How to Get What You Want – a short primer for ambitious people | Hacker News Reader

How to Get What You Want – a short primer for ambitious people

thewantbook.com

44 pointsjasonshen17 comments

"In 1954, Roger Bannister set a world record, running one mile in 3:59.4. The 4 minute mile had become a white whale, with medical experts arguing that the human body wasn’t capable of completing it. Prior to Bannister, the previous one mile record had stood at 4:01 for nine years. Less than a year later, someone else ran a sub 4 minute mile. Today, hundreds of American runners, and likely thousands around the world have achieved this feat."

This is often noted as a mental breakthrough, but what isn't told about this story is that Bannister had the advantage of a better running surface and pacemakers. Those that broke the 4-min mile after Bannister did it because they too took advantage of a better running surface and pacemakers.

http://sportsscientists.com/2014/12/2-hour-marathon-4-min-mi... "The difference that track surface makes is enormous – biomechanists estimate that modern synthetic tracks are worth 1.5% compared to the cinder tracks that Bannister and Landy ran on (some cinder being better than others, of course). And that’s why, as my friend David Esptein so elegantly presented at TED, of the 1,034 men who have broken 4-min for the mile since 1954, only 530 would remain if you applied that “correction factor” that predicts that synthetic tracks are worth about 1.5% per lap compared to the cinder tracks of the 1950. It means only 10 men per decade have joined the club since Bannister created it, and that should give you some context to this argument that “Four minutes used to be impossible, and now it is easy”."

Really appreciate that link - and definitely a fact I will tuck away. Pacesetters and track surface... fascinating!

Still, I think the fact that the fastest man in the world at the time had tried multiple times to beat it and could not definitely puts a damper on anyone else trying to break a record.

Clearly technology and social forces were at work. Believing you can do something does not make it so. But NOT believing you can do something sure as hell isn't going to help you make it happen.

> Still, I think the fact that the fastest man in the world at the time had tried multiple times to beat it and could not definitely puts a damper on anyone else trying to break a record.

It didn't put a damper on Bannister. In fact, you could argue that the press coverage around the limit motivated more people to try to break four minutes for the acclaim. Without that narrative, maybe Bannister wouldn't have been motivated enough to do it.

> Clearly technology and social forces were at work. Believing you can do something does not make it so. But NOT believing you can do something sure as hell isn't going to help you make it happen.

You may be right, but the 4-minute-mile anecdote doesn't show this. In Landy's case, it wasn't new-found belief, but technology and knowledge that pushed him under four minutes.

Just curious, how much detail does the book go into "figuring out what you want"? Most books like this go into more detail for the second part ("how to get what you want"), which I've never had as much of a problem with.

I used to struggle with is this too. So I started with the basics. Stay alive; breathe; eat, drink, sleep; get laid (with someone else in the room); stay fit; get rich; be happy.

That was my first list, and I just added concrete goals to each as time went on. Eat now includes a constraint (never again will I eat what I don't like) with a goal (healthy, balanced). Sex was easy and I now have a son. That in turn changed other goals. I keep refining. When I don't know I don't push it. It will come.

Great question. From a word count perspective, roughly 30% of the book is devoted to "figuring out". Ultimately, that section is about helping people recognize that it's important to choosing wants. It's true that the latter still gets more attention. I think that's in part because stories and data about making choices is more limited since it is so personal and "in people's heads" vs "in the world".

I like the idea of specific action-oriented guides to X (even if X is, in this case, somewhat general). Non-fiction could be splitting along the axis of practical-vs-curiosity-exploring, which is great, as it makes room for more things like this.

The focus on chapter count / selected chapters is kinda odd, considering each chapter has, on average, less than 300 words. Vocabulary that speaks to the value of the book more (like "steps"? that might be too late-night-tv-sales, but "topics" or "subjects"?) might make more sense to people who haven't yet read the book.

Hey hawkice - thanks for the feedback. I did aim to write something that was both generally applicable, but also included specific tactics and relevant case studies. We'll see if I succeeded.

Agree that chapter count is a little odd, and that's why I also included a small preview (if you click the cover, you'll get an overlay with 4 of the chapters). Also the six "Selected Chapter" hopefully also hint at the contents of the book.

Hope you enjoy it!

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't feel like you provide enough sample content to convince me that this is worth paying money for.

What does this book say that hasn't already been said by various mainstream self help authors, Steve Pavlina, people in the human potential movement, etc. ?

I just added another 3 chapters to the book preview that you get from clicking the cover. That brings the total to 7 chapters, nearly 20% of the 36 chapters in the book. If you're not excited to get the book at that point, you're probably not going to like it once you buy. Which is totally cool.

As for your second question, there are 6,000 books in the "Applied Psychology" category on Amazon, and 28,000 books in the "Success". Between all of them, I'm sure that none of the ideas I've presented in this book haven't already been said.

What this book offers is my unique take on those ideas, the personal stories I've shared, the way I've presented the research, and the voice through which I've expressed it.

10000 words in 36 chapters? 300 words per chapter seems a bit short, doesn't it? This comment is already more than twenty words long, so each chapter would be just one or two paragraphs.

One of my favorite bloggers in the world is Seth Godin.

Here's a post he wrote recently: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/01/unprepared.h...

It's 247 words and 9 paragraphs. I don't think he's worried about the number of sentences in his paragraphs, nor were the 796 people who liked his post on Facebook.

I didn't mean it as an attack, nor was I suggesting you should be worried about the number. But its presence on the marketing page as a selling point confused me. The fact it's there reads to me as if you're saying, "this is valuable because it's 10k words long." But 10k words is not long -- it's quite short. Especially compared to almost any other book of prose you might pay $4 for.

I understand that's probably not what you meant, but that's how I interpreted it.

Who is Jason Shen and why should I give him $10 for a book with a terribly silly title?

From the linked page:

"Hey, I’m Jason Shen. I’m a writer, athlete, and lifelong tech geek.

I do marketing and product management at Percolate, an enterprise software company based in NYC. Previously, I co-founded Ridejoy, a YC-backed transportation company, and served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the Smithsonian. Back in the day, I was captain of an NCAA championship gymnastics team at Stanford.

B.S. + M.S. from Stanford University Author of the Amazon best-seller: Winning Isn't Normal: Meditations on the Art of Ass-Kicking"

It is an impressive biography, there is no question about that.

Thanks for this book, I enjoyed reading the beta version.

Congrats Jason!

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