

This book will teach you how to create your own startup, nail the problem it solves, and scale it.

Why do most new businesses fail, yet a few entrepreneurs have a habit of winning over and over again? The shocking discovery of years of research and trial is that most startups fail by doing the "right things," but doing them out of order. In other words, human nature combined with our entrepreneurial drive puts us on autopilot to become part of the 70% to 90% of ventures that fail. From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the Nail It Then Scale It method is based on pattern recognition of the timeless principles and key practices used by successful entrepreneurs to repeatedly innovate.

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

business

Business

books

Books

Nail It Then Scale It is the first lean startup book to help entrepreneurs through the process of launching a high-growth company. The book includes not just high-level principles, but a distilled, step by step guide of key actions successful entrepreneurs take to reduce risk and increase success. NISI answers key questions including: Why do most new businesses fail? What first steps do successful serial entrepreneurs take? What are the most common failure traps and how can I avoid them? Based on years of research and observation, Furr and Ahlstrom conclude that startups often fail by doing the "right things," but doing them out of order. In other words, human nature combined with entrepreneurial drive puts the entrepreneur on autopilot to become part of the 70% to 90% of ventures that fail. From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the Nail It Then Scale It method is based on pattern recognition of the timeless principles and key practices used by successful entrepreneurs to repeatedly innovate. These processes and principles have now been distilled into a handbook to guide entrepreneurs step by step to victory. Stop following conventional wisdom and join the few entrepreneurs that consistently take their innovative ideas all the way to a successful product and company launch.

Nathan Furr

Paul Ahlstrom

Nail it Then Scale it

<ul>
<li>Scaling Shifts Your Team’s Focus: more customers means more bugs. And more bugs means less time for our team to work on everything else.</li>
<li>Scaling Is Expensive: as the number of customers you’re supporting rises, so do your costs.</li>
<li>Scaling Amplifies Everything: As you grow, the feedback that you get from our customers goes farther and farther. The network effect of having lots of happy customers is incredibly valuable, as it helps you reach more and more new customers. But that reach isn’t all roses. Just as it amplifies the good, scaling amplifies the bad.</li>
</ul>

Biggest Scaling Challenges

Seeing some real growth is just the beginning. These are the 3 hurdles you have to overcome when figuring our how to scale your startup

The 3 Deadliest Challenges of Scaling a Startup | Groove Blog

<ul><li>Many of us assume job security, but any job someone gives you can be taken away. You may also wake up and decide the job you have isn’t what you wanted at all, which is another way things change.</li><li>To thrive in a world of flux, think about your career more like a portfolio you curate rather than a singular path to pursue.</li><li>Thinking you’ll succeed if you make it down a predetermined path leads to a lot of hurt, disappointment, and a potential identity crisis when the path doesn’t work out or you decide it’s not the path you want to be on. </li></ul>

Think of your career like your portfolio

Get clear on your relationship with change and control. Some people are fine with little changes, but mega-meta changes completely unravel them. Others are good with big picture changes, but the small things unravel them. When you find your triggers, level up your self-awareness and get clear that you are in the driver’s seat of how you respond but not in the driver’s seat of the actual end result.

Assess your relationship with change

A superpower is the ability to let go of the future. Letting go of a need to control can be empowering.Try scenario mapping, imagining different possible futures that might play out. Shift your mindset from trying to predict the future to preparing for many possible futures. Also, shift your expectations from the idea that your plans will work out to assuming they will change.

Let go of the result

To get comfortable with change, shift your focus. Are you focusing on what you know and what is in front of you? Instead, focus on what you still need to discover. What we don’t know is far greater than what we do know. Every week we put plans into place that change. Your mindset needs to be more fit for a world in flux.”

Focus on what you need to discover

While you can’t always control what happens, you can control how you respond.


Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

career

Career

problemsolving

Problem Solving

How to plan for what will go wrong in your career

Film credits often have producers, creative producers, executive producers, and similar titles that can confuse a layperson. Here is a quick primer:<ol><li>The Executive Producer is the one who invested all the money in the project.</li><li>The Producer is more in line with the director's vision, and is there to solve real-world problems during production.</li><li>The Line Producer runs the operation of the film production, working with payroll, insurance and vendors.</li><li>The Creative Producer works directly with the director and hatches ideas, creative elements and creative collaborators that make or break the movie.</li></ol>

What Producer Does What

Film credits can get confusing, especially when it comes to the producing side of the process. Between the Producers, the Creative Producers, the Line Producers and

communication

Communication

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Finally Understand in 5min the Difference Between a Producer, an Executive Producer & a Line Producer

Music theory will give you a better understanding of music. It is not a set of rules but a tool to help you understand, create, and communicate music.
The best is to learn music fundamentals first. The building blocks of musical compositions include:
<ul>
<li>Harmony - When multiple notes play at the same time to produce a harmonious new sound.</li>
<li>Melody - Notes in succession that are arranged into a musical phrase.</li>
<li>Rhythm - A recurring movement of notes and rests and a pattern of strong and weak notes.</li>
</ul>

Musical theory: a tool to understand music

Harmony combines chords and chord progressions. Not all harmonies sound pleasing to the ear.
<ul>
<li>Dissonant harmony doesn't sound pleasant when played together. It adds tension and makes the chord sound unstable.</li>
<li>Consonant harmony sounds balanced and pleasant.</li>
</ul>
Musicians combine consonant and dissonant harmonies to make music more interesting.

Harmony in music

The melody of the song is often the most recognisable part. Most compositions have multiple melodies that repeat.
Two primary elements of a melody:
<ol>
<li>Pitch is how high or low a note will sound.</li>
<li>Rhythm is the duration of each pitch.</li>
</ol>
There are two types of melodic motion that musicians combine to give melodies more variation:
<ol>
<li>Conjunct motion is when notes move by whole or half steps with shorter leaps between the notes.</li>
<li>Disjunct motion has larger leaps between the notes.</li>
</ol>

The melody in music

Rhythm is the backbone for other musical elements. Understanding rhythm can help you make great music.
<ul>
<li>Beat: A repeating pulse.</li>
<li>Meter: A specific pattern of strong and weak pulses.</li>
<li>Time Signature: The number of beats per measure.</li>
<li>Tempo: How fast or slow the music plays.</li>
<li>Strong and Weak Beats: The downbeats are the strong beats, and the offbeats are the weak beats.</li>
<li>Syncopation: Rhythms that accent or emphasize the offbeats.</li>
<li>Accents: Where the emphases are placed on the notes.</li>
</ul>

Basic elements of rhythm in music

<ul>
<li>The musical alphabet consists of seven letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and repeat. They are the white keys, and each note has a specific pitch.</li>
<li>There are 12 notes on the piano keyboard: A, A#/B♭, B, C, C#/D♭, D, D#/E♭, E, F, F#/G♭, G, G#/A♭. The sharps (#) and flats (♭) are often the black keys on a piano.</li>
<li>Octaves are the next highest or lowest pitch of the same note.</li>
<li>Key signatures indicate what notes in a scale are sharp (♯) or flat (♭).</li>
</ul>

The fundamentals of music theory

There are five types of intervals in music: major (M), minor (m), perfect (P), augmented (A), and diminished (d). They are measured by the number of half steps and whole steps, and their position in the scale.
Intervals are the foundation of harmony (paying two or more notes together) and melody (playing single notes in sequence).

Intervals - the distance between two notes

A music scale is a set of notes within an octave and arranged by their pitch. The notes from a scale form melodies and harmonies.
The two main types of scales are major and minor scales and can start from any note.
<ul>
<li>Major scales are happy sounding and follow the same interval pattern of whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half.</li>
<li>Minor scales sound dark and sad and follow the same interval pattern of whole-half-whole-whole-half-whole-whole.</li>
</ul>
There are twelve minor scales with three variations: natural, harmonic, and melodic.

