The Science of Intelligent Achievement

8Automaticity, Scaling, and the Rise of Mental Loops

If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

—W. Edwards Demming

Success relies on scalability, which relies on systems, or loops.

Successful people are normal people who have learned how to scale themselves really well. If you don't know what the word “scale” means in the last sentence, don't worry; you are not alone. Most people don't know what it means, or they pretend to know as they smile and nod at their boss.

Here, the word “scale” refers to scalability, which is a characteristic of a system, model or function that describes the system's capability to cope and perform under an increased or expanding workload.

A system that scales well, ...