A great book that not only combines short chapters on personal improvement ideas but also is based on studies of the research evidence into which methods actually work. Most of the self-help ideas, when studied had no affect whatsoever.
The 59 seconds of the title comes from the chapter summary of what actually works at the end of the book:
Develop the gratitude attitude Having people list three things that they are grateful for in life, or three events that have gone especially well over the past week, can significantly increase their level of happiness for about a month. This, in turn, can cause them to be more optimistic about the future and improve their physical health. Place a picture of a baby in your wallet
Putting a photograph of a smiling baby in a wallet increases the chances of the wallet being returned if lost by 30 per cent. The baby’s big eyes and button nose initiates a deep-seated evolutionary mechanism that causes people to become more caring, and thus increases the likelihood of them returning it.
Hang a mirror in your kitchen Placing a mirror in front of people when they are presented with different food options results in a remarkable 32 per cent reduction in their consumption of unhealthy food. Seeing their own reflection makes them more aware of their body and more likely to eat food that is good for them.
Buy a pot plant for the office Adding plants to an office results in a 15 per cent boost in the number of creative ideas reported by male employees, and helps their female counterparts produce more original solutions to problems. The plants help reduce stress and induce good moods which, in turn, promote creativity.
Touch people lightly on the upper arm Lightly touching someone on their upper arm makes them far more likely to agree to a request because the touch is unconsciously perceived as a sign of high status. In one dating study, the touch produced a 20 per cent increase in the number of people accepting the offer of a dance in a nightclub and a 10 per cent increase in people giving their telephone number to a stranger on the street.
Write about your relationship Partners spending a few moments each week committing their deepest thoughts and feelings about their relationship to paper boosts the chances of them sticking together by over 20 per cent. Such ‘expressive writing’ results in partners using more positive language when they speak to one another, leading to a healthier and happier relationship.
Deal with potential liars by closing your eyes and asking for an email The most reliable clues to lying are in the words that people use, with liars tending to lack detail, use more ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’, and avoid self-references (‘me’, ‘mine, ‘I’). In addition, people are about 20 per cent less likely to lie in an email than telephone call, because their words are on record and so more likely to come back and haunt them.
Praise children’s effort over ability Praising a child’s effort rather than their ability (‘well done, you must have tried very hard’) encourages them to try regardless of the consequences, therefore side-stepping any fear of failure. This, in turn, makes them especially likely to attempt challenging problems, find these problems more enjoyable, and try to solve them in their own time.
Visualize yourself doing, not achieving People who visualize themselves taking the practical steps needed to achieve their goals are far more likely to succeed than those who simply fantasize about their dreams becoming a reality. One especially effective technique involves adopting a third-person perspective: those who visualize themselves as others see them are about 20 per cent more successful than those adopting a first-person view.
Consider your legacy Asking people to spend just a minute imagining a close friend standing up at their funeral and reflecting on their personal and professional legacy helps them to identify their long-term goals, and assess the degree to which they are progressing towards making those goals a reality.
I have included quite a long list of quotes from this book as it was packed with so many useful references I will certainly use again.
Locn. 87-92 Then there is the infamous ‘Yale Goal Study’. According to some writers, in 1953 a team of researchers interviewed Yale’s graduating seniors, asking them whether they had written down the specific goals that they wanted to achieve in life. Twenty years later the researchers tracked down the same cohort and found that the 3 per cent of people who had specific goals all those years before had accumulated more personal wealth than the other 97 per cent of their classmates combined. It is a great story, and frequently cited in self-help books and seminars to illustrate the power of goal-setting. There is just one small problem – as far as anyone can tell, the experiment never actually took place.
Locn. 105-6 The message is clear – those who do not feel in control of their lives are less successful, and less psychologically and physically healthy, than those who do feel in control.
Locn. 170 When people can afford the necessities in life, an increase in income does not result in a significantly happier life.
Locn. 175-79 The bad news is that research shows that about 50 per cent of your overall sense of happiness is genetically determined, and so cannot be altered.9 The better news is that another 10 per cent is due to general circumstances (educational level, income and whether you are married or single, etc.) that are difficult to change. However, the best news is that the remaining 40 per cent is derived from your day-to-day behaviour, and the way in which you think about yourself and others.
Locn. 255-56 those expressing gratitude ended up happier, much more optimistic about the future, physically healthier and even exercised significantly more.
Locn. 280-84 To help incorporate effective writing techniques into your life, I have put together a rather unusual diary. Instead of keeping a record of the past, this diary encourages you to write about topics that will help create a happier future. The diary should be completed on five days of the week, with each entry taking just a few moments. Maintain the diary for one week. Research suggests that you will quickly notice the difference in mood and happiness, and that these changes may persist for months. If you feel the effects wearing off, simply repeat the exercise again.
Locn. 318-22 The results from both studies clearly indicated that in terms of short- and long-term happiness, buying experiences made people feel better than buying products. Why? Our memory of experiences easily becomes distorted over time (you edit out the terrible trip on the airplane and just remember those blissful moments relaxing on the beach). Our goods, however, tend to lose their appeal by becoming old, tatty and out of date.
Locn. 417-18 those who carried out all their acts of kindness on just one day each week increased their happiness by an incredible 40 per cent.
Locn. 445-46 ’Tis Better to Give Than Receive.
Locn. 456-58 Get people to behave in a certain way and you cause them to feel certain emotions and have certain thoughts. The idea was initially controversial but was fortunately supported by a series of compelling experiments.
Locn. 477-78 The message from this type of work is simple – if you want to cheer yourself up, behave like a happy person. Most important of all, smile more. for between 15 and 30 seconds.
Locn. 539-40 if you set children an activity they enjoy and reward them for doing it, the reward reduces the enjoyment and demotivates them. Within a few seconds, you transform play into work.
Locn. 551-52 According to the results of this study, it seems that excessive rewards may have a detrimental effect on the attitude of the people doing the tasks.
Locn. 555-56 studies have shown short-term boosts in performance, but over the long haul rewards tend to destroy the very behaviour they are designed to encourage.
Locn. 556-61 As we’ve seen, what does not work is to motivate people with the promise of a reward. So what form of incentive does work best? To encourage people to do more of something they enjoy, try presenting them with the occasional small surprise reward after they have completed the activity, or praise the fruits of their labour. When it is something that they don’t enjoy, a realistic, but not excessive, reward is effective at the start, followed by feel-good comments that encourage them to pursue the activity (‘if only everyone was a good park-tidying citizen like you’).
On interview techniques:
Locn. 603-4 It seems that presenting weaknesses early is seen as a sign of openness.
Locn. 609-10 It seems that modesty, rather than honesty, is critical for positive aspects of your past. By delaying, Locn. 634-36 Increase your chances of giving a great interview in three easy steps. First, likeability is more important than academic achievements and work experience,
Locn. 643-46 Second, when you do have weaknesses, don’t wait until late in the interview to reveal them. Instead, give your credibility a boost by getting them into the conversation towards the start of the interview. And remember, for positive aspects, modesty is vital, so retain something strong until the very last minute. Locn. 646-47 Finally, if you make what seems like a major mistake, don’t overreact.
Locn. 651-53 Choose the Middle Way. If you want to increase your chances of making a good impression in a meeting, sit towards the middle of the table.
Locn. 673-74 you can increase how bright people think you are simply by improving your handwriting and simplifying your language.
Locn. 693-95 ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.’ In other words, to increase the likelihood of someone liking you, get them to do you a favour.
Locn. 708-9 the same principle applies for favours. To encourage others to like you, ask for their help.
Locn. 750-52 So, say positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues and you are seen as a nice person. In contrast, constantly bitch about their failings and people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.
Locn. 775-78 ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ In How To Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie argued that getting someone to answer ‘yes’ to a series of statements increased the likelihood of them agreeing with you in the future. Research conducted over fifty years after the publication of his seminal book has supported the importance of positive utterances.
Locn. 785-87 In a series of studies during the 1930s, psychologist Gregory Razran discovered that people developed a special fondness for other people, objects and statements if they were introduced to them while eating a meal.
Locn. 880-82 The message from the bystander effect is clear – the more people who are around when a person is apparently in need of assistance, the lower the likelihood of any one person actually helping. Locn. 911-12 Together, the results show that charity boxes can become up to 200 per cent more effective by being painted red, labelled ‘Every penny counts’ and placed anywhere except Birmingham.
Locn. 950-55 According to sociologists, there are only a handful of rules that are absolutely central to the well-being of any society. These rules have been found in almost every culture, and help ensure the smooth running of communal living. Perhaps the best known of these is ‘don’t kill other people simply for the fun of it’, closely followed by ‘try not to have sex with members of your close family or their pets’. Even though a minority of people struggle to adhere to them, it is obvious why both of these rules help gel society together. There are, however, several other rules that operate at a more unconscious level, but are nevertheless equally vital for group welfare. The notion of reciprocation is perhaps the most important of these.
Locn. 965-67 We like people who help us, and we help people we like. However, in terms of favours, it is surprising how little it takes for us to like a person, and how much we give on the basis of so little. It seems that if you want to help yourself, you should help others first.
Locn. 1075-79 Why should imagining yourself achieving your goals be so bad for you? Researchers have speculated that those who fantasize about how wonderful life could be are ill prepared for the setbacks that frequently occur along the rocky road to success, or maybe they enjoy indulging in escapism and so become reluctant to put in the effort required to achieve their goal. Either way, the message from the research is clear – fantasizing about your perfect world may make you feel better but is unlikely to help transform your dreams into reality.
Locn. 1150-52 To achieve your aims and ambitions, there are four key techniques that will help you succeed: having the right kind of plan; telling your friends and family; focusing on the benefits; and rewarding yourself each step of the way.
Locn. 1280-82 Some research suggests that eating more slowly helps people eat less, perhaps because it fools our brains into thinking that we’ve eaten more, and allows extra time for the body to digest food.
Locn. 1285-86 starting the meal at a normal rate of eating then dropping to the slower rate, caused both men and women to experience a large reduction in their appetite. The normal-slow combination was even more effective
Locn. 1293-94 If you want to reduce your drinking, stay away from short, wide glasses, and stick to tall, narrow ones.