Music scales

Musical modes are scales and are made from a parent scale. They use the same notes and interval patterns, but the scale is started on a different note.
The seven musical modes are:
<ul>
<li>I – Ionian: major scale</li>
<li>ii – Dorian: major scale starting on the 2nd degree</li>
<li>iii – Phrygian: major scale starting on the 3rd degree</li>
<li>IV – Lydian: major scale starting on the 4th degree</li>
<li>V – Mixolydian: major scale starting on the 5th degree</li>
<li>vi – Aeolian: natural minor scale or major scale starting on the 6th degree</li>
<li>vii – Locrian: major scale starting on the 7th degree</li>
</ul>

Music modes

Chords are the harmonious building blocks of music. Knowing how to build chords and how they interact is essential when learning music theory.
There are four basic types of chords in music:
<ol>
<li>Major – It has a major third and a perfect fifth above the root</li>
<li>Minor – It has a minor third and a perfect fifth above the root</li>
<li>Diminished – It has a minor third and a diminished fifth above the root</li>
<li>Augmented – It has a major third and an augmented fifth above the root.</li>
</ol>

Basic chords in music

<ul>
<li>The most basic chords are triads - a chord made of three notes.</li>
<li>The seventh chords add a note above the basic triad. For example, C major seventh has the notes C-E-G-B.</li>
<li>Major chords have a root note, a major third, and a perfect fifth, for example, a C major triad has the notes C-E-G.</li>
<li>Minor chords have a root note, a minor third and a perfect fifth, for example, a C minor triad consists of the notes C-E♭-G.</li>
<li>Diminished chords sound tense. They have a root note, minor third, and diminished fifth. For example, a C diminished triad has the notes: C-E♭-G♭.</li>
</ul>

Different types of chords

<ul>
<li>Chord extensions add notes to the basic triad beyond the seventh. They extend into the next octave and are richer than basic triads.</li>
<li>Chord inversions are variations of the same chord. Transferring the bottom note in a chord to the next octave makes an inversion.</li>
<li>Chord progressions is an ordered series of chords and support the melody and the rhythm.</li>
</ul>

Chord extensions, inversions and progressions

This basic music theory guide looks at fundamental concepts musicians use to understand, analyze, perform, communicate, and create music.

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<ul>
<li>The 17th century saw Galilieo exploring the moon using his telescope, wondering how craters were formed. </li>
<li>Two centuries later, astronomers like Franz von Gruithuisen proposed that asteroids were responsible for the same, a theory that was rejected.</li>
<li>The perfect circular shape of the moon’s craters misled scientists into believing these are mountains. Later the Russian astronomer Nikolai Morozov concluded through a series of experiments that the craters were indeed formed by asteroids.</li>
</ul>

Craters On The Moon

<ul>
<li>When a high-impact asteroid or smaller rocks known as meteors rush towards Earth, the atmosphere behaves like it is water being hit by pebbles.</li>
<li>The rocks burn away in the friction when colliding with the atmosphere, with the giant asteroids (those the size of a mountain) having the ability to wipe out entire life from the planet.</li>
<li>The fall is at a speed of more than 10 miles per second, and ensures that even air cannot escape the impact area, and gets heated thousands of degrees in an instant.</li>
<li>The compressed, super-hot air vaporizes the surrounding area. The impact does not give time to rocks to shatter or crumble, and they start to flow, instantly turning liquid.</li>
</ul>

The Impact With An Asteroid

A vertical ‘sploosh’ results from an impact with an asteroid, with the earth rising at 1000 miles per hour to create mountains taller than Mt. Everest, only to instantly collapse due to continuous explosions, leaving behind a ring known as the ‘Peak Ring’.
The impact’s energy measurement is approximately 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilojoules for the size of a rock that can destroy our planet. The temperatures created on impact exceed that of the surface of the Sun.

The Crater’s ‘Peak Ring’

<ul>
<li>If an asteroid the size of Chicxulub hit earth on the same spot in Mexico, one could get killed in Texas, be deaf in New York, and lose the car window panes at Buenos Aires (Argentina).</li>
<li>If a resulting tsunami doesn’t get you, you might have a better chance near the ocean to survive. It is also a good idea to hide in a cave, shielding from the impact of trillions of shattered glass bullets(which in large quantities cause firestorms in the air).</li>
<li>Surviving the resulting heat is tricky, and a large tropical island might be the safest place to be. Another option is to find a mountainous region with a livable temperature, deep caves and less rainfall. One can eat the plants and animals (carefully) to survive.</li>
</ul>

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