How copyright forces an artist to decode the underlying principles of underlying atist's work and recreate something different.

The insight that "brain loves numbers" behind all the counting. Should work with KPIs as well as self-reporting sustainability/usage numbers. A Brian for numbers

Obama learning speech from congregation in church.

Once you have an insight that all mass produced things break the same way, you can make youtube video showing how to fix it or pick the safe locks of bank at home.

Federer addressed his weakness. If there were any games forecasted based on his previous performance, then the sprite models need update that he corrected many of his weaknesses.

Many more tips on how to reduce risk with small bets, advantages of a psuedonym.

5.0 out of 5 stars
An insanely useful trove of immediately actionable tools & deep insights for your greatness

Did you know that Barack Obama used to be terrible at public speaking? That Stan Lee almost quit writing comics around age 40? That after a slump and injury, Roger Federer took almost a year off to revamp his entire game to become the greatest of all time? Well I did not, which is part of why I enjoyed "Decoding Greatness" enough to have read it twice already!

But the even bigger reason for my enthusiasm for the book is its giant trove of deep, sometimes counterintuitive, always actionable insights about how you, too, can achieve world-class results. This is a book about reverse engineering success — also known as emulating those who are great at what they do so you can get similar results. Friedman expertly structures the book to make its life-altering information easy to digest, reference, and implement.

Heck, I've already implemented not one but *two* of its suggestions (and it's still the release day). For one, if journaling is good enough for Thomas Edison, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams, I figure it's good enough for me. So I just acquired my first-ever 5-year journal. I'll also be tracking my own performance in various realms to find more "leading indicators."
Some other super-useful techniques:
• Reverse outlining: To write a great article or book, read then break down the structure of the best works in the genre. Then, emulate that structure.
• Totally new stuff tends to bomb; people actually prefer the familiar. So for maximum creative success, you want "optimal newness" -- something that's "derivative with a twist."
• Visualization is miraculously effective! Just make sure you visualize the whole process of doing the thing. If you just visualize standing on the damn podium, that's actually counterproductive. Optimal dose: 20min/day.
• Reflective practice: This is so huge. “We’ve been taught that education occurs from the outside in—that learning happens through exposure to new information. But that’s only half the equation. Reviewing past events with an eye for insights, patterns, and predictions is how we turn experience into wisdom.”

I also appreciate all the tools that Friedman casually drops in that I had no idea existed. Want to see all the chord progressions for any pop song? Get the Capo 3 app! All the parts of every car in the world? The A2Mac1 website has you covered! And then there's the epic, word-by-word breakdown of the late Sir Ken Robinson's greatest TED talk of all time.

Of course, there's even more in there: the science of giving and receiving useful feedback; cognitive task analysis; how to interview an expert to get actually useful information (harder than you think); and my favorite — pressure acclimatization training, as exemplified by speed cuber Dan Knights and basketball god Stephen Curry.

As a coach, therapist, and performer, I'm a huge fan of the literature of high performance, and this book is now one of my favorites. Implementing any one of its dozens of science-backed ideas is bound to measurably improve your game. Do more than that, and who knows how far you'll go! "Re-read great books often", another of the book's recommendations, is one I'll be applying to this one regularly. Get one copy for yourself and one for the favorite budding performer in your life.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer and author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible , the highest-rated dating book on Amazon, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine