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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY SIXTY

Summary by Sam T Davies

The Book in Three Sentences

A copywriter is a salesperson behind a keyboard.

Copy should be urgent, unique, ultra-specific and useful.

Your performance as a copywriter is based on sales generated, not originality.

The Five Big Ideas

For copy to convince the customer to buy a product or service it must get attention, communicate and persuade

“The word free is the most powerful word in the copywriter’s vocabulary.”

Four out of five readers will read the headline and skip the rest of the ad.

“When writing testimonial copy, use the customer’s own words as much as possible. Don’t polish his statements; a natural, conversational tone adds believability to the testimonial.”

Ask yourself, “Who is my customer? What are the important features of the product? Why will the customer want to buy the product? (What product feature is most important to him?)”

The Copywriter’s Handbook Summary

“A copywriter is a salesperson behind a typewriter.” – Judith Charles

For copy to convince the consumer to buy the product, it must do three things:

Get attention

Communicate

Persuade

Your headline can perform four different tasks:

Get attention

Select the audience

Deliver a complete message

Draw the reader into the body copy

“The word free is the most powerful word in the copywriter’s vocabulary.”

Powerful attention-getting words:

How to

Why

Sale

Quick

Easy

Bargain

Last chance

Guarantee

Results

Proven

Save

“Grade your performance as a copywriter on sales generated by your copy, not on originality.”

“When you write a headline, get attention by picking out an important customer benefit and presenting it in a clear, bold, dramatic fashion. Avoid headlines and concepts that are cute, clever, and titillating but irrelevant. They may generate some hoopla, but they do not sell.”

“According to David Ogilvy, four out of five readers will read the headline and skip the rest of the ad.”

“Ogilvy recommends that you include the selling promise and the brand name in the headline.”

“Remember, as a copywriter, you are not a creative artist; you are a salesperson. Your job is not to create literature; your job is to persuade people to buy the product.”

“When writing testimonial copy, use the customer’s own words as much as possible. Don’t polish his statements; a natural, conversational tone adds believability to the testimonial.”

The “4 U’s” Copywriting Formula

Urgent. “Urgency gives the reader a reason to act now instead of later. You can create a sense of urgency in your headline by incorporating a time element. A sense of urgency can also be created with a time-limited special offer, such as a discount or premium if you order by a certain date.”

Unique. “The powerful headline either says something new, or if it says something the reader has heard before, says it in a new and fresh way.”

Ultra-specific. “Boardroom, a newsletter publisher, is the absolute master of ultra-specific bullets, known as ‘fascinations,’ that tease the reader into reading further and ordering the product.”

Useful. “The strong subject line appeals to the reader’s self-interest by offering a benefit.”

“When you have written your headline, ask yourself how strong it is in each of the 4 U’s. Use a scale of 1 to 4 (1 = weak, 4 = strong) to rank it in each category.”

Questions to Ask Yourself

Who is my customer?

What are the important features of the product?

Why will the customer want to buy the product? (What product feature is most important to him?)

11 Tips for Writing Clear Copy

1. Put the Reader First

“Think of the reader. Ask yourself: Will the reader understand what I have written? Does he know the special terminology I have used? Does my copy tell her something important or new or useful? If I were the reader, would this copy persuade me to buy the product?”

“One technique to help you write for the reader is to address the reader directly as ‘you’ in the copy, just as I am writing to you in this book. Copywriters call this the ‘you-orientation’”.

2. Carefully Organize Your Selling Points

“When you write your copy, you must carefully organize the points you want to make.”

“The headline states the main selling proposition, and the first few paragraphs expand on it. Secondary points are covered later in the body copy. If this copy is lengthy, each secondary point may get a separate heading or number.”

“The organization of your selling points depends on their relative importance, the amount of information you give the reader, and the type of copy you are writing (letter, ad, commercial, or news story).”

“Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. And then, tell them what you told them.” – Terry C. Smith

“Before you create an ad or mailer, write down your sales points. Organize them in a logical, persuasive, clear fashion. And present them in this order when you write your copy.”

3. Break the Writing into Short Sections

“If the content of your ad can be organized as a series of sales points, you can cover each point in a separate section of copy.”

“If there is no particular order of importance or logical sequence between the sales points, use graphic devices such as bullets, asterisks, or dashes to set off each new section. If you have a lot of copy under each section, use subheads (as I’ve done in this book).”

“Paragraphs should also be kept short. Long, unbroken chunks of type intimidate readers.”

“When you edit your copy, use subheads to separate major sections. Leave space between paragraphs. And break long paragraphs into short paragraphs. A paragraph of five sentences can usually be broken into two or three shorter paragraphs by finding places where a new thought or idea is introduced and beginning the new paragraph with that thought.”

4. Use Short Sentences

“(D. H. Menzel) found that sentences became difficult to understand beyond a length of about 34 words.”

“To make your writing flow, vary sentence length. By writing an occasional short sentence or sentence fragment, you can reduce the average sentence length of your copy to an acceptable length even if you frequently use lengthy sentences.”

“Train yourself to write in crisp, short sentences. When you have finished a thought, stop. Start the next sentence with a new thought. When you edit, your pencil should automatically seek out places where a long string of words can be broken in two.”

5. Use Simple Words

“In advertising copy, you are trying to communicate with people, not impress them or boost your own ego. Avoid pompous words and fancy phrases.”

“Small words are better than big words whether you’re writing to farmers or physicists, fishermen or financiers.”

6. Avoid Technical Jargon

“Don’t use jargon when writing to an audience that doesn’t speak your special language.”

“Don’t use a technical term unless 95 percent or more of your readers will understand it.”

“Don’t use a technical term unless it precisely communicates your meaning.”

7. Be Concise

“Unnecessary words waste the reader’s time, dilute the sales message, and take up space that could be put to better use.”

“Rewriting is the key to producing concise copy.”

“Avoid redundancies, run-on sentences, wordy phrases, the passive voice, unnecessary adjectives, and other poor stylistic habits that take up space but add little to meaning or clarity.”

8. Be Specific

9. Go Straight to the Point

“If the headline is the most important part of an ad, then the lead paragraph is surely the second most important part.”

“Start selling with the very first line of copy.”

“The finished copy should sell from the first word to the last.”

10. Write in a Friendly, Conversational Style

“People enjoy reading clear, simple, easy-to-understand writing. And the simplest, clearest style is to write the way you talk.”

“John Louis DiGaetani recommends this simple test for conversational tone: ‘As you revise, ask yourself if you would ever say to your reader what you are writing. Or imagine yourself speaking to the person instead of writing.’”

11. Avoid Sexist Language

“Copywriters must avoid sexist language. Like it or not, sexist language offends a large portion of the population, and you don’t sell things to people by getting them angry at you.”

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“Ending a sentence with a preposition adds to the conversational tone of the copy.”

“Sentence fragments help keep your average sentence length to a respectable number of words. And sentence fragments can add drama and rhythm to your copy.”

“Beginning a sentence with and, or, but, or for makes for a smooth, easy transition between thoughts.”

“An occasional one-sentence paragraph provides a change of pace that can liven up a piece of copy.”

“Highlighting and underlining can make words and phrases stand out in print advertising and promotion as well as in schoolbooks. Many readers skim copy without reading it carefully, so an underline or highlight can be useful in calling out key words, phrases, paragraphs, and selling points.”

“One of the most effective techniques for writing subscription copy is to present the publication’s content as a list of bulleted items, e.g., ‘7 ways to reduce your heating bill this winter.’”

“Be specific about the problem; be vague and mysterious about the solution. Plus, do it with a twist, hook, or unusual angle.”

Before you release copy to the client or the art department, ask yourself these questions:

Does the copy fulfill the promise of the headline?

Is the copy interesting?

Is it easy to read?

Is it believable?

Is it persuasive?

Is it specific?

Is it concise?

Is it relevant?

Does it flow smoothly?

Does it call for action?

“The first step in writing copy that sells is to write about benefits and not about features.”

“A feature is a descriptive fact about a product or service; it’s what the product is or has. A benefit is what the product does; it’s what the user of the product or service gains as a result of the feature.”

“According to AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), the copy must first get the reader’s attention, then create an interest in the product, then turn that interest into a strong desire to own the product, and finally ask the reader to buy the product or take some other action that will eventually lead to a sale.”

“In ACCA (Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction, Action), consumers are first made aware that the product exists. Then they must comprehend what the product is and what it will do for them. After comprehension, the readers must be convinced to buy the product. And finally, they must take action and actually make the purchase.”

“The copywriter creates a picture of what the product can do for the reader, promises the picture will come true if the reader buys the product, proves what the product has done for others, and pushes for immediate action.”

“The Motivating Sequence”

1. Get Attention

“This is the job of the headline and the visual. The headline should focus on the single strongest benefit you can offer the reader.”

2. Show a Need

“The second step of writing copy that sells, then, is to show the reader why she needs the product.”

3. Satisfy the Need and Position Your Product as a Solution to the Problem

“Once you’ve convinced the reader that he has a need, you must quickly show him that your product can satisfy his need, answer his questions, or solve his problems.”

4. Prove Your Product Can Do What You Say It Can Do

“It isn’t enough to say you can satisfy the reader’s needs—you’ve got to prove you can.”

5. Ask for Action

“The last step in any piece of copy should always be a call for action.”

“False logic, a term coined by my friend, master copywriter Michael Masterson, is copy that, through skillful writing, manipulates (but does not lie about or misrepresent) existing facts. The objective: to help readers come to conclusions that these facts, presented without the twists of the copywriter’s pen, might not otherwise support.”

“According to Reeves, there are three requirements for a USP (and I am quoting, in the italics, from Reality in Advertising):

Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Each must say, ‘Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.’

The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer.

The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.

“One popular method is to differentiate your product or service from the competition based on a feature that your product or service has and they don’t.”

“Malcolm D. MacDougall, former president and creative director of SSC&B, says there are four ways to advertise seemingly similar products:

Stress an underpublicized or little-known benefit.

Dramatize a known benefit in a compelling fashion.

Dramatize the product name or package.

Build long-term brand personalities.

“Study your list of product features and benefits. Then look at the competition’s ads. Is there an important benefit that they have ignored, one you can embrace as the Unique Selling Proposition that sets your product apart from all others?”

“The secondary promise is a lesser benefit that the product also delivers.”

“Your copy should reach prospects on three levels: intellectual, emotional, and personal.”

To reach your prospects on all three levels—intellectual, emotional, and personal—you must understand what copywriter Michael Masterson calls the buyer’s “Core Complex.” These are the emotions, attitudes, and aspirations that drive them, as represented by the BFD formula, which stands for beliefs, feelings, and desires.

Beliefs. What does your audience believe? What is their attitude toward your product and the problems or issues it addresses?

