Summary: Smartcuts E-Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Herausgeber: Business Book Summaries
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 35

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The must-read summary of Shane Snow's book: "Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success".

This complete summary of the ideas from Shane Snow's book "Smartcuts" states how nowadays it takes less and less time to make money. People aren’t doing this by taking shortcuts, but ‘smartcuts’. These ‘smartcuts’ break conventions and find better ways to get more done. According to Snow, smartcutters hack their way to success, using principles that fall into three categories: shorten, leverage and soar. This summary explains each of these categories in detail and tells you how you can start thinking laterally and hack your way to success.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Discover how to hack your way to success
• Follow the nine principles of taking ‘smartcuts’ to get things done faster

To learn more, read “Smartcuts” and find your smartcut to success!

Leseprobe

Book Presentation: Smartcuts by Shane Snow

Summary of Smartcuts (Shane Snow)

Book Presentation: Smartcuts by Shane Snow

Book Abstract

In the 1860s, oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller took 46 years to make a billion dollars. In the 1980s, Michael Dell achieved billionaire status in 14 years. Bill Gates took 12 years. Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo achieved the same milestone in four years, while eBay founder Pierre Omidyar took three years. In the late 2000s, Groupon's Andrew Mason did it in two years – and was then fired from the company he founded.

Admittedly there's been inflation along the way but the undeniable fact is people are achieving much more in less time today than ever before. They're doing this not by taking shortcuts which land them in hot water but by taking “smartcuts” – they break conventions and find smarter ways to get more done than anyone else. Smartcutters hack their way to success.

Smartcutters by-and-large employ nine principles which can be grouped into three classes:

SHORTEN : Eliminate what is not necessaryLEVERAGE : Find ways to do more with lessSOAR : Generate momentum and go for it

The key to achieving more is not to pay your dues or even to play by everyone else's rules. Instead, you should hack your way to success. Figure out what smartcuts you can take by thinking laterally and then go out and break the rules.

“Increasingly in today's culture, ‘hacking’ is something done not just by criminals and computer scientists, but by anyone who has the capability to approach a problem laterally. (This is the original usage of the term.) You can make incremental progress by playing by the rules. To create breakthrough change, you have to break the rules.”

- Shane Snow

About the Author

SHANE SNOW is a journalist and self-confessed geek. He is cofounder and chief creative officer of Contently Inc., a web-based platform which empowers freelance journalists to do what they love. He is also an adviser to Visual.ly and a published contributor to Mashable, WIRED Magazine, Fast Company, The New Yorker, Time, The Washington Post and New Scientist. He was previously the founder of Brave Media LLC and assistant editor at Scroll Newspaper. Shane Snow is a graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and Brigham Young University - Idaho.

Important Note About This Ebook

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book.  This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.

Summary of Smartcuts (Shane Snow)

SHORTEN – Eliminate what is not necessary

Smartcutters work incredibly hard. They use “hacker” style thinking to figure out a shorter path to success than others have ever noticed before. They eliminate the unnecessary cycles so they can get there faster.

1. Hack the ladder

In today's world, hackers are considered to be a problem but it's their mindset you can and should emulate. Hackers don't want to climb the traditional ladders of success – they figure out ways to get to the top of their fields quickly. It turns out smartcutters do much the same thing.

For example, consider the fact the President of the United States is typically younger than most senators. The average age of the President of the United States is 55 years old. By contrast, most US senators don't even get elected to their first term until age 62. (Members of the House of Representative's average age is 57.) How does the President get to the top of the political heap before most senators even get in the door?

The simple fact is the president doesn't generally come through the normal ladder of succession in the field of politics. He (or maybe she in the future) typically comes up a different ladder and then pivots to national politics. This allows him to leapfrog all those who are paying their dues by working their way up the political ladder. Or put another way, presidents hack the ladder whereas average politicians get busy paying their dues.