Teamwork is crucial. Even geniuses like Turing need help from others to crack the Enigma. So, what are the key factors that enable a team to succeed? People naturally believe it is the abilities and levels of individual members, but the reality might surprise you.

At the beginning of The Culture Code, the author describes an interesting competition among kindergarten children, business school students, and lawyers: participants had to build the tallest structure possible using raw spaghetti, tape, string, and marshmallows. The competition ended with the kindergarten children winning. Why did the seemingly least capable group manage to defeat the others? Upon reviewing the competition, we found that business school students typically analyzed the problem first, discussed the right strategy, and then quietly established a hierarchy; whereas the kindergarten children simply started building and experimenting with different approaches.

A strong team culture emphasizes communication among team members rather than individual skills. Such a culture maximizes overall performance. To foster a positive team culture that enhances collective performance, there are three key skills.

1. Create a Safe Work Environment​

People are more likely to unleash their full potential in a familiar environment, so creating a safe space is crucial. The sense of safety within a team comes from familiarity and connection among its members. If you want to cultivate a safe work environment, it is essential to learn to listen and let others know they are heard. When people know that what they say is being listened to and valued, they feel secure. You can provide appropriate feedback while listening, which enhances interaction and makes people feel needed.

2. Be Vulnerable to Build Trust​

Although it may seem counterintuitive, showing vulnerability can indeed enhance team performance. We often observe the behaviors of those around us and learn by imitation. Admitting your weaknesses and mistakes to team members shows that they can do the same. This helps to strengthen internal trust among the team.

At the same time, displaying your shortcomings expresses an expectation for collaboration. When you show that you rely on others for help, they can also comfortably acknowledge their need for assistance. Over time, everyone understands that they shouldn’t bear everything alone, naturally fostering a sense of unity within the team.

3. Establish Common Goals and Reinforce Them​

A steadfast pursuit of common goals is key to good team performance. A team's common goal refers to the beliefs and values that motivate the actions of its members. This common goal clarifies the team's self-identity and communicates it to the outside world. Psychologist Gabriele Oettingen has demonstrated through several studies that communicating common goals helps unite members and makes achieving those goals easier.

To deepen members' impressions, repetition is essential. To express things more clearly, repeating them ten or even a hundred times is worthwhile. You can repeatedly convey the company's mission in meetings or turn the goals into catchy slogans.

Data Domain is a data backup service provider that went public in its sixth year after founding and was acquired by EMC two years later, becoming EMC's second fastest-growing business after VMWare. The CEO of Data Domain shares the story and logic behind this in the book "Tape Sucks," which may be the best SaaS book I've read in recent years.

The company's background is venture-backed, with top-tier investors. Most team members hold PhDs, indicating that the problems the company solves are quite challenging; top talent is more interested in solving difficult problems than merely interesting ones. There were four founders: one with an academic background, one with an engineering background, one with a product background, and one an expert in data. The author joined the company a year and a half after its founding, just before the Series A funding was about to transition to Series B, and became the CEO.

The problem the company addresses is using hard drives for data backup, replacing cheaper but less reliable tapes. This is also the title of the book and the company's slogan: "Tape Sucks, Move On."

No Pain, No Gain​

Only the Federal Reserve can create new money; everyone else's money is obtained from others. Narrowly speaking, most businesses are zero-sum games.

So when starting a company, you need to understand from whom you are earning your money. With limited budgets, what will they stop buying once you enter the picture, and what will they buy instead? Who are you replacing, and why will you succeed in replacing them?

"Creative destruction," or "no pain, no gain," is a fundamental truth in business; you better understand whose lunch you are stealing.

Target a product category that is being questioned or is declining; this increases your chances of success. Do not target a product category that is on the rise.

Start from Applications or Use Cases, Not Technology​

Company operations always consume resources. When you launch a missile, if there is no target, it will continuously consume fuel and eventually fall.

Make Customers Happy​

"Everything revolves around the customer" is a common saying, but how can you truly achieve this?

Everyone in the company should listen to and discuss user feedback. Before receiving the first round of funding, the company had already gathered specific feedback about the product from dozens of customers. The importance of all other ideas ranks behind customer feedback.

This has two benefits:

1. Maintains focus
2. Aids sales: Customers prefer to work with vendors who genuinely care about their business and learn from them. For specifics, refer to the HBR 1993 article on Customer Intimacy.