Feelings. How do they feel? Are they confident and brash? Nervous and fearful? What do they feel about the major issues in their lives, businesses, or industries?

Desires. What do they want? What are their goals? What change do they want in their lives that your product can help them achieve?

“Before you write your copy, it’s a good idea to review the reasons why people might want to buy your product.”

22 Reasons Why People Might Buy Your Product

To be liked

To be appreciated

To be right

To feel important

To make money

To save money

To save time

To make work easier

To be secure

To be attractive

To be sexy

To be comfortable

To be distinctive

To be happy

To have fun

To gain knowledge

To be healthy

To gratify curiosity

For convenience

Out of fear

Out of greed

Out of guilt

“The more expensive a product is, the more copy you generally need to sell it.”

“Copy that sells the product directly off the printed page or screen (known as “one-step” or “mail-order” copy) usually has to be long, because it must present all product information and overcome all objections.”

“People who are pressed for time, such as busy executives and professionals, often respond better to short copy.”

“Products that people need (a refrigerator, a fax machine) can be sold with short copy because . . . well, the prospect has to buy them. Products that people want but don’t have to buy (exercise videos, self-help audio programs, financial newsletters) must be “sold,” and require long copy to do so.”

“Short copy works well with products the prospect is already familiar with and understands.”

How to Write Persuasive, Fact-Filled Copy for Your Clients

Step 1: Get All Previously Published Material on the Product

“You should spend a lot of time printing out and reading the client’s Web site, or at least the pages pertaining to the product you are promoting.”

“By studying this background material, the copywriter should have 90 percent of the information he or she needs to write the copy.”

Step 2: Ask Questions About the Product

What are its features and benefits? (Make a complete list.)

Which benefit is the most important?

How is the product different from the competition’s? (Which features are exclusive? Which are better than the competition’s?)

If the product isn’t different, what attributes can be stressed that haven’t been stressed by the competition?

What technologies does the product compete against?

What are the applications of the product?

What problems does the product solve in the marketplace?

How is the product positioned against competing products?

How does the product work?

How reliable is the product? How long will it last?

How efficient is the product?

How economical?

How much does it cost?

Is it easy to use? Easy to maintain?

Who has bought the product and what do they say about it?

What materials, sizes, and models is it available in?

How quickly does the manufacturer deliver the product?

If they don’t deliver, how and where can you buy it?

What service and support does the manufacturer offer?

Is the product guaranteed?

Step 3: Ask Questions About Your Audience

Who will buy the product? (What markets is it sold to?)

What exactly does the product do for them?

Why do they need the product? And why do they need it now?

What is the customer’s main concern when buying this type of product (price, delivery, performance, reliability, service, maintenance, quality, efficiency, availability)?

What is the character of the buyer? What type of person is the product being sold to?

What motivates the buyer?

How many different buying influences must the copy appeal to? (A toy ad, for example, must appeal to both the parent and the child.)

“If you are writing an ad, read issues of the magazines in which the ad will appear.”

“If you are writing direct mail, find out what mailing lists will be used and study the list descriptions.”

Step 4: Determine the Objective of Your Copy

This objective may be one or more of the following:

To generate inquiries

To generate sales

To answer inquiries

To qualify prospects

To generate store traffic

To introduce a new product or an improvement of an old product

To keep in touch with prospects and customers

To transmit news or product information

To build brand recognition and preference

To build company image

To provide marketing tools for salespeople

Here are 10 criteria that an ad must satisfy if it is to be successful as a selling tool:

The headline contains an important consumer benefit, or news, or arouses curiosity, or promises a reward for reading the copy

The visual (if you use a visual) illustrates the main benefit stated in the headline

The lead paragraph expands on the theme of the headline

The layout draws readers into the ad and invites them to read the body copy

The body copy covers all important sales points in logical sequence

The copy provides the information needed to convince the greatest number of qualified prospects to take the next step in the buying process

When you sit down to write your ad, ask yourself: “What do I want the reader to do? And what can I tell him that will get him to do it?”

The copy is interesting to read

The copy is believable

The ad asks for action

#DAY60

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY NINE

Summary by Sam T Davies

The Book in Three Sentences

Abundance comes from writing down 10 ideas every day.

Build a foundation for success.

Passion comes from what you’re good at.

The Five Big Ideas

“The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are an ability to fail, an ability to have ideas and to sell those ideas, the courage to execute on those ideas, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move on to the next adventure”.

Ask: “What can I do right now to move forward, in this second?”

“Choosing yourself right now in how you treat yourself, how you treat the people around you, how you treat your efforts and your loves. Nothing is more important than this”.

“When you have ideas, you’ll quickly get freedom. When you get freedom, you’ll have the energy to build more ideas, to generate more abundance, to live the life you want to live”.

“Every day give the world at least one more reason to whisper ‘thank you’ to you. If you can hear that whisper, everything else, every gift in life, becomes expected. You earned it”.

The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth Summary

“When you are in the Idea Machine, nothing can stop you. This is where abundance is. This is where seeds are planted. This is where you dip into other dimensions not yet created”.

“True wealth occurs when you don’t have to bow down to any gatekeepers—regardless of the money involved. Money is just a by-product. You are out of prison. You are free”.

“The only way to have success is to build the foundation for it”.

“Here’s a secret: you don’t have to worry about “finding” your passion. You’re naturally going to get passionate about what you are good at”.

“‘Get Paid, Get Laid, Lose Weight’ are the three things people will pay for”.

“Come up with ten ideas you can write newsletters about. They don’t have to be in the above three categories”.

“I have never once seen anyone save the increase they received in their salary”.

“Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of humankind”.

“Abundance only comes when you are moving along your themes—when you are truly enhancing the lives of the people around you”.

“Ideas are the currency of life. Not money—because money can run out. Money gets depleted until you go broke. But good ideas buy you good experiences, buy you better ideas, buy you better experiences, buy you more time, save your life. Financial wealth is a side effect of the ‘runner’s high’ of your idea muscle”.

“Often the best way to make friends and customers for life is to direct them to a better service or product than yours”.

“When you get in the door, do not sell your product. People make a decision on your product in five seconds. Sell the dream. Build up images of the dream. Give a taste of what the dream is like. Let it linger. Let it weave itself. Let the imagination of the buyer take hold and run with it. The dream has up to infinity in value”.

“Don’t do something just for the money. Money is a side effect of persistence. You persist in things you are interested in. Explore your interests. Then persist. Then enjoy all the side effects”.

“The definition of “success” for me is: ‘Is today successful?’”

“Today is the only day I need to think about success. And every successful tomorrow is determined by one thing: having a successful today”.

“Connecting people who can benefit each other is the most useful skill you can have on the entrepreneurial ladder of skills”.

Ask: “What can I do right now to move forward, in this second?”

“Choosing yourself right now in how you treat yourself, how you treat the people around you, how you treat your efforts and your loves. Nothing is more important than this”.

“We love our excuses. They are just as much our babies as our ideas are”.

“I don’t have the goal, ‘do this by X date’. I have a “theme” that I want to have a high quality of life until the day I die”.

“When you have ideas, you’ll quickly get freedom. When you get freedom, you’ll have the energy to build more ideas, to generate more abundance, to live the life you want to live”.

“Every day give the world at least one more reason to whisper ‘thank you’ to you. If you can hear that whisper, everything else, every gift in life, becomes expected. You earned it”.

#DAY59

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY EIGHT

Summary by Sam T Davies

The Book “Choose Yourself” in Three Sentences

“The world is changing. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It’s up to you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself”.

“You build a house by laying a solid foundation: by building physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health”.

“Success comes from continually expanding your frontiers in every direction—creatively, financially, spiritually, and physically. Always ask yourself, what can I improve? Who else can I talk to? Where else can I look?”

The Five Big Ideas

“In this new era, you have two choices: become a temp staffer (not a horrible choice) or become an artist-entrepreneur”.

“Rejection—and the fear of rejection—is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves”.

“Only think about the people you enjoy. Only read the books you enjoy, that make you happy to be human. Only go to the events that actually make you laugh or fall in love. Only deal with the people who love you back, who are winners and want you to win too”.

“The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are the ability to fail, to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on them, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure”.

“Pretend everyone was sent to this planet to teach you”.

Choose Yourself Summary

“I have to count the things that are abundant in my life. Literally count them. If I don’t they will begin to disappear”.

“There’s a saying, ‘The learned man aims for more. But the wise man decreases. And then decreases again’.”

“This is about a new phase in history where art, science, business, and spirit will join together, both externally and internally, in the pursuit of true wealth”.

“In this new era, you have two choices: become a temp staffer (not a horrible choice) or become an artist-entrepreneur”.

“Rejection—and the fear of rejection—is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves”.

“What you need to do is build the house you will live in. You build that house by laying a solid foundation: by building physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health”.

“The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic”.

“There’s the saying ‘Time heals all wounds’. This is true. But we can control to some extent how much time it takes”.

“When I get on a subway, I like to find a seat and read and daydream until I arrive at my destination”.

“To ask people for their seats went against everything they had ever been taught. This is obviously an extreme. But it points out how hard it is for us to do things for ourselves unless we are given some implicit permission”.

“Instead of counting sheep to get back to sleep, count all the things you are grateful for. Even the negative parts of your life. Figure out why you should be grateful for them. Try to get up to one hundred”.

“Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, “I did it again’.”

“The only real fire to cultivate is the fire inside of you. Nothing external will cultivate it. The greater your internal fire is, the more people will want it”.

“Say to yourself when you wake up, ‘I’m going to save a life today’. Keep an eye out for that life you can save”.

“If you think, ‘Everything would be better off if I were dead’, then think, ‘That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months’. Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months”.

“I don’t like the word purpose. It implies that somewhere in the future I will find something that will make me happy, and that until then, I will be unhappy”.

“Rodney Dangerfield didn’t succeed in comedy until his forties”.

“Ray Kroc was a milkshake salesman into his fifties. Then he stumbled onto a clean restaurant that served a good hamburger run by two brothers with the last name McDonald. He bought McDonald’s when he was fifty-two”.

“Raymond Chandler, the most successful noir novelist of all time, wrote his first novel at age fifty-two”.

“But he was young compared to Frank McCourt, who won the Pulitzer for his first novel, Angela’s Ashes, written when he was sixty-six”.

“Harry Bernstein was a total failure when he wrote his bestselling memoir, The Invisible Wall. His prior forty (forty!) novels had been rejected by publishers. When his memoir came out, he was ninety-three years old. A quote from him: ‘If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book, God knows what other potentials lurk in other people, if we could only keep them alive well into their 90s’.”

“As I write this, I’m forty-five and I still have no idea what I want to be when I ‘grow up’. But I’m starting to finally accept the fact that all I want to be is ME”.

