Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler. Steven is an author and entrepreneur and I previously read his book The Future Is Faster Than You Think. He is addressing flow, yet like my previous read, he somewhat misses the mark.
There is certainly some promise to the idea of “flow” the ability to drive performance. Steven is focusing on ecstatic: the “overwhelming happiness or joy” throughout the book. In addition, this contributes to his launch of the flow genome project.
However, for many readers the thought they can transfer their existing life into the high performance of Navy SEALS, Google programmers, and even at the extreme end, become an out of work Venezuelan suddenly bursting out to be an internet video “star” is even beyond perplexing.
In fact, the idea that any reader lacking the required years and years of dedication, education, and physical training to be a SEAL, a complete and through understanding of advanced computer programming — including the ability to navigate through Google’s notorious interviewing process is pretty far fetched. Yet, add on top of all of this the “luck of the draw” to become a 2011 internet video sensation? Yes, this alludes to the skillsets required to be able to ‘steal fire’ as the book seems to suggest. Yet, this is a metrics data mining issue. And it would not seem possible….unless you add drugs to the mix.
Too Much Hype ?
Nevertheless, this book is interesting. What Steven is aiming for are insights that allow you to skip to the front of the line, regardless of market, workplace, or business venture. Whereas Angela Duckworth’s Grit or Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (the 10,000 hour rule) reveal that hard work, time, and determination make the difference, Stealing Fire suggests by altering your state of consciousness with drugs, you can outperform your competition.
Not ‘drugs’ per say, rather ‘pharmacology’
Steven’s idea is that success can be accelerated via psychology, neurobiology, technology and pharmacology. Yet, I am intrigued that by hand picking an individual with a rare talent (the ability to master the violin) can occur in six weeks rather than say — perhaps ten years. So the message is the magic of drugs allows you to become Albert Einstein, Rambo, or your favorite business CEO.
The promise of tapping into mega millions in profits
In conclusion, consider this book with a significant grain of salt. From the history of LSD usage by CIA employees, it becomes somewhat of a stretch to advocate across America’s drug addicted society that elite levels of performance are simply available to anyone via drugs. In addition, this becomes very concerning, many will see this book as introducing valuable insights to their human performance.