Not every business is buyer-driven; for example, the iPod was not created because customers wanted it.

Create Your Own Blood Supply​

Buying things is hard; selling your product directly is more challenging than letting someone else sell it. However, the authors decided to build their own marketing and sales teams for several reasons:

1. Intermediaries put you further away from customers, making it harder to achieve intimacy.
2. You become dependent on others, losing control over your destiny.
3. No one will want to sell your product more than you do.
4. You can only take home 10-20% of the profits.
5. They believe their product is genuinely good, so if competitors sign agreements with intermediaries, it must be because they cannot compete with them directly.
6. If the company's goal is to go public, this approach is more controllable and predictable.
7. If you find strong salespeople, it not only strengthens you but weakens your enemies. This is what victory is; Ulysses S. Grant once said that victory is breaking the enemy's will to fight.

Building a marketing and sales team is fraught with challenges and can take years. Essentially, it involves continuously finding ways to make the sales team

1. Efficient
2. Cost-effective

Building a marketing and sales team is a costly endeavor, so a crucial prerequisite is that their product has an 80% margin.

To control expenses, marketing and sales are done together.

Clarify Sales Channels​

1. Direct sales: buy if you want,
   1. If you don't buy, your competitors will.
   2. If you don't buy, your customers will.
2. Omnichannel strategy: large suppliers correspond to saturated channels and big clients, which can attract small and medium clients directly. The omnichannel strategy does not affect profit margins; with intermediaries, prices are slightly higher, and without them, they are lower.

The more directly you can reach customers, the more power you have.

When to Persist and When to Give Up​

When not making money, focus on conserving strength; once you find a good breakthrough point, spend resources quickly and efficiently. In the growth S-curve, there are two key questions to repeatedly ask yourself:

1. When will the breakthrough point come?
2. Once the breakthrough point arrives, can you invest enough resources for growth?

Cash is the fuel that allows the business rocket to fly; if the fuel runs out before reaching escape velocity, the rocket will fall.

Set and collect data evidence to reach milestones for securing the next round of funding.

Growing Pains of the Team​

The company faced a ceiling in team growth due to insufficient guidance for leadership and being overly stingy in hiring managers.

Initially, almost everyone was an independent contributor focused on getting things done. No one was dedicated full-time to recruiting and performance management. Without proper processes in place, it was impossible to onboard new hires effectively.

In the early stages, growth is always more important than profitability; slightly managing the efficiency and rate of cash burn allows the company to survive. Consequently, when sales reached 40 to 50 million, there were only two finance staff. The desire to survive led to a reluctance to hire unnecessary managers and raise funds.

Hire Potential Stars Instead of Superstars​

When the company is still small, the people you want may not want you; if you can't hire superstars, you can hire potential stars. Good potential stars have the following characteristics: full of energy, enthusiastic, ambitious, smart, hardworking, and eager for the job.

After hiring many potential stars, the company even developed a culture of "everyone has a mission to prove themselves."

Rapid Experimentation​

How does the company achieve rapid experimentation?

1. Lead by example from the top. Quickly and openly acknowledge, address, and summarize mistakes.
2. Prohibit a culture of punishing mistakes or settling scores later. Whether people or machines, mistakes and errors are inevitable; sincerely learn from them to avoid repeating them, or create a mechanism where making mistakes does not cause harm.

Are Large Banks Suitable Initial Target Customers?​

No. Because large bank customers:

1. Are overly picky
2. Are too conservative, leading to long sales cycles

Startups should focus on places where they can quickly sell products, rather than getting bogged down with large banks.

The key is to find traction. Data Domain found traction in the mid-market and channels, avoiding trouble, increasing installations, refining products, and making customers happy.

Once mid-market customers are secured, then pursue high-end clients.

Lead by Example, Experience the Battlefield, and Stay Motivated​

In a brawl, what kind of leader is most motivating? Of course, it's the leaders who charge to the front and beat the enemy. Similarly, as the CEO in charge of sales, the most motivating thing is to travel for a few days, meet five or six customers daily, and return to share experiences and customer feedback with the team.

If you don't do this, you will distance yourself from your team members, making it harder to relate and understand each other.

The marketplace is like a battlefield; if employees cannot feel the cold wind of competition every day, if they cannot sense their efforts defeating bloody opponents, if they cannot feel the atmosphere of the battlefield, how can you expect them to be motivated and work hard?

