Using Google Classroom Professional Development Lesson Planet: Fill & Download for Free

I want to decorate elementary schools in the light of the 21st century.Saying that it has always been this way, doesn’t count as a legitimate justification to why it should stay that way. Teacher and administrators all over the world are doing amazing things, but some of the things we are still doing, despite all the new solutions, research and ideas out there is, to put it mildly, incredible.I’m not saying we should just make the current system better… we should change it into something else.I have compiled a list of 14 things that are obsolete in 21st century schools and it is my hope that this will inspire lively discussions about the future of education.1. Computer Rooms:The idea of taking a whole class to a computer room with outdated equipment, once a week to practice their typewriting skills and sending them back to the classroom 40 minutes later, is obsolete.Computers or technology shouldn’t just be a specific subject, that’s not sufficient anymore but rather it should be an integral part of all the subjects and built into the curriculum.2. Isolated classrooms:Classrooms can be isolated in two ways. One where parents, teachers or guests are not welcome because the door and drapes are always shut… which has the words “Don’t come in here” written all over it. The other way is being isolated to all the knowledge outside the 4 walls. For example from the internet, videos, blogs, websites and visits from authors or scientists through Skype, to name a few.Tony Wagner, the author of the Global Achievement Gap says: “Isolation is the enemy of improvement”. The classroom should be open, teachers should be able to walk in and learn from each other, parents should visit often, f.x. with so called Extra Open Schooldays (where all parents are encouraged to visit classrooms anytime during the day). Isolated classrooms are therefore obsolete.3. Schools that don’t have WiFi:Schools that don’t have a robust WiFi network for staff and students are not only missing a big change for teaching and learning but robbing the students of access to knowledge and also limiting their chances to learn about the internet and using technology in a safe way.21st century schools make it possible for students and staff to learn anywhere, anytime and schools that don’t allow that are obsolete.4. Banning phones and tablets:Taking phones and tablets from students instead of using them to enhance learning is obsolete. We should celebrate the technology students bring and use them as learning tools.Phones are no longer just devices to text and make phone calls… when they were, then banning them was OK. Today there is more processing power in the average cellular telephone than NASA had access to when they sent a man to the moon in 1969. Yet most students only know how to use these devices for social media and playing games.Today you can edit a movie, make a radio show, take pictures, make posters, websites, blog, tweet as a character from a book, have class conversations over TodaysMeet and Google most answers on a test with the device in your pocket. We should show our students the learning possibilities & turn these distractions into learning opportunities that will reach far outside the classroom.5. Tech director with an administrator access:Having one person responsible for the computer system, working from a windowless office in the school basement, surrounded by old computers, updates the programs and tells the staff what tech tools they can and cannot use… is obsolete.Today we need technology co-ordinators that know what teachers and students need to be successful and solves problems instead of creating barriers. Someone who helps people to help themselves by giving them responsibility and finds better and cheaper ways to do things.6. Teachers that don’t share what they do:are obsolete. Teachers are no longer working locally but globally and it’s our job to share what we do and see what others are doing. If a teacher is no longer learning then he shouldn’t be teaching other people.We should all be tweeting, blogging and sharing what works and doesn’t work, get and give advice to and from co-workers around the world. We should constantly be improving our craft because professional development isn’t a 3 hour workshop once a month but a lifelong process.“We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” -John Dewey7. Schools that don’t have Facebook or Twitter:Schools that think putting a news article on the school website every other week and publish a monthly newsletter is enough to keep parents informed are obsolete.The school should have a Facebook page, share news and information with parents, have a Twitter account and their own hashtag, run their own online TV channel where students film, edit and publish things about school events.If you don’t tell your story, someone else will.8. Unhealthy cafeteria food:School cafeterias that look and operate almost like fast food restaurants where staff and students get a cheap, fast and unhealthy meals are obsolete.A few schools in Iceland and Sweden have turned almost completely to organic foods and given thought into the long term benefit of healthy food rather than the short term savings of the unhealthy. For example at Stora Hammar school in Sweden 90% of the food served is organic.Children should put the food on their own plate, clean up after themselves and even do the dishes. Not because it saves the school money on workforce but because it is a part of growing up and learning about responsibility. What 21st century schools should be doing as well is growing their own fruits and vegetables where students water them and learn about nature. Setting up a farm to feed students would be optimal, but if that is not an option (for example in big city schools) then they can at last set up a windowfarm in some of the school windows.The goal with providing students a healthy meal is not only to give them enough nutrition to last the school day but to make healthy food a normal part of their daily life and get them to think about nutrition which is something that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.9. Starting school at 8 o’clock for teenagers:Research has shown over and over again that teenagers do better and feel better in schools that start later. Often parents or administrators needs get in the way of that change. Research (f.x. from the The Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics and University of Minnesota – video) show that delaying school start as little as 50 minutes and making it longer by 30 minutes instead has a positive effect both on learning and activities after school. Schools that don’t do this are obsolete.Starting later is easy and teachers could use the extra time in the morning to prepare class… it’s a win-win situation.10. Buying poster-, website- and pamphlet design for the school:When your school needs a poster, pamphlet or a new website they shouldn’t buy the service from somewhere else (although that can sometimes be the case) and have students do it instead. In the best schools of the future, they will be the ones doing it as a real project that has meaning and as a collaborative project in language and art….using technology.11. Traditional libraries:Libraries that only contain books and chess tables are obsolete.A 21st century library should be at the heart of the school and a place where both students and staff can come in to relax, read, get advice, access powerful devices, edit videos, music, print in 3D and learn how to code to name a few. This 21st century learning space should give people an equal chance to use these devices and access information. Otherwise these libraries will turn into museums where people go to look at all the things we used to use.12. All students get the same:Putting kids in the same class because they are born in the same year is obsolete. School systems were originally set up to meet the needs of industrialism. Back then we needed people to work in factories, conformity was good and nobody was meant to excel or be different in that environment. That doesn’t fit our needs today, let alone the future but many schools are still set up like the factories they were meant to serve a 100 years ago.We should increase choice, give children support to flourish in what interests them and not only give them extra attention in the things they’re bad at. In most schools, if you are good in art but bad in german you get german lessons to get to par with the other students instead of excelling at