The Scout Mindset - Book Review

A must-read, must-revise every six months kinda book. A text book on how to get better at whatever you do.

Packed with trivia, insights, learnings, data, and ample opportunities to "Oh, I need to do or pay attention to this".

Some of the highlights I found charming:

I call it scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.

In the scout mindset, there’s no such thing as a “threat” to your beliefs. If you find out you were wrong about something, great—you’ve improved your map, which can only help you.

TRY TO ABIDE by the rule that when you advocate changing something, you should make sure you understand why it is the way it is in the first place.

This rule is known as Chesterton’s fence, after G. K. Chesterton, the British writer who proposed it in an essay in 1929.

Imagine you discover a road with a fence built across it for no particular reason. You say to yourself, “Why would someone build a fence here? This seems unnecessary and stupid; let’s tear it down.”

But if you don’t understand why the fence is there, Chesterton argued, you can’t be confident that it’s okay to tear it down.

The rewards of choosing to sleep in are immediate; the rewards of choosing to exercise are diffuse and delayed. What difference will one exercise session make to your long-term fitness goals, anyway?

Have you ever lied to your doctor? If so, you’re not alone.

In two recent surveys, 81 % and 61 % of patients admitted withholding information from their doctor about important things, such as whether they regularly took their medication or understood their doctor’s instructions.

Your doctor’s opinion of you doesn’t matter— it has close to zero impact on your life, career, or happiness. Rationally, it makes much more sense to be fully honest with your doctor to get the best possible medical advice.

“Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad supper.”

We’ll even risk death to avoid looking foolish in front of strangers.

In Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America, writer Mark Svenvold describes being in a motel in El Reno, Oklahoma, as a tornado approached.

The motel television blared an alarm, and a warning from the National Weather Service scrolled across the bottom of the screen: “TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY.”

After thirty minutes of second-guessing his own judgment, he noticed the men outside were gone, and only then did he finally feel permitted to flee.

Do you ever prove yourself wrong?

The AMAZING story of one of the turning points of the Intel Story:

Our mood was downbeat. I looked out the window at the Ferris wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance, then I turned back to Gordon, and I asked, “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”

Gordon answered without hesitation, “He would get us out of memories.”

I stared at him, numb, then said, “Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?

Grove and Moore did an outsider test: Imagine someone else stepped into your shoes—what do you expect they would do in your situation?

When you’re making a tough decision, the question of what to do can get tangled up with other, emotionally fraught questions like, “Is it my fault that I’m in this situation?” or “Are people going to judge me harshly if I change my mind?”

The outsider test is designed to strip away those influences, leaving only your honest guess about the best way to handle a situation like the one you’re in.

Barack Obama used a trick on his advisors when he was president. It was essentially a “yes man” test.

If someone agreed with his view, Obama would pretend he had changed his mind and no longer held that view. Then, he would ask them to explain to him why they believed it to be true.

“Every leader has strengths and weakness, and one of my strengths is a good B.S. detector,” Obama said.

RECOGNIZING YOU WERE WRONG MAKES YOU BETTER AT BEING RIGHT

Read all the book notes here:

https://www.goodreads.com/notes/54181287-the-scout-mindset/88044824-alok-kejriwal

#Dhandhekibaat

Also, PLEASE check out my new book, "Getting Dressed and Parking Cars," if you haven't already! Link - https://bit.ly/Getting_Dressed_Parking_Cars_Book_Alok_Kejriwal

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