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Tim Ferriss

Astro Teller, CEO of X – How to Think 10x Bigger (#309)

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Astro Teller.

“Perspective shifts will unlock more than smartness will.”

– Astro Teller

This is a very short, roughly 10-minute, episode. It explains how to 10x your thinking and your goals, or — put another way — how to escape incremental thinking and think truly BIG. I loved it so much that I now listen to it on a regular basis as a reminder. Perhaps you’ll end up doing the same.

The speaker is Dr. Astro Teller (@astroteller). Astro is currently Captain of Moonshots (CEO) of X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory for building magical, audacious ideas that, through science and technology, can be brought to reality. Astro is also co-founder and a current Director of Cerebellum Capital, a hedge fund management firm whose investments are continuously designed, executed, and improved by a software system based on techniques from statistical machine learning. Astro was also the co-founder and CEO of BodyMedia, Inc., a leading wearable body monitoring company that was sold to Jawbone in 2013.

Dr. Teller holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Stanford University, Master of Science in symbolic and heuristic computation, also from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a recipient of the prestigious Hertz Fellowship.

It was recorded as part of A360, a high-end membership group run by past podcast guest and Founder and Chairman of The XPRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis. For more on A360 and its digital version (Abundance Digital), please visit Diamandis.com and look under “Memberships.”

You can find the transcript of this episode here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Astro Teller, CEO of X – How to Think 10x Bigger

Want to hear another episode with another inspiring entrepreneur? — Listen to this interview with Debbie Millman, where we discuss how to recover from rejection, how to overcome personal crises of faith, class exercises from her most impactful mentors, and much more. (Stream below or right-click here to download.):

#214: How to Design a Life – Debbie Millman

This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom. I’ve used this service for many of my businesses, as have quite a few of the icons on this podcast — such as Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame.

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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for links and show notes…

Selected Links from the Episode

  • Connect with Astro Teller:

Website | Twitter | Medium | Facebook

Show Notes

  • Choice A or Choice B? [04:51]
  • Context matters. [06:41]
  • Historically, war has spurred innovation tantamount to the miraculous. [07:07]
  • What is moonshot thinking — and why should we wait for a war to spur innovation on a Choice B level? [07:47]
  • Are you creating the context for Choice B? [08:33]
  • Switching perspective with the mutilated checkerboard problem. [09:40]
  • Why going 10x bigger is more important and effective than going 10% bigger. [11:29]
  • Imagine you’re Willy Wonka. Your chocolate factory should be staffed by Peter Pans with PhDs wearing t-shirts that say “Safety Third.” [12:21]
  • It’s not just a moonshot when you choose to go big at the high level. [13:09]
  • Perspective shifts unlock more than smartness will. [13:46]
  • A business plan for embarking on weirdness is doomed from the start. Here’s a better perspective. [14:01]

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