art… All even, all the same!Education should be individualised, students should work in groups regardless of age and their education should be built around their needs.13. One-Professional development-workshop-fits-all:A school that just sends the entire staff to a workshop once a month where everyone get the same are obsolete. Professional development is usually top down instead of the ground up where everyone get what they want and need. This is because giving everyone (including students) what they need and want takes time & money.With things like Twitter, Pinterest, articles online, books, videos, co-operation & conversations employees can personalize their professional development. (Read about my article on Personalized Professional Development here)14. Standardized tests to measure the quality of education:Looking at standardized tests to evaluate whether or not children are educated or not is the dumbest thing we can do and gives us a shallow view of learning. The outcomes, although moderately important, measure only a small part of what we want our kids to learn and by focusing on these exams we are narrowing the curriculum. Alfie Kohn even pointed out a statistically significant correlation between high grades on standardized tests and a shallow approach to learning.The world today and the needs of the society are completely different to what they used to be. We are not only training people to work locally but globally. With standardized test, like PISA, we are narrowing the curriculum, and all the OECD countries are teaching the same thing. Because of that we all produce the same kind of workers, outdated workers, to work in factories. People who can comply, behave and be like everybody else.In the global world today it is easy to outsource jobs to someone who is willing to do the same job, just as fast for less money. Therefore we need creative people that can do something else and think differently.Andrea Schleicher (2010) said: “Schools have to prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, technologies that have not yet been invented and problems that we don’t know will arise.”Standardized education might have been the answer once but saying that it’s obsolete is putting it mildly and is only a way to try to repair the broken system. Results of those tests are, according to Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind, 2005) in direct contradiction to the skills we need today. Those skills are for example design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.We should be solving real problems, asking questions that matter instead of remembering and repeating facts. Adults’ accomplishments are linked far more strongly to their creativity than IQ (source) and we should be celebrating diverse knowledge and interest instead of trying to standardise knowledge and skills.I wonder if schools would finally change their direction if we designed a new standardize test that wouldn’t measure numeracy, science and literacy but empathy, creative thinking and communication skills… Maybe that is all we need.Final thoughtsAll the education systems on the planet are being reformed, but I don’t think reform is what we need. We need a revolution and change the education system into something else. It isn’t an easy task, but as S.E. Phillips once said:Anything worth having, is worth fighting for.Doing something new and getting poor results on the old test shouldn’t surprise anyone. What is the point of doing something new and different if we get the same results on standardized tests… then we might as well just do factory schooling, conform and comply.“If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” – Henry FordThat is exactly what we are doing today. We are asking our students to remember more, write better and repeat faster then before… just like we wanted the faster horse, when really we should be asking for the car. Sure the car wasn’t better than the horse in the beginning and our education system won’t be perfect either. It will never be perfect, it should be constantly evolving and we should strive to make it better every day.I don’t know what a perfect education system looks like, and don’t think it even exist. But I believe that if we talk, try something different, fail forward, investigate and share what we do, not only locally but globally, we can get a lot closer.If you want to see change in education, you should start in your own classroom.“Education can be encouraged from the top-down but can only be improved from the ground up”– Sir Ken Robinson

1________ Google Search & Its features – Google search is the most popular search engine on the Web.AdMob – Monetize and promote your mobile apps with ads.Android – Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system , middleware and key applications.Android Auto – The right information for the road ahead.Android Messages – Text on your computer with Messages for web.Android Pay – The simple and secure way to pay with your Android phone.Android TV – Android TV delivers a world of content, apps and games to your living room.Android Wear – Android Wear smartwatches let you track your fitness, glance at alerts & messages, and ask Google for help – right on your wrist.Blogger – A free blog publishing tool for easy sharing of your thoughts with the world.Dartr – Dartr is a brand new programming language developed by Google.DoubleClick – An ad technology foundation to create, transact, and manage digital advertising for the world’s buyers, creators and sellers.Google.org – Develops technologies to help address global challenges and supports innovative partners through grants, investments and in-kind resources.Google Aardvark* – A social search engine where people answer each other’s questions.Google About me – Control what people see about you.Google Account Activity – Get a monthly summary of your account activity across many Google products.Google Ad Planner – A free media planning tool that can help you identify websites your audience is likely to visit so you can make better-informed advertising decisions.Google AdSense – Place contextual Google ads on your site – and earn money.Google AdWords (now known as Google Ads) – Advertise online and pay only when people click on your ad.Google Affiliate Network* – Full-service online marketing company specializing in pay-for-performance media.Google Alerts – Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.Google Allo – Allo is a messaging app that makes conversations easier, more productive, and more expressive.Google Analytics (Urchin) – Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Also check out, Google Analytics Premium.Google Answers* – Answers allows users to get help from researchers with expertise in online searching.Google Apps (Now, G Suite) – Software-as-a-service for business email, information sharing and security.Google App Engine – Run your web applications on Google’s infrastructure.Google Assistant – Your own personal Google. Ask it questions. Tell it to do things. It’s your own personal Google, always ready to help.Google Base – Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content.Google Blog Search – Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs.Google Body (Now, Zygote Body) – Google Body is a detailed 3D model of the human body.Google Bookmarks – Google Bookmarks is an online service that lets you save your favorite sites and attach labels and comments. Also check out, Bookmark Manager.Google Book – Search and preview millions of books from libraries and publishers worldwide.Google Books Ngram Viewer – Visualize the rise and fall of particular keywords across 5 million books and 500 years.Google Browser Size – Simple visual tool to show what percentage of web users can see different areas of a website without needing to scroll.Google Buzz* – Start conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos , videos and more with your friends.Google Calendar – Keep track of all your life’s important events – birthdays, reunions, little league games, doctor’s appointments — all in one place.Google Cardboard – Experience virtual reality in a simple, fun, and affordable way.Google Cars – A search engine to get quotes for Cars.Google Checkout – Buy from stores across the web and track all your orders and shipping in one place.Google Chrome – A browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.Google Chromecast – Cast your favorite entertainment from your phone or tablet straight to the TV.Google Chrome Sync – It’s a Google Tool that Syncs your Google Chrome bookmarks across multiple computers.Google Chromebook – A computer from Google, designed to help you get things done faster and easier. 