Long Fuse, Big Bang: Achieving Long Term Success Through Daily Victories

What "Long Fuse, Big Bang" teaches us to do is override our brain to turn it into an ally. We learn how to overcome our natural tendency to prioritize immediate problems, so we can focus on our more important, long-term goals. So, whether you want to go back to college or transform your organization, you'll learn how to plan for it in this book.

The author doesn't just stop there though. He knows we have to deal with little emergencies and problems every day. That's just part of life. So he gives us strategies to help us gain daily victories without sacrificing our focus on the long-term. And he also offers a lot of tips for selling your great ideas, so the "big bang" actually happens.

Put simply, he teaches us how to stop lighting short fuses to firecrackers, so we can light long fuses to dynamite.

The book is highly entertaining and a fast read. The author's conversational writing style keeps the pace moving, and the case studies and science behind the inner workings of our minds is simply fascinating. The book blends great narrative with highly useful tips and strategies, and you're not going to want to put it down once you start reading.

This is the kind of book we can all learn something from. Whether you're in top management or just starting your career, the strategies you'll learn in this book will give you an edge over everyone else. You're going to learn a new way of thinking and planning to achieve your long-term, transformational goals. There are plenty of strategies to help you pitch your big ideas to your team or organization, and the author also teaches us how to overcome their hesitation when we present them with a great idea.

The author, Eric Haseltine, is a neuroscientist with a Ph.D in physiological psychology. He's currently the president of Haseltine Partners, and has held senior positions at the National Security Agency, Disney Imagineering, and Hughes Aircraft.

So keep listening to find out why we should disguise our big ideas in some situations, why instant gratification is so important when we're working on long-term projects, and how to turn around the emotions of your group when you're pitching a big idea.

"Long Fuse, Big Bang" is divided into twelve chapters. The author spends the first chapter explaining why we focus on the here and now so much, and why it's so vital to learn how to improve our long-term thinking.

He makes a compelling case here by talking about how society develops at an ever-increasing pace. Scientists have concluded that each new wave of human innovation comes on the scene about one-tenth the time its predecessor did.

Quoting futurist Ray Kurzweil, the author notes that it took humans a very long time to figure out how to cook with fire. But they crafted shelters only a few hundred thousand years after that. And then sophisticated clothing arrived only a few ten thousand years after shelters. This pace has continued to increase. Now, new cameras and computers come out in a matter of months rather than years.

This is why long-term planning is so important. Innovative companies like Google and Apple have mastered the art of "long fuse, big bang" thinking, and we can do it too. And because of this ever quickening pace, we don't have to wait as long to see the benefits of our long-term plans. We can reap the rewards sooner than we used to.

In chapter two we start getting strategies we can use to override our brain's focus on the short term.

One such strategy is to focus on small chunks.

The author tells the compelling story of a doctor who was trying to overhaul the American health care system in the nineteen seventies and eighties, to make the gender balance more equal. Women, and their health issues, were sorely neglected in every aspect of health care and research at that time. But tackling such an enormous goal seemed impossible, especially in bureaucratic Washington D.C.

She started by taking small, manageable steps to change things. Each step seemed insignificant at times. Other times they led to a relatively painless change. Most importantly, every step was low-risk for the people she was pitching to. They couldn't see her large goal of overhauling healthcare to include women. All they could see was her request to add more women doctors to the council of the National Institute of Health, as one example.

The author says sometimes we have to disguise big ideas as small ones if we want to light a long fuse for a big bang. We thought this was an excellent concept because it's one we can all use when we're trying to push projects and ideas through the red tape of large organizations. This concept would also work well when we're up against a group of people resisting change.

The author offers a great piece of advice here. He says we shouldn't get frustrated and emotional when we encounter conservative thinkers who are resisting change or new ideas. Change is highly uncertain. And, as you heard earlier, our brains are hard wired to avoid uncertain situations simply from a survival standpoint.

To counteract this, we need to put risk-management into our presentations and speeches. We have to openly address risk whenever we talk about a new project or idea we're passionate about, because we can be sure our audience is thinking about it.

We also have to keep negative emotion out of the picture. We have to know, going in, that people are probably going to think conservatively. Getting angry will only push them further away and turn them off our idea.

In chapter three, Pursuing the Distant Win, we learn why we still need instant gratification when we're trying to do long-term projects. Our brains crave that quick fix, so if we're going to succeed, we need to give it to them.

The author says we need to ask ourselves what we can do today to push us towards our long-term goal. These small, quick accomplishments will steadily move us down the path towards our larger goal. And they're far easier to do than the goal itself. Every time we accomplish a tiny step, we get that instant gratification that keeps us motivated to take the next tiny step.

