Unreasonable Success and How to Achieve It  
Richard Koch    

Summary

Pretty self explanatory title. Author does a great job looking at successful people from history and charting their path.

Notes

The way you position yourself for success is more important than talent or competence

Landmark 1: self-belief

Landmark 2: olympian expectations

• Others positive expectations of us can make us perform well
• Those who inherit the earth will be those who expect to
• If you want unreasonable success, you must have unreasonable expectations

Landmark 3: Transforming experiences

• You can acquire ideas and transformative experiences and experiment while being employed by someone else

Landmark 4: One breakthrough achievement

• Man cannot create the current of events. He can only float with it and steer - Otto von Bismarck
• Your objective must be new, revolutionary, imaginative and almost laughably ambitious

Landmark 5: Make your own trail

• You need your own philosophy and deeply grounded beliefs, unique and authentic convictions before the world will take note of you

Landmark 6: Find and drive your personal vehicle

• Pool vehicles: something in your environment that can help you as a launch pad
• Personal vehicle: create something which increases your impact on the world
• Adopt a pool vehicle then find your personal vehicle and drive it to success

Landmark 7: Thrive on setbacks

• Success means going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm - Churchill
• Setbacks validates unconventional views and contributes to a sense of greatness
• They happen more frequently to people who take large risks. High downside but high upside
• If you survive defeats, you can achieve great success
• Being anti-fragile: means benefitting from shocks, setbacks, risks and uncertainty
• Strong anti-conventional opinions and ability to confront adversity w/ a curiosity about themselves and the world
• Take big risks: after a disaster, keep going, but switch gears and never give up hope

Landmark 8: Acquire unique intuition

• Turn your hidden knowledge into incredibly valuable knowledge
• Intuition must be important, unproven, original, imaginative, simple, contradict experts, based on deep knowledge and you must be at the centre of it

Landmark 9: distort reality

• The people who are crazy enough to change the world are the ones who do
• Do what others think is impossible. Defeat the conventional view of what is realistic and unrealistic. Sharpen your willpower
• Reality distortion becomes less impossible the more you practice it and demonstrate your powers of will and prediction
• Faith can over power facts. It is not the weak or powerful who inherit the earth but the unreasonable believers

Reach as high as you can just plausibly achieve

Serious intent means a permanent obsession with what you can do for the world

Could you invent a new concept or valuable theory?

Find a personal vehicle that you alone can ride

Increase your creativity and the power of your unconscious mind

Life is a book of bets. Make astute bets at long odds.

It’s about positioning yourself for success, not improving your performance

It’s not about ability, it’s about the right attitude and success strategies

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