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With Expeditions, teachers can take students on immersive, virtual journeys.Google Express – Google Express is an online marketplace that connects shoppers with popular retailers.Google Fast Flip* – Read news fast.Google FeedBurner – Allows bloggers and podcasters to manage their RSS feeds.Google Fi – Project Fi is a mobile virtual network operator owned by Google, providing wireless phone and data services using Wi-Fi and cellular networks belonging to Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Three.Google Fiber – Google Fiber is a broadband internet network that starts with a connection speed 100 times faster than today’s broadband.Google Finance – Offers a broad range of information about stocks, mutual funds, and companies.Google Firebase – Firebase is Google’s mobile platform that helps you quickly develop high-quality apps and grow your business.Google Fit – An open platform that lets users control their fitness data.Google Flights – Choose your flight from a simple list of results, explore destinations on a map, and find travel dates with the lowest fare with Google Flight Search.Google Fonts – Google Fonts (previously called Google Web Fonts) is an interactive directory of hosted open-source fonts optimized for the web.Google Forms – Create a new survey on your own or with others at the same time.Google Fuchsia – Fuchsia is an operating system currently being developed by Google.Google Fusion Tables – Gather, visualize and share your data online.Google Friend Connect* – Instantly awakens and strengthens the community that visits your site by enriching it with social features.Google Gboard – Gboard is a virtual keyboard app developed by Google for Android and iOS devices.Google Gears – A Firefox and Internet Explorer extension that allows to navigate on compatible websites offline and synchronize when going back online.Google Glass – Google’s Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD).Google Go – Go is an expressive, concurrent, garbage-collected programming language.Google Grants – In-kind advertising for non-profit organizations.Grasshopper – Grasshopper is the coding app for beginners. With fun, quick lessons on your phone, the app teaches adult learners to write real JavaScript.Google Groups – Where groups of people have discussions about common interests.Google Hangouts – Hangouts bring your conversations to life with photos, emoji, and group video calls for free.Google Hangouts Chat – A messaging platform built for teams.Google Hangouts Meet – Video meetings for your business.Google Helpouts – Connects people who need help with people who can give help over live video.Google Health* – Puts you in charge of your health information.Google Hire – A recruiting app that helps distribute jobs, identify and attract candidates, build strong relationships, and efficiently manage the interview process.Google History – Your web history is stored on Google servers, which means that you can view and manage it from any computer.Google Home – Google Home is a powerful speaker and voice Assistant. Play your music. Call your friends. Ask it questions. Control your home. It’s your own Google, always ready to help.Google Home Mini – Google Home Mini is Google Assistant anywhere you want it. Ask it questions. Tell it to do things. It’s your own Google, always ready to help.Google Hotel Finder – Browse hotel photo galleries, read visitor reviews, and discover the popular areas of the city with Google Hotel Finder.Google Ideas (Now, Jigsaw) – Google Ideas connect users, experts and engineers to conduct research and seed new technology-driven initiatives.Google Image Search & Similar Images – The most comprehensive image search on the web. Google Search Images allows you to search for images using pictures rather than words.Google Inbox – Inbox by Gmail is a new app from the Gmail team for Android, iOS, and Google Chrome. Inbox is an organized place to get things done and get back to what matters.Google in Quotes ____ Allows you to find quotes from stories linked to Google News!!Google Input Tools – Input Tools makes it easy to type in the language you choose, anywhere on the web!!Google Jamboard – Jamboard is an interactive whiteboard developed by Google, as part of the G Suite family.Google Jump – Jump is Google’s professional VR video solution. Jump makes 3D-360 video production at scale possible with best-in-class automated stitching.Google Keep – Quickly create, access and organize your notes, lists and photos with Keep.Google Knol* – Knol makes it free and easy to create, collaborate on, and publish credible web content.Google Latitude – See where your friends are on a map.Google Lens – Real-time answers to questions about the world around you.Google Lively* – A web-based virtual environment by Google.Google Local Business Center – If you are a business owner Claim your business listing today and let customers find you online!Google Loon – Loon is a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and remote areas, help fill coverage gaps, and bring people back online after disasters.Google Mail (Gmail) – Gmail is a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful.Google Maps & Google Map Maker – Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions. With Map Maker you can edit the map in more than a hundred countries and watch your edits go into Google Maps.Google Maps Smarty Pins – A Google Maps based geography and trivia game.Google Marketing Platform – A unified advertising and analytics platform for smarter marketing and better results.Google Mars – Provides a visible imagery view, like Google Moon, as well as infrared imagery and shaded relief (elevation) of the planet Mars.Google Mobile – Upgrade your phone with free Google products.Google Moderator – A tool that allows distributed communities to submit and vote on questions for talks, presentations and events.Google Moon – See the Moon in 3D.Google Music – Upload your personal music collection and access it instantly on the web or any compatible device without the hassle of wires or syncing.Google Music Timeline – Music Timeline shows genres of music waxing and waning, based on how many Google Play Music users have an artist or album in their music library, and other data (such as album release dates).Google My Business – Connects you directly with customers, whether they’re looking for you on Search, Maps or Google+.Google News, News Archive Search & Google News Timeline – Aggregated headlines and a search engine of many of the world’s news sources. News archive search provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. News Timeline is a web application that organizes information chronologically.Google News Lab – The News Lab is Google’s effort to collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to build the future of media.Google Nexus – Smartphones and tablets from Google.Google Nexus Player – A console designed to fit beautifully alongside your current home entertainment setup.Google Nik Collection – Create stunning images faster.Google Notebook* (SearchWiki*) – With Google Notebook, you can browse, clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that’s accessible from any computer.Google Now – An intelligent personal assistant by Google.Google Offers – Get amazing deals at the best places to eat, shop, and play.Google One – Get expanded cloud storage, access to help from Google experts, and more benefits — in one simple plan that you can share with your family.Google One Pass* – A service that lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content.Google One Today – One Today makes it easy to donate to the causes that inspire you, while letting nonprofits raise the funds they need to make the world better.Google OnHub – A new router from Google that’s built for all the ways you Wi-Fi.Google Optimize – Make a great impression on each and every visitor. Easily run tests on your website — for free — so it works better for your customers and your business.Google Pack* – Google Pack is a collection of software tools offered by Google to download in a single archive.Google PageSpeed Insights – Page Speed Online analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster.Google PageSpeed Service – PageSpeed Service makes web pages load faster for your users.Google Patents – Search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you.Google Pay – Google’s new digital payment app (originally made for India as Google Tez).Google