If you want to light big bangs, says the author, don't try to get your brain to light a long fuse by focusing on a huge goal. Instead, get it to light short fuses that connect, one day at a time, into much longer fuses.

Another fascinating chapter is chapter four, which focuses on our blind spots.

The author brings up a phenomenon called "functional fixity." Functional fixity is where our brains lock on to the functions that everyday objects are supposed to have, which blinds us to the full potential of what these objects could do.

A simple example is a rock. When we overcome functional fixity, that everyday rock can be used as a hammer, or to light a fire. That pencil on our desk could become a weapon, or a tool to center a picture we're trying to hang.

Whenever someone has a big bang innovation, chances are they overcame functional fixity to create something really innovative. Functional fixity is our biggest blind spot. Our brains see what we want to see, not what we don't want to see. If we can learn how to overcome our natural blind spots, we can start creating some big bangs of our own.

So how do we do that?

We have to start by recognizing that our brains routinely give us plausible-sounding reasons to reject new ideas. Often, we convince ourselves that an idea is bad because we're afraid of the implications of the change it will bring. That new idea is painful, so we often persuade ourselves it's bad so we don't have to deal with it. This is why so many great opportunities often die before they even get started.

We don't learn how to really overcome our blind spots until chapter five. Here, the author gives us the Magic Matrix, a model he developed to help us overcome our blind spots and come up with innovative new ideas to solve problems.

We think readers, especially those of you facing resistance to an idea or project you're pitching, will find this matrix highly useful. The author says it works best when you're in a battle with a tough competitor. The matrix helps you uncover your own blind spots by getting you to look at the problem from your competitor's point of view.

Another chapter worth highlighting is chapter eight. Here the author goes into detail about the power of our hearts, and why staying positive can open ourselves up to "long fuse" ideas.

The author goes into great detail about the evolution of our brain here. His explanation of our body's reaction to fear and positive emotion is eye-opening, and it fully supports his statement that when we're feeling positive and curious, we're far more open to big bang ideas.

There's also a great strategy in this chapter for turning around the emotions of a person or group you're trying to convince to hop on board with your big bang idea.

The strategy is a bit long to go into detail here, but put simply it's this. If your group is already focusing on the negative, riskier aspects of your idea, you're not going to convince them with logic.

Instead, you've got to make a complete turnabout and appeal to the primal limbic system of their brains. The limbic system is very powerful and largely unconscious. It's what kept us alive when we were avoiding threats and hunting thousands of years ago.

To appeal to the limbic system, you've got to exude infectious enthusiasm and positive emotion. The author says the most effective leaders use this strategy because emotions are far more powerful than logic. Emotions speak directly to our limbic systems, specifically our amygdale. Regions in our limbic system receive sensory inputs before information arrives from our neocortex, which is the logical portion of our brain.

Because our limbic system is stronger and faster than our neocortex, appealing to this part of our brain means we often act fast, even overriding our neocortex.

We thought this was a useful tip all of us could use when pitching new ideas. Although we can't say with certainty that it'll work all the time, it does seem a better strategy than countering arguments and resistance with more negative emotions.

The last four chapters continue in the same vein. We get more strategies for breaking down resistance to our ideas in larger groups, and how we can continue to light long fuses for big bangs well into the future.

The author does a great job including some really fascinating stories that not only educate, but keep us entertained as well.

So, what's our last word on "Long Fuse, Big Bang?"

We loved it. This is the type of book that will keep you up reading late into the night because it's so fascinating. The author has backed up his claims with scientific data, and the stories and issues he covers are interesting and very well written. Although some of the stories do get a bit long-winded at times, they're always relevant to the topic at hand.

The only criticism we have is that, although the book is a gold mine of information, the tips and strategies are sometimes hard to find. This is not a book you can skim to get the most relevant information. There are no bullet points, and few subheadings, to break up the text and highlight important points.

The strategies and tips are hidden in and out of the author's stories and scientific case studies. So if you need this information in a hurry, good luck. You really need to sit down and read in order to grasp what the author's talking about. The author does give handy recaps at the end of each chapter, but these are just in paragraph format.

"Long Fuse, Big Bang" is a highly-readable, intriguing look at the human brain and its evolution. The author gives us some great ideas for overcoming our natural tendencies so we can thrive in the new world of fast-paced innovation. And although some of the stories are a bit drawn out, they're well-written enough to keep us entertained. Overall, we think readers will get a lot of value out of the book.

"Long Fuse, Big Bang," by Eric Haseltine, is published by Hyperion Books.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.