Articles about working in Finance at Amazon.
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The Magic Of Thinking Small
This is not referring to the scope of your idea, We’re talking about your approach to implementing it. Thinking small is the thinking required to execute. At work and in life.
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Thinking Big Is Free
Anyone can talk about their grand idea for the government, or the economy, or the climate, or any new project.
But ideas are just opinions. A dime a dozen. Free, really.
Some are better than others but without execution they’re all the same.
Thinking small is where things get done.
On Inspiration
Thinking small doesn’t mean you have to do all the work on your own. It means you have to understand the underlying connections of how to get the pieces to fit together.
Elon Musk couldn’t build a rocket ship by himself. But he can build an organization that can.
People in the field follow and respect visionary leaders who can think small. (And they run away from people speaking out of their arse!)
Dreams Versus Goals
‘I want to go to space,’ is a cool dream.
And there it remains until you decide to study physics. (And math, and economics, and psychology, etc.)
Thinking small is what turns dreams into goals.
It’s working backwards through the 1,000 intermediary steps to what you need to do today.
Well, actually you probably won’t consciously know all 1,000 steps but it’s taking step one so that step two gets pushed into cache.
Another Angle - What’s Your Time Horizon
There are two ways we can think about any problem:
1. What they should be doing about it.
2. What I can do about it.
For instance, the talking heads opine all day about their ideas for the government or Facebook. And? So?
Now I don’t know much about the current state of military affairs but I have an actual plan on how to get cracking on world peace. Starting in first grade we should make every student have a pen pal in a foreign country.
I’m not talking Europe. I mean the green territories from RISK. Afghanistan, Kamchatka, Irkutsk. Places without McDonald’s. I think that will help
The view of Asia from the RISK game board. Image from war-boardgames.com
I’m going to figure out how to set my daughter up with this once she can write. I bet I can find a whole class overseas. Or maybe a whole school. Then we’ll show people how cool it is. I can see it catching on.
I would have a hard time being prejudiced or bombing someone who once sent me a letter in crayon.
Now that’s thinking small.
Have some thoughts? Feel free to drop a comment or hit me up: charlie@charleskunken.com
Other Posts In The Hollywood Heist Series
What would you do if you read your own obituary? Part 4 (the finale) of a short story.