Locn. 1295-96 Research shows that just placing food or drink out of sight or moving it a few metres away can have a big effect on consumption.
Locn. 1303-4 To cut intake, make sure that tempting foods are out of sight, and in a place that is difficult to access, such as a top cupboard or basement.
Locn. 1308-10 silence.95 Distractions while eating, such as watching television, reading a magazine or even chatting with others encourage people to consume more.
Locn. 1314-15 The results revealed that those given the large spoons and large bowls had, on average, taken 14 per cent and 31 per cent more ice cream than their modestly equipped companions.
Locn. 1322-24 participants who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept none. You don’t need to turn into Samuel Pepys to gain the benefits; just scribbling down what you eat on a Post-It note or sending yourself an email has the same effect.
Locn. 1334-35 Use More Energy. Think about how you could burn more calories by making small changes to your everyday routines.
Locn. 1339-40 placing a mirror in your kitchen may help you shed pounds.101 In several studies,
Locn. 1388-92 So do such studies show that group brainstorming is more effective than individuals working alone? Many scientists are far from convinced. Brian Mullen from the University of Kent at Canterbury and his colleagues analysed twenty studies that tested the efficacy of group brainstorming in this way, and were amazed to discover that in the vast majority of the experiments, the participants working on their own produced a higher quantity and quality of ideas than those working in groups.
Locn. 1398-1403 Additional work revealed that the phenomenon, like the bystander effect described in the Persuasion chapter on p. 64, is largely due to a diffusion of responsibility. When people work on their own, their success or failure is entirely due to their own abilities and hard work. If they do well, the glory is theirs. If they fail, they carry the can. However, add other people to the situation and suddenly everyone stops trying so hard, safe in the knowledge that, though they will not receive personal praise if the group does well, they can always blame others if it performs badly.
Locn. 1511-13 Genuine creativity can come from spending just a few moments occupying your conscious mind, and thus preventing it from interfering with the important and innovative thoughts in your unconscious. Everyone can be more creative; it is just a case of keeping the loud guy in your head busy, and giving the quiet guy a chance to speak up.
Locn. 1579-81 adding flowers and plants to an office resulted in a 15 per cent increase in ideas from male employees, and more flexible solutions to problems from their female counterparts.
Locn. 1595-96 The evidence suggests that for creativity, you are better off going green.
Locn. 1597-1600 To inspire creative thoughts, place plants and flowers in a room, and, if possible, ensure that windows look out on trees and grass, not concrete and steel. Don’t try to fake it. Pictures of waterfalls do not aid innovation, and even high-definition screens showing live-camera feeds from natural scenes do not make people feel more relaxed.
Locn. 1620-21 So, in respect of group creativity, the message is clear: play musical chairs. Even though a team may have worked well together in the past, maximize the potential for new and exciting thoughts by altering members as often as possible.
Locn. 1652-53 The message is clear – if you want to fast-track a group or individual to think more creatively, use the power of visual priming.
Locn. 1697-1700 Priming. To prime your mind into thinking creatively, spend a few moments describing a typical musician or artist. List their behaviours, lifestyle and appearance. Or, following on from Förster’s work into creativity and patterns, use the following designs to help produce original ideas.
Locn. 1710-11 Why you shouldn’t play hard to get, how the subtle art of seduction involves the simplest of touches, rollercoaster rides and artificial Christmas trees.
Locn. 1832-36 Women frequently accuse men of being shallow, and too easily influenced by a pair of large breasts. Guéguen’s adventures with hitchhiking and latex certainly suggest that this is the case. However, his work on the psychology of female seduction shows that women’s romantic decision-making can also be swayed by physical factors, providing they signal high status. Perhaps the real message is that deep down we are all a tad more shallow than we might like to admit.
Locn. 2066-67 So, when it comes to that all-important first date, go somewhere scary and don’t be afraid of intimate conversation. Common sense says your date may find you a tad strange. Science suggests you will be irresistible.
Locn. 2214-16 When it comes to anger management, putting on the boxing gloves or punching a pillow are far more likely to increase, not decrease, feelings of aggression. Instead, it is possible to significantly reduce such feelings by focusing on the benefits that have risen from the seemingly negative events underlying your anger.
Locn. 2256-57 People who spontaneously use humour to cope with stress have particularly healthy immune systems, are 40 per cent less likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes, experience less pain during dental surgery and live 4.5 years longer than average.
Locn. 2296 Seen in this way, dogs are like a devoted therapist, albeit one with woolly ears, a wet nose and low fees.
Locn. 2549-50 long-term couples will feel more attracted to one another when they regularly engage in novel and exciting joint activities which involve working together to achieve a goal.
Locn. 2569-70 men severely underestimate the romantic value of even the simplest act.
Locn. 2627-28 For a relationship to succeed, the frequency of positive comments has to outweigh the number of negative remarks by about five to one. In other words, it takes five instances of agreement and support to undo the harm caused by a single criticism.
Locn. 2858-59 People are far more likely to agree to a big request if they have already agreed to a small one.
Locn. 2879-81 Persuasion is all about getting your foot in the door, the door in your face, surprising people with an unusual request, and offering an endless stream of bargains. More importantly, research shows that these techniques can be learnt in exactly 47 seconds. Actually, 30 seconds tops. And that includes a free set of smaller knives.
Locn. 2955-57 Anagrams and the Unconscious Mind. When making straightforward decisions, stick with the conscious mind by thinking about the pros and cons and assessing the situation in a rational, level-headed way. However, for more complex choices, try giving your conscious mind a rest and letting your unconscious work.
Locn. 3049-50 happiness is about wanting what you have, not having what you want.
Locn. 3136-38 Research shows that people have a strong tendency to underestimate how long a project will take, and that people working in groups are especially likely to have unrealistic expectations.
Locn. 3148-49 So, to find out how long it really will take you to do something, isolate all of the steps involved before making your time estimate.
Locn. 3201-3 The public’s belief about the alleged Mozart effect is a mind myth. There is almost no convincing scientific evidence to suggest that playing his piano music to babies will have any long-term or meaningful impact on their intelligence.
Locn. 3281-83 Remarkable as it may seem, the results revealed that students with first or last names starting with an A or B obtained significantly higher grade-point averages than those beginning with the letters C or D. Locn. 3358-61 all praise is not created equal. Some praise can have devastating effects on a child’s motivation, while other praise can help them achieve their very best. Telling a child they possess a certain trait, such as being bright or talented, is not good for their psychological health because it encourages them to avoid challenging situations, not try so hard and quickly become demotivated when the going gets tough. In contrast, praising effort encourages people to stretch themselves, work hard and persist in the face of difficulties.
Locn. 3399-3401 The ability to delay instant gratification and focus more on long-term success is vital for achieving important aims and ambitions. For example, research shows that school pupils’ level of self-discipline provides a better predictor of their future academic success than their scores on intelligence tests.
Locn. 3701-3 In order to obtain a mysterious insight into yourself and others, it may well be better to forget traditional palmistry and instead focus your attention on the apparently important relative length of the index and ring finger.
Locn. 3706-12 To quickly assess yourself, hold your right hand palm up in front of you and look at the length of your first (index) and third (ring) fingers. Look at where your first finger joins the palm of your hand. There will be several creases there. Place the zero mark of a ruler on the middle of the bottom crease and measure to the tip of your finger (not your nail) in millimetres. Now repeat exactly the same procedure for your right third finger. To find the 2D:4D ratio, divide the length of your first finger by the length of your third finger. Research shows that the average male ratio is about .98, and a ratio of around .94 would be seen as especially masculine, while a ratio of 1.00 would be viewed as more feminine. For women, the average ratio is about 1.0, and a score of around .98 would be seen as more masculine while a ratio of 1.02 would be seen as more feminine.
Locn. 3747-48 Fish owners turned out to be the happiest, dog owners the most fun to be with, cat owners the most dependable and emotionally sensitive and reptile owners the most independent.
Locn. 3765-68 Right-handers can try this quick test to discover if they tend to be more right- than left-brained, or vice versa. Interlock the fingers of your hands and place one thumb on top of the other. People who place their right thumb on top of their left thumb tend to be left-brain dominant, and are thus more verbal and analytical.Those placing their left thumb on top of their right thumbs tend to be right-brain dominant, and excel in visual, creative and intuitive
Sunday 28 November 2010
Thursday 11 November 2010
Games People Play (Eric Berne)
From the man who developed the idea of transactional analysis - that human interactions are between the 'parent', 'child' or 'adult' within each of us. Originally written in 1964 and it certainly shows its age in terms of the view of women.
Locn. 240 the principle which emerges here is that any social intercourse whatever has a biological advantage over no intercourse at all.
Locn. 265-66 Belching at meals or asking after another man’s wife are each encouraged or forbidden by local ancestral tradition, and indeed there is a high degree of inverse correlation between these particular transactions. Locn.
2206-12 In this case the rules of ‘Indigent’ were set up by the agency to complement the local rules of ITH Y. There was a tacit agreement between the worker and the client which read as follows: W. ‘I’ll try to help you (providing you don’t get better).’ C. Til lookfor employment (providingldon’t have to find any). If a client broke the agreement by getting better, the agency lost a client, and the client lost his welfare benefits, and both felt penalized. If a worker like Miss Black broke the agreement by making the client actually find work, the agency was penalized by the client’s complaints, which might come to the attention of higher authorities, while again the client lost his welfare benefits.
Locn. 2482-83 so-called ‘objective’ discussions of this game are practically nonexistent. People who claim to be neutral soon show which side they are neutral on.
Locn. 2517-19 ‘Raising’ children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favour different types of games, and various tribes and families favour different variations of these. That is the cultural significance of games.
Locn. 2632-35 A Chinese man started to get into a local subway train, when his Caucasian companion pointed out that they could save twenty minutes by taking an express, which they did. When they got off at Central Park, the Chinese man sat down on a bench, much to his friend’s surprise. ‘Well,’ explained the former, ‘since we saved twenty minutes, we can afford to sit here that long and enjoy our surroundings.’
