? Bill Gates information comes from: Guth, Robert. “In Secret Hideaway, Bill Gates Ponders Microsoft’s Future.” Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2005, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB111196625830690477.
? Neal Stephenson information comes from an older version of Stephenson’s website, which has been preserved in a December 2003 snapshot by The Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20031207060405/http://www.well.com/~neal/badcorrespondent.html.
“A 2012 McKinsey study found that”: Chui, Michael, et al. “The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies.” McKinsey Global Institute. July 2012. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_social_economy.
“What the Net seems to be doing is” and “I’m not the only one”: Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic Monthly, July–August 2008. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/.
The fact that Carr had to move to a cabin to finish writing The Shallows comes from the Author’s Note in the paperback version of the book.
“superpower of the 21st century”: Barker, Eric. “Stay Focused: 5 Ways to Increase Your Attention Span.” Barking Up the Wrong Tree. September 18, 2013. http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/09/stay-focused/.
Chapter 1
Information about Nate Silver’s election traffic on the New York Times website: Tracy, Marc. “Nate Silver Is a One-Man Traffic Machine for the Times.” New Republic, November 6, 2012. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/109714/nate-silvers-fivethirtyeight-blog-drawing-massive-traffic-new-york-times.
Information about Nate Silver’s ESPN/ABC News deal: Allen, Mike. “How ESPN and ABC Landed Nate Silver.” Politico, July 22, 2013. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/07/how-espn-and-abc-landed-nate-silver-168888.html.
Examples of concerns regarding Silver’s methodology:
Davis, Sean M. “Is Nate Silver’s Value at Risk?” Daily Caller, November 1, 2012. http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/01/is-nate-silvers-value-at-risk/.
Marcus, Gary, and Ernest Davis. “What Nate Silver Gets Wrong.” The New Yorker, January 25, 2013. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/01/what-nate-silver-gets-wrong.html.
Information about David Heinemeier Hansson comes from the following websites:
? David Heinemeier Hanson. http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/.
? Lindberg, Oliver. “The Secrets Behind 37signals’ Success.” TechRadar, September 6, 2010. http://www.techradar.com/us/news/internet/the-secrets-behind-37signals-success-712499.
? “OAK Racing.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAK_Racing.
For more on John Doerr’s deals: “John Doerr.” Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/profile/john-doerr/.
The $3.3 billion net worth of John Doerr was retrieved from the following Forbes.com profile page on April 10, 2014: http://www.forbes.com/profile/john-doerr/.
“We are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring” and “Our technologies are racing ahead”: from page 9 of Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. Cambridge, MA: Digital Frontier Press, 2011.
“other technologies like data visualization, analytics, high speed communications”: Ibid., 9.
“The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?”: from page 1 of Cowen, Tyler. Average Is Over. New York: Penguin, 2013.
Rosen, Sherwin. “The Economics of Superstars.” The American Economic Review 71.5 (December 1981): 845–858.
“Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance”: Ibid., 846.
The Instagram example and its significance for labor disparities were first brought to my attention by the writing/speaking of Jaron Lanier.
How to Become a Winner in the New Economy
Details on Nate Silver’s tools:
? Hickey, Walter. “How to Become Nate Silver in 9 Simple Steps.” Business Insider, November 14, 2012. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nate-silver-and-fivethityeight-works-2012-11.
? Silver, Nate. “IAmA Blogger for FiveThirtyEight at The New York Times. Ask Me Anything.” Reddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/166yeo/iama_blogger_for_fivethirtyeight_at_the_new_york.
? “Why Use Stata.” www.stata.com/why-use-stata/.
The SQL example I gave was from postgreSQL, an open source database system popular in both industry and (especially) academia. I don’t know what specific system Silver uses, but it almost certainly requires some variant of the SQL language used in this example.
Deep Work Helps You Quickly Learn Hard Things
“Let your mind become a lens”: from page 95 of Sertillanges, Antonin-Dalmace. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirits, Conditions, Methods. Trans. Mary Ryan. Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 1948.
“the development and deepening of the mind”: Ibid., 13.
Details about deliberate practice draw heavily on the following seminal survey paper on the topic: Ericsson, K.A., R.T. Krampe, and C. Tesch-R?mer. “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.” Psychological Review 100.3 (1993): 363–406.
“We deny that these differences [between expert performers and normal adults] are immutable”: Ibid., 13.
“Men of genius themselves”: from page 95 of Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life.
“Diffused attention is almost antithetical to the focused attention required by deliberate practice”: from page 368 of Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer. “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.”
Details on the neurobiology of expert performance can be found in: Coyle, The Talent Code.
Coyle also has a nice slideshow about myelination at his website: “Want to Be a Superstar Athlete? Build More Myelin.” The Talent Code. www.thetalentcode.com/myelin.
For more on deliberate practice, the following two books provide a good popular overview:
? Colvin, Geoffrey. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. New York: Portfolio, 2008.
? Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. New York: Bantam, 2009.
Deep Work Helps You Produce at an Elite Level
More about Adam Grant, his records, and his (thirty-page) CV can be found at his academic website: https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/1323/.
Grant, Adam. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. New York: Viking Adult, 2013.
The article on Adam Grant in the New York Times Magazine: Dominus, Susan. “The Saintly Way to Succeed.” New York Times Magazine, March 31, 2013: MM20.
Newport, Cal. How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Used by Real College Students to Score High While Studying Less. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006.
Leroy, Sophie. “Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 109 (2009): 168–181.
What About Jack Dorsey?
“He is a disrupter on a massive scale and a repeat offender” and “I do a lot of my work at stand-up tables” and details on Jack Dorsey’s daily schedule come from the following Forbes.com article: Savitz, Eric. “Jack Dorsey: Leadership Secrets of Twitter and Square.” Forbes, October 17, 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/10/17/jack-dorsey-the-leadership-secrets-of-twitter-and-square/3/.
The cited Jack Dorsey net worth number was accessed on the following Forbes.com profile on April 10, 2014: http://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-dorsey/.
“I can go a good solid Saturday without”: from an interview with Kerry Trainor that was conducted in October 2013 by HuffPost Live. A clip with the e-mail usage quote is available here: http://www.kirotv.com/videos/technology/how-long-can-vimeo-ceo-kerry-trainor-go-without/vCCBLd/.
Chapter 2