Rules, Guides and Heuristics

Mine

Causal Rules

1. Exercise
2. Take a nap
3. Eat something healthy and drink water every two hours you’re awake
4. Good sooner is better than perfect later – the first does not preclude the second
5. Big or persistent problems should be broken into smaller problems
6. Any thing you want to remember should be written down
7. To learn a thing – do it. To master a thing – do it for many years
8. You have no will-power. Bribe, incentivize and trick yourself
9. Take your hobbies seriously
10. Balance is more important than any individual success or failure

How to Practice

1. Be directed - don't practice what you already know or what you're not ready for
2. Practice new skills, but no so many that you won't understand your failures
3. Knowledge and skill should be reviewed only often enough to keep them fresh
4. Make the decision to move into research consciously, and be aware that learning what is established in a field will almost always be faster than original research

Emergency Response Steps

From Emergency Response Plan

1. Roles
2. Reaction
3. Location
4. Protocol
5. Data
6. Communication
7. Objective
8. Planning

Gaining Trust

From con-man Victor Lustig

1. Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con-man his coups)
2. Never look bored
3. Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them
4. Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones
5. Hint at sex talk, but don’t follow it up unless the other fellow shows a strong interest
6. Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown
7. Never pry into a person’s personal circumstances (they’ll tell you all eventually)
8. Never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious
9. Never be untidy
10. Never get drunk

Motivation

From Dan Pink

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

Expertise

According to Malcom Gladwell in "Tipping Point" it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of almost anything.

Spotting the Future

The future often comes from (source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/ff_spotfuture/)

1. Cross pollinating seemingly unrelated disciplines
2. Converting a sub-exponential process to use an exponential one
3. Remove artificial scarcity
4. Audacious goals, when achieved, transform the world
5. Open (extensible) system are generally more successful than closed ones
6. System should have design and usability down to their core
7. The way that people voluntarily waste time is indicative of coming trends

Joi Ito of MIT

http://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/45107871992/joi-ito-of-mit-media-lab-from-a-wired

Resilience over strength

Yield and allow failure then bounce back instead of trying to resist failure

Pull over push

Pull the resources from the network as needed, as opposed to centrally stocking and controlling them

Risk over safety

System over objects

Compasses over maps

Practice over theory

Because sometimes we don’t know why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that there is some theory around it

Disobedience over compliance

No one gets a Nobel Prize for doing what they are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience

Emergence over authority

Learning over education

How to Learn Quickly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5MgBikgcWnY#!

1. Deconstruct the skill
2. Learn enough to self correct
3. Remove practice barriers
4. Practice for 20 hours

Pixar's rules of Story Telling

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Elmore Leonards Rules on Writing

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/arts/writers-writing-easy-adverbs-exclamation-points-especially-hooptedoodle.html

1. Never open a book with weather
2. Avoid prologues
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"
5. Keep your exclamation points under control
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose"
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip

Adam Savage 10 Ground Rules

1. Get good at something
2. Getting good at stuff takes practice (lots of practice)
3. Get obsessed (everyone at the top of their field is obsessed)
4. Doing something well and thoroughly is its own reward
5. Show and tell
6. If you want something, ask for it
7. Have goals
8. Be nice
9. Fail
10. Work your ass off