Express Humanity with Authenticity​

The first rule of leadership is to be yourself and be the person you want to be. Two reasons:

1. If you don't feel worthy of being followed, and you have to follow others, how can you expect everyone to follow you? They can directly follow the people you follow.
2. People can easily see through pretentiousness; if you pretend, you will come across as lacking enthusiasm, preferences, humanity, and energy, and no one will remember what you said.

How to be an authentic leader? == Publicly show your determination, enthusiasm, energy, passion, and relentless desire for success.==

For example, the author participates in triathlons and makes controversial statements. When questioned about why a large tech company could replicate their technology in six months, the author responds without hesitation: "You can send a thousand women to have babies, but no matter how many there are, it still takes nine months; software development is the opposite of economies of scale: the more people involved, the slower the progress."

CEOs Must Overcome Ego​

• The CEO is not the owner of the company; the investors are.
• Arrogant CEOs often lack self-awareness, while outsiders can easily see it.
• Never miss the opportunity to praise others; if the company does well, you will receive all the accolades, which is not solely your achievement.
• A self-centered leader often says "I" instead of "we," and "my" instead of "our."

Start Internationalization Early​

No matter where you conduct sales, it takes a long time; it's best to start early.

The Board Does Not Operate the Company​

• The board supervises and advises but should not operate the company.
• Listen to the majority's opinions, consult with a few, and make your own decisions.
• Sometimes a company grows beyond the board's level of experience.

Going Public​

By the fifth and a half year, the company's cash flow had been positive for some time, and it wasn't lacking in operational funds; why go public?

1. When competing with giants, a publicly traded company with financial transparency reassures customers.
2. Investors need liquidity.
3. It makes operations more standardized.

Be sure to bring in people with the right industry experience to help you.

Acquisition​

Two years later, NetApp and EMC competed to acquire the company; they chose EMC because:

1. Their product line was too narrow, threatened by comprehensive data center solution providers.
2. EMC offered a full cash acquisition.

Corporate Culture​

In business, the essence of culture is a collective value system—a group of people reaching a consensus on what is valuable and what is not.

Whether you are there or not, whether you define it or not, company culture will exist; good culture makes the company a more pleasant place, so its value is self-evident. The author even believes that company culture is the only form of sustainable differentiation.

At that time, the culture formed throughout the company was called RECIPE:

• Respect
• Excellence
• Customer
• Integrity
• Performance
• Execution

Challenges to cross the chasm​

1. Lack of customers
2. Existing customer’s payment cannot cover the next period
3. Unaligned demands from different visionaries
4. Competitions from alternatives
5. Unsatisfaction from investors

Analogy to Invasion of Normandy​

Analogy: it’s aggression, as the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, Our long-term goal is to take over the mainstream market that is currently dominated by an entrenched competitor.

Solution: focus on a niche market that is

1. Readily achievable
2. Leverage-able for long-term success

If we do not take the niche, we do not worry about our next targets.

Why niche-and-next strategy?​

The niche-and-next strategy is counterintuitive and thus hard to stick to. If we do not adhere to it, it is like lighting a fire without kindling.

Reference-able customers are satisfied ones​

It is ==fatal== to be a sales-driven company; our company should be a market-driven one. Unfortunately, following this strategy takes discipline because leaders can hardly resist the temptation to make short-term money.

The sole goal of the company at this stage should be creating a pragmatist customer base that is reference-able for the mainstream markets.

To achieve the goal, we must ==ensure the first set of customers completely satisfy their buying objectives with the whole product — a generic product that is needed for the customer to have a compelling reason to buy.== The key indicator of this effort is the word-of-mouth reputation among buyers.

Be a niche market leader to sell to pragmatists​

Another reason to be niche focused is that we need to achieve market leadership because pragmatists customers want to buy from market leaders. However, you are small and are still crossing the chasm, so the only available strategy is to take a “big fish, small pond” approach.

One common mistake that website builders make is designing their sites like a product brochure. They go to great lengths to provide visitors with extensive details, but in reality, such websites fail to retain users.

The reason is that most people do not want to spend a lot of time figuring out how things work. They prefer to find answers through trial and error or simply by clicking around.

From a user's perspective, a good website allows them to discover what they need through their own exploration and experimentation. Based on the content from Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited, we have summarized four essential principles for designing a good website.