Locn. 2681-82 human life is mainly a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait,
Locn. 240 the principle which emerges here is that any social intercourse whatever has a biological advantage over no intercourse at all.
Locn. 265-66 Belching at meals or asking after another man’s wife are each encouraged or forbidden by local ancestral tradition, and indeed there is a high degree of inverse correlation between these particular transactions. Locn.
2206-12 In this case the rules of ‘Indigent’ were set up by the agency to complement the local rules of ITH Y. There was a tacit agreement between the worker and the client which read as follows: W. ‘I’ll try to help you (providing you don’t get better).’ C. Til lookfor employment (providingldon’t have to find any). If a client broke the agreement by getting better, the agency lost a client, and the client lost his welfare benefits, and both felt penalized. If a worker like Miss Black broke the agreement by making the client actually find work, the agency was penalized by the client’s complaints, which might come to the attention of higher authorities, while again the client lost his welfare benefits.
Locn. 2482-83 so-called ‘objective’ discussions of this game are practically nonexistent. People who claim to be neutral soon show which side they are neutral on.
Locn. 2517-19 ‘Raising’ children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favour different types of games, and various tribes and families favour different variations of these. That is the cultural significance of games.
Locn. 2632-35 A Chinese man started to get into a local subway train, when his Caucasian companion pointed out that they could save twenty minutes by taking an express, which they did. When they got off at Central Park, the Chinese man sat down on a bench, much to his friend’s surprise. ‘Well,’ explained the former, ‘since we saved twenty minutes, we can afford to sit here that long and enjoy our surroundings.’
Locn. 2681-82 human life is mainly a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait,
Saturday 6 November 2010
Influence (Robert B. Cialdini)
A book that gives insights into how those who want us to say 'yes' to something can use our innate response mechanisms to get us to do as they wish (well some of the time anyway). Useful if your job involves persuading others, and also useful if you need to resist such persuasion. Also full of quotable facts:
Locn. 151-52 A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
Locn. 157-58 It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference.
Locn. 163-64 the word “because” triggers an automatic compliance response from Langer’s subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to comply.
Locn. 183-84 In fact, automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much of human action, because in many cases it is the most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary.
Locn. 264-65 This last feature of the process allows the exploiters an enormous additional benefit—the ability to manipulate without the appearance of manipulation.
Locn. 278-83 A nice demonstration of perceptual contrast is sometimes employed in psychophysics laboratories to introduce students to the principle firsthand. Each student takes a turn sitting in front of three pails of water—one cold, one at room temperature, and one hot. After placing one hand in the cold water and one in the hot water, the student is told to place both in the lukewarm water simultaneously. The look of amused bewilderment that immediately registers tells the story: Even though both hands are in the same bucket, the hand that has been in the cold water feels as if it is now in hot water, while the one that was in the hot water feels as if it is now in cold water.
Locn. 289 sell the costly item first. Common sense might suggest the reverse:
Locn. 348 rule for reciprocation.1 The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.
Locn. 381-84 Make no mistake, human societies derive a truly significant competitive advantage from the reciprocity rule, and consequently they make sure their members are trained to comply with and believe in it. Each of us has been taught to live up to the rule, and each of us knows about the social sanctions and derision applied to anyone who violates it.
Locn. 417-18 representatives of strange or unpopular organizations—can greatly increase the chance that we will do what they wish merely by providing us with a small favor prior to their requests.
Locn. 438-42 The unsuspecting passerby who suddenly finds a flower pressed into his hands or pinned to his jacket is under no circumstances allowed to give it back, even if he asserts that he does not want it. “No, it is our gift to you,” says the solicitor, refusing to accept it. Only after the Krishna member has thus brought the force of the reciprocation rule to bear on the situation is the target asked to provide a contribution to the Society. This benefactor-before-beggar strategy has been wildly successful for the Hare Krishna Society,
Locn. 482-84 The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule. In true jujitsu fashion, the promoter who gives free samples can release the natural indebting force inherent in a gift while innocently appearing to have only the intention to inform.
Locn. 532-34 the Disabled American Veterans organization reports that its simple mail appeal for donations produces a response rate of about 18 percent. But when the mailing also includes an unsolicited gift (gummed, individualized address labels), the success rate nearly doubles to 35 percent.
Locn. 542-43 it is the obligation to receive that makes the rule so easy to exploit. The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others. Locn. 637 Another consequence of the rule, however, is an obligation to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us.
Locn. 660-64 the rejection-then-retreat technique. Suppose you want me to agree to a certain request. One way to increase your chances would be first to make a larger request of me, one that I will most likely turn down. Then, after I have refused, you would make the smaller request that you were really interested in all along. Provided that you have structured your requests skillfully, I should view your second request as a concession to me and should feel inclined to respond with a concession of my own, the only one I would have immediately open to me—compliance with your second request.
Locn. 696-97 if the first set of demands is so extreme as to be seen as unreasonable, the tactic backfires.11
Locn. 698-700 The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of reciprocal concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.
Locn. 818-20 Strangely enough, then, it seems that the rejection-then-retreat tactic spurs people not only to agree to a desired request but actually to carry out the request and, finally, to volunteer to perform further requests.
Locn. 842-43 But it appeared to these subjects that they had made the opponent change, that they had produced his concessions. The result was that they felt more responsible for the final outcome of the negotiations.
Locn. 848-50 Satisfaction. Even though, on the average, they gave the most money to the opponent who used the concessions strategy, the subjects who were the targets of this strategy were the most satisfied with the final arrangement. It appears that an agreement that has been forged through the concessions of one’s opponent is quite satisfying.
Locn. 949-51 Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.
Locn. 970-71 Indeed, we all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.
Locn. 1111-13 If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment. Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand.
Locn. 1215-18 What may occur is a change in the person’s feelings about getting involved or taking action. Once he has agreed to a request, his attitude may change, he may become, in his own eyes, the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made by strangers, who takes action on things he believes in, who cooperates with good causes.6
Locn. 1218 could use this to gain slx cooperation by praising what team is now doing for common good.
Locn. 1222-24 I am rarely willing to sign a petition anymore, even for a position I support. Such an action has the potential to influence not only my future behavior but also my self-image in ways I may not want. And once a person’s self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit that new image.
Locn. 1233 slx support needs to alter self image as one who works for greater team good
Locn. 1281 tell team they are becoming known as a real force in cleaning date something that was said couldnt be done
Locn. 1334-35 The prisoner experience in Korea showed the Chinese to be quite aware of an important psychological principle: Public commitments tend to be lasting commitments.
Locn. 1338-39 Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.
Locn. 1363-64 Should you ever find yourself as the foreperson of a jury under these conditions, then, you could reduce the risk of a hung jury by choosing a secret rather than public balloting technique.11
Locn. 1463-65 “persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.”
Locn. 1465 so we need to make jive difficult to be granted access to or maybe a group only after special effort
Locn. 1478-79 those with the most dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies were those with the greatest group solidarity.
Locn. 1502-3 It appears that commitments are most effective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior when they are active, public, and effortful.
Locn. 1529-32 Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to it. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment.
Locn. 1870 the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.
Locn. 1906-8 Sales and motivation consultant Cavett Robert captures the principle nicely in his advice to sales trainees: “Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.”
Locn. 2076-78 In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct. Locn. 2079-80 Those people are probably examining the social evidence, too. Especially in an ambiguous situation, the tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead to a fascinating phenomenon called “pluralistic ignorance.”
Locn. 2147-48 the state of pluralistic ignorance “in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong.
Locn. 2248-49 The principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the behavior of people just like us.
Locn. 2320-22 Newspaper stories reporting on suicide victims who died alone produce an increase in the frequency of single-fatality wrecks only, whereas stories reporting on suicide-plus-murder incidents produce an increase in multiple-fatality wrecks only.
Locn. 2362-66 the average number of people killed in a fatal crash of a commercial airliner is more than three times greater if the crash happened one week after a front-page suicide story than if it happened one week before. A similar phenomenon can be found in traffic statistics, where there is evidence for the deadly efficiency of postsuicide-story auto crashes. Victims of fatal car wrecks that follow front-page suicide stories die four times more quickly than normal.
Locn. 2373-75 When the newspaper detailed the suicide of a young person, it was young drivers who then piled their cars into trees, poles, and embankments with fatal results; but when the news story concerned an older person’s suicide, older drivers died in such crashes.
Locn. 2455-59 No leader can hope to persuade, regularly and single-handedly, all the members of the group. A forceful leader can reasonably expect, however, to persuade some sizable proportion of group members. Then the raw information that a substantial number of group members has been convinced can, by itself, convince the rest. Thus the most influential leaders are those who know how to arrange group conditions to allow the principle of social proof to work maximally in their favor. Locn. 2661-63 “It would be impossible to overestimate its value. Phoning or calling on a prospect and being able to say that Mr. So-and-so, a friend of his, felt he would benefit by giving you a few moments of his time is virtually as good as a sale 50 percent made before you enter.”
Locn. 2706-7 it is apparent that good-looking people enjoy an enormous social advantage in our culture. They are better liked, more persuasive, more frequently helped, and seen as possessing better personality traits and intellectual capacities. Locn. 3039-41 Gregory Razran. Using what he termed the “luncheon technique,” he found that his subjects became fonder of the people and things they experienced while they were eating.
Locn. 3167-69 This finding tells me that it is not when we have a strong feeling of recognized personal accomplishment that we will seek to bask in reflected glory. Instead, it will be when prestige (both public and private) is low that we will be intent upon using the successes of associated others to help restore image.
Locn. 3353-54 To Milgram’s mind, evidence of a chilling phenomenon emerges repeatedly from his accumulated data: “It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study.”
Locn. 3612-13 By establishing their basic truthfulness on minor issues, the compliance professionals who use this ploy can then be more believable when stressing the important aspects of their argument.14 Locn. 3702-3 The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. Locn. 3992-94 we are most likely to find revolutions where a period of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in those conditions.