“No matter how much of a minimalist style you want to have, you are still stuck with all these things in your head, for better or for worse”.

“Being an entrepreneur means you’re going to create something in a way that a customer can’t get anywhere else”.

“The silence is the only place your creative ideas will come from”.

“Only hire someone you wouldn’t mind sitting next to on a plane ride across the country”.

“Think of two people in your network who don’t know each other but you think can add value to each other’s lives. Introduce them. Do this every day. Get better and better at it. The more value you bring to the people in your network (even if it doesn’t directly bring value to you in an immediate way), the greater the value of your network. And then the greater value you will have”.

“I ask the darkness when I open my eyes. ‘Who would you have me help today?’ I’m a secret agent and I’m waiting for my mission. Ready to receive”.

“You don’t have to come up with the new, new thing. Just do the old, old thing slightly better than everyone else”.

“The way you get good ideas is to do two things: 1) Read two hours a day. 2) Write ten ideas a day. By the end of a year, you will have read for almost one thousand hours and written down 3,600 ideas”.

“Surrender to the fact that you can’t control ALL of the events in your life”.

“You don’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to make a lot of money’. You wake up and you say, ‘I have a big problem. And a lot of people have the same problem. And nobody is going to solve this problem except for me’.”

“To succeed at something: Know every product in the industry Know every patent Try out all the products.”

“Understand how the products are made Make a product that YOU would use every single day. You can’t sell it if you personally don’t LOVE it”.

“If you have something that’s worthwhile, you can’t be afraid to cold-call. They need you more than you need them”.

“If you have an idea, don’t focus on the money. Don’t focus on how you will make a living. Do this: Build your product. Sell it to a customer. Start shipping. Then quit your job”.

“If you want to be successful, you need to study success, not hate it or be envious of it. If you are envious, then you will distance yourself from success and make it that much harder to get there”.

“In the past fifteen years, the only time I didn’t look at my bank account every day was when I was doing something I was passionate about”.

As yourself: “What’s the lifetime value of the customer? What are the ancillary benefits of having this customer?”

“Learn the entire history of your client, your audience, your readership, and your platform”.

“Often the real reason someone buys from you is not for your product, but for you”.

On Richard Branson: “The day he came up with the idea, he also called Boeing and got a plane from them”.

“Every day, read/skim chapters from books on at least four different topics”.

“This morning I read from a biography of Mick Jagger; I read a chapter from Regenesis, a book on advances in genetic engineering, a topic I know nothing about. I read a chapter in Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed”.

“Write down ten ideas. About anything. It doesn’t matter if they are business ideas, book ideas, ideas for surprising your spouse in bed, ideas for what you should do if you are arrested for shoplifting, ideas for how to make a better tennis racquet, anything you want”.

“Right now, list ten ideas that are ‘too big for me’ and what the next steps might be”.

“You don’t ever have to look at these ideas again. The purpose is not to come up with a good idea. The purpose is to have thousands of ideas over time. To develop the idea muscle and turn it into a machine”.

“Be a transmitter”.

“Activate another part of your brain”.

“Ideas mate with other ideas to produce idea children”.

“Don’t pressure yourself”.

“Shake things up. I have a very strict routine every day. I wake up, read, write, exercise, eat, and attend meetings (phone or live), then reverse the process: eat, write, read, and sleep”.

“We only ever remember the things we are passionate about”.

Ben Nesvig: “Three things I do when struggling for idea topics: 1. Twitter Search I’ll search phrases like: ‘I wish I had’, ‘I just paid someone to’, ‘is the worst product’, ‘is a horrible company’, ‘has a terrible website’, ‘is my favourite website’, ‘does anyone know how’.”

“Only worry about your own happiness, which doesn’t have to be limited by anyone else’s stupidity unless you allow it to be”.

“Every time I have a judgment about something, I change the punctuation at the end of the judgment from an exclamation point to a question mark. ‘She should do this!’ becomes, ‘She should do this?’”

“The mediocre entrepreneur understands that persistence is not the self-help cliché ‘Keep going until you hit the finish line!’ It’s ‘Keep failing until you accidentally no longer fail’. That’s persistence”.

Honesty is the only way to make money in today’s world.

“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” — Gandhi

“In life, you will always have 30 percent of people who love you, 30 percent who hate you and 30 percent who couldn’t care less”.

Pretend everyone was sent to this planet to teach you.

#DAY58

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY SEVEN

Summary by Sam T Davies

The Book in Three Sentences

According to Warrillow, the number one mistake entrepreneurs make is to build a business that relies too heavily on them.

This is a problem because when the time comes to sell, buyers aren’t confident that the company can stand on its own—even if it’s profitable.

However, by pursuing three criteria—teachable, valuable, repeatable—you can make a business sellable.

The Five Big Ideas

You should always run a company as if it will last forever.

The best businesses are sellable—even if you have no intention of cashing out or stepping back anytime soon.

Once your business can run without you, you’ll have a valuable asset.

If you focus on doing one thing well and hire specialists in that area, the quality of your work will improve and you will stand out from your competitors.

Make sure that no one client makes up more than 15 percent of your revenue.

Built to Sell Summary

You should always run a company as if it will last forever, and yet you should also strive constantly to maximize its value, building in the qualities that allow it to be sold at any moment for the highest price buyers are paying for businesses like yours.

The best businesses are sellable, and smart business people believe that you should build a company to be sold even if you have no intention of cashing out or stepping back anytime soon.

Once your business can run without you, you’ll have a valuable—sellable—asset.

Don’t generalize; specialize. If you focus on doing one thing well and hire specialists in that area, the quality of your work will improve and you will stand out from your competitors.

Relying too heavily on one client is risky and will turn off potential buyers. Make sure that no one client makes up more than 15 percent of your revenue.

Owning a process makes it easier to pitch and puts you in control. Be clear about what you’re selling, and potential customers will be more likely to buy your product.

Don’t become synonymous with your company. If buyers aren’t confident that your business can run without you in charge, they won’t make their best offer.

We’re used to paying for products up front and services after they have been rendered.

Avoid the cash suck. Once you’ve standardized your service, charge up front or use progress billing to create a positive cash flow cycle.

Don’t be afraid to say no to projects. Prove that you’re serious about specialization by turning down work that falls outside your area of expertise. The more people you say no to, the more referrals you’ll get to people who need your product or service.

Take some time to figure out how many pipeline prospects will likely lead to sales. This number will become essential when you go to sell because it allows the buyer to estimate the size of the market opportunity.

Two sales reps are always better than one. Often competitive types, sales reps will try to outdo each other. And having two on staff will prove to a buyer that you have a scalable sales model, not just one good sales rep.

Hire people who are good at selling products, not services. These people will be better able to figure out how your product can meet a client’s needs rather than agreeing to customize your offering to fit what the client wants.

Ignore your profit-and-loss statement in the year you make the switch to a standardized offering even if it means you and your employees will have to forgo a bonus that year. As long as your cash flow remains consistent and strong, you’ll be back in the black in no time.

You need at least two years of financial statements reflecting your use of the standardized offering model before you sell your company.

Build a management team and offer them a long-term incentive plan that rewards their personal performance and loyalty.

Find an adviser for whom you will be neither their largest nor their smallest client. Make sure they know your industry.

Avoid an adviser who offers to broker a discussion with a single client. You want to ensure there is competition for your business and avoid being used as a pawn for your adviser to curry favor with his or her best client.

Think big. Write a three-year business plan that paints a picture of what is possible for your business. Remember, the company that acquires you will have more resources for you to accelerate your growth.

If you want to be a sellable, product-oriented business, you need to use the language of one. Change words like “clients” to “customers” and “firm” to “business.” Rid your website and customer-facing communications of any references that reveal you used to be a generic service business.

Don’t issue stock options to retain key employees after an acquisition. Instead, use a simple stay bonus that offers the members of your management team a cash reward if you sell your company. Pay the reward in two or more installments only to those who stay so that you ensure your key staff stays on through the transition.

#DAY57

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY SIX

Summary by Sam T Davies

The Book in Three Sentences

Success can only happen when we confront our mistakes

More people die from mistakes made by doctors and hospitals than from traffic accidents.

Aviation, on the other hands, has created an astonishingly good safety record because mistakes are learned from rather than concealed.

The Five Big Ideas

The single greatest obstacle to progress is failing to learn from mistakes.

A cornerstone to success is a progressive attitude to failure.

“Only by redefining failure will we unleash progress, creativity, and resilience.”

“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs.”

“Marginal gains is not about making small changes and hoping they fly. Rather, it is about breaking down a big problem into small parts in order to rigorously establish what works and what doesn’t.”

Free Download:

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What is Black Box Thinking?

According to Syed, “[Black Box Thinking] is about the willingness and tenacity to investigate the lessons that often exist when we fail, but which we rarely exploit.” Furthermore, ““It is about creating systems and cultures that enable organizations to learn from errors, rather than being threatened by them.”

Black Box Thinking Summary

“A failure to learn from mistakes has been one of the single greatest obstacles to human progress.”

“A progressive attitude to failure turns out to be a cornerstone of success for any institution.”

“Society, as a whole, has a deeply contradictory attitude to failure. Even as we find excuses for our own failings, we are quick to blame others who mess up.”

“It is partly because we are so willing to blame others for their mistakes that we are so keen to conceal our own. We anticipate, with remarkable clarity, how people will react, how they will point the finger, how little time they will take to put themselves in the tough, high-pressure situation in which the error occurred. The net effect is simple: it obliterates openness and spawns cover-ups. It destroys the vital information we need in order to learn.”

“Only by redefining failure will we unleash progress, creativity, and resilience.”

“So, just to re-emphasize, for our purposes a closed loop is where failure doesn’t lead to progress because information on errors and weaknesses is misinterpreted or ignored; an open loop does lead to progress because the feedback is rationally acted upon).”

“In each case the investigators realised that crews were losing their perception of time. Attention, it turns out, is a scarce resource: if you focus on one thing, you will lose awareness of other things.”

“The problem was not a lack of diligence or motivation, but a system insensitive to the limitations of human psychology.”

“When people don’t interrogate errors, they sometimes don’t even know they have made one (even if they suspect they may have).”

“The mnemonic which has been used to improve the assertiveness of junior members of the crew in aviation is called P.A.C.E. (Probe, Alert, Challenge, Emergency).”

“[Black Box Thinking] is about creating systems and cultures that enable organizations to learn from errors, rather than being threatened by them.”

“In effect, practice is about harnessing the benefits of learning from failure while reducing its cost. It is better to fail in practice in preparation for the big stage than on the big stage itself. This is true of organizations, too, which conduct pilot schemes (and in the case of aviation and other safety critical industries test ideas in simulators) in order to learn, before rolling out new ideas or procedures. The more we can fail in practice, the more we can learn, enabling us to succeed when it really matters.”