Person Finder – Google Person Finder by Home – Google.org helps people reconnect with friends and loved ones in the aftermath of natural and humanitarian disasters.Google Photos – Google Photos is the home for all your photos and videos. Automatically organized and searchable, you can find photos fast and bring them to life.Google Pixel – Android devices designed and built from start to finish by Google.Google Play – Google’s digital application distribution platform for Android and an online electronics and digital media store.Google Play Movies – Find the newest movies and TV shows to buy or rent.Google Play Music — Makes it easy to discover, play and share the music you love on Android and the web.Google Play Newsstand – Discover more of the news and magazines you care about on your Android tablet or phone.Google Play Protect – Google Play Protect is Google’s built-in malware protection for Android. Backed by the strength of Google’s machine learning algorithms, it is always improving in real time.Google Plus – Google+ aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Also check out, Google+ Stories & Movies.Google Podcasts – Google Podcasts is a new way for Android users to discover and listen to the world’s podcasts.Google Postini – Google email security and archiving services, powered by Postini, make your existing email system more secure and compliant.Google PowerMeter – Save Energy. Save Money. Make a Difference.Google Primer – Primer is a fast, easy way to learn new business and digital marketing skills.Google Product Search (Froogle) – Presents photographs of products and links to the stores that sell them online.Google Profiles – Decide what the world sees when it searches for you. Display the information you care about and make it easy for visitors to get to know you.Google Public Data Explorer – Makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.Google Public DNS – Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider.Google Reader* – Web based feed reader to keep up with blogs and news.Google Related – Google Related is a Chrome Extension that shows you useful, interesting content while you browse the web.Google Safe Browsing — Check URLs against Google’s constantly updated lists of suspected phishing and malware pages.Google Scholar – Provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.Google Scribe – Google Scribe helps you write better documents.Google Script Converter – Convert text or a webpage.Google Self-driving Car – Google Driverless Car is a project that involves developing technology for autonomous cars.Google Sets* – Automatically create sets of items from a few examples.Google Sheets – Create a new spreadsheet and edit with others at the same time — from your computer, phone or tablet.Google Sites – Google Sites is a free and easy way to create and share web pages.Google SketchUp – Create, modify and share 3D models. Also check out, 3D Warehouse.Google Sky – Google Sky includes a number of different ways to explore the universe.Google Slides – Create a new presentation and edit with others at the same time — from your computer, phone or tablet.Google Spaces – Instant groups for everything in life.Google Squared – Takes a category and creates a starter ‘square‘ of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web.Google Station – Google’s free, fast public Wi-Fi.Google Street View – Explore the world at street level.Google Store – Official Google Accessories, Apparel Items, Software, Office Equipment.Google Subscribed Links – Subscribed Links let you create custom search results that users can add to their Google search pages.Google Suggest – As you type your search, Google offers keyword suggestions in real time.Google Sunroof – Sunroof is a solar calculator from Google that helps you map your roof’s solar savings potential.Google Surveys – Market research that’s fast and accurate.Google Sync – Synchronize your mail, calendar and contacts.Google Tag Manager – It lets you add and update your website tags, easily and for free, whenever you want, without bugging the IT folks.Google Takeout – Google Takeout allows you to download a copy of your data stored within Google products.Google Talk* – Chat with family and friends over the Internet for free.Google Tango – Tango lets you see more of your world.Google Tasks – Keep track of what you need to do. Your task list stays up to date no matter how you access it. It’s a simple list that’s with you everywhere you go.Google Think – It’s Google’s source for insights, trends and research in digital marketing.Google Tilt Brush – Tilt Brush lets you paint in 3D space with virtual reality.Google Toolbar – Internet Explorer and Firefox Toolbar with Google search.Google Tour Creator – Tour Creator makes it easy to build immersive, 360 tours right from your computer.Google Transit – Plan a trip using public transportation.Google Transliteration – Google Transliteration allows you to type phonetically using Roman characters.Google Translate – Free online language translation service instantly translates text and web pages.Google Trends & Google Insights for Search – Compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Use Google Insights for Search and see for yourself what the world is searching for.Google Trips – Instantly plan and organize your trips, automatically discover new sights, and effortlessly track your travel info.Google TV – Google TV is a new experience that combines TV, the entire web, and apps — as well as a way to search across them all. Take a tour, learn how it works, and find out how to get it.Google URL Shortener – Google URL Shortener at Google URL Shortener is used by Google products to create short URLs that can be easily shared, tweeted, or emailed to friends.Google Vault – Use Google Vault to manage, retain, search and export your company email, on-the-record chats, and Google Drive file content.Google Ventures – Venture Capital – by Google.Google Video – Search and watch millions of videos indexed from all over the web.Google Voice – Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, free US long distance, low rates on international calls, and more. Tip: The first minute of calls to phone numbers in twenty-five different countries is now free with Hangouts.Google VR – Virtual Reality for everyone.Google Wallet – Save time and money by shopping with Google Wallet — a smart, virtual wallet that stores your payment cards, offers, and more on your phone and online.Google Wave* – Google Wave is a new online communication and collaboration tool.Google Web Designer – Create engaging, interactive HTML5-based designs and motion graphics that can run on any device.Google Web Accelerator – Google Web Accelerator works with your browser to help web pages show up in a snap.Google Web Elements – Google Web Elements allow you to easily add your favorite Google products to your website.Google Web Fonts – Get hundreds of free, open-source fonts optimized for the web (hosted on Google Server).Google Web Toolkit – Open source set of tools for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications.Google Webmaster Tools – Provides you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google.Google Website Optimizer – Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent.Google WiFi – Google WiFi is a free wireless Internet service that Google is offering to the city of Mountain View.Google X – X is a semi-secret research and development facility founded by Google.GYBO (Get Your Business Online with Google) – Get an easy-to-build professional website, a customized domain name, and web hosting — all free for one year.Cameos – Cameos on Google lets you be the authority on you. Record video answers to the most asked questions on Google and then post them right to Google. Now, when people search for you, they’ll get answers directly from you.Constitute – To read, search, and compare the world’s constitutions!Flutter – Flutter is Google’s mobile app SDK for crafting high-quality native interfaces on iOS and Android in record time.iGoogle* – Your personalized Google home page.Jaiku* – Create your own microblog and connect with your friends.Motion Stills – Motion Stills is an app from Google Research that uses advanced stabilization and rendering to turn your Live Photos and videos into GIFs that loop forever or edit them together into epic movies.Navlekha – Navlekha, a Google initiative, helps you easily make offline content fully editable and publish online without expert digital knowledge.Neighbourly (Android only) – Your neighbourhood questions, answered.Orkut* – Social