Locn. 3992-94 we are most likely to find revolutions where a period of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in those conditions.
Locn. 4271-74 Because technology can evolve much faster than we can, our natural capacity to process information is likely to be increasingly inadequate to handle the surfeit of change, choice, and challenge that is characteristic of modern life. More and more frequently, we will find ourselves in the position of the lower animals—with a mental apparatus that is unequipped to deal thoroughly with the intricacy and richness of the outside environment.
Locn. 151-52 A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
Locn. 157-58 It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference.
Locn. 163-64 the word “because” triggers an automatic compliance response from Langer’s subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to comply.
Locn. 183-84 In fact, automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much of human action, because in many cases it is the most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary.
Locn. 264-65 This last feature of the process allows the exploiters an enormous additional benefit—the ability to manipulate without the appearance of manipulation.
Locn. 278-83 A nice demonstration of perceptual contrast is sometimes employed in psychophysics laboratories to introduce students to the principle firsthand. Each student takes a turn sitting in front of three pails of water—one cold, one at room temperature, and one hot. After placing one hand in the cold water and one in the hot water, the student is told to place both in the lukewarm water simultaneously. The look of amused bewilderment that immediately registers tells the story: Even though both hands are in the same bucket, the hand that has been in the cold water feels as if it is now in hot water, while the one that was in the hot water feels as if it is now in cold water.
Locn. 289 sell the costly item first. Common sense might suggest the reverse:
Locn. 348 rule for reciprocation.1 The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.
Locn. 381-84 Make no mistake, human societies derive a truly significant competitive advantage from the reciprocity rule, and consequently they make sure their members are trained to comply with and believe in it. Each of us has been taught to live up to the rule, and each of us knows about the social sanctions and derision applied to anyone who violates it.
Locn. 417-18 representatives of strange or unpopular organizations—can greatly increase the chance that we will do what they wish merely by providing us with a small favor prior to their requests.
Locn. 438-42 The unsuspecting passerby who suddenly finds a flower pressed into his hands or pinned to his jacket is under no circumstances allowed to give it back, even if he asserts that he does not want it. “No, it is our gift to you,” says the solicitor, refusing to accept it. Only after the Krishna member has thus brought the force of the reciprocation rule to bear on the situation is the target asked to provide a contribution to the Society. This benefactor-before-beggar strategy has been wildly successful for the Hare Krishna Society,
Locn. 482-84 The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule. In true jujitsu fashion, the promoter who gives free samples can release the natural indebting force inherent in a gift while innocently appearing to have only the intention to inform.
Locn. 532-34 the Disabled American Veterans organization reports that its simple mail appeal for donations produces a response rate of about 18 percent. But when the mailing also includes an unsolicited gift (gummed, individualized address labels), the success rate nearly doubles to 35 percent.
Locn. 542-43 it is the obligation to receive that makes the rule so easy to exploit. The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others. Locn. 637 Another consequence of the rule, however, is an obligation to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us.
Locn. 660-64 the rejection-then-retreat technique. Suppose you want me to agree to a certain request. One way to increase your chances would be first to make a larger request of me, one that I will most likely turn down. Then, after I have refused, you would make the smaller request that you were really interested in all along. Provided that you have structured your requests skillfully, I should view your second request as a concession to me and should feel inclined to respond with a concession of my own, the only one I would have immediately open to me—compliance with your second request.
Locn. 696-97 if the first set of demands is so extreme as to be seen as unreasonable, the tactic backfires.11
Locn. 698-700 The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of reciprocal concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.
Locn. 818-20 Strangely enough, then, it seems that the rejection-then-retreat tactic spurs people not only to agree to a desired request but actually to carry out the request and, finally, to volunteer to perform further requests.
Locn. 842-43 But it appeared to these subjects that they had made the opponent change, that they had produced his concessions. The result was that they felt more responsible for the final outcome of the negotiations.
Locn. 848-50 Satisfaction. Even though, on the average, they gave the most money to the opponent who used the concessions strategy, the subjects who were the targets of this strategy were the most satisfied with the final arrangement. It appears that an agreement that has been forged through the concessions of one’s opponent is quite satisfying.
Locn. 949-51 Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.
Locn. 970-71 Indeed, we all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.
Locn. 1111-13 If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment. Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand.
Locn. 1215-18 What may occur is a change in the person’s feelings about getting involved or taking action. Once he has agreed to a request, his attitude may change, he may become, in his own eyes, the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made by strangers, who takes action on things he believes in, who cooperates with good causes.6
Locn. 1218 could use this to gain slx cooperation by praising what team is now doing for common good.
Locn. 1222-24 I am rarely willing to sign a petition anymore, even for a position I support. Such an action has the potential to influence not only my future behavior but also my self-image in ways I may not want. And once a person’s self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit that new image.
Locn. 1233 slx support needs to alter self image as one who works for greater team good
Locn. 1281 tell team they are becoming known as a real force in cleaning date something that was said couldnt be done
Locn. 1334-35 The prisoner experience in Korea showed the Chinese to be quite aware of an important psychological principle: Public commitments tend to be lasting commitments.
Locn. 1338-39 Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person.
Locn. 1363-64 Should you ever find yourself as the foreperson of a jury under these conditions, then, you could reduce the risk of a hung jury by choosing a secret rather than public balloting technique.11
Locn. 1463-65 “persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.”
Locn. 1465 so we need to make jive difficult to be granted access to or maybe a group only after special effort
Locn. 1478-79 those with the most dramatic and stringent initiation ceremonies were those with the greatest group solidarity.
Locn. 1502-3 It appears that commitments are most effective in changing a person’s self-image and future behavior when they are active, public, and effortful.
Locn. 1529-32 Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to it. The same is true of a strong threat; it may motivate immediate compliance, but it is unlikely to produce long-term commitment.
Locn. 1870 the principle of social proof. It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.
Locn. 1906-8 Sales and motivation consultant Cavett Robert captures the principle nicely in his advice to sales trainees: “Since 95 percent of the people are imitators and only 5 percent initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.”
Locn. 2076-78 In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct. Locn. 2079-80 Those people are probably examining the social evidence, too. Especially in an ambiguous situation, the tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead to a fascinating phenomenon called “pluralistic ignorance.”
Locn. 2147-48 the state of pluralistic ignorance “in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong.
Locn. 2248-49 The principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the behavior of people just like us.
Locn. 2320-22 Newspaper stories reporting on suicide victims who died alone produce an increase in the frequency of single-fatality wrecks only, whereas stories reporting on suicide-plus-murder incidents produce an increase in multiple-fatality wrecks only.
Locn. 2362-66 the average number of people killed in a fatal crash of a commercial airliner is more than three times greater if the crash happened one week after a front-page suicide story than if it happened one week before. A similar phenomenon can be found in traffic statistics, where there is evidence for the deadly efficiency of postsuicide-story auto crashes. Victims of fatal car wrecks that follow front-page suicide stories die four times more quickly than normal.
Locn. 2373-75 When the newspaper detailed the suicide of a young person, it was young drivers who then piled their cars into trees, poles, and embankments with fatal results; but when the news story concerned an older person’s suicide, older drivers died in such crashes.
Locn. 2455-59 No leader can hope to persuade, regularly and single-handedly, all the members of the group. A forceful leader can reasonably expect, however, to persuade some sizable proportion of group members. Then the raw information that a substantial number of group members has been convinced can, by itself, convince the rest. Thus the most influential leaders are those who know how to arrange group conditions to allow the principle of social proof to work maximally in their favor. Locn. 2661-63 “It would be impossible to overestimate its value. Phoning or calling on a prospect and being able to say that Mr. So-and-so, a friend of his, felt he would benefit by giving you a few moments of his time is virtually as good as a sale 50 percent made before you enter.”
Locn. 2706-7 it is apparent that good-looking people enjoy an enormous social advantage in our culture. They are better liked, more persuasive, more frequently helped, and seen as possessing better personality traits and intellectual capacities. Locn. 3039-41 Gregory Razran. Using what he termed the “luncheon technique,” he found that his subjects became fonder of the people and things they experienced while they were eating.
Locn. 3167-69 This finding tells me that it is not when we have a strong feeling of recognized personal accomplishment that we will seek to bask in reflected glory. Instead, it will be when prestige (both public and private) is low that we will be intent upon using the successes of associated others to help restore image.
Locn. 3353-54 To Milgram’s mind, evidence of a chilling phenomenon emerges repeatedly from his accumulated data: “It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study.”
Locn. 3612-13 By establishing their basic truthfulness on minor issues, the compliance professionals who use this ploy can then be more believable when stressing the important aspects of their argument.14 Locn. 3702-3 The idea of potential loss plays a large role in human decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. Locn. 3992-94 we are most likely to find revolutions where a period of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in those conditions.
Locn. 3992-94 we are most likely to find revolutions where a period of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in those conditions.
Locn. 4271-74 Because technology can evolve much faster than we can, our natural capacity to process information is likely to be increasingly inadequate to handle the surfeit of change, choice, and challenge that is characteristic of modern life. More and more frequently, we will find ourselves in the position of the lower animals—with a mental apparatus that is unequipped to deal thoroughly with the intricacy and richness of the outside environment.
Thursday 21 October 2010
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff)
A book written primarily for those in businesses wondering if they should get involved in Social Networking. It goes through a way to determine if it is appropriate for your particular customer base (and in what way you might get started) then gives case studies of how other companies have both succeeded and failed.
It also has a step by step suggestion for how to start to get involved and then build on your interactions.
(I'm still reading Ch11 on internal networking and will update the post when I finish it)
Loc. 26-27 Simply put, the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. If you're in a company, this is a challenge.
Loc. 83-84 But lawyers and entrepreneurs aren't the most powerful force on the Internet. People are. And people, empowered by technology, won't always go along. Media isn't neatly boxed into little rectangles called newspapers, magazines, and TV sets anymore. People connect with other people and draw power from other people, especially in crowds.