“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.”

“Cognitive dissonance occurs when mistakes are too threatening to admit to, so they are reframed or ignored. This can be thought of as the internal fear of failure: how we struggle to admit mistakes to ourselves.”

“The problem today, he says, is that we operate with a ballistic model of success. The idea is that once you’ve identified a target (creating a new website, designing a new product, improving a political outcome) you come up with a really clever strategy designed to hit the bullseye.”

“Professor Lane recommends an entirely different concept of success: the guided-missile approach.”

“Success is not just dependent on before-the-event reasoning, it is also about after-the-trigger adaptation.”

“In the absence of data, narrative is the best we have.”

“Creativity is, in many respects, a response.”

“If we wish to fulfill our potential as individuals and organizations, we must redefine failure.”

#DAY56

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY FIVE

Summary by Sam T Davies

The Book in Three Sentences

Ideas are the currency of the 21st century.

Execution is a subset of ideas.

When you exercise your idea muscle every day you become an idea machine.

The Five Big Ideas

“Ideas are the currency of life. Not money. Money gets depleted until you go broke. But good ideas buy you good experiences, buy you better ideas, buy you better experiences, buy you more time, save your life”.

“Coming up with ten ideas a day is like exercise. And exercise makes the idea muscle stronger”.

“When you come up with 10 ideas a day, or about 3000 ideas a year (depending on weather you include weekends or not), ideas will explode out of you. You will be unstoppable in every situation”.

“Idea sex is mixing ideas and releasing control. It might lead to the birth of brilliant, more powerful ideas”.

“The more value you bring to the world with your ideas, the more value you will bring to yourself, your family, and your community”.

Become an Idea Machine Summary

“Coming up with ten ideas a day is like exercise. And exercise makes the idea muscle stronger”.

“When you come up with 10 ideas a day, or about 3000 ideas a year (depending on weather you include weekends or not), ideas will explode out of you. You will be unstoppable in every situation”.

“Remember: complaining is draining. So I wanted to make better use of that energy rather than fight it”.

“And change can only start with us. From within by making sure we are physically healthy (take a walk, bathe, take care of your health), mentally healthy (practicing the ideas of this book), spiritually healthy by going beyond ‘thank you’ and really feeling gratitude for new and different things every day, and emotionally healthy by surrounding ourselves with people that support and cheer us up”.

“That is what happens when you train your idea muscle and then you stumble on one you love. You are acting from inspiration, there are no goals, there is just flow, there is just now, and this amazing feeling of doing something really good”.

“When an idea has electricity in it you will have no choice but to move into action. And you will love it because it will set your heart on fire”.

“Idea sex is mixing ideas and releasing control. It might lead to the birth of brilliant, more powerful ideas”.

“The more value you bring to the world with your ideas, the more value you will bring to yourself, your family, and your community”.

#DAY55

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY FOUR

Summary by Sam T Davies

The Book in Three Sentences

According to Victor Frankl, there are three things that give life meaning: a project, a significant relationship and a redemptive view of suffering.

If we want true satisfaction in life, we have to rise above the pettiness of our own desires and do what is required of us.

Clarity comes with action.

The Five Big Ideas

“A calling is what you have when you look back at your life and make sense of what it’s been trying to teach you all along.”

“Most people waste the best years of their life waiting for an adventure to come to them instead of going out and finding one.”

“Sometimes all it takes to make a difficult decision is an affirming voice telling you what you know to be true but still need to hear.”

“Regardless of natural talent or the lack thereof, every person has the ability to improve themselves.”

“The basic idea of a portfolio life is that instead of thinking of your work as a monolithic activity, what if you chose to see it as the complex group of interests, passions, and activities it is?”

The Art of Work Summary

“Maybe we all have the power to turn our lives into significant stories if we start to see our difficulties as opportunities.”

“[Victor Frankl] learned there are three things that give meaning to life: first, a project; second, a significant relationship; and third, a redemptive view of suffering.”

“What we all want is to know our time on earth has meant something. We can distract ourselves with pleasure for only so long before beginning to wonder what the point is. This means if we want true satisfaction, we have to rise above the pettiness of our own desires and do what is required of us. A calling comes when we embrace the pain, not avoid it.”

“In any great narrative, there is a moment when a character must decide to become more than a bystander.”

“Most people waste the best years of their life waiting for an adventure to come to them instead of going out and finding one.”

“And they learned, as you might, an important lesson: clarity comes with action.”

“A calling is what you have when you look back at your life and make sense of what it’s been trying to teach you all along.”

“But a vocation is not like that. It’s not something you try; it’s someone you become.”

“Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come. —UNKNOWN”

“Sometimes all it takes to make a difficult decision is an affirming voice telling you what you know to be true but still need to hear.”

“The worst way to get a mentor is to go find one. The best way is to see the one that’s already there.”

“Regardless of natural talent or the lack thereof, every person has the ability to improve themselves.”

“Any great discovery, especially that of your life’s work, is never a single moment. In fact, epiphany is an evolutionary process; it happens in stages.”

“First, you hear the call. It may sound different to each person, but it comes to us all.”

“Humility is a prerequisite for epiphany.”

“Second, you respond. Mere words will not suffice—you must act.”

“Third, you begin to believe.”

“The path to your dream is more about following a direction than arriving at a destination.”

“Every calling is marked by a season of insignificance, a period when nothing seems to make sense. This is a time of wandering in the wilderness, when you feel alone and misunderstood. To the outsider, such a time looks like failure, as if you are grasping at air or simply wasting time. But the reality is this is the most important experience a person can have if they make the most of it.”

“And what if instead of identifying with a job description, you began to see the whole mass of things you do as one portfolio of activity?”

“This idea was first coined by Charles Handy in his book The Age of Unreason. In the book, Handy lays out five different types of work that make up your portfolio. They are: fee work, salary work, homework, study work, and gift work.”

“Fee and salary work are the only types of paid work and are somewhat self-explanatory: fee work means trading hours for dollars and a salary is a fixed income based on a job description.”

“Homework is work that you do at home, like mowing the lawn or spending time with your family. Study work is any intentional education that contributes to any work you do in the future, like reading a book or taking a vocational class. And gift work is any volunteer experience you might do, including giving your time to a local homeless shelter or even taking someone out to lunch to give them helpful career advice.”

“Handy then encourages what he calls “portfolio people” to organize their time not based on hours in a week, but rather days in a year. For example, if you need to make $50,000 per year and can figure out a way to make $250 a day, then you only need to work 200 days a year. The remaining 165 days can be spent on the rest of your portfolio.”

“Life is not a support system for your work; your work is a support system for your life.”

#DAY54

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY THREE

Summary by Sam T Davies

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

The Law of Leadership

The Law of Category

The Law of the Mind

The Law of Perception

The Law of Focus

The Law of Exclusivity

The Law of the Ladder

The Law of Duality

The Law of the Opposite

The Law of Division

The Law of Perspective

The Law of Line Extension

The Law of Sacrifice

The Law of Attributes

The Law of Candor

The Law of Singularity

The Law of Unpredictability

The Law of Success

The Law of Failure

The Law of Hype

The Law of Acceleration

The Law of Resources

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Summary

Chapter 1: The Law of Leadership

Summary: It’s better to be first than it is better.

It’s much easier to get into the mind first than to try to convince someone you have a better product than the one that did get there first.

In today’s competitive environment, a me-too product with a line extension name has little hope of becoming a big profitable brand.

The leading brand in any category is almost always the first brand into the prospect’s mind.

Not every first is going to become successful. Timing is an issue—your first could be too late.

People tend to stick with what they’ve got.

One reason the first brand tends to maintain its leadership is that the name often becomes generic (e.g. “How do I make a Xerox?”).

If you’re introducing the first brand in a new category, you should always try to select a name that can work generically.

Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.

Chapter 2: The Law of Category

Summary: If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.

If you didn’t get into the prospect’s mind first, don’t give up hope. Find a new category you can be first in. It’s not as difficult as you might think.

When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not “How is this product better than the competition?” but “First what?” In other words, what category is this new product first in?

Everyone is interested in what’s new. Few people are interested in what’s better.

When you’re the first in a new category, promote the category. In essence, you have no competition.

Chapter 3: The Law of The Mind

Summary: It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

Being first in the marketplace is important only to the extent that it allows you to get in the mind first.

You can’t change a mind once a mind is made up.

The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing is trying to change a mind.

If you want to make a big impression on another person, you cannot worm your way into their mind and then slowly build up a favorable opinion over a period of time. The mind doesn’t work that way. You have to blast your way into the mind.

Chapter 4: The Law of Perception

Summary: Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perception.

All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect. The perception is reality. Everything else is an illusion.

Only by studying how perceptions are formed in the mind and focusing your marketing programs on those perceptions can you overcome your basically incorrect marketing instincts.

What makes the battle even more difficult is that customers frequently make buying decisions based on second-hand perceptions. Instead of using their own perceptions, they base their buying decisions on someone else’s perception of reality. This is the “everybody knows” principle.

Chapter 5: The Law of Focus

Summary: The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.

A company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to own a word in the mind of the prospect. Not a complicated word. Not an invented one. The simple words are best, words taken right out of the dictionary.

The leader owns the word that stands for the category.

You can test the validity of a leadership claim by a word association test.

If you’re not a leader, then your word has to have a narrow focus. Even more important, however, your word has to be “available” in your category. No one else can have a lock on it.

The most effective words are simple and benefit orientated. No matter how complicated the product, no matter how complicated the needs of the market, it’s always better to focus on one word or benefit rather than two or three or four.

Words come in different varieties. They can be benefit related (captivity prevention), service related (home delivery), audience related (younger people), or sales related (preferred brand).

There comes a time when a company must change words.

You can’t take somebody else’s word.

What won’t work in marketing is leaving your own word in search of a word owned by others.

You can’t narrow the focus with quality or any other idea that doesn’t have proponents for the opposite point of view.

When you develop your word to focus on, be prepared to fend off the lawyers.

Once you have your word, you have to go out of your way to protect it in the marketplace.

Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.

Chapter 6: The Law of Exclusivity

Summary: Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.

When a competitor owns a word or position in the prospect’s mind, it is futile to attempt to own the same word.

Chapter 7: The Law of The Ladder

Summary: The strategy you use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder.

All products are not created equal. There’s a hierarchy in the mind that prospects use in making decisions.

For each category, there is a product ladder in the mind. On each rung is a brand name.

Your marketing strategy should depend on how soon you got into the mind and consequently which rung of the ladder you occupy. The higher the better, of course.

The mind is selective. Prospects use their ladders in deciding which information to accept and which information to reject. In general, a mind accepts only new data that is consistent with its product ladder in that category. Everything else is ignored.