networking site designed to make your social life more active and stimulating.Panoramio – A geolocation-oriented photo sharing website.Picasa – Helps you organize, edit, and share your photos.Quick, Draw! – Draw a picture of an object or idea and Google uses a neural network artificial intelligence to guess what the drawings represent.reCAPTCHA – A captcha system that uses successful decodings to helps digitise books for online use.Schemer – Schemer lets you discover new things to do, share schemes with friends, and make the most of your day.Scrubbies (iOS only) – Scrubbies lets you easily manipulate the speed and direction of video playback to produce amazing video loops that highlight actions, capture funny faces, and replay moments.Selfissimo! (iOS, Android) – is an automated selfie photographer that snaps a stylish black and white photo each time you pose.Snapseed – A photo-editing app for iOS and Android.Storyboard (Android only) – Storyboard transforms your videos into single-page comic layouts, entirely on device.Textcube – Korean blogging platform.The Physical Web – An approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand.Think with Google – Google’s source for insights, trends and research in digital marketing.VirusTotal – VirusTotal is a free service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware.Waze – It is the world’s largest community based traffic and navigation app. You can join other drivers in your area who share real-time traffic and road info, saving everyone time and gas money on their daily commute.Wear OS– Wear OS by Google smartwatches help you get more out of your time. Fitness tracking, messaging, help from your Google Assistant and more all from the convenience of your wrist.WebP – A new open-source image format by Google that provides 30% better image compression.WebPageTest – Website Performance and Optimization Test is an open source project developed and supported by Google to test a website’s performance.WebRTC – An open source project that enables web browsers with Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities.What Do You Love (WDYL) – Search numerous Google products with one click.Wildfire – Wildfire is a social media marketing software that provides easy-to-use social media tools for pages, messages, ads, promotions, monitoring, analytics, etc.YouTube – Share your videos with friends, family, and the world.YouTube Gaming – Connect to a world of gamers with the broadest mix of games, videos, and live streams all in one place.YouTube Kids – A safer online experience for kids.YouTube Music – A music streaming website and app available for iOS and Android.YouTube Red – With a YouTube Red membership, watch YouTube ad-free, save videos offline, and play videos in the background.YouTube Studio – Manage your channel with Creator Studio.YouTube TV – Stream live TV channels and record without DVR storage space limits.Zagat – Find reviews on the hottest restaurants, make reservations and see full menus!

Wonderful question!Throughout my entire career as a serial entrepreneur and writer, I have been fascinated with a question that correlates directly with becoming part of the 1%:Is there some unique way of thinking that gives self-made billionaire entrepreneurs an edge?I’ve read more billionaire entrepreneur biographies than I can count, researched what they have in common, and met and interviewed several.Without a doubt, luck plays a central role. But luck alone doesn’t explain the repeated success of entrepreneurs who create billion dollar company after billion dollar company or who have enduring multibillion dollar companies: entrepreneurs like Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk.By researching these entrepreneurs, I’ve found unique ways of thinking that aren’t commonly known among most entrepreneurs (even successful ones).The process of uncovering these principles has fundamentally changed how I think about business. Some have served as a reminder that it’s consistently doing simple things that matter most.Photo Credit: Steve Jennings/Getty Images For TechCrunch (Elizabeth Holmes), Michelle Andonian (Elon Musk), Joi Ito (Reid Hoffman), AP Photo-Nati Harnik (Charlie Munger), Steve Jurvetson (Jeff Bezos), World Economic Forum/Moritz Hager (Ray Dalio), Marcin Mycielski (Larry Page), Matthew Yohe (Steve Jobs), Stuart Isett/Fortune Most Powerful Women (Warren Buffett)For each entrepreneur I studied, I’ve uncovered a:Billionaire entrepreneur strategy. The overarching principle that has served as a foundation for the billionaire’s success. I focused on one specific, non-obvious strategy.Billionaire entrepreneur hack. How successful entrepreneurs are applying the strategies to grow their business.1. Charlie Munger (billionaire investor): Analyze what can go wrong instead of what can go right.Photo Credit: AP Photo-Nati HarnikBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:Until I read billionaire Charlie Munger’s Poor Charlie’s Almanack, I thought the key to success was creating a vision, setting goals, and working hard toward them every day.If I failed, I thought it was because I did one of these steps wrong.Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman and long-time Warren Buffett business partner, shows another equally important path to success; thinking through what can go wrong.Things constantly go wrong no matter how smart and hardworking you are.Realizing this, Munger continuously and methodically considers every way a plan could go wrong and plots out how to avoid each obstacle. He says:“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead — through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die so I don’t go there.”Munger’s approach helps him avoid roadblocks and be more prepared when he inevitably runs into one. Furthermore, combining goal setting and obstacle avoidance is backed up by a growing body of over 100+ academic studies on the topic. When people only ‘fantasize’ about the future, they actually end up taking less action than they would if they also thought about what could go wrong and made plans to avoid it.Bottom line: Being both pessimistic and optimistic is better than just being optimistic. One of the best ways to win is not to lose.Billionaire Entrepreneur Hack:To apply this principle, test your plan with this three-step pre-mortem process developed by Meathead Movers CEO and cofounder, Aaron Steed:List the ways the project could failAssign a probability to each possibilityPrioritize actions that can be taken to avoid failureSteed created the process after noticing that certain projects at his 350-person company were getting poor results.Rather than adding new procedures to help those projects succeed, he developed the pre-mortem process to remove the barriers that were causing them to fail.One of the obstacles that Munger proactively avoids is psychological biases. As an additional resource, we compiled a 27 page report that summarizes the 22 psychological biases that Munger has identified throughout his 70-year career.2. Warren Buffett (billionaire investor): Use checklists to avoid stupid mistakes.Photo Credit: Stuart Isett/Fortune Most Powerful WomenBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:Generally speaking, there are two types of mistakes: those that are stupid and those that are ignorant.Ignorant mistakes happen when you don’t know better. Stupid mistakes happen when you do know better.Stupid mistakes are the hardest to stomach because they’re the easiest to solve. Yet people, especially smart people, make them over and over.Warren Buffett and his 40-year business partner, Charlie Munger, don’t attribute their success to raw intelligence or brilliant ideas. Instead, they attribute a large part of it to consistently avoiding stupid mistakes by religiously following basic tenets and ideas they know will work.Talking about his and Buffett’s strategy in his book, Munger states:“We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.”To counteract the often negative influence emotions can have in investment decisions, Buffett and Munger use several checklists, including ones for investing, problem solving, and psychological biases.They claim that using these checklists have been crucial to their miraculous 21.6 percent return on investment for four decades, which is double the market average.More recently, checklists have been receiving well-deserved attention as a result of theChecklist Manifesto, written by Harvard Medical School professor of surgery, Atul Gawande.In a fascinating study by the World Health Organization, 8 hospitals who adopted a 