By publishing your document, the content will be optimally indexed by Google via AI and sorted into the right category for over 500 million ePaper readers on YUMPU. I’m using the term formula in the same way that computer scientists talk about algorithms, as a sequence of steps that anyone can follow to get consistent results. And while the rest of this book is dedicated to the details of this formula, there are a couple of key questions that are worth answering up front.

The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer eBook The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer eBook

And that instruction occurs automatically. When we play, the brain releases dopamine and oxytocin, two of our most crucial “reward chemicals.” These are pleasure drugs that make us feel good when we accomplish, or try to accomplish, anything that fulfills a basic survival need. Dado que lo imposible es siempre un camino arduo, los artistas de élite nunca dependen de una única fuente de combustible para mantenerse en el camino.” Journalism,” one of my old editors liked to say, “is the greatest job in the world because you occasionally find yourself in bed with history—and it gets pretty weird up close.” Solid. A helpful and/or enlightening book, in spite of its obvious shortcomings. For instance, it may offer decent advice in some areas while being repetitive or unremarkable in others. What does it take to accomplish the impossible? What does it take to shatter our limitations, exceed our expectations, and turn our biggest dreams into our most recent achievements?Motivation is what gets you into this game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations. That, my friends, is the real art of impossible. Welcome to the infinite game.” Here, we want to break that mission statement down into smaller chunks, dividing up the impossible into a long series of difficult but doable goals that, if accomplished, render said impossible much more probable.” Evolution shaped the brain to enable survival. But evolution itself is driven forward by the availability of resources. Scarcity of resources is always the largest threat to our survival, making it the largest driver of evolution. And there are only two possible responses to this threat. You can fight over dwindling resources, or you can go exploring, get creative, innovative, and cooperative, and make new resources. It’s for this same reason that today Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple, and dozens of other companies have instituted autonomy programs of their own.6 But the more important point is what we learn from their examples. Google taps this driver with 20 percent time, meaning they’re giving people eight hours a week to pursue an idea about which they’re passionate. Yet 3M gets amazing results from just 15 percent time, which is only about an afternoon a week. In other words, if you’ve already worked your way through the passion recipe and are now trying to figure out how to make room in your life to pursue that dream, these living experiments tell us you can get the results you desire by spending four to five hours a week devoted to your newfound purpose. In fact, as we’ll see in the next section, the magic number of hours required to tap into autonomy might actually be less than that—provided those hours are spent in a very particular way. Pushing the limits of impossible is the highest and the most meaningful goal to whichyou can aspire.

The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer|Paperback The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer|Paperback

At getAbstract, we summarize books* that help people understand the world and make it better. Whatever we select for our library has to excel in one or the other of these two core criteria: In The Art of Impossible, Steven Kotler has managed to articulate what many peak performers intuitively know but can't explain: that there's a formula for impossible.

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Bestselling author and peak performance expert Steven Kotler decodes the secrets of those elite performers—athletes, artists, scientists, CEOs and more—who have changed our definition of the possible, teaching us how we too can stretch far beyond our capabilities, making impossible dreams much more attainable for all of us.

The Art Of Impossible - Steven Kotler

There are no two ways about it: your journey to impossible is going to be long and arduous. As with any long journey, you’ll need fuel to keep you going. That includes food and sleep, but you also need psychological fuel –⁠ in other words, drive. Their original idea was simple: As social creatures, humans have an innate desire for connection and caring. We want to be connected to other people and we want to care for other people. At a basic biological level, we need to relate to others to survive and thrive; and, as a result, are neurochemically motivated to fulfill this need. Neuroanatomy and networks, meanwhile, are the places those messages are sent from and received, the where in the brain something is taking place.6 Learning. The ingredients of impossible ; Growth mindsets and truth filters ; The ROI on reading ; Five not-to-easy steps for learning almost anything ; The skill of skill ; Stronger ; The 80/20 of emotional intelligence ; The shortest path to superman

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Next, look for spots where your core passion intersects with one or more of these grand, global challenges—a place where your personal obsession might be a solution to some collective problem. The overlap between passion and purpose, that’s what you’re hunting. If you can zero in on that target, you’ve found a way to use your newfound passion to do some real good in the world. That’s a legitimate massively transformative purpose. Since 2004, Google has tapped autonomy as a driver with their “20 Percent Time,” wherein Google engineers get to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing projects of their own creation, ones that align with their own core passion and purpose. And this experiment has produced incredible results. Over 50 percent of Google’s largest revenue-generating products have come out of 20 percent time, including AdSense, Gmail, Google Maps, Google News, Google Earth, and Gmail Labs.