Products that are purchased infrequently and involve an unpleasant experience usually have very few rungs on their ladders.

The ultimate product that involves the least amount of pleasure and it purchased once in a lifetime has no rungs on its ladder.

There’s a relationship between market share and your position on the ladder in the prospect’s mind. You tend to have twice the market share of the brand below you and half the market share of the brand above you.

Seven is the maximum number of rungs on a ladder in the prospect’s mind.

Sometimes your own ladder, or category, is too small. It might be better to be a small fish in a big pond than to be a big fish in a small pond. In other words, it’s sometimes to be No. 3 on a big ladder than No. 1 on a small ladder.

Before starting any marketing program, ask yourself, “Where are we on the ladder in the prospect’s mind?”

In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.

Chapter 8: The Law of Duality

Summary: In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.

Early on, a new category is a ladder of many rungs. Gradually, the ladder becomes a two-rung affair.

When you take the long view of marketing, you find the battle usually winds up as a titanic struggle between two major players—usually the old reliable brand and the new upstart.

In a maturing industry, third place is a difficult position to be in.

Knowing that marketing is a two-horse race, in the long run, can help you plan strategy in the short-term.

If you’re shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader.

Chapter 9: The Law of Opposite

Summary: If you’re shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader.

A company should leverage the leader’s strength into a weakness.

You must discover the essence of the leader and then present the prospect with the opposite. (In other words, don’t try to be better, try to be different). It’s often the upstart versus old reliable.

By positioning yourself against the leader, you take business away from all the other alternatives to No. 1.

You must present yourself as the alternative.

As a product gets old, it often accrues some negative damage.

Marketing is often a balance for legitimacy. The first brand that captures the concept is often able to portray its competitors as illegitimate pretenders.

A good No.2 can’t afford to be timid. When you give up focusing on No. 1, you make yourself vulnerable to not only the leader but to the rest of the pack.

Chapter 10: The Law of Diversion

Summary: Over time, a category will divide and become two or more categories.

A category starts off as a single entity. But over time, the category breaks up into other segments.

Companies make mistakes when they try to take a well-known brand name in one category and use the same brand name in another category.

What keeps leaders from launching a different brand to cover a new category is the fear of what will happen to their existing brands.

Timing is important. You can be too early to exploit a new category.

It’s better to be early than late. You can’t get into the prospect’s mind first unless you’re prepared to spend time waiting for things to develop.

Chapter 11: The Law of Perspective

Summary: Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time.

Chapter 12: The Law of Line Extension

Summary: There’s an irresistible pressure to extend the equity of the brand.

The law of line extension is the most violated law.

When you try to be all things to all people, you inevitably wind up in trouble.

Line extension involves taking the brand name of a successful product and putting it on a new product you plan to introduce.

In the long run and in the presence of serious competition, line extension almost never works.

Invariably, the leader in any category is the brand that is not line extended.

One reason why top management believe line extension works is because it can be a winner in the short-term.

Chapter 13: The Law of Sacrifice

Summary: You have to give up something in order to get something.

If you want to be successful, you have to narrow the focus in order to build a position in the prospect’s mind.

For a new brand to succeed, it ought to be first in a new category. Or the new brand ought to be positioned as an alternative to the leader.

The law of sacrifice is the opposite of the law of line extension. If you want to be successful today, you should give something up.

There are three things to sacrifice:

Product line

Target market

Constant change

If you want to be successful, you have to reduce your product line, not extend it.

The word of business is populated by big, highly diversified generalists and small, narrowly focused specialists.

The best way to maintain a consistent position is not to change it in the first place.

Chapter 14: The Law of Attributes

Summary: For every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute.

For instance, since Crest owned cavities, other toothpastes avoided cavities and jumped on other attributes like taste, whitening, breath protection, etc.

Marketing is a battle of ideas. So if you are to succeed, you must have an idea or attribute of your own to focus your efforts around. Without one, you better have a low price. A very low price.

When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.

Chapter 15: The Law of Cador

Summary: When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.

Candor is very disarming.

Every negative statement you make about yourself is instantly accepted as truth. Positive statements, on the other hand, are looked at as dubious at best. Especially in advertising.

You have to prove a positive statement to the prospect’s satisfaction. No proof is needed for a negative statement.

If your name is bad, you have two choices: change the name or make fun of it. The one thing you can’t do is ignore a bad name.

Admitting a problem is something very few companies do.

When a company starts a message by admitting a problem, people tend to, almost instinctively, open their minds.

The law of candor must be used carefully and with great skill. First, your “negative” must be widely perceived as a negative. It has to trigger an instant agreement with your prospect’s mind. If the negative doesnät register quickly, your prospect will be confused and will wonder, “What’s this all about?” Next, you have to shift quickly to the positive. The purpose of candor isn’t to apologize. The purpose of candor is to set up a benefit that will convince your prospect.

Chapter 16: The Law of Singularity

Summary: In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results.

History teaches that the only thing that works in marketing is the single, bold stroke.

Unless you write your competitor’s plans, you can’t predict the future.

Chapter 17: The Law of Predictability

Summary: Unless you write your competitors’ plans, you can’t predict the future.

Failure to forecast competitive reaction is a major reason for marketing failures.

Good short-term planning is coming up with that angle or word that differentiates your product or company. Then you set up a coherent long-term marketing direction than builds a program to maximize that idea or angle. It’s not a long-term plan, it’s a long-term direction.

While you can’t predict the future, you can get a handle on trends, which is a way to take advantage of change.

When you assume that nothing will change, you are predicting the future just as surely as when you assume that something will change. Remember Peter’s Law. The unexpected always happens.

One way to cope with an unpredictable world is to build an enormous amount of flexibility into your organization. As changes come sweeping through your category, you have to be willing to change and change quickly if you are to survive in the long term.

Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.

Chapter 18: The Law of Success

Summary: Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.

Ego is the enemy of successful marketing.

When people become successful, they tend to become less objective. They often substitute their own judgment for what the market wants.

Success is often the fatal element behind the rash of line extensions. When a brand is successful, the company assumes the name is the primary reason for the brand’s success. So they promptly look for other products to plaster the name on.

The more you identify with your brand or corporate name, the more likely you are to fall into the line extension trap.

Brilliant marketers have the ability to think like a prospect thinks. They put themselves in the shoes of their customers. They don’t impose their own view of the world on the situation.

The bigger the company, the more likely it is that the chief executive has lost touch with the front lines.

Failure is to be excepted and accepted.

Chapter 19: The Law of Failure

Summary: Failure is to be expected and accepted.

Too many companies try to fix things rather than drop things.

Admitting a mistake and not doing anything about it as bad for your career. A better strategy is to recognize failure early and cut your losses.

Nobody has ever been fired for a bold move they didn’t make.

Chapter 20: The Law of Hype

Summary: A situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.

When things are going well, a company doesn’t need the hype. When you need the hype it usually means you’re in trouble.

Chapter 21: The Law of Acceleration

Summary: Successful programs are not built on fads, they’re built on trends.

A fad is a wave in the ocean, and a trend is the tide. A fad gets a lot of hype, and a trend gets very little.

Forget fads. And when they appear, try to dampen them. One way to maintain a long-term demand for your products is to never totally satisfy the demand.

Chapter 22: The Law of Resources

Summary: Without adequate funding, an idea won’t get off the ground.

Even the best idea in the world won’t go very far without the money to get it off the ground.

An idea without money is worthless.

#DAY53

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY TWO

The Book “7 Day Startup” in Three Sentences

Summary by Sam T Davies

You have to spend time on the things that are most likely to bring you customers

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to ’ship’ your product.

You have to build a business idea in order to test it.

The Five Big Ideas

“Once you launch, you need to get more people paying you. You have to relentlessly pursue your best method of getting customers and not the stuff you naturally gravitate to.”

“There is a very big difference between someone entering their email and someone paying you each month for a product.”

“There’s a huge forgotten void between ‘idea’ and ‘successful business’ that validation doesn’t account for.”

“If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be passionate about growing a business.”

“Solve problems where people are already paying for solutions.”

The 7 Day Startup Summary

“You don’t learn until you launch.”

“Eric Ries defines a startup as ‘a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.’”

“Anyone can create a job for themselves. But not everyone can change the world.”

“Things may come to those who wait … but only the things left by those who hustle.” Anonymous

“Hustle for an early stage startup is generally about spending your time on the things that are most likely to bring you, customers.”

“Once you launch, you need to get more people paying you. You have to relentlessly pursue your best method of getting customers and not the stuff you naturally gravitate to.”

“There is a very big difference between someone entering their email and someone paying you each month for a product.”

“To really test whether you can build a business, you have to start building it.”

“There’s a huge forgotten void between ‘idea’ and ‘successful business’ that validation doesn’t account for.”

“If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to launch.”

“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” Neil Gaiman

The 9 Elements of a Bootstrapped Business Idea

Enjoyable daily tasks

Product/founder fit

Scalable business model

Operates profitably without the founder

An asset you can sell

Large market potential

Tap into pain or pleasure differentiators

Unique lead generation advantage

Ability to launch quickly

“If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be passionate about growing a business.”

“It makes no sense to start a business that is going to have you doing work you don’t enjoy.”

“Startup founders should have the ambition to grow their business into a larger company. If you don’t have that ambition, what you are creating is not a startup.”

“Your idea is not a solid startup idea if you don’t have the capacity to make use of a profitable, growing business model.”

“You need to be able to see a point where you can hire in staff or systems to replace you, and still continue to generate a profit. At that point it becomes a real business.”

“Focusing on short-term launches or projects won’t build assets. Assets are built over time by ignoring short-term distractions in favor of a bigger, long-term vision.”

“A list of customers that pay you every month is an asset. If you focus on short-term projects you’ll make more money initially. But if you turn down projects and focus on providing recurring value, you build a valuable asset.”

“If you work on this idea for five years, what will you have in the end?”

“What will make you, and your company, unique?”

“Playing the visionary is a privilege reserved for second- and third-time entrepreneurs. It’s fun, but it’s fraught with danger.”

“Solve problems where people are already paying for solutions.”

“Everyone might be saying that your idea is great, but look at whether or not they are currently paying for a solution to the same problem.”

“A common MVP mistake is over-emphasizing the ‘minimum’ and under-emphasizing the ‘viable.’”

“The key is to forget about automation and figure out what you can do manually.”

Questions that will help you with your MVP:

How can you perform a service or offer a product to real customers?

How will you get them to pay you after seven days?

How close will your MVP be to the final vision of your product?

What can you do manually (hint: probably everything)?

What can you do yourself instead of delegating?

How can you make your offer as real as possible for the end customer?