19-point checklist saw deaths from surgery nearly cut in half!Billionaire Entrepreneur Hack:Blake Goodwine has used a decision-making checklist to build his Lionize Media Group into a network of niche media sites with tens of millions of monthly visitors.His problem-solving checklist, shown below, lays out the path to a successful business strategy, and counteracts any internal biases that impede him from reaching his desired destination:Brainstorm. Dream up as many possible solutions as you can. This helps you avoid availability bias, which often results in us choosing the first solution that comes to mind rather than the best solution.Test. Test as many potential solutions as you can afford to. This avoids the confirmation bias of rationalizing the one solution you chose.Evaluate. Have a minimum success criteria for each experiment. This allows you to avoid doubling down on bad ideas that aren’t working in an effort to recoup sunk costs.Learn. Dive deeply into the data and learn from EVERY experiment, not just the one that worked best. Avoid taking mistakes personally and feeling shame over something that did not work.Goodwine says:“Even if this checklist helps you make big decisions just slightly better, it will change the entire trajectory of your life and business. It has for me.”As an additional resource, we compiled some of the best expert advice on how to create actionable checklists into a step-by-step guide.3. Ray Dalio (billionaire investor): Learn how to think independently so you can be smarter than everyone else.Photo Credit: World Economic Forum/Moritz HagerBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:“You can’t make money agreeing with the consensus view,” asserts Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world ($169+ billion under management).Doing what everyone else does is going to bring you average results. That’s the definition of average.To Dalio, the key to having enduring, extraordinary performance is to do what others won’t or can’t AND to be right.This is easier said than done. For example, 86% of professional investors do not beat the market. The numbers are sobering for entrepreneurship too: 30.9–37.6% of new businesses fail in the first three years.In a recent op-ed, Dalio explains why it’s so hard:“Whenever you’re betting against the consensus there’s a significant probability you’re going to be wrong, so you have to be humble.”The good news is that with enough practice, you can put the odds in your favor.Billionaire Entrepreneur Hack:Thinking independently is more than one simple hack. Broadly speaking, it requires:Courage to stand up against the herd when you’re right and everyone else is wrongAccess to or understanding of information that other people don’t haveUnique ways of analyzing that informationHere are ways to hone each of those abilities:Ability #1: Stand Up Against The HerdWe are wired to want to fit in socially. So, standing up against the herd is extremely hard.Fortunately, courage is a skill that can be practiced.Emerson Spartz, founder and CEO of Spartz Inc., a digital media company that owns a network of sites like Dose and OMG Facts (45+M monthly visitors), practices daily what he calls comfort zone challenges. Spartz says:“These are little things I do that cause me to feel uncomfortable and socially awkward, but have no real negative impact.”These challenges train him to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, so he has courage when he really needs it.His favorite challenge is the coffee cup challenge, which is simply asking for a 10 percent discount when you buy coffee.Ability #2: Develop An Information AdvantageOne of the easiest ways to beat the herd is to have an information advantage. Here are four ways to get that advantage:Build deep relationships with people who have accomplished the goals you want to accomplish. By building relationships based on mutual trust and respect, where others want you to succeed, people share information they never would publicly. For more on this strategy, read Reid Hoffman’s strategy (see #7).Learn from other fields and bring the insights into your own. Most people focus on learning about their own field, even though other fields have proven insights that are applicable. Being an expert-generalist (a term coined by Orit Gadiesh, the chairwoman of multibillion dollar consulting company,Bain & Company) and going wide into adjacent fields will quickly give you a unique perspective.Build a lab, not an experiment. Entrepreneurs who can conduct more experiments will discover more new data and therefore have a big advantage. These entrepreneurs look at their business as a lab where they constantly run experiments. Many entrepreneurs fail here because they look at their business as one big experiment to test just one idea.Be good at pulling out the wisdom of others. Many successful people are not able to articulate how they do what they do. They just do it. Asking the right questions can help bring to the surface this tacit knowledge. One way that famous technology investor, Peter Thiel, uncovers this knowledge is by asking the founders he backs what they strongly believe that no one else does.Ability #3: Develop An Analytical AdvantageThis is where many of the billionaire strategies mentioned in this article can be applied:Charlie Munger (see #1)Elon Musk (see #8)As an additional resource, we summarized Ray Dalio’s seminal ebook, Principles, and interviews he has done over the years into a step-by-step guide on how to develop your own independent opinions.4. Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder): Invest in what will NOT change instead of only what will changePhoto Credit: Steve JurvetsonBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:Judging by the media coverage of entrepreneurs, it’s easy to think that the #1 key to success is hopping on the biggest trends.Jeff Bezos shows that big trends are only part of the story. It’s also about doing the exact opposite and focusing on what does not change.Since its founding in 1994, Amazon has focused, like a laser, on the simple idea that people will always want to buy products as cheaply, easily and as quickly as possible. Therefore, Amazon can safely make huge technology investments in these areas and know they will pay off in the future.Bezos explained why this approach makes sense at the 2012 Amazon Web Services conference:“It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ or ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’”The strategy seems to be working. Amazon just became the most valuable retailer in the world this year, and its growth is speeding up, while the growth of its main competitor, Walmart, is slowing down.Bottom line: Become the best in one core area by continually investing in it over time, rather than jumping from trend to trend and starting over each time.Billionaire Entrepreneur Hack:To apply this principle to your business, identify a core customer need that will likely stay the same (even as technology and culture evolve) to which your company is uniquely positioned to cater.Then build your company around it.This is what Ohio-based entrepreneur Jason Duff did.Realizing that nostalgia doesn’t get the attention it deserves, Duff built his whole real estate business around it. Nostalgia is the universal inclination to remember the past sentimentally in order to derive meaning from our lives.Duff applied this insight in his company by focusing on restoring historic downtown buildings rather than tearing them down and building modern structures.He used the following formula to create hundreds of jobs in his community and build several multimillion dollar businesses.Purchase overlooked historic properties at a large discountInvest heavily in repurposing and restoring themTell the story of what they meant (and could mean again) to the community through social media.In doing so, he has increased the value of the property, by tapping into the warm feelings held by the townspeople who remember coming to the building in their youth. His Facebook posts providing details on renovation projects regularly attract hundreds of likes.5. Elizabeth Holmes (31-year-old billionaire): Be laser focused on a single problem with no backup plan for your career.Photo Credit: Steve Jennings/Getty Images For TechCrunchBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:Elizabeth Holmes, the 31 year old founder of Theranos (valued at $9 billion) doesn’t believe in backup plans. Speaking to a group of students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Holmes shared her philosophy:“I think