Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Kaufman: Trend-focused books are poor investments compared to foundational frameworks

Josh Kaufman · #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control · Mar 9, 2021 · at 23:28

Author Josh Kaufman discusses information filtering and explains why he avoids reading trend analysis or biographies in favor of practical mental models.

0:00 / 0:19exact quote · 19.6s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I just, I remember a book from a couple of years ago of like the rising trend of Twitter. It's like, that's not a good investment in terms of this kind of research. I want to read something like influence, which is how to think about cognitive biases in this, in the specific application of persuasion and sales.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Josh Kaufman

Opinion
Kaufman: Everything taught in business school can be self-taught
“There is nothing that's taught in business school classrooms that you are not capable of learning and understanding and applying on your own.”
Josh Kaufman Mar 9, 2021 ▶ 1:05:49 #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control
Opinion
Kaufman: Charlie Munger's mental models targeted investors, not business operators
“The things that he's done, and it was fascinating and illuminating, and it was focused on investors, so people who are making capital allocation decisions. And at this point, I think I was a year out of college, and frankly, I didn't have a whole lot of capita…”
Josh Kaufman Mar 9, 2021 ▶ 8:08 #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control
Insight
Kaufman: Gauging daily progress by unfinished to-do lists destroys personal satisfaction
“If you're gauging your mental and emotional conception of progress on, is my to-do list done yet? The answer to that day after day, week after week, year after year is no, it's not done yet. Therefore, it's hard to feel good about what it is that you've done i…”
Josh Kaufman Mar 9, 2021 ▶ 19:08 #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control
Insight
Josh Kaufman: Frequency analysis across diverse reading reveals key core concepts
“The wider you look, the wider the variety of sources that you have coming into your brain, the more access to interesting insights and connections you would have. So, so yes, reading broadly, experimenting broadly, having experiences in different domains and t…”
Josh Kaufman Mar 9, 2021 ▶ 21:20 #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control
Insight
Josh Kaufman: Direct experimentation beats online research or asking for recommendations
“I think just even a relatively small amount of experimentation can get you further down to The line of what is the best X for Y problem, then you can find reading in a book or searching the internet or asking a friend about it.”
Josh Kaufman Mar 9, 2021 ▶ 26:24 #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control
Insight
Kaufman: Reviews provide signal only when detailing specific problems and concrete solutions
“Reviews can be good signal if they include the information that this is what I was trying to do, and this is the problem I was trying to solve, and this is how this particular resource solved this problem or helped me with this, provide a solution in, in a ver…”
Josh Kaufman Mar 9, 2021 ▶ 29:33 #106 Josh Kaufman: Maximizing Our Locus of Control
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.