A Framework for Choosing an Acceptable Business Name

Is it taken?

Is it simple?

Is it easy to say out loud?

Do you like it?

Does it make sense for your idea?

“Every single one of the top 25 brands in the world are 12 characters or less.”

“Broader is better.”

10 Ways to Market Your Business

Create Content on Your Site

Start Sending Emails

Podcasting

Forums and Online Groups

Guest Blogging

Listing Sites

Webinars

Presenting

Doing Free Work

Media Coverage

“Save your excitement until you land people you don’t know as customers.”

“What are you working on today that will make you indestructible tomorrow?”

“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.” Eric Ries

“Any time you feel yourself wondering if what you are doing is good enough, compare it to the best.”

“By comparing yourself to the best, you set higher expectations for yourself, and you will be better for it.”

“Always take a step back and ask yourself if it’s feasible that someone else may have solved this problem before.”

“Momentum is a powerful force, so keep an eye out for what is working and do more of it.”

“Your own personal happiness and motivation are the most important keys to the success of your business.”

“You should be more excited about Monday than you are about Friday. If that’s not the case, there’s a good chance things aren’t going to work out.”

“No amount of money is worth working with a difficult customer.”

7 Days to Startup

Day 1. “Brainstorm a bunch of ideas and evaluate them against the checklist. Choose the idea that stands out as being the best option for you.”

Day 2. “Write down exactly what you will launch on Day 7. What will your customers get, what is included, and what is excluded? If necessary, write down what is automated and what will be done manually in the short term.”

Day 3. “Come up with a bunch of potential business names and evaluate them against the criteria above. Choose whichever one makes the most sense to you and run with it. Grab the best domain you can for that name.”

Day 4. “Build yourself a website!”

Day 5. “Build a list of what marketing methods you are going to choose. Put together a rough plan for the first week or two of your launch.”

Day 6. “Create a spreadsheet that covers the first few months in business, the number of signups, revenue, estimated costs, and monthly growth.”

Day 7. “Launch and start executing your marketing plan.”

#DAY52

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY ONE

The Book “Who Moved My Cheese” in Three Sentences

Summary by James Clear

Letting go of what we know is hard, but essential for growth and improvement. The quicker you let go of old things, the sooner you can learn new skills and create a better future. When you change what you believe, you can change what you do.

Who Moved My Cheese summary

This is my book summary of Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

“What would I do if I wasn't afraid?”

“Taking action is key. Moving in a new direction can free you.”

Moving past fear is freeing.

Quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.

When you change what you believe, you change what you do.

Continue to explore and grow! Even when things are good.

#DAY51

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FIFTY

The Book “When Breath Becomes Air” in Three Sentences

Summary by James Clear

The memoir of Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University, who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in his mid-thirties. Kalanithi uses the pages in this book to not only tell his story, but also share his ideas on how to approach death with grace and what it means to be fully alive.

When Breath Becomes Air summary

This is my book summary of When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

On the suffering that often accompanies death: “With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but ’tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.” -Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

I realized that the questions intersecting life, death, and meaning, questions that all people face at some point, usually arise in a medical context.

Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?

Learning to judge whose lives could be saved, whose couldn’t be, and whose shouldn’t be requires an unattainable prognostic ability. I made mistakes. Rushing a patient to the OR to save only enough brain that his heart beats but he can never speak, he eats through a tube, and he is condemned to an existence he would never want… I came to see this as a more egregious failure than the patient dying.

As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives—everyone dies eventually—but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.

One of the earliest meanings of the word “patient” is “one who endures hardship without complaint.”

When you take up another’s cross, you must be willing to sometimes get crushed by its weight.

“Boredom is the awareness of time passing.” -Heidegger

The pain of failure had led me to understand that in neurosurgery technical excellence was a moral requirement. Good intentions were not enough, not when so much depended on my skills, when the difference between tragedy and triumph was defined by one or two millimeters.

Death comes for all of us. It is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms.

Dealing with the fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

Can we become comfortable with the most uncomfortable thing in the world—death? If the weight of mortality does not grow lighter, does it at least grow more familiar?

As a doctor, I was an object, a cause. As a patient, I was merely something to which things happened.

Life isn’t about avoiding suffering. The defining characteristic of an organism is striving.

“Even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I’m still living.”

The tricky thing about terminal illness (and life, probably) is your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you and then you keep figuring it out.

How do you decide what to do with your life when you’re not sure how much life you have left? Maybe in the absence of certainty we should just assume we’re going to live a long time. Maybe that’s the only way forward.

If you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any.

No system of thought can contain the fullness of human experience.

Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.

“I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their labor.” -The Bible

Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the rest was just reflection.

Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past.

What happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy.

#DAY50

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FORTY NINE

The Book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” in Three Sentences

Summary by James Clear

Behavioral problems, not technical skills, are what separate the great from the near great. Incredible results can come from practicing basic behaviors like saying thank you, listening well, thinking before you speak, and apologizing for your mistakes. The first step to change is wanting to change.

What Got You Here Won't Get You There summary

This is my book summary of What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

The higher you go in an organization, the more your suggestions become interpreted as orders.

Getting praise can be dangerous because it becomes easy to delude yourself when all you hear are positive things.

Delusional self-confidence causes you to resist change.

You can't control the outcome, but why wouldn't you want to try to control what you can? Even if the cards are stacked against you in life your best bet is to try your hardest.

Successful people believe they are in control. They don't see themselves as victims of the world.

Lottery ticket players: serious lottery players think success is random. Successful people think success is within their control and thus don't play the lottery. Both mindsets are delusional in their own way, but the successful approach seems to work better overall.

People will only do something and change when it is in their own best interest and aligns with our values.

The four drivers of self-interest: money, power, status, popularity.

Smart people know what to do. They need to know what to stop.

Create a To-Stop list rather than a To-Do list.

Not all behavior is good or bad. Some behaviors are simply neutral.

The fallacy of adding too much value is that by adding value you kill the ownership of other peoples ideas. When you add to the idea it no longer feels like it is their idea.

When getting feedback of any type, positive or negative, accept it from a neutral place and say, “Thank you.” If you don't reply with a judgmental comment, you can't get into an argument.

The question to ask yourself when making a destructive or critical comment about someone is not, “Is it true?” But, “Is it worth it?”

Don't tell people how smart you are. Nobody gives a damn.

Withholding information is a problem for me when I don't communicate well. If you don't communicate what is going on it feels like you're keeping people in the dark. That annoys people.

Create a list of people you should give recognition to and then review that list each week to see if you should send someone praise.

Give away ALL the credit.

Clinging to the past: “Many people enjoy living in the past, especially if going back there lets them blame someone else for anything that's gone wrong in their lives. That's when clinging to the past becomes an interpersonal problem… When we make excuses, we are blaming someone or something beyond our control as the reason for our failure. Anyone but ourselves.” When we talk about the past it is NOT about change. It is about understanding. And often about blaming others.

Just say “Thank You” to more comments rather than making a bigger fuss about things. We often have issues with accepting compliments.

Hearing people out does not make you dumber. So listen and say thank you.

Gratitude is not a limited resource. Express your thanks more often.

People who think they can do no wrong usually can't admit they are ever wrong. Which, paradoxically, makes you more wrong. Owning up to your mistakes is essential.

Your personality is not fixed and improvement does not require you to become a radically different person. You don't have to change your whole life, just improve one tiny trait.

Goal obsession is the blindness of goal pursuit at the expense of more important things.

You should feel no shame if your pursuit of a difficult goal fails.

Goal obsession is not a flaw, it is a creator of flaws.

Princeton theology students research study and the story of the Good Samaritan. Goal obessions: we are so focus on shortsighted goals and the task in front of us that we miss the bigger point. Use this as a jumping off point for talking about goals in life. Is working really the point?

Main lesson: you can do a lot worse than questioning your flaws. We often get so defensive about these things, but what do we really have to lose? Usually, very little.

Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past.

The higher you go the more your problems are behavioral. Interpersonal behavior is the difference between being great and near great.

Knowing the answer to, “How do you feel about me?” does not matter when it comes to getting better. What matters is, “How can I get better?”

Apologize, apologize, apologize. Just step up and make the apologies you need to make.

When you make an apology say, “I'm sorry. I'll try to do better.” And then shut up. Don't try to justify it.

Frances Hesselbein, CEO of the Girl Scouts. Claimed to be greatest executive by Peter Drucker.

When you listen to someone make them feel like they are the only person in the room. Devote your attention to them.

We can't change for the long-run without following up. Follow up shows your colleagues that you care about getting better and that you're taking the process seriously.

#DAY49

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FORTY EIGHT

The Book “This is Water” in Three Sentences

Summary by James Clear

Learning “how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It can be easy to spend our entire lives accepting our natural default ways of thinking rather than choosing to look differently at life. The only thing that is capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see life and how you construct meaning from experience.

This is Water summary

This is my book summary of This is Water by David Foster Wallace. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

The meaning we construct out of life is a matter of personal, intentional choice. It’s a conscious decision.

So often, we hold beliefs so tightly we don’t even realize they can be questioned—arrogance, blind certainty, a closed-mindedness that’s like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

Our natural setting is to be deeply and literally self-centered. There’s no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. We see the whole world through this lens.

People who can adjust away from this natural, self-centered setting are often described as “well-adjusted.”

It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your head.

Learning “how to think” really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.

You have to choose what you pay attention to and choose how you construct meaning from experience.

It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms nearly always shoot themselves in the head.

The natural default setting is to think I am at the center of the world and my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.

Most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at life. If you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.

The only thing that is capital-T True in life is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. This is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted: You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t.

Everybody worships. We just get to choose what to worship.

The trick is to keep truth up front in daily consciousness.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship (money, power, fame, beauty, etc.) is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. That is being taught how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race” — the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

The biggest of questions is not about life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to thirty, or maybe even fifty, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.

The real value of education has nothing to do with grades or degrees and everything to do with simple awareness—awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves of it over and over.

#DAY48

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FORTY SEVEN

The Book “The Tell-Tale Brain” in Three Sentences

Summary by James Clear

Humans are unique among the animal kingdom because of their brain. The human brain evolved through two methods: biological evolution, which takes a long time and cultural evolution, which is incredibly fast by comparison. These evolutionary processes have resulted in the development of mirror neurons, which contribute to our remarkable levels of creativity, ambition, communication.

The Tell-Tale Brain summary

This is my book summary of The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

The author has unearthed many of his discoveries by working with people who have interesting or strange brain injuries and disabilities.

The Heinsenberg Principle reveals that at the subatomic level even our most basic sense of cause and effect breaks down.

The deciphering of the genetic code in the 1950s marked the birth of modern biology.

Humans are different, plain and simple. We are not “just another ape.”

It is impossible to understand the human brain without understanding how it evolved.