Loc. 113-15 Mike Masnick, a blogger for Techdirt, coined the term Streisand effect for events where attempts to remove content from the Internet cause it to spread broadly instead.'1 So not only is Barbra Streisand's house still visible online-now her name has become synonymous with futile attempts to remove content from the Net.
Loc. 139-40 groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
Loc. 147-48 People have always depended on each other and drawn strength from each other. And people have always rebelled against institutional power,
Loc. 155-56 the technology is just an enabler. It's the technology in the hands of almost-always-connected people that makes it so powerful.
Loc. 226-27 With that in mind, here's the principle for mastering the groundswell: concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies.In the groundswell, relationships are everything. The way people connect with each other-the community that is created-determines how the power shifts.
Loc. 242 Video viewing is also popular, but there are far more video viewers than video creators.
Loc. 250-52 First, listen. Read blogs that talk about your company and see what people are saying. Blog search engines like Google Blog Search and Technorati can help you determine which blogs have the most influence. Search YouTube, Dailymotion, MetaCafe, and other video sites for what the groundswell is saying about you, or use a cross-site video search engine like Yahoo! Video.
Loc. 257-58 If you want to get serious about monitoring, work with services, like TNS Cymfony and Nielsen BuzzMetrics, that monitor blogs, videos, and online discussion groups for mentions of your company and your competitors and gauge general sentiment.
Loc. 307 Wikipediaisuni- versally known and frequently used: it's the eighth-most-popular site on the Web, according to Alexa.
Loc. 333-34 Discussion forums are basically a slow-motion conversation, enabling people to respond to each other online; frequent posters in many forums get to know each others' tendencies well, although they likely have never met.
Loc. 353-54 Even so, keep an eye on this activity-after all, those who classify and organize the online world will determine how we see that world.
Loc. 365 The first thing you should do is to go to del.icio.us and enter your company's site in the search box.
Loc. 539-41 Europeans' participation is more similar to Americans', but with variations by country. Swedish and Dutch companies can count on engaging with their highly active customers in the groundswell. There are comparatively more Critics in Germany than in the rest of Europe, so forums and ratings make the most sense there. The French are far less
likely to belong to social networks,
Loc. 618-20 To help you get started, we've provided a free tool at groundswell.forrester.com. Enter the country where you want to do business and the age and gender of your customer base, and we'll show you the Social Technographics Profile of the group you've specified.
Loc. 741-42 But in the end whoever is in charge of the plan must regularly brief the CEO on how it is transforming the way the company does business with customers. Groundswell projects routinely stir up people well above the part of the organization where they started.
Loc. 796 Your brand is whatever your customers say it is. And in the groundswell where they communicate with each other, they decide.
Loc. 817-18 Designed cleverly enough, these surveys will answer any question you can think up. But they can't tell you what you never thought to ask. And what you never thought to ask might be the most important question for your business.
Loc. 1126-27 Brands that appeal to consumers ages thirteen to twenty-three must engage in social networks because their customers are already there, while those with a market between twenty-four to thirty-five are likely to be successful with this strategy.
Loc. 1145-48 The result was a short, straightforward blogging policy and a course that would-be bloggers could take to keep them within the guardrails. HP's blogging policy includes such commonsensical but better-not-violate gems as "Include your name and position [in blogs and comments] ... and write in the first person" and this one that made the lawyers happy: "Your blog must comply with financial disclosure laws, regulations and requirements."
Ironically, these rules made blogging spread because now the corporation had blessed it. And HP began to reap the benefits.
Loc. 1374 people believe other people more than media.
Loc. 1446-48 our research shows that about 80 percent of reviews tend to be positive.9 And in fact, the negative reviews are essential to the credibility of the site-without them, the positive reviews just don't seem believable.
Loc. 1547-48 Other companies succeed despite a significant number of dissatisfied customers. If that's you, then energizing your customers will only make things worse.
Loc. 1671-75 Amazingly, we see this impulse throughout the groundswell. Caterina Fake, cofounder of the photo-sharing site Flickr, called it "the culture of generosity."6 We call it the search for psychic income.' As we described in chapter 3, psychic rewards come in several varieties, including
good feelings from altruism, validation, and belonging to a community. People like Jeff participate for the gratitude. Others want recognition. Still others feel answering questions gives them influence. Psychic income is free-it's paid in love, not money.
Loc. 1746 Support makes people comfortable. And people need to be comfortable to spend money.
Loc. 1829-31 In reality, the members of such a community are dying to hear from you-they are there explicitly to talk about your products and services. Posts by the company will garner a lot of attention. If there's a vibrant community around your product or service already, consider joining it, sponsoring it, or forming some other relationship so you can help your customers support themselves.
Loc. 1846-48 Communities have opinions on everything. They'll not only tell you what product features to add; they'll also tell you how the community should run and what you are doing right-and wrong. Be sure to include a thread called "Improving this community," and pay close attention to what you hear, not just there, but throughout the forum.
Loc. 1906-8 People who've connected with customers in this way are always amazed at how much more quickly they generate ideas. It's because they've just supercharged their dozens or hundreds of engineers with thousands or millions of other minds.
Loc. 1977-78 First of all, the bank has aligned itself on the same side as its customers. Instead of saying "Tell us what to do," it said, and the difference is subtle, "What would you do if you were us?" By encouraging the customers to develop empathy for the bank, even momentarily, Credit Mutuel gets much more realistic suggestions.
Loc. 2165-66 For Dell, listening and then acting was the crucial first step for its new social strategy.
Loc. 2220-21 First, start small. We've said this throughout the book, but it's even more crucial in company transformation. The change will take time, and you typically only have so much political power to use at any one time. So pick your battles strategically. Second, educate your executives. Some of them think this is for their kids, not their customers.
==========
It also has a step by step suggestion for how to start to get involved and then build on your interactions.
(I'm still reading Ch11 on internal networking and will update the post when I finish it)
Loc. 26-27 Simply put, the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. If you're in a company, this is a challenge.
Loc. 83-84 But lawyers and entrepreneurs aren't the most powerful force on the Internet. People are. And people, empowered by technology, won't always go along. Media isn't neatly boxed into little rectangles called newspapers, magazines, and TV sets anymore. People connect with other people and draw power from other people, especially in crowds.
Loc. 113-15 Mike Masnick, a blogger for Techdirt, coined the term Streisand effect for events where attempts to remove content from the Internet cause it to spread broadly instead.'1 So not only is Barbra Streisand's house still visible online-now her name has become synonymous with futile attempts to remove content from the Net.
Loc. 139-40 groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
Loc. 147-48 People have always depended on each other and drawn strength from each other. And people have always rebelled against institutional power,
Loc. 155-56 the technology is just an enabler. It's the technology in the hands of almost-always-connected people that makes it so powerful.
Loc. 226-27 With that in mind, here's the principle for mastering the groundswell: concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies.In the groundswell, relationships are everything. The way people connect with each other-the community that is created-determines how the power shifts.
Loc. 242 Video viewing is also popular, but there are far more video viewers than video creators.
Loc. 250-52 First, listen. Read blogs that talk about your company and see what people are saying. Blog search engines like Google Blog Search and Technorati can help you determine which blogs have the most influence. Search YouTube, Dailymotion, MetaCafe, and other video sites for what the groundswell is saying about you, or use a cross-site video search engine like Yahoo! Video.
Loc. 257-58 If you want to get serious about monitoring, work with services, like TNS Cymfony and Nielsen BuzzMetrics, that monitor blogs, videos, and online discussion groups for mentions of your company and your competitors and gauge general sentiment.
Loc. 307 Wikipediaisuni- versally known and frequently used: it's the eighth-most-popular site on the Web, according to Alexa.
Loc. 333-34 Discussion forums are basically a slow-motion conversation, enabling people to respond to each other online; frequent posters in many forums get to know each others' tendencies well, although they likely have never met.
Loc. 353-54 Even so, keep an eye on this activity-after all, those who classify and organize the online world will determine how we see that world.
Loc. 365 The first thing you should do is to go to del.icio.us and enter your company's site in the search box.
Loc. 539-41 Europeans' participation is more similar to Americans', but with variations by country. Swedish and Dutch companies can count on engaging with their highly active customers in the groundswell. There are comparatively more Critics in Germany than in the rest of Europe, so forums and ratings make the most sense there. The French are far less
likely to belong to social networks,
Loc. 618-20 To help you get started, we've provided a free tool at groundswell.forrester.com. Enter the country where you want to do business and the age and gender of your customer base, and we'll show you the Social Technographics Profile of the group you've specified.
Loc. 741-42 But in the end whoever is in charge of the plan must regularly brief the CEO on how it is transforming the way the company does business with customers. Groundswell projects routinely stir up people well above the part of the organization where they started.
Loc. 796 Your brand is whatever your customers say it is. And in the groundswell where they communicate with each other, they decide.
Loc. 817-18 Designed cleverly enough, these surveys will answer any question you can think up. But they can't tell you what you never thought to ask. And what you never thought to ask might be the most important question for your business.
Loc. 1126-27 Brands that appeal to consumers ages thirteen to twenty-three must engage in social networks because their customers are already there, while those with a market between twenty-four to thirty-five are likely to be successful with this strategy.
Loc. 1145-48 The result was a short, straightforward blogging policy and a course that would-be bloggers could take to keep them within the guardrails. HP's blogging policy includes such commonsensical but better-not-violate gems as "Include your name and position [in blogs and comments] ... and write in the first person" and this one that made the lawyers happy: "Your blog must comply with financial disclosure laws, regulations and requirements."
Ironically, these rules made blogging spread because now the corporation had blessed it. And HP began to reap the benefits.
Loc. 1374 people believe other people more than media.
Loc. 1446-48 our research shows that about 80 percent of reviews tend to be positive.9 And in fact, the negative reviews are essential to the credibility of the site-without them, the positive reviews just don't seem believable.
Loc. 1547-48 Other companies succeed despite a significant number of dissatisfied customers. If that's you, then energizing your customers will only make things worse.
