Smartcuts

How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

By: Shane Snow

Narrated by: Shane Snow, Erik Bergmann

Entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow (Wired, Fast Company, The New Yorker, and cofounder of Contently) analyzes the lives of people and companies that do incredible things in implausibly short time.

How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers do in common to beat the norm?

One way or another, they do it like computer hackers. They employ what psychologists call ""lateral thinking: to rethink convention and break ""rules"" that aren't rules.

These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical ""smartcuts"" that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In Smartcuts, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like ""paying dues"" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.

From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter—and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.

Interesting and Important book

I truly found this book useful. He made a deliberate decision to look at his subject matter in a different way, used current examples and didn't try to force-fit the evidence to fit his theory (a major sin of a lot of modern writers). I've already recommended this book to 3 persons.

I love everything about this book

I found the information in this book to be unique and very useful. It was entertaining enough to listen to for long stretches at a time and I didn't feel overwhelmed by the amount of information provided . It was well-paced and kept my interest.

Great information for business and life

Loved the information - there are so many take aways! Shane Snow is a good narrator - pace, tone, and voice keep attention and never grate.

Great Book Club Read

I read this book with my book club, and because of all of the nuggets of information. It was great to hear the various takeaways from different members of the group. It was an easy read/listen. Highly recommend.

Awesome book

Love how the author explains each smartcut. It's one of those books I want to keep as a reference in the future.