#252 Dr. Ron Friedman – Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success

Key Takeaways

Reverse engineering: finding great examples in your field and then working backwards to figure out how they were created and more importantly, how you can recreate them yourself.

Adopt a mindset of curiosity that asks how this was created, what can I learn from this, and how can I apply this to the thing I’m working on? Share on X

Become a Collector: “Having the collection that you can then scan for inspiration and compare the ordinary against the extraordinary”

Impactful Frameworks & Practices

Practicing reflection
Reading
Exercise everyday

00:39 Non Negotiables

Ron’s number one non negotiable: exercise.

“If I don’t exercise I don’t sleep well, if I don’t sleep well my productivity sinks, my creativity flounders”

Ron’s recommendation for listeners:

Purchase a 5 year journal and actively use it.

1 page for each day of the year
After each year you start over and can see what you did on that day the previous year
Way to recognize your patterns

“Anytime something bad happens to you in your life, the question you need to ask yourself is ‘will this matter in ten years?’ if the answer is no, it’s just a lot easier to let it go.”

4:22 Ron’s One Major Takeaway

If Ron had to still everything he knows down to one insight it would be:

Figure out when your best hours are.

“Too often we let people take our best hours from us and when we do that we suffer because we try to make it up”

5:40 Writing Your Own Story

Ron’s realization early in his career:

You’re not going to get wealthy working for someone else
You’re not going to be satisfied unless you’re in control of how you invest your time and build your career

Ron quit his job and got a book deal, surprisingly without a platform, and wrote his first book: The Best Place to Work.

“When it comes to authoring our own lives, we can talk about it on a day to day level but I think more macro, what are you really working toward? Are you giving yourself the space to swing for the fences?

9:23 De-Risking

The second half of Ron’s book, Decoding Greatness, is about strategies to use once you know the path that you’re aiming for and one of those is called ‘derisking’ or ‘taking the risk out of risk taking’.

Sell First, Build Later.

Start with the initial sale
If you make the sale, build what you said you were going to build

“It’s a great way of taking risks without investing years and years and years building something that no one wants”

11:57 Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering: finding great examples in your field and then working backwards to figure out how they were created and more importantly, how you can recreate them yourself.

*particular strategies depend on your field

Ron says that anything successful he has done throughout his life, comes from this strategy.

“The goal of reverse engineering is not simply to copy someone else’s approach but to identify why it works so that you can take the best elements and mix them together”

“Adopt a mindset of curiosity that asks how this was created, what can I learn from this, and how can I apply this to the thing I’m working on?”

18:08 Influences

“I think creativity ultimately is about blending the influences that have been the most impactful to you to the extent that you’re cognizant of it”

Ron compares different authors and talks about their lack of or their immense influence on him:

Some authors he talks about:

“I write the kind of book that I want to read which means that it’s loaded with actions that I can take at the end of the book and it’s based in science”

20:25 Research on Creativity

Ron talks about a University of Tokyo research study where creativity experts brought in amateur artists and they had them draw original works over the course of 3 days.

“How do you become more creative by copying someone else’s work? And the answer is, when you stop to pause and recreate someone else’s work, that forces you to compare your initial instinct against the decisions of a master”

25:20 Think More, Do Less

One of the strategies that Ron talks about in Decoding Greatness is ‘becoming a collector’.

“Having the collection that you can then scan for inspiration and compare the ordinary against the extraordinary”

Collect material that inspires you and peaks your interest
Connect the material to your own thesis

29:50 Story of George Leonidas Leslie

Ron tells one of his favorite stories that he includes in Decoding Greatness about a bank robber, George Leonidas Leslie, and how his approach to robbing banks is a great example of reverse engineering.

“That approach is one that is necessary for all of us, it’s not enough to know what we want to create, we also need to bridge the gap between our vision and ability.”

37:31 Dimensions of Practice

Most people practice in the present → doing something over and over again and utilizing feedback to improve the next time

Two other dimensions of practice:

Practicing in the past → comparing what your initial expectations were to your actual experience

Practicing in the future → imagining what your about to do and taking yourself through all the senses and steps in order to execute the act

40:08 Looking at Less to See More

Ron says that he has developed a repertoire for opening writing sections and connecting sections.

“It’s all about mapping out what you want to do in advance before sitting down to actually write it”

43:17 Connections Through Creativity

“Your creativity is not going to come from complete originality but by finding connections between things that gives you license to chase your curiosities and enjoy your guilty pleasures”

45:00 Impactful Frameworks & Practices

Practicing reflection
Reading

47:20 Ron’s Book Recommendations

“As you get better at something, the question should change from ‘can I do this?’ to ‘should I do this?’ to learn what will be a good use of your time”