Kathy Sierra spoke at this year’s Emerging Technologies conference about How to Kick Ass (which apparently starts with a great title). It was recorded. Here are the notes.

  • Where there are passion, there are people who kick ass
  • People are not passionate about things they suck at
  • People usually have to do something at her talks
  • Being better is better
  • Neurogenesis
  • Neuroplasticity
  • A common thread of people who are ‘world class’ at something is that they have the time to put in the effort at the something rather than natural talent. (Malcolm Gladwell say 10000 hours in Outliers.)
  • Rage to Master
  • The passionate people are the ones who spend the money (high-end lens, Pessoa saddles, etc.)
  • Do experts actually know more?
  • Chess masters remember a real board far more than an amateur. Show a nonsensical one and the advantage is eliminated.
  • It is not what the expert knows, it is what they do
  • Brain hacks
    • Exploit your telepathy superpowers
      • Mirror neurons (again)
      • allow us to run a simulation of another person’s brain inside our brain
      • watch people in action, not read a report
      • effectiveness of visualization increases as you increase your doing the real activity (dancer to dancer, ninja to ninja)
      • Watching people who suck; notso good
      • Better to visualize what you would see as you are doing, not you doing it from a 3rd party perspective
    • Reduce interference
    • Control Stress
      • People evolved / survived since they are great predators
      • Being surrounded by predators is stressful
      • Stress, anxiety, etc. will almost always make you suck
      • StressEraser
    • Get to know your brain
      • If you don’t get enough sleep, your performance will be like you were drunk
      • SLEEPTRACKER
      • Real exercise helps you give your best performance from your brain (as compared to the popular Brain Age video games, etc.)
  • Intermittent variable rewards is the most powerful motivational technique