“Talented people can predict with great accuracy what's about to happen just a tiny bit ahead of their competitors. It might be two seconds ahead, or two hundredths of a second, or two days. Napoleon on an eighteenth century battlefield had something more like a two-day advantage. Wayne Gretzky in a hockey game was probably a second ahead of everyone else on the ice.” PeopleTwoMightHappensGamesBitsCenturyAdvantageTinyIceHockeySecondsCompetitorsBattlefieldsAccuracyWayneTwo DaysGretzky Author:Kevin Maney
“Now companies tend to mine gigantic databases for insights into what might happen six months from now. That might always be valuable, but there's a different kind of value - and a competitive edge - in processing ongoing streams of data through a software model that can quickly and constantly make predictions about, say, whether a certain customer is going to defect, or an aircraft is going to run into trouble.” KindDifferentMightHappensRunningCertainValuesCompanyTroubleMinesMonthsSixModelsEdgesValuableInsightCustomersDataStreamsSoftwareDifferent KindsPredictionsDefectsSix MonthsOngoingProcessingAircraftDatabases Author:Kevin Maney
“When someone is in a state of flow, that person's brain is not thinking about anything - it's just processing things through chunks at a total instinct level. Athletes in a state of flow describe knowing what will happen just before it does - knowing how a defender will react to a certain move an instant before doing it. Of course, if you know what will happen, you can succeed at doing it, so an athlete in flow has a stand-out game.” IfsThinkingKnowsPersonsDoeStatesHappensMovingCertainCoursesGamesLevelsBrainKnowingSucceedFlowInstinctAthleteInstantStanding OutDefendersChunksProcessing Author:Kevin Maney
“Babies have not yet chunked anything. They aren't doing any high level thinking. All they're doing is sucking in all the data they experience in the world around them, and remembering it, raw. It's basically what extreme savants have happen in their brains.” ThinkingWorldHappensRememberLevelsBrainBabyExtremesDataHigh LevelSavants Author:Kevin Maney