that the minute that you have a backup plan, you’ve admitted that you’re not going to succeed.”Conventional thinking says you should diversify when it comes to your career, business, and strategies within your business. The rationale is that if one option fails, you’ll still have something to fall back on.The problem with this approach is that it takes precious time and resources away from your best option. As a result, you decrease the odds that either one will work.Holmes’s approach is to spend extra time determining what to focus on and then put all of her energy into that one thing. The same philosophy is used by Warren Buffett who only makes 2–3 investments per year.Another benefit of going all in on one career path is that you are building up your skills, network, and reputation in that field, so even if things don’t go as you had planned, you can still use your ‘career capital’ to pursue your next big idea.Finally, Katy Milkman, a professor at Wharton, has performed research that shows that backup plans come with another unexpected downside. She explains the downside in an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast:“Because you know that all your eggs aren’t in this one basket, you may feel more confident and comfortable relaxing and letting up and not pushing as hard toward your primary goal since you know things will be OK, you can always go with your back up plan.”Billionaire Entrepreneur Hack:By not having a backup plan, you can put all your energy into your primary plan.But, in order for this to work, you need to have put in the extra effort to make sure you’ve prioritized correctly.The “one thing” philosophy is a powerful approach that ensures you stay on track.The heart of this approach is taking extra time to prioritize, so you always have clear view of the one most important thing you can do for the day, for the week, for the month, and for the year to push your vision forward.This approach:Forces you to get a deeper understanding of what’s really importantIncreases the odds of completing that one thingRyan Simonetti, co-founder of Convene, which has 150+ employees, applies the “one thing” philosophy by waking up every morning and asking himself,“What is the one thing I need to do today to help my company accomplish its singular vision such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”In an Entrepreneur.com article, Simonetti shares,“When you compound this process over days, months and years, the impact is truly astounding. It is the 80/20 rule on steroids.”Professor Edward D. Hess has spent much of his career studying the outliers (both private and public companies) that achieved above average shareholder returns. What he shares in his book, Smart Growth, is that focus on a singular vision is one of the key themes of successful companies.6. Steve Jobs (Apple co-founder): Use storytelling to make your vision more compelling; not mission-speak.Photo Credit: Matthew YoheBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:Having a powerful vision is essential for all entrepreneurs, but if you are going to excel, your stakeholders need to buy into your vision.That’s where most people fail.For many, the vision ends up becoming a few lines of mission-speak on their corporate website.Yet, there are other leaders like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk who seem to have the superpower to distort reality.After listening to them, it feels like their vision of the world is inevitable and http://critical.It is easy to attribute this ability to charisma, but there is a case to be made that Jobs was just really good at storytelling, which is a learnable skill.According to academic studies on storytelling, great stories transport others into a whole other world and, in doing so, alter their beliefs, cause a loss of access to real-world facts, evoke emotions, and significantly reduce their ability to detect inaccuracies.Throughout history, visionary storytellers have changed the course of societies and industries:Billionaire Entrepreneur Hacks:1. Turn Your Vision Into A Detailed Story And Picture1–800-GOT-JUNK? founder and CEO Brian Scudamore captures his company’s vision through a document called the Painted Picture.In vivid detail, the document explains what Scudamore expects the company to be like in 3 to 5 years. This description includes both quantitative details (like the number of people the company will employ and how many locations it will have) and qualitative ones (like how employees will describe the culture to their families).The Painted Picture was paramount in 1–800-GOT-JUNK? growing its revenues to more than $100 million, Scudamore says. He recommends the following steps "retreat, visualize, and ask" to create your own:Retreat: First, grab a notebook and find a quiet space where you don’t have any distractions from your daily life.Visualize: Transplant yourself five years into the future. See yourself looking around at your life and your business. Imagine that you’re really in that place where the future HAS already happened. For example, if you have a five-year old child, imagine your child is now ten. Then, imagine yourself five years older.Ask: Once you’ve transported yourself to that place, ask yourself some questions that will help you “crystal ball” the future. Here are some key questions to ask yourself:- What is your top-line revenue?- How many people are on your team?- How would your people describe the culture of your company when talking to a family member?- What is the press saying about your business? Be as specific as possible: what would your local paper say about your company? What would your favorite magazine say?- What do your people love about your vision and where the company is headed?- How would a customer describe their experience with you? What would they say to their best friend?- What accomplishment are you most proud of? What accomplishment are your people most proud of?- What do you do better than anyone else on the planet?- Describe your office environment in detail.- Describe your service area. Who are your customers and how do they feel?As an additional resource, read Brian Scudamore’s article on the science-backed reasons that creating a vision is so powerful.2. Share Your Vision Often And EverywhereCameron Herold, author of Double Double, CEO coach and globally renowned speaker has helped tens of thousands of high growth entrepreneurs and leaders from 6 continents create a Vivid Vision for their organizations.One of the biggest mistakes that Herold sees leaders make is keeping their vision to themselves rather than sharing it with others.He recommends sharing your Vivid Vision as widely and as often as you can. This means sharing it with your team, family and friends, investors, media, customers, potential employees, and partners. He explains why:“When you’re a startup just getting traction, you can’t offer the salary and benefits that a world-class employee would normally get at a large company. You haven’t accomplished a lot that you can talk to the media about. So, what you’re always selling is the sizzle; not the steak. The sizzle is your vision!”A few ways and reasons that Herold recommends sharing your vision with different stakeholders include:Media Exposure. Herold recommends turning every conversation with the media into a conversation about the vision:“What makes a company like Uber get covered is not the fact that it’s a taxi service; it’s the story that Uber is completely changing the transportation industry. If companies like Uber only talked about what they did now, they’d be boring and they’d only get a fraction of the media coverage.”Employee Filtering. Herold says that the Vivid Vision should act like a magnet; it should attract those who are committed and repel those who aren’t. He shares one example of what one of his CEO clients told his employees after sharing the vivid vision with them for the first time, “15% of you hated what you heard. That’s alright. Now’s an ok time for you to leave. 