“Nothing in biology makes sense, except in light of evolution.” -Theodosius Dobzhansky

Fascinating: many traits evolved from previous traits with very different functions. For example, wings evolved from scales. The original purpose was insulation not flight.

Evolution found ways to radically repurpose functions in the ape brain into remarkably more powerful functions in the human brain.

“All good science emerges from an imaginative conception of what might be true.” -Peter Medawar

Ramachandran loves “small science” which doesn't require big teams or lots of technology and can be repeated by almost anyone.

Homogeneity breeds weakness. Science (and life) needs many different styles and viewpoints.

Application for mental models: Many scientists let the most expensive equipment drive their research and not the most interesting questions. If your lab spends $1 million on a state of the art brain imaging machine, then you tend to get pressured to use it at all times. Every scientific problem gets forced through the lens of one machine. Consider how often we do this with our thinking and our decision making. How often do we let one identity (politics, religion, capitalism, etc.) dictate all of our thinking? (See Paul Graham's “Keep your identity small.”) How often does the highest paid person's mental model win out? (See: HiPPOs.) Be careful to not let investments overpower mental models.

Humans are part of the animal kingdom, descendants of apes, but also transcendent and unique among the animal kingdom. We are both.

Incremental changes do not always lead to incremental results. Sometimes there is a “phase transition” like heating a block of ice from 31 degrees to 32 degrees.

Phase transitions can occur in society as well. The rise of the Internet, new political orders, etc.

Sometime around 150,000 years ago, this phase transition happened within the human brain.

We can view evolution as going through two avenues: biological, which takes a very long time and cultural, which is shockingly fast by comparison. Ideas evolve much faster than bodies do.

The cortex of most other mammal brains is mostly smooth and flat whereas the human cortex has grown so much that it has developed many folds and valleys to increase surface area (the walnut-like appearance).

The cortex is especially well developed in dolphins and primates.

An intention tremor is an example of an oscillating feedback loop in the human body. (Thinking in Systems makes the point that delays in feedback loops lead to oscillations in systems.)

Biology so clearly drives behavior. Damage to the basal ganglia, for example, can lead to Parkinson's and a shuffling gate. This new behavior (a shuffling walk) is not a choice on the patient's part. It is simply a consequence of changes in the neurological structure of the brain. We are quick to admit the influence of biological factors on behavior in cases like these, but we too often overlook them otherwise.

Wernicke's area in the brain plays a critical role in language and deciphering meaning. It is 7x larger in human than in other primates and is one of the key biological differences between our brain and other animals.

Some of the complex traits that embody human nature: ambition, empathy, and foresight.

At least three areas have developed extraordinarily rapidly in human brains relative to other primates: Wernicke’s area, the prefrontal cortex, and the IPL region in each parietal lobe. These three areas structurally evolved in small steps, but functionally they led to massive leaps forward compared to other primates.

Within some of these regions there is a special class of nerve cells called mirror neurons. These fire not only when you perform an action, but also when you watch someone else perform an action.

Mirror neurons are incredibly important and are an area of huge research focus right now. They may be central to social learning, imitation, and the cultural transmission of skills and attitudes.

Mirror neurons are hyper developed in humans compared to animals. This allowed humans to learn new skills within just one or two generations as opposed to the hundreds or thousands of generations required for genetic evolution. Cultural evolution operates at light speed compared to genetic evolution.

Look up servo loop.

Experience modifies the brain by strengthening or weakening the synapses that link neurons together.

The regions of the brain are not cleanly divided in their roles and functions, but rather work together in a remarkable fashion. They are strongly linked and some regions can even take over functions for damaged areas. There is much redundancy among the brain areas.

Humans are the only species to use neural plasticity to such an extreme degree. You've probably noticed how reliant humans are on their parents compared to say, how a baby giraffe can walk within hours of being born. This is not a weakness, but rather a strength because it allows humans to maintain remarkable brain plasticity during the first ten years of life.

Vision is so incredibly powerful for living creatures that it evolved separately in different species.

When you see something the light rays seen by your eye are converted into nerve impulses. There is no image in your head. Just impulses that describe it to your brain – like writing could describe how a chair looks even though the words on the paper look nothing like the chair itself.

Wieskrantz’s studies on blindsight offer an interesting look at nonconscious sight. The patient was able to point at a spot on the wall correctly time after time despite saying that he could not see the spot at all.

The Coolidge Effect: the phenomenon where males are sexually excited by new partners over and over again. Proven by a seldom known rat study where a sex deprived rat has sex with a female until exhausted. Then a new female is introduced and it happens again. And then again even though the rat was seemingly exhausted before.

Synesthesia occurs when someone experiences the combining of senses. For example, the number 7 might seem red or chicken might taste “pointy.”

In the fetus there is a massive over connection of neurons and then they are gradually pruned down to strengthen and prioritize certain connections.

One fascinating explanation of synesthesia is that two adjacent areas of the brain are crosswired which leads to increased crosstalk between, say, colors and numbers.

Interesting theory: a high percentage of artists and creators have been reported to have synesthesia. It's quite possible that the cross linkage between neurons that leads to synesthesia also enables artists to create metaphors and connections between ideas in an easier fashion than most people.

It is very possible that the crosswiring of adjacent areas of the brain was selected for by evolution because it enabled those people to be more creative (and thus increase the odds of survival) with the unharmful side effect that some people would experience synesthesia.

This is how science works: begin with simple, tractable questions that can be answered and will pave the way to the big questions.

Humans mature at a glacial pace compared to most animals. What do we gain from this vulnerable period that would seem to decrease our odds of survival? The answer is culture.

Culture is transferred from person to person through language and imitation. Accurate imitation depends on our unique human ability to see the world from someone else’s vantage point.

Humans can develop a mental model of what others think of them. This is known as a “theory of mind” and our ability to construct these scenarios in our head is unique to humans.

There are still many important questions about the evolution of the human mind that remain unanswered. Here are Ramachandran’s five big unanswered questions about the evolution of the human brain:

Wallace’s Problem: The human brain reached its present size about 300,000 years ago, yet many of our modern attributes like tool making, fire, and perhaps even language appeared only about 75,000 years ago. Why did it take so long for all of this latent potential to blossom? And why did it blossom so suddenly?

2) Homo habilis likely created the first tools 2.4 million years ago. What was the role of tool use in shaping human cognition?

3) Why was there a sudden explosion in human cognition around 60,000 years ago? Widespread clothing and shelters show up around this time. (Jared Diamond refers to this as “the great leap.”)

4) Why are humans so good at reading one another’s intentions? Why can we develop theories of others minds? Why do humans have better neural circuits for this than any other animal?

5) How did language evolve?

Natural selection can only select for expressed abilities, not latent ones.

Giacomo Rizzolatti's study showed that monkeys had some ability to read another monkey’s mind, which means they had some mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are like “nature’s own virtual reality simulations of the intentions of other beings.” They allow you to envision what someone else is doing and to predict what will happen next. This is how we interpret other people’s complex intentions.

Mirror neurons also allow you to imitate the skills of others, which makes it possible for us to inherit the skills and culture of others.

Anytime you watch someone doing something, the neurons your brain would use to do the same thing become active as if you yourself were doing it.

The brain and free will: Your brain has to inhibit yourself from imitating everything you see, so there are some inhibitory circuits that cut off those actions. This might be how free will occurs. You are presented with many options and your brain ignores all but one of them.

The brain has multiple layers of communication between neurons. If you see someone experiencing pain but your skin receptors do not experience pain, then your body knows it is not happening to you and so you empathize with that person rather than actually feel their pain.

Mirror neurons appear to be wired from birth to some degree. A newborn baby, just a few hours old, will often echo its mother by sucking its tongue out when watching its mother do it.

Mirror neurons have multiple functions. They allow you to predict another person's intentions. They allow you to adopt someone else's point of view and to see yourself as others see you (self-awareness). They allow you to transform a map in one dimension into a map in another dimension (ex. visual to auditory).

Imitation was one of the key steps in the evolution of humans. Imitation allows us to learn by example, which means we made the massive shift from Darwinian evolution (which takes millions of years) to cultural evolution (which can spread ideas and skills rapidly).

IQ as a measure of intelligence sort of misses the point because intelligence is a collection of complex, multifaceted abilities not one general ability.

Interesting: two doctors discovered autism independently and, incredibly, they both named the condition “autism.”

Ramachandran ran an experiment where subjects bit a pencil horizontally, so it shaped their mouth somewhat like a smile. While in this position, their brains would register someone’s frown, but would not imitate someone else’s smile. The hypothesis was that the mirror neurons which would fire while looking at and imitating someone else’s smile were already busy with the own person’s smile (or similar shape), thus they did not fire. In some ways, this link between imitation and action reminds me of Brene Brown’s idea that it is much harder to be closed off emotionally if you are active physically. It’s like if the body is moving, the activity in your neurons makes it harder to “close off” emotional pathways.

Humans have an incredible capacity for language. It is one of the traits that separates us most clearly from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Interesting definition of natural selection: the progressive series of chance variations that enhance the organism's ability to pass on its genes to the next generation.

Alfred Russell Wallace independently discovered natural selection. He deserves more credit than he gets.

You can't get very far in science by trying to explain one mystery with another mystery.

Trying to ascribe a numerical value to how much genes or environment impact the outcome misses the point. Both impact it and the percentage to which it impacts it can vary widely. The key is to realize they are connected and not to worry about some single numerical value. Psychologists often make this mistake – especially when discussing IQ as a single trait.

The PKU example showcases how the same problem can appear completely genetic or completely environmental under different conditions.

How it is possible for neural circuitry to embody meaning is one of the great unsolved mysteries of neuroscience.

The three bones in the inner ear of mammals – the malleus, incus, and stapes – actually evolved from the jaws of reptiles, which have three bones in their jaw rather than the one bone (mandible) in mammals. It's fascinating how many functions in the body would never have been designed that way from scratch, but just resulted from “works for now” evolutionary adaptations.

There seem to be some universal factors in the recognition of beauty. For example, tropical male birds developed remarkably beautiful feathers to attract females of their own species, but humans find them beautiful as well and use them in headdresses. Perhaps there is a fundamental “truth” of aesthetics that speaks to all creatures.

Bowerbirds create very detailed nests in an effort to court a mate. They are even original artists with different birds (within the same species) having different aesthetic tastes and styles. Another interesting example of how beauty might have some fundamental principles that extend outside the human concept of art.

Three questions to ask when analyzing any human trait. 1) What is the internal logical structure of the trait you are looking at? 2) Why does the particular trait have the structure it does? What did it evolve for? 3) How is this trait mediated by the neural machinery in the brain?

Knowing the small details doesn't mean you comprehend the whole picture.