Start with a Clear and Simple Navigation Bar​

When users first visit a website, they often struggle to understand the scale of the site. Without knowing the website's structure, they may choose to leave. This is why a navigation bar is so crucial. On every page, users should be able to locate their current position, return to the homepage, search for keywords, and find information on how to use the site. Most importantly, the navigation bar must be clear and straightforward.

Design an Impressive Homepage​

The homepage is typically the most frequently visited page on the entire site, making its importance undeniable. Users' first impression of our website also depends on the homepage. Therefore, it is essential to design a visually striking homepage. Additionally, we need to ensure that the homepage conveys the most important information to visitors—our website's vision and goals. For example, we could include a tagline next to the website logo that describes the site's vision.

Use Visual Hierarchy to Present Information​

Users generally do not read text line by line when visiting a website; instead, they skim through the text to retrieve the information they need. If we want to convey specific information to users, we should learn to utilize visual hierarchy. The rule is simple—highlight key information. This way, users will understand what to focus on and where to click.

Improve Loading Speed on Mobile Devices​

A few years ago, creating responsive web pages was just a nice-to-have feature, but now it is essential. With the rapid advancement of mobile devices, users have increasingly high expectations for mobile websites and tend to spend more time surfing on their phones. At the same time, users are more likely to lose patience when loading speeds are slow. On one hand, we need to continually enrich and enhance the content and interactivity of mobile pages; on the other hand, we should strive to improve the loading speed of mobile websites to create the best user experience.

A common mistake many website builders make is creating a website like a product brochure. Website builders spare no efforts to provide the most detailed information for visitors. However, this kind of site cannot keep users.

That is because most people don’t want to spend much time learning how things work. Instead, they prefer to try and figure things out on their own simply by clicking around.

From the users’ perspective, a good website allows them to find what they need by playing around. Based on the book Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited, we have summarized four guidelines for creating a website of good usability.

Start with clear navigation​

When a user lands on a website for the first time, he can hardly estimate the website’s scale. He will probably choose to opt-out for not knowing how the website is organized. That’s why a navigation bar is so necessary. On each page, the navigation should enable users to locate where they are, how they can get back to the homepage, where they can search for keywords and other extra information about how to use the website. Most of all, navigation must be simple and straightforward; otherwise, users may get confused and just click away.

Make an impressive home page​

The home page is likely to be the most frequently visited page of a website, and its importance is self-evident. Users’ first impression of a website is determined by their first impression of the home page. An impressive home page is a must.

Besides, we also need to make sure that we have delivered the most important message to visitors, which is the goal of our website. The book suggests an effective way to communicate with readers on the home page would be placing a tagline describing our mission next to the website logo.

Use visual hierarchies to present information​

When we visit a website, we don’t read the text line by line. Instead, we often scan the text to retrieve the information we need. If you want to convey a specific message to visitors, you should learn to make use of visual hierarchies. The rule is simple. Key messages should be highlighted. So users can understand where to focus on and click. Hiding important information will only annoy visitors.

Improve mobile loading speed​

A few years ago, being responsive was only a plus, but nowadays, it has become a must.

1. Due to the rapid development of mobile devices, users expect more from mobile websites and tend to spend much more time on mobile surfing.
2. Users easily get impatient if the loading speed is slow.
3. We need to enrich the content and interactivity on mobile pages. (tailoring contents for mobile devices.)

Problems with Comic Sans:

1. Unbalanced visual weight in both the letter-level and paragraph-level.
2. Bad kerning (spacing between characters).
3. It gains undeserved popularity nowadays with an aged design for on-screen display in 1994, during which Windows 95 does not have anti-aliasing.
4. Average people mistakenly think they can design well with the ease of modern technologies, while professional designers fight back intensively. And Comic Sans is one of the fiercest points of conflicts.

Advertisements are everywhere nowadays in the society of consumption. Although the ways of advertising have changed quite a lot over the past century, the incentives stay the same behind the scene: drawing attention and trying to sell.

Selling Attention​

Dating back to the early eighteenth century, most of the ads were just informational instead of being persuasive. This situation did not change until Benjamin Day launched his own newspaper in 1833. In order to obtain a large audience, he set the price at a penny while rivals sold at six cents per copy. The loss was inevitable. However, he began to invite businesses to publish ads in his newspaper with an exposure fee. As a result, the newspaper became phenomenal. Because of Benjamin Day, the world started to realize the value of selling the attention of the audience.

