Think Like a Freak

is, if you could learn how you might fail without going to the trouble of actually failing? That’s the idea behind a “premortem,” as the psychologist Gary Klein calls it. The idea is simple. Many institutions already conduct a postmortem on failed projects, hoping to learn exactly what killed the patient. A premortem tries to find out what might go

The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.

At university, he had been learning about game theory and now it came in handy.

Knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, can make a complicated world less so. There is nothing like the

extrapolation algorithm?

the best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency. Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame. It is most powerful when least expected, like when things have gone wrong. Some

The most radical accomplishment of once-and-done is that it changed the frame of the relationship between the charity and the donor. Whenever you interact with another entity, whether it’s your best friend or some faceless bureaucracy, the interaction falls into one of a handful of frameworks. There’s the financial framework that governs everything

“It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ,” said the esteemed neurologist Roger Bannister,

Here is the broader point: whatever problem you’re trying to solve, make sure you’re not just attacking the noisy part of the problem that happens to capture your attention. Before spending all your time and resources, it’s incredibly important to properly define the problem—or, better yet, redefine the problem.