Vision evolved to discover and respond to objects: recognize them, eat them, catch them, or mate with them quickly and reliably.

Ramachandran refers to a phenomenon known as The Peak Shift Effect, which is also called supernormal stimuli by other experts. It seems like a very powerful concept to me. It essentially says that the brain learns certain rules for discriminating between things and that if you present the brain with an exaggerated version of that rule, it strongly prefers it. Tinbergen’s famous studies on herrings provide a good example. Baby herrings will peck at a red spot on their mother’s beak when they want food. If a research presents a fake beak with three red spots, then the baby herring goes berserk. This supernormal stimuli is preferred by the brain as if the baby bird is saying, “Wow! What a beak.”

Caricatures are an example of supernormal stimuli in human art. Caricatures amplifying the features of a given face. Also, many female sculptures have exaggerated breasts and hips, which seems to be preferred by our brains.

Most theories are stated in a way that doesn’t even allow them to be tested or proven wrong. This isn’t really science. It’s just conjecture. Science requires you to state a hypothesis (or theory) and then develop an experimental way of testing to see if it is confirmed or refuted.

There are three ways to test ideas about peak shift (and other supernormal stimuli). 1) Galvanic skin response (GSR) tests, 2) recording nerve impulses from single nerve cells in the visual area in the brain, 3) utilizing your “laws” or hypotheses to create more reliable, consistent, or successful results.

Your brain has 100 billion nerve cells, but only a small subset can be active in any given instant. (How many, exactly?)

Ramachandran conducts an interesting exercise in class where people must rank three drawings of a horse. One drawn by an autistic seven year old is often preferred to one down by Leonardo DaVinci. (The three pictures.)

The Isolation Principle. There appears to be some aspect of isolation in the brain that can lead to enhanced creativity. For example, when autistic children have damaged or poorly functioning areas of the brain it often opens up the ability for one area (like the right parietal lobe) to receive more attention and results in remarkable creativity (like drawing).

Idea: I also wonder how much other areas of the brain dampen signals to a given area and when they are damaged (like in autistic children) reduced dampening leads to greater creativity.

It's possible regular folks have latent creative talent waiting to be unleashed but it is being held back by inhibition from other brain areas (which is normal) and only arises when those inhibitors are damaged.

There were some remarkable brain studies conducted in Australia, which used TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) to deactivate parts of normal people's brains for a few moments. Almost instantly they could draw better or perform mathematical feats. This supports The Isolation Principle.

The process of vision is carried out through a series of processes and feedback loops in the brain. This occurs in such a way that multiple visual options are presented, but only one wins out – the final image you see. In this sense, vision and hallucination are closely related. We are always “hallucinating” and our brain selects the one hallucination that seems to most closely match reality based on the external stimuli we receive.

Our minds prefer symmetrical faces. Even minor deviations in symmetry are seen as undesirable. There is an evolutionary explanation for this. Parasitic infestations During infancy can cause small variations in symmetry. So, biological health is somewhat tied to symmetry.

Interestingly, the male brain may prefer blondes over brunettes because it is easier to identify certain ailments like jaundice in a fair blonde complexion than in brunettes. In other words, it's easier to judge if a blonde is a healthy mate.

The self consists of many components and the notion of one, unitary self may be an illusion.

Qualia is the word for your unique sense and perception of the world. It refers to how things seem to you. Examples: the pain of breaking your leg or the color of a sunset. Qualia refers to your subjective experience of the world.

Qualia (your subjective experience) and the self are different things, but you can’t get qualia without a self.

Freud, despite his faults, was correct that the modern brain is largely unconscious and that the conscious self is but a small slice of our whole world.

The self seems to emerge from a relatively small cluster of brain areas.

Blindsight is an example of how your conscious mind is tied to your visual cortex, yet a lot of other information you are taking in can be processed nonconsciously.

The human brain and body seem to have a default tendency for harmony. We feel tension that needs to be resolved if there is a mismatch between our conscious mind and nonconcious body. (Extreme examples: transsexual man trapped in female body or phantom limb.)

Neuroscience is currently at the stage chemistry was at in the 19th century. Grouping together the basic elements of the field and not yet attempting any grand, all-encompassing theories.

Science tells us that humans are animals, another type of beast. But, importantly, we don't feel that way. We feel like angels who aspire to become something more than a mere animal. So, perhaps we are both an animal and an angel.

Reading Suggestions

This is a list of authors, books, and concepts mentioned in The Tell-Tale Brain, which might be useful for future reading.

Stephen Jay Gould's essays on natural history.

Eye and Brain by Richard Gregory

Pat Churchland’s writings on philosophy and neuroscience

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5 is an awesome description of life and death

Niko Tinbergen’s studies on animal behavior, which won the Nobel Prize

Alan Snider's writing and theories on creativity

Arthur (Bud) Craig's work on neuroanatomy and consciousness

Richard Francis Burton and his expeditions

Additional Thoughts

This is a list of interesting notes, side stories, or additional thoughts that were sparked as as I read the book.

How do primates learn to use tools? Does each one learn it anew? Is it passed down through their “culture”? If so, do they have mirror neurons, but just less of them than humans?

Can we apply the Coolidge Effect and the brain's thirst for novelty to other areas of life outside of sexual interest? For example, are we wired to naturally seek new stimulation with our goals rather than mastery?

#DAY47

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bookedsuccess · 6 years

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DAY FORTY SIX

The Book “Superhuman by Habit” in Three Sentences

Summary by James Clear

You can do just about anything if you break down the task into habits. You are more likely to stick with good habits over the long run if you start with tiny habits that are incredibly easy in the beginning. When you miss a habit once, getting back on track and sticking with the next occurrence of that habit should become the top priority in your life.

Superhuman by Habit summary

This is my book summary of Superhuman by Habit by Tynan. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

Habits allow you to stick with behaviors that would require a lot of willpower as a one-time attempt, but only need a little willpower to remain a habit.

Whenever you're going to not do a habit, explain to your brain why you're missing.

Absolutely never skip twice. Missing two days of a habit is like habit suicide.

When you miss a habit once, sticking with the next occurrence of that habit should become the top priority in your life.

Plan for failure. Figure out why you missed a habit and plan solutions in advance.

Plan for variances in habits ahead of time. “I won't follow my normal workout routine when I go on my trip to Europe. So I will do 20 push-ups per day while I'm there and then return immediately to my previous workout routine once I get home.”

When you don't feel like doing a habit, do a crappy job.

If you beat yourself up every time you miss a habit, you are basically ruining the whole purpose of the experience. Habits are supposed to make your life better. Hating yourself for missing a habit introduces negativity that completely offsets the positive benefits. (Note: we could use a finance metaphor here. Getting a new credit card to earn a bunch of frequent flier miles is pointless if you don't pay off the balance each month. The negatives offset any positive gain. Same situation here with habits.)

Use your mistakes to focus. They are an indicator of where to direct your energy.

There is no guarantee of success once you introduce your habits into the outside world. But, you can control your behavior, so focus on the process not the results.

It is best to always assume that it is your fault. We are quick to claim to be the victim, but not quick enough to claim responsibility. (Note: when we lose our job, we assume it's the economy. When we don't get a job, we assume it's because we don't have the right network. We make all sorts of assumptions. If you're going to assume something, assume it's your fault. There is always something more you could have done.)

When you mistreat others, feel guilty. When you mistreat yourself, feel compassion.

You can do just about anything if you break down the task into habits.

There are two types of people: those who find it easier to add new habits into their life and those who find it easier to cut habits out of their life. (Note: you may find it varies by habit. Attack your habits from both sides.)

If you're not going to follow through on a habit, it is better to not start it at all and focus on a habit you can actually stick to instead.

In many situations it is better to try and fail than to not try at all. Not so with habits. It is better to try a small one and stick with it than to try a big one and fail. (Note: this is because all the benefit of habits comes from the long-term consistency.)

Note: most people optimize for the finish line. Goals, outcomes, milestones, deadlines. Instead you should optimize for the starting line. Reducing friction, etc.

Learning how to build new habits is useful because you can translate the skills you learn to new habits. That's one reason why building an incredibly simple habit is still worthwhile.

The way you live your normal day is full of triggers for possible habits.

Doing something occasionally or whenever you feel like it is an inconsistent hobby. Doing it on a predictable schedule is a habit.

First you need to acknowledge your bad habit. Then you need to develop a specific plan to solve the problem.

Chain your habits together with the easiest habits at the beginning. Make it really easy to start and let the momentum build.

If you're struggling to find time and space for old and new habits, then let your old habits slide while you build the new ones. Once the new habit becomes routine you will be more likely to fall back into the routine with the old habits because you already had it mastered previously.

It's a good idea to become completely accountable to yourself.

There must be consequences for failure.

Reserve accountability for your most important habits. It can be a logistical pain to setup accountability partners, but it works really well.

If you want to grow, you have to expose yourself to high-quality influences.

Only quit habits when you no longer want to quit. The time when you have lots of emotional benefit from quitting is the beginning.

Expose yourself to ideas you disagree with and actually try them out.

The 3 big negative habits are: 1) drugs and alcohol, 2) addiction to stimulation, 3) negative friends.

It's a shame everyone else is such an idiot. Of course, to someone else, we are the idiot.

Remember that everyone is just trying to do their best and be happy. Just like you.

Eating healthy is perhaps the most impactful health habit you can adopt.

The key elements of great sleep habits are complete darkness and silence.

It takes two months of building a meditation habit before you start experiencing the benefits.

Meditation creates a space between feeling an impulse and acting on it.

Most people who work indoors are deficient in Vitamin D.

Everything in life is either input or output. We are either creating something or consuming something.

International travel, reading books, and seeking out masterpieces from all fields are some of the best ways to increase the quality of your input.

Writing daily, dancing, and organization habits are some of the best ways to increase the quality of you output.

For writing habits: what you write about and the quality of writing are not important. Following the habit is important.

For organization habits: practice imperfect cleaning where you get your home or work space to a 9/10 cleanliness, but don't worry about perfection.

Calendar habits: the critical component of a calendar habit is getting everything on the calendar. If you don't keep every single event on the calendar then you can't trust it and that defeats the purpose.

Unclutter your life. If you're 90 percent sure you won't use it in the next 6-12 months, give it away.

“Twice, then quit.” The first time you want to quit, don't. Push through. The second time you want to quit, don't. Push through again. The third time you want to quit, then you can stop.

Eliminate starting procrastination. If you want to procrastinate on some future part of work, that's fine. But you're not allowed to procrastinate starting the behavior. You have to start right now – don't delay, plan, strategize, research, etc. Of course, if you get started you probably won't want to procrastinate later because you'll have built momentum.

At this end of each day, rate yourself based on how much time you wasted and so on.

#DAY46

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