Methodical Advertising​

Advertising became more methodical at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was considered as a science. People start to use advertisements specifically for grabing attention. Demand engineering was one of these scientific approaches. It advertised a problem that was never recognized, or sometimes totally fabricated at first, and then claimed the solution of using a certain product. Advertisers of the 1920s also realized that a good reputation could be engineered as well by creating and publicizing a brand.

Forms of Advertising​

The main focus of advertising was in public space before the 1920s. Things changed afterward. Radio advertising became very popular, and advertisers were willing to sponsor the radio content, and hear their names being mentioned during the broadcast, which could draw immediate attention from a large audience. However, the role that radio played in advertising was soon replaced by television, which turned out to be a much more effective way of attracting attention till now.

The emergence of the Internet brought another round of ad revolution, during which emails showed up as a new form of advertising. A survey in 1973 found emails comprised 75 percent of all network traffic. Email is very effective because it rewards people. Receiving an email makes people feel good. Search engines such as Google also become significant sources to harvest lots of attention from users. In order to monetize the attention, the Googlers employed an advertising tool called Adwords to display relevant ads to users based on what they are searching for, along with the results.

In today's consumerist society, advertising is ubiquitous. Although the forms of advertising have changed significantly over the past century, its ultimate goal remains the same: to capture the public's attention and successfully sell products.

Selling Attention​

In the early 18th century, most advertisements were merely informative and did not aim for eye-catching effects. This began to change when Benjamin Day launched his own newspaper in 1833. To attract more readers, he priced his newspaper at one cent while his competitors charged six cents. With the newspaper's success, losses were inevitable. To increase profits and reduce losses, Benjamin started inviting advertisers to place ads in his newspaper and charged them for it. Ultimately, his publication achieved great success, making the world gradually aware of the value of selling attention.

Advertising Methodology​

By the 20th century, advertising began to take shape as a systematic field and was regarded as a science. An advertisement could be crafted to grab attention. Creating demand is one of many scientific methods. This method involves heavily promoting a problem that the public is either unaware of or that is entirely fabricated, and then claiming that a certain product can solve this problem. Additionally, advertisers in the 1920s realized that word of mouth could also be shaped by establishing and popularizing a brand.

Forms of Advertising​

Before the 1920s, advertising was primarily focused on public spaces. However, shortly thereafter, radio advertising became extremely popular. Advertisers were eager to sponsor radio content just to hear their names mentioned during broadcasts—because this would immediately attract a large audience's attention. Later, television quickly replaced radio as the dominant medium for advertising, becoming a more effective way to capture attention, a trend that continues to this day.

The rise of the internet ushered in a new wave of advertising revolution, with email emerging as a new form of advertising. A survey in 1973 showed that emails accounted for 75% of traffic on the internet. Emails are highly effective because they feel like a reward or incentive for customers—receiving an email feels good. Meanwhile, search engines like Google gradually became important resources for capturing user attention. To monetize attention, Google's founders introduced the Adwords advertising tool: it displays relevant ads alongside search results based on user queries.

Only Live "Day 1" = Without Growth, There is Death​

The office building where Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos works is called "Day 1." Over the years, no matter which other building he moves to, he always brings this same name with him. Therefore, he has a lot of authority on this term.

Someone might ask, what is "Day 2"? Day 2 is stagnation, followed by irrelevance, then suffocating, painful decline, and finally, death.

This is why Bezos believes that every day should be Day 1; without growth, there is death. So how do we prevent "Day 2"? There are four foundations.

A True Obsession with Customers​

There are countless business strategies, but why focus on "obsession with customers"? The benefits are numerous, with the biggest being: Customers are always dissatisfied, even when they say they are satisfied. Customers often don’t know what they truly want: they actually want something better. If you want to serve customers well, you must create products and services in their name. For example, the Prime service was not something customers asked Amazon for, but the results proved it was indeed what they wanted.

Maintaining "Day 1" requires patience; you need a lot of experimentation and to accept failure. Planting seeds and growing saplings takes time, but once you see what makes users happy, double down on it.

Resisting Proxies​

As companies grow larger, we often tend to rely on proxies or intermediaries. This form of dependency can take many shapes and is very much "Day 2." Here are two examples:

1. Relying on processes as proxies for results. Good processes serve you, allowing you to better serve customers. You must never serve the process. Why? When you serve the process, you only focus on doing the process correctly, regardless of the outcome. When failures occur, only inexperienced leaders say, "We followed the process," while seasoned leaders say, "We found an opportunity to improve the process." Constantly ask yourself, does the process own us, or do we own the process?