5% of you loved it. Let’s build it. This is what we’re working toward.”Customer Relationships. Herold advises his clients to send out the vivid vision quarterly to their customers, “90% clients may not care, but even if just a few do, you’ll be able to take your relationship to a whole new level.”Employee Alignment. Herold says that sharing the vision internally leads to more clarity, less in-fighting, and less bureaucracy, because there isn’t confusion about what everyone is working toward. It’s crystal clear and not questionable. Herold recommends that every quarter, employees reread the vivid vision as a team and do a few things: (1) Highlight each sentence with green, yellow, and red depending on how it’s doing so everyone can visually see how the vision is coming alive. (2) Share how they individually can make each sentence of the vivid vision come true. (3) Circle sentences that really excite them and read those sentences out loud.Executive / Board Alignment. In a Forbes interview, Herold recommends having one executive read all or part of the vivid vision at the beginning of your meetings meetings with executive and board members.As an additional resource, go here to download Cameron’s free book chapter on how to create a Vivid Vision.7. Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn founder): Build deep, long-term relationships that give you insider knowledge.Photo Credit: Joi ItoBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:If you reverse engineer the relationships of many successful entrepreneurs, as I have, you will realize that many people work with the same people over and over in their careers.In the technology world, this phenomenon has been cataloged extensively (see the mafias of Oracle, Netscape, Fairchild, PayPal, andMyspace). Each of these companies have spawned new multi-billion dollar enterprises as a result of former employees starting new companies together, advising each other, investing in each other, and much more.These long-term, collaborative networks are often referred to as mafias. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and part of the PayPal mafia, has put these types of relationships at the centre of his career and makes a case that others should too. In the information age, one of the best ways to get information is not from just being better at searching Google, it’s from learning how to build a network and get the information you need through that network, Hoffman says.In a fascinating interview on This Week In Startups, Hoffman goes so far as to say that the biggest mistake in his career was deciding that in order to be a product manager he needed to learn product management skills. In retrospect, he would have focused on placing himself in the right network by working at one of the fastest growing, futuristic companies at that time: Netscape.Hoffman refers to the information that only exists in people’s heads as the ‘dark net.’ This includes information that is not searchable online, in any book, or in any classroom and never will be.Getting access to this ‘dark net’ information from people who have accomplished what you want to accomplish is extremely valuable and will help you think independently. The ‘dark net’ includes people’s lessons learned and hacks, topics that are too sensitive to talk about because they make someone look bad, and tacit knowledge (knowledge that people have but aren’t able to articulate).Hoffman explains the power of the ‘dark net’:“Ten extremely informed individuals who are happy to share what they know with you when you engage them can tell you a lot more than a thousand people you only know in the most superficial way.”Billionaire Entrepreneur Hack:Deep long-term relationships don’t happen by chance. Just as divorce rates are high, so too are partnerships that go sour.Two keys on building long-term relationships that I’ve learned from researching and writing on the art and science of building deep and authentic relationships for Forbes include:Key #1: Be extremely picky about whom you spend a lot of time around.Our time is limited. Every minute you spend with one person is a minute you’re NOT spending with someone else. Below are characteristics other relationship builders and I use for filtering our professional network:1. Professional network. Qualities that I look for:They value relationships over pure achievement and are willing and able to invest in the relationshipThey are giversThey are open to being vulnerable and to sharing their true experiencesI genuinely enjoy spending time with themThey are constantly growing and learningThey share similar values2. Close business relationships. Rohit Anabheri, founder of the firm Circa Ventures($10M+ revenue), has built multiple multimillion dollar companies before he turned 30. He has built each business through business partnerships by using the following rules:Have a mutual, enduring commitment to the relationship so you can get through tough timesComplement each other in multiple ways; strengths and weaknesses, visionary and execution, and styleHave clear, mutually-agreed-upon rolesKey #2: Invest the time.No matter how successful you are, building deep relationships still takes a lot of time. So, it’s critical to turn relationship building into a habit.8. Elon Musk (SpaceX and Tesla co-founder): Use decision trees to make better decisions.Photo Credit: Michelle AndonianBillionaire Entrepreneur Strategy:Many thought that Elon Musk was crazy when he plowed all of his PayPal earnings into SpaceX and Tesla. However, there was a proven logic behind Musk’s decisions. Musk, like Warren Buffett, uses decision trees to make big decisions.Decision trees are particularly useful for avoiding stupid risks and big bets that aren’t likely to succeed.Making unlikely big bets:In an interview with tech entrepreneur Kevin Rose, Musk admits that he thought the most likely outcome for both SpaceX and Tesla was failure. However, they were both so important to the future of humanity and had so much potential that he felt the risk was worth it.Probabilistically, it makes sense. Here’s why.Financially, if Musk thought that SpaceX could be a $100 billion company and that the chance of success was 30 percent, the expected return statistically using a decision tree is $30 billion. Not bad!Musk could have easily focused on a company with a $1 billion potential and a 80 percent chance of success. But, in this case, the expected return would only be $800 million.Avoiding “Russian roulette” risks:If there is even a tiny chance that doing something could destroy you, it’s a very bad idea.In a talk, Warren Buffett compares these types of situations to Russian roulette:“If you hand me a gun with a million chambers in it, and there’s a bullet in one chamber, and you said, ‘Put it up to your temple. How much do you want to be paid to pull it once?’ I’m not going to pull it. You can name any sum you want, but it doesn’t do anything for me.”Smart people fall for this mistake all the time. In the same talk, Buffett shares the story of the collapse of the multibillion-dollar hedge fund Long-Term Capital.The leadership team included the smartest people in the industry along with Nobel laureates. Yet they played Russian roulette. For every dollar of their money they invested, they borrowed $25. This made them extremely susceptible to a downturn in the market, even a small one. This happened in 1998 and the firm went under in just a few months.Buffett’s point was that all of the company leaders were already extremely wealthy and had spent decades building reputations. So, the incremental benefit of growing richer was small compared with the risk of losing everything, which they ultimately did.Billionaire Entrepreneur Hack:Utilizing a decision tree does not require a PhD. All that’s needed is a basic understanding of probability. Here’s a step-by-step process you can follow to use the principles in your decision making:Understand the different outcomes that could happen (both positive and negative)Calculate the expected return or loss of each outcome:Attach a probability to each outcomeUnderstanding the magnitude of the return or lossMultiple the probability by the magnitude (probability of winning * value of win) — (probability of losing * cost of the loss)Add up and subtract all of the expected returns and lossesTo get started you don’t need to know the exact probabilities. Just following the process will give you unique insights you wouldn’t have had otherwise (i.e., the power of unlikely big bets and the risk of Russian roulette decisions).For a step-by-step guide on how to create decision trees, visit this page. It is an online companion to an economics textbook.—Special thanks to Rachel Zohn, Sheena Lindahl, Emily Shapiro, Austin Epperson, and Ian Chew who volunteered their time to edit this article and do research.Also thank you to Jessica Newfield, Antonia Donato, Amber Tucker, andEduardo Litonjua for reviewing the article and providing insightful feedback.Disclosure: Some of the contributors featured in this article are members of Seminal, a selective council that distills research-backed, actionable insights from world-class entrepreneurs and leaders.