Loc. 1671-75 Amazingly, we see this impulse throughout the groundswell. Caterina Fake, cofounder of the photo-sharing site Flickr, called it "the culture of generosity."6 We call it the search for psychic income.' As we described in chapter 3, psychic rewards come in several varieties, including
good feelings from altruism, validation, and belonging to a community. People like Jeff participate for the gratitude. Others want recognition. Still others feel answering questions gives them influence. Psychic income is free-it's paid in love, not money.
Loc. 1746 Support makes people comfortable. And people need to be comfortable to spend money.
Loc. 1829-31 In reality, the members of such a community are dying to hear from you-they are there explicitly to talk about your products and services. Posts by the company will garner a lot of attention. If there's a vibrant community around your product or service already, consider joining it, sponsoring it, or forming some other relationship so you can help your customers support themselves.
Loc. 1846-48 Communities have opinions on everything. They'll not only tell you what product features to add; they'll also tell you how the community should run and what you are doing right-and wrong. Be sure to include a thread called "Improving this community," and pay close attention to what you hear, not just there, but throughout the forum.
Loc. 1906-8 People who've connected with customers in this way are always amazed at how much more quickly they generate ideas. It's because they've just supercharged their dozens or hundreds of engineers with thousands or millions of other minds.
Loc. 1977-78 First of all, the bank has aligned itself on the same side as its customers. Instead of saying "Tell us what to do," it said, and the difference is subtle, "What would you do if you were us?" By encouraging the customers to develop empathy for the bank, even momentarily, Credit Mutuel gets much more realistic suggestions.
Loc. 2165-66 For Dell, listening and then acting was the crucial first step for its new social strategy.
Loc. 2220-21 First, start small. We've said this throughout the book, but it's even more crucial in company transformation. The change will take time, and you typically only have so much political power to use at any one time. So pick your battles strategically. Second, educate your executives. Some of them think this is for their kids, not their customers.
==========
Thursday 14 October 2010
What Every BODY is Saying (Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins)
A book basically on body language written by an ex FBI agent. It doesn't help you to tell if someone is lying but it does give clues on how to tell if someone is comfortable or uncomfortable in a specific situation.
Some of the usual signs and signal and some very interesting tips that have made me look at people in a new way (the most important is to leave the face to last as people are most adept at faking facial expressions, the rest of their body gives more clues)
Loc. 530-31 Freezing your movement can often make you nearly invisible to others, a phenomenon every soldier and SWAT team operator learns.....The same behavior is observed when an individual is being questioned about matters that he or she perceives could get them into trouble. The person will freeze in his chair as if in an “ejector seat”
Loc. 592-96 The person may also distance herself from someone by leaning away, placing objects (a purse) on her lap, or turning her feet toward the nearest exit. All of these behaviors are controlled by the limbic brain and indicate that someone wants distance from one or more undesirable persons or any perceived threat in the environment. Again, we undertake these behaviors because, for millions of years, humans have withdrawn from things we didn’t like or that could harm us. Therefore, to this day, we expedite our exit from a deplorable party, distance ourselves from a bad relationship, or lean away from those who are deemed undesirable or even with whom we strongly disagree
Loc. 635-37 the “prime directive” of the limbic brain is to ensure our survival as a species. It does this by being programmed to make us secure by avoiding danger or discomfort and seeking safety or comfort whenever possible. It also allows us to remember experiences from our past encounters and build upon them
Loc. 727-31 For our purposes, any touching of the face, head, neck, shoulder, arm, hand, or leg in response to a negative stimulus (e.g., a difficult question, an embarrassing situation, or stress as a result of something heard, seen, or thought) is a pacifying behavior. These stroking behaviors don’t help us to solve problems; rather, they help us to remain calm while we do. In other words, they soothe us. Men prefer to touch their faces. Women prefer to touch their necks, clothing, jewelry, arms, and hair.
Loc. 883-85 In fact, these age-old reactions are still so hardwired in us that when we are presented with something dangerous or even disagreeable, our feet and legs still react as they did in prehistoric times. First they freeze, then they attempt to distance, and finally, if no other alternative is available, they prepare to fight and kick.
Loc. 907 When it comes to honesty, truthfulness decreases as we move from the feet to the head.
Loc. 1009-12 Usually this hands-on-knees gesture is followed by a forward lean of the torso and/or a shift of the lower body to the edge of the chair, both intention movements. When you note these cues, particularly when they come from your superiors, it’s time to end your interaction; be astute and don’t linger.
Loc. 1079-81 the more advantaged we are socioeconomically or hierarchically, the more territory we demand. He also found that people who tend to take up more space (territory) through their daily activities also tend to be more self-assured, more confident, and of course more likely to be of higher status.
Loc. 1105-6 Leg crossing, then, becomes a great way to communicate a positive sentiment.
Loc. 1522-26 At seminars I frequently ask the question, “How many of you were dressed by your mother today?” Of course everyone laughs, and no one raises his hand. Then I say, “Well, then, you—all of you—chose to dress the way you did.” That is when they all look around them and, perhaps for the first time, realize that they could do a better job of dressing and presenting themselves. After all, before two people first meet, the only input each has to go on about the other is physical appearance and other nonverbal communications. Perhaps it’s time to consider how you are being perceived.
Loc. 1865-67 One of the employees pointed out to me that ticket agents can often identify passengers who will become problematic by how wide they position their arms when they are at the counter. From that day forward I have looked for this behavior and have witnessed it countless times during confrontations.
Loc. 2232-33 Thumbs in the pocket indicate low status and confidence. People in authority should avoid this display because it sends the wrong message.
Loc. 2421-22 We miss facial cues because we have been taught not to stare and/or because we concentrate more on what is being said than on how it is being said.
Loc. 2546-47 Eye blocking with the hands is an effective way of saying, “I don’t like what I just heard, saw, or learned.”
Loc. 2625-27 As a general rule, dominants tend to ignore subordinates visually while subordinates tend to gaze at dominant individuals at a distance. In other words, higher-status individuals can be indifferent while lower-status persons are required to be attentive with their gaze.
Loc. 2839-40 One nonverbal of disapproval too commonly seen in America is rolling of the eyes. This is a sign of disrespect and must not be tolerated, especially from subordinates, staff, or children.
Loc. 2901-2 If you are confused as to the meaning of a facial expression, reenact it and sense how it makes you feel. You will find this little trick may help you decipher what you just observed.
Loc. 2947-49 repeated studies begun in the 1980s show that most of us—including judges, attorneys, clinicians, police officers, FBI agents, politicians, teachers, mothers, fathers, and spouses—are no better than chance (fifty-fifty) when it comes to detecting deception
Some of the usual signs and signal and some very interesting tips that have made me look at people in a new way (the most important is to leave the face to last as people are most adept at faking facial expressions, the rest of their body gives more clues)
Loc. 530-31 Freezing your movement can often make you nearly invisible to others, a phenomenon every soldier and SWAT team operator learns.....The same behavior is observed when an individual is being questioned about matters that he or she perceives could get them into trouble. The person will freeze in his chair as if in an “ejector seat”
Loc. 592-96 The person may also distance herself from someone by leaning away, placing objects (a purse) on her lap, or turning her feet toward the nearest exit. All of these behaviors are controlled by the limbic brain and indicate that someone wants distance from one or more undesirable persons or any perceived threat in the environment. Again, we undertake these behaviors because, for millions of years, humans have withdrawn from things we didn’t like or that could harm us. Therefore, to this day, we expedite our exit from a deplorable party, distance ourselves from a bad relationship, or lean away from those who are deemed undesirable or even with whom we strongly disagree
Loc. 635-37 the “prime directive” of the limbic brain is to ensure our survival as a species. It does this by being programmed to make us secure by avoiding danger or discomfort and seeking safety or comfort whenever possible. It also allows us to remember experiences from our past encounters and build upon them
Loc. 727-31 For our purposes, any touching of the face, head, neck, shoulder, arm, hand, or leg in response to a negative stimulus (e.g., a difficult question, an embarrassing situation, or stress as a result of something heard, seen, or thought) is a pacifying behavior. These stroking behaviors don’t help us to solve problems; rather, they help us to remain calm while we do. In other words, they soothe us. Men prefer to touch their faces. Women prefer to touch their necks, clothing, jewelry, arms, and hair.
Loc. 883-85 In fact, these age-old reactions are still so hardwired in us that when we are presented with something dangerous or even disagreeable, our feet and legs still react as they did in prehistoric times. First they freeze, then they attempt to distance, and finally, if no other alternative is available, they prepare to fight and kick.
Loc. 907 When it comes to honesty, truthfulness decreases as we move from the feet to the head.
Loc. 1009-12 Usually this hands-on-knees gesture is followed by a forward lean of the torso and/or a shift of the lower body to the edge of the chair, both intention movements. When you note these cues, particularly when they come from your superiors, it’s time to end your interaction; be astute and don’t linger.
Loc. 1079-81 the more advantaged we are socioeconomically or hierarchically, the more territory we demand. He also found that people who tend to take up more space (territory) through their daily activities also tend to be more self-assured, more confident, and of course more likely to be of higher status.
Loc. 1105-6 Leg crossing, then, becomes a great way to communicate a positive sentiment.
Loc. 1522-26 At seminars I frequently ask the question, “How many of you were dressed by your mother today?” Of course everyone laughs, and no one raises his hand. Then I say, “Well, then, you—all of you—chose to dress the way you did.” That is when they all look around them and, perhaps for the first time, realize that they could do a better job of dressing and presenting themselves. After all, before two people first meet, the only input each has to go on about the other is physical appearance and other nonverbal communications. Perhaps it’s time to consider how you are being perceived.
Loc. 1865-67 One of the employees pointed out to me that ticket agents can often identify passengers who will become problematic by how wide they position their arms when they are at the counter. From that day forward I have looked for this behavior and have witnessed it countless times during confrontations.
Loc. 2232-33 Thumbs in the pocket indicate low status and confidence. People in authority should avoid this display because it sends the wrong message.
Loc. 2421-22 We miss facial cues because we have been taught not to stare and/or because we concentrate more on what is being said than on how it is being said.
Loc. 2546-47 Eye blocking with the hands is an effective way of saying, “I don’t like what I just heard, saw, or learned.”
