Handbook inc.’s Success Super Book : a definitive Consolidation of 25 Perspectives to Guide your Future Success

13. Proactively manage decision fatigue.
“Humans can be astonishingly bad at managing and recognizing 
the impact of decision fatigue (the tendency to make worse 
choices after prolonged sessions of decision making when they are 
cognitively exhausted). 
To fight this phenomenon, I move my highest priority meetings 
to midmorning, when I’m most alert, and try to limit the number 
of decisions I make after lunch. I also try to lock in a number of 
behaviors as routine, as opposed to making them daily choices, like 
whether I work out or drive a certain route to work every day. 

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IN C . C O M
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IN C .’ S S U C C E S S S U P E R B O O K : A D E F INI T I V E C O N S O L ID AT IO N O F 2 5 P E R S P EC T I V E S TO G UID E YO U R F U T U R E S U C C E S S
MY FAVORITE 
EXAMPLE 
IS BARACK 
OBAMA, WHO 
PICKED OUT 
HIS CLOTHING 
THE NIGHT 
BEFORE AND 
ONLY WORE 
BLUE AND GRAY 
SUITS FOR 
EIGHT YEARS 
TO MINIMIZE 
HIS NUMBER OF 
DECISIONS. 
My favorite example is Barack Obama, who picked out his clothing 
the night before and only wore blue and gray suits for eight years 
to minimize his number of decisions. If you want to devote all 
your energy to running the country (or your business/ family/
organization), don’t spend your limited cognitive resources on 
variables that don’t move the needle.”
--Jeremy Kauffman, principal at Scale Venture Partners, a venture 
capital firm, which invests in early-in-revenue enterprise software 
companies such as DocuSign, Box, and HubSpot, and raised $400 
million to close its sixth fund in 2018
14. Keep up on what’s going on outside of yourself and your 
company.
“My goal is to build external context every day. There are lots of 
different ways I do this. I spend 30 to 45 minutes catching up on 
what’s happening outside of my own world. When you focus only 
on what affects your company or industry, you may miss the forest 
for the trees. 
I run through news sources like BBC World News, CNBC, and 
NPR, focusing on broad trends. In addition, I make sure I have an 
average of one customer, partner, or competitive touch-point a day, 
so I have 360-degree context on my business to complement the 
internal perspective.”
--Christine Heckart, CEO of Scalyr, a log management and 

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IN C . C O M
16 2
IN C .’ S S U C C E S S S U P E R B O O K : A D E F INI T I V E C O N S O L ID AT IO N O F 2 5 P E R S P EC T I V E S TO G UID E YO U R F U T U R E S U C C E S S
EAT DINNER 
AS A FAMILY 
EVERY NIGHT, 
WITH NO 
ELECTRONICS 
ALLOWED.
observability company with customers including NBCUniversal, 
Giphy, OkCupid, and Zalando