2. Relying on market research and customer surveys as proxies for customers. When you invent and design products, relying on research can be dangerous; "satisfaction increased from 47% to 55%" is a vague statement that can be misleading.

   1. Good investors and designers deeply understand customers; they invest significant energy in developing intuition and study numerous fascinating anecdotes rather than average data from surveys. They exist to design.
   2. Bezos does not oppose public testing and surveys; they help you identify blind spots, but as a provider of products and services, you must prioritize your vision and unique value over customer feedback. Exceptional customer experiences begin with intuition, curiosity, playfulness, courage, and taste—qualities that user surveys cannot provide.

Embracing External Trends​

The trends of the world favor those who align with them and doom those who resist. These trends are not hard to identify, but strangely, large companies often struggle to embrace them. One such trend today is machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Over the past few decades, many tasks could be solved with precise rules and algorithms; next, with machine learning, we can tackle tasks that cannot be described by exact rules.

Much of what happens in machine learning occurs at the foundational level, out of sight, but you can at least call them very simply via APIs.

Fast Decision-Making​

"Day 2" companies make high-quality decisions, but their decision-making speed is very slow. To maintain the energy and vitality of "Day 1," you must make "high-quality and high-speed" decisions. This is important not only because "speed" matters in the business world but also because having an atmosphere of "fast decision-making" is more enjoyable.

How can you achieve fast decision-making? Bezos does not have a complete answer, but here are some thoughts:

1. Decisions are inherently unequal; never treat them all the same. Reversible decisions should use lightweight decision-making processes.

2. Most decisions can be made when you have 70% of the information. Waiting until you have 90% may be too late. Also, in either case, you must quickly identify and address bad decisions. When you are highly responsive, making mistakes is cheap, while being slow is costly.

3. Use a management style of "==I disagree, but I commit to executing well==." This saves a lot of time spent on disputes.

   1. When no one knows the outcome, ask, "I know we have a disagreement, but are you willing to take a gamble with me? I disagree, but I commit to executing well?" The answer you get is likely to be, "Sure."
   2. The party that disagrees does not commit out of indifference but from a genuine and sincere disagreement, allowing the other party to reconsider your "disagreement" while still acting quickly due to your commitment.

4. Identify misalignments early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes, goals between teams conflict, and disputes at the same level cannot be resolved, wasting a lot of time and energy. In such cases, escalating will make decision-making faster and easier.

The ability to stay focused is the key to achieve your goals in a world full of temptations. Nir Eyal, the author of the bestseller book, Hooked, revealed his way of fighting against distractions in his new book, indistractable.

Why are we so easily distracted? There might be external causes sometimes. However, in most cases, it turns out distraction has internal sources. We are distracted because we want to escape from discomfort. To avoid distraction, we need to solve the problem from inside.

Identify internal triggers and beat them​

Next time you feel inclined to distraction, try to record your feelings and what triggers that. That’s how you can identify internal triggers in the first place. Then you can try to avoid the triggers by making tasks more fun.

Plan quality time for yourself before work​

To have a plan can prevent you from distraction because you will know what exactly you are striving for. However, scheduling for work is not the best place to start. On the contrary, plan for yourself and your relationships first, and then you will not escape to your hobbies in the middle of work.

Cut down on office distractions and learn to organize​

Office distractions such as email notifications are typical external triggers. Let others know that you need to be entirely focused on the task at hand, so they are not supposed to interrupt you. Also, learn to sort your emails more effectively and make sure only a few emails demand your attention every day. Other than emails, there are other forms of distraction in the workplace. Learn to organize them in the least distracting way.

Make use of pacts to prevent distraction​

You have to be aware of the fact that the battle between you and distraction is not a one-day fight. Maybe you can try an APP to block your access to distracting. Or find a study buddy to focus together. Imposing fines for missing targets also sounds practical, which has been testified by the author.

Contribute to a functional work culture​

Dysfunctional work culture is the beginning of endless distraction, in which employees are overburdened and even required to answer emails after work. Employers should create a platform that enables employees to give feedbacks safely without be worried about getting fired. Step by step, the company can head towards a functional work culture.