Sander’s book club: Bold

How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World?

“When Steve Jobs said that the goal of every entrepreneur should be to “put a dent in the universe” — he wasn’t talking about inventing the next Angry Birds” — Peter Diamandis

Peter Diamandis, the man behind XPRIZE, Singularity University and many other high impact projects is truly an inspiration on how to be dream big and achieve more. And this book combines a great guide for copying his success in helping to generate all sorts of great innovation.

That said, I agree that too many of us are focusing on problems with easy and achievable solutions. Instead of using our talents to generate innovation, just building a faster horse, better bicycle or the next Samsung phone that does not have any remarkable updates compared to the last one.

We are wasting our time building just 0.0005% better thing, when we could build a system that would let us bridge distance, time & culture, create water from thin air, generate innovative AI approaches & collaboration or turn CO2 emissions into valuable products.

Not that we do not need people doing simple tasks. Or that building software for one small group of people would be bad.

I rather mean that those that do have the talent should not aim low but try to impact a bigger portion of the humanity. Just because they can!

And that’s what Peter helps any of us realise in his book co-written with Steven Kotler.

If you think you can or think you can’t — well, you’re right.

The books has plenty of great ideas and instead of trying to describe the meaning of them, I’ll just copy few of my favourites here:

• Setting goals increases performance and productivity 11 to 25 percent.
• Big goals help focus attention, and they make us more persistent.
• Good entrepreneurs don’t like risk. They seek to reduce risk. Starting a company is already risky…so you systematically eliminate risk in those early days.
• Fail early, fail often, fail forward.
• The very best people to help you with your next project are those who helped you or watched you succeed with your last.
• Even if the probability for success is fairly low, if the objective is really important, it’s still worth doing. Conversely, if the objective is less important, then the probability needs to be much greater.
• Don’t leave any dollars in reserve — you can always feed yourself, but don’t leave money on the table. Spend it!
• Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.
• It’s often easier to make progress when you’re really ambitious. Since no one else is willing to try those things, you don’t have any competition.
• The number of people having any connection with your project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner.
• Don’t think outside of the box. Go box shopping. Keep trying on one after another until you find the one that catalyses your thinking. A good box is like a lane marker on a highway. It’s a constraint that liberates.
• Abundance is not a technoutopian vision. Technology alone will not bring us this better world. It is up to us.

In short, I really enjoyed the book and hope you’ll do the same!

If you could recommend me just one book to read, then which one will it be?

Sander’s book club is an initiative to record my thoughts just after finishing reading any book. Hope these encourage you to read more!