Loc. 2625-27 As a general rule, dominants tend to ignore subordinates visually while subordinates tend to gaze at dominant individuals at a distance. In other words, higher-status individuals can be indifferent while lower-status persons are required to be attentive with their gaze.
Loc. 2839-40 One nonverbal of disapproval too commonly seen in America is rolling of the eyes. This is a sign of disrespect and must not be tolerated, especially from subordinates, staff, or children.
Loc. 2901-2 If you are confused as to the meaning of a facial expression, reenact it and sense how it makes you feel. You will find this little trick may help you decipher what you just observed.
Loc. 2947-49 repeated studies begun in the 1980s show that most of us—including judges, attorneys, clinicians, police officers, FBI agents, politicians, teachers, mothers, fathers, and spouses—are no better than chance (fifty-fifty) when it comes to detecting deception
Tuesday 21 September 2010
Making up the mind - Chris Frith
A delightful book that gently constructs a theory of mind of consciousness even though it sets out not to do so.
Intriguingly it shows how much of our existence is unconscious, far more than we believe.
We construct mental models of the world in order to make predictions about it and then compare the input from our senses (or just from running our internal model in thought experiments) to improve the model.
Loc. 290 Our brain consumes about 20% of our body’s energy even though the brain is only 2% of our body in terms of its weight.
==========
Loc. 492 But this long-term change in the brain had no effect on his conscious mind. He could not remember anything that happened yesterday. Such people show that our brain can know things about the world that our mind does not know.
==========
Loc. 502-4DF’s brain “knows” about the angle of the rod and can use this information to control the movements of her hand. But DF can’t use this information to see the orientation of the rod. Her brain knows something about the physical world, while her conscious mind does not.
==========
Loc. 708-12 Not only do we seem to perceive the world instantly and without effort, we also seem to perceive the whole visual scene in vivid detail. This too is an illusion. Only the middle of the visual scene that strikes the center of our eye can be seen in detail and in color. This is because only the middle of our retina (the fovea) has closely packed, color-sensitive neurons (cones). Beyond about 10 degrees from the middle the neurons are further apart and detect only light and shade (rods). The edge of our view of the world is blurred and has no color.
==========
Loc. 1059-62 The urge to lift the finger occurred about 200 msec before the finger was actually lifted. But the key observation that caused so much fuss was that the change in brain activity occurred about 500 msec before the finger was lifted. So brain activity indicating that the volunteer was about to lift a finger occurred about 300 msec before that volunteer reported having the urge to lift his or her finger.
==========
Loc. 1370-73 Pavlov reports that even after 374 combinations of a loud buzzer and food, no learning took place. This was because the sound of the buzzer always occurred 5 to 10 seconds after the food was put into the mouth. An arbitrary stimulus is only interesting if it predicts that something nice or nasty is going to happen in the future. If the stimulus comes after the important event, it is of no interest at all.
==========
Loc. 1468-73 The activity in these cells does not signal reward. It does not even signal that reward will be coming soon. The activity in these cells tells us that there is an error in our prediction about reward. If the juice arrives when we expect it to arrive, then there is no error in our prediction and the dopamine nerve cells do not send out a signal. If the juice arrives unexpectedly, then the reward is better then we expected and the nerve cells send out a positive signal. If the juice fails to arrive when it should, then the reward is worse than we expected and the nerve cells send out a negative signal. These signals about the errors of our predictions enable us to learn about the world without needing a teacher. If our prediction about the world is wrong, then this is a sign to us that we need to do something in order to make our prediction better.
==========
Loc. 1561-63 The volunteer’s brain now responded to this angry face as if it was a loud noise. But the volunteer himself was not aware of having seen the angry face, because it had been masked with another face. The volunteer was learning a conditioned response even though he was not aware of seeing the stimulus that elicited this conditioned response.91
==========
Loc. 2037-39 What I perceive are not the crude and ambiguous cues that impinge from the outside world onto my eyes and my ears and my fingers. I perceive something much richer - a picture that combines all these crude signals with a wealth of past experience.114 My perception is a prediction of what ought to be out there in the world. And this prediction is constantly tested by action.
==========
Loc. 2078-81 Our brains build models of the world and continuously modify these models on the basis of the signals that reach our senses. So, what we actually perceive are our brain’s models of the world. They are not the world itself, but, for us, they are as good as. You could say that our perceptions are fantasies that coincide with reality. Furthermore, if no sensory signals are available, then our brain fills in the missing information.
==========
Loc. 2129-31 The imagination is utterly uncreative. It has no predictions to make and no errors to resolve. We don’t create in our heads. We create by externalizing our thoughts with sketches and doodles and rough drafts so that we can benefit from the unexpectedness of reality. It is this continual unexpectedness that makes interacting with the real world such a joy.
==========
Loc. 2170-72 Even stick figures have a gender For a moving version try http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLgender.html from Prof Nikolaus Troje’s Biomotion lab.
==========
Loc. 2275-77 To imitate someone, we watch their movements closely, but we don’t copy these movements. We use the movements to discover something in the mind of the person we are watching: the goal of their movement. Then we imitate them by making a movement that achieves the same goal.
==========
Loc. 2362-64 These mental times and physical times are not the same. In your mind the button press occurs slightly later and the bell starts to ring slightly earlier. For you the cause and effect of your action seem closer together. In mental time the components of your actions are bound together.
==========
Loc. 2461-65 I think that I have direct contact with the physical world, but this is an illusion created by my brain. My brain creates models of the physical world by combining signals from my senses and prior expectations, and it is these models that I am aware of. I acquire my knowledge of the mental world - the minds of others - in the same way. However it may seem to me, my contact with the mental world is neither more nor less direct than my contact with the physical world. Using cues acquired from my senses and prior knowledge acquired from my experience, my brain creates models of the minds of others.
==========
Loc. 2719-20 We understand that people’s behavior is controlled by beliefs even if these beliefs are false. And we soon learn that we can control people’s behavior by giving them false beliefs. This is the dark side of communication.
==========
Loc. 2923-26 But when we punish free riders, we are not deliberately trying to increase cooperation or thinking about how the group will benefit in the long term. We get immediate satisfaction from punishing people who have behaved unfairly. We do not feel any empathy for the suffering of these undesirable people. We have learned to dislike them. Our brain even gives us pleasure from the punishment of free riders.
Intriguingly it shows how much of our existence is unconscious, far more than we believe.
We construct mental models of the world in order to make predictions about it and then compare the input from our senses (or just from running our internal model in thought experiments) to improve the model.
Loc. 290 Our brain consumes about 20% of our body’s energy even though the brain is only 2% of our body in terms of its weight.
==========
Loc. 492 But this long-term change in the brain had no effect on his conscious mind. He could not remember anything that happened yesterday. Such people show that our brain can know things about the world that our mind does not know.
==========
Loc. 502-4DF’s brain “knows” about the angle of the rod and can use this information to control the movements of her hand. But DF can’t use this information to see the orientation of the rod. Her brain knows something about the physical world, while her conscious mind does not.
==========
Loc. 708-12 Not only do we seem to perceive the world instantly and without effort, we also seem to perceive the whole visual scene in vivid detail. This too is an illusion. Only the middle of the visual scene that strikes the center of our eye can be seen in detail and in color. This is because only the middle of our retina (the fovea) has closely packed, color-sensitive neurons (cones). Beyond about 10 degrees from the middle the neurons are further apart and detect only light and shade (rods). The edge of our view of the world is blurred and has no color.
==========
Loc. 1059-62 The urge to lift the finger occurred about 200 msec before the finger was actually lifted. But the key observation that caused so much fuss was that the change in brain activity occurred about 500 msec before the finger was lifted. So brain activity indicating that the volunteer was about to lift a finger occurred about 300 msec before that volunteer reported having the urge to lift his or her finger.
==========
Loc. 1370-73 Pavlov reports that even after 374 combinations of a loud buzzer and food, no learning took place. This was because the sound of the buzzer always occurred 5 to 10 seconds after the food was put into the mouth. An arbitrary stimulus is only interesting if it predicts that something nice or nasty is going to happen in the future. If the stimulus comes after the important event, it is of no interest at all.
==========
Loc. 1468-73 The activity in these cells does not signal reward. It does not even signal that reward will be coming soon. The activity in these cells tells us that there is an error in our prediction about reward. If the juice arrives when we expect it to arrive, then there is no error in our prediction and the dopamine nerve cells do not send out a signal. If the juice arrives unexpectedly, then the reward is better then we expected and the nerve cells send out a positive signal. If the juice fails to arrive when it should, then the reward is worse than we expected and the nerve cells send out a negative signal. These signals about the errors of our predictions enable us to learn about the world without needing a teacher. If our prediction about the world is wrong, then this is a sign to us that we need to do something in order to make our prediction better.
==========
Loc. 1561-63 The volunteer’s brain now responded to this angry face as if it was a loud noise. But the volunteer himself was not aware of having seen the angry face, because it had been masked with another face. The volunteer was learning a conditioned response even though he was not aware of seeing the stimulus that elicited this conditioned response.91
==========
Loc. 2037-39 What I perceive are not the crude and ambiguous cues that impinge from the outside world onto my eyes and my ears and my fingers. I perceive something much richer - a picture that combines all these crude signals with a wealth of past experience.114 My perception is a prediction of what ought to be out there in the world. And this prediction is constantly tested by action.
==========
Loc. 2078-81 Our brains build models of the world and continuously modify these models on the basis of the signals that reach our senses. So, what we actually perceive are our brain’s models of the world. They are not the world itself, but, for us, they are as good as. You could say that our perceptions are fantasies that coincide with reality. Furthermore, if no sensory signals are available, then our brain fills in the missing information.
==========
Loc. 2129-31 The imagination is utterly uncreative. It has no predictions to make and no errors to resolve. We don’t create in our heads. We create by externalizing our thoughts with sketches and doodles and rough drafts so that we can benefit from the unexpectedness of reality. It is this continual unexpectedness that makes interacting with the real world such a joy.
==========
Loc. 2170-72 Even stick figures have a gender For a moving version try http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLgender.html from Prof Nikolaus Troje’s Biomotion lab.
==========
Loc. 2275-77 To imitate someone, we watch their movements closely, but we don’t copy these movements. We use the movements to discover something in the mind of the person we are watching: the goal of their movement. Then we imitate them by making a movement that achieves the same goal.
==========
Loc. 2362-64 These mental times and physical times are not the same. In your mind the button press occurs slightly later and the bell starts to ring slightly earlier. For you the cause and effect of your action seem closer together. In mental time the components of your actions are bound together.
==========
Loc. 2461-65 I think that I have direct contact with the physical world, but this is an illusion created by my brain. My brain creates models of the physical world by combining signals from my senses and prior expectations, and it is these models that I am aware of. I acquire my knowledge of the mental world - the minds of others - in the same way. However it may seem to me, my contact with the mental world is neither more nor less direct than my contact with the physical world. Using cues acquired from my senses and prior knowledge acquired from my experience, my brain creates models of the minds of others.
==========
Loc. 2719-20 We understand that people’s behavior is controlled by beliefs even if these beliefs are false. And we soon learn that we can control people’s behavior by giving them false beliefs. This is the dark side of communication.
==========
Loc. 2923-26 But when we punish free riders, we are not deliberately trying to increase cooperation or thinking about how the group will benefit in the long term. We get immediate satisfaction from punishing people who have behaved unfairly. We do not feel any empathy for the suffering of these undesirable people. We have learned to dislike them. Our brain even gives us pleasure from the punishment of free riders.
Friday 17 September 2010
What the dog saw - Malcolm Gladwell
There were mixed reviews on this book on Amazon but mostly they complained that this was just recycled stories from newspaper articles he had written. Not having read the newspaper I bought the book anyway and found it entertaining.
Loc184 “To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish"
Loc310 great story about the founders of Ronco etc. They were, he says, waiting for him to fail: he had never worked that particular slicer before and, sure enough, he was massacring the vegetables. Still, in a single pitch he took in $200. “Their eyes popped out of their heads,” Arnold recalls. “They said, ‘We don’t understand it. You don’t even know how to work the damn machine.’ I said, ‘But I know how to do one thing better than you.’ They said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘I know how to ask for the money.’ And that’s the secret to the whole damn business.”
Loc184 “To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish"
Loc310 great story about the founders of Ronco etc. They were, he says, waiting for him to fail: he had never worked that particular slicer before and, sure enough, he was massacring the vegetables. Still, in a single pitch he took in $200. “Their eyes popped out of their heads,” Arnold recalls. “They said, ‘We don’t understand it. You don’t even know how to work the damn machine.’ I said, ‘But I know how to do one thing better than you.’ They said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘I know how to ask for the money.’ And that’s the secret to the whole damn business.”
Loc345 Thirty years ago, the videocassette recorder came on the market, and it was a disruptive product, too: it was supposed to make it possible to tape a television show so that no one would ever again be chained to the prime-time schedule. Yet, as ubiquitous as the VCR became, it was seldom put to that purpose. That’s because the VCR was never pitched: no one ever explained the gadget to American consumers — not once or twice but three or four times — and no one showed them exactly how it worked or how it would fit into their routine, and no pair of hands guided them through every step of the process. All the VCR-makers did was hand over the box with a smile and a pat on the back, tossing in an instruction manual for good measure. Any pitchman could have told you that wasn’t going to do it.
Loc607 Moskowitz does not believe that consumers — even spaghetti lovers — know what they desire if what they desire does not yet exist. “The mind,” as Moskowitz is fond of saying, “knows not what the tongue wants.”
Loc901 on power laws in economics: “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.”
Loc. 1828 Dogs aren’t smarter than chimps; they just have a different attitude toward people. “Dogs are really interested in humans,” Hare went on. “Interested to the point of obsession. To a dog, you are a giant walking tennis ball.”
Loc 1858 Combinations of posture and gesture are called phrasing, and the great communicators are those who match their phrasing with their communicative intentions
Loc2427 Homelessness doesn’t have a normal distribution, it turned out. It has a power-law distribution. “We found that eighty percent of the homeless were in and out really quickly,” he said. “In Philadelphia, the most common length of time that someone is homeless is one day. And the second most common length is two days. And they never come back. Anyone who ever has to stay in a shelter involuntarily knows that all you think about is how to make sure you never come back.”
Loc 2455 The homelessness problem is like the LAPD’s bad-cop problem. It’s a matter of a few hard cases, and that’s good news, because when a problem is that concentrated you can wrap your arms around it and think about solving it. The bad news is that those few hard cases are hard.They are falling-down drunks with liver disease and complex infections and mental illness. They need time and attention and lots of money. But enormous sums of money are already being spent on the chronically homeless, and Culhane saw that the kind of money it would take to solve the homeless problem could well be less than the kind of money it took to ignore it. Murray Barr used more healthcare dollars, after all, than almost anyone in the state of Nevada. It would probably have been cheaper to give him a full-time nurse and his own apartment.
Loc. 2538-39 Power-law problems leave us with an unpleasant choice. We can be true to our principles or we can fix the problem. We cannot do both.
==========
Loc2829Welch writes in his new book, Should I Be Tested for Cancer?, a brilliant account of the statistical and medical uncertainties surrounding cancer screening.
Loc4095 Frightening impact poor teahcers have out of all proportion to other effects in students outcomes
Nonetheless, if you follow Brown and Smith for three or four years, their effect on their students’ test scores starts to become predictable: with enough data, it is possible to identify who the very good teachers are and who the very poor teachers are. What’s more — and this is the finding that has galvanized the educational world — the difference between good teachers and poor teachers turns out to be vast.
Loc 4098 Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a bad school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile.
Loc4897 The correlation between the two, she found, was astoundingly high. A person watching a two-second silent video clip of a teacher he has never met will reach conclusions about how good that teacher is that are very similar to those of a student who sits in the teacher’s class for an entire semester.
Loc5081 tips on getting teh job you want
the kinds of things that employers are looking for — what are they looking for in terms of personality. One of the most important things is that you have to come across as being confident in what you are doing and in who you are. How do you do that? Speak clearly and smile.”
Friday 10 September 2010
The Leisure Economy - Linda Nazareth
This was a free Kindle ebook that I found held some useful statistics on how the technology of modern life is giving us more free time than we believe. Lots of studies and data though mainly USA biased and pre 2007 (so the financial crisis hadn't hit at the time of publication)
Locn 1388, Interesting point on Work-life balance similar to my experience at Rencol:
Those companies that have initiated programs to provide work-life balance often find that they have a big carrot with which to attract Gen Y graduates. “It’s very competitive to get the right people, and the fact that we as a company embrace the work-life issue is a strong selling point for us,” says Houston Brown. “We have a program where every second week people take Fridays off by working nine hours a day Monday to Thursday. Managers do it too. That’s very popular with Generation Y.”
Locn 1388, Interesting point on Work-life balance similar to my experience at Rencol:
Those companies that have initiated programs to provide work-life balance often find that they have a big carrot with which to attract Gen Y graduates. “It’s very competitive to get the right people, and the fact that we as a company embrace the work-life issue is a strong selling point for us,” says Houston Brown. “We have a program where every second week people take Fridays off by working nine hours a day Monday to Thursday. Managers do it too. That’s very popular with Generation Y.”
Tuesday 7 September 2010
Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky
This is an earlier book to Clay's Cognitive Surplus and I think it's more interesting in terms of explaining the underlying changes that social tools are having (and are going to have) on the way society works. The book is illustrated with stories that bring his points to life and demonstrate how the ideas affect all of us.
This was also the first ebook I read on a Kindle so I no longer have the page numbers to refer to but here are some quotes I found stimulating (I need to find some sort of way to refer to the document positions for others):
we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations.
He looks at cooperative creation; Linux and Wikipedia
Wikipedia, with none of those things, does not have to be efficient—it merely has to be effective.
This was also the first ebook I read on a Kindle so I no longer have the page numbers to refer to but here are some quotes I found stimulating (I need to find some sort of way to refer to the document positions for others):
we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations.
Writing in Science magazine in 1972, Anderson noted that aggregations of anything from atoms to people exhibit complex behavior that cannot be predicted by observing the component parts.
About tagging content
What Flickr did instead was to let the users label (or tag) their photos as a way of arranging them. When two or more users adopted the same tag, those photos were automatically linked. The users were linked as well; (he argues the underlying basis of using tags is to create connections not to find information) The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming “gather, then share” into “share, then gather.” People were able to connect after discovering one another through their photos.
The changes to news media
From now on news can break into public consciousness without the traditional press weighing in. Indeed, the news media can end up covering the story because something has broken into public consciousness via other means.
the loss of control of what is deemed newsworthy my traditional news channels , in some senses they now follow not lead the agenda.
In the same way you do not have to be a professional driver to drive, you no longer have to be a professional publisher to publish. Mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the printing press five centuries ago.
Changes in society
Because social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don’t involve an orderly transition from point A to point B. Rather, they go from A through a long period of chaos and only then reach B. In that chaotic period, the old systems get broken long before new ones become stable.
The comparison with the printing press doesn’t suggest that we are entering a bright new future—for a hundred years after it started, the printing press broke more things than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and political chaos that ended only in the 1600s.
“The internet means you don’t have to convince anyone else that something is a good idea before trying it.”
It’s when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen, and for young people today, our new social tools have passed normal and are heading to ubiquitous, and invisible is coming.
Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society; they are a challenge to it. New technology makes new things possible: put another way, when new technology appears, previously impossible things start occurring. If enough of those impossible things are important and happen in a bundle, quickly, the change becomes a revolution.
Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies—it happens when society adopts new behaviors.
The transistor and the birth control pill are quite unlike each other, but they do have one thing in common: they are both human-scale inventions that were pulled into society one person at a time, and they mattered more than giant inventions pushed along by massive and sustained effort. They changed society precisely because no one was in control of how the technology was used, or by whom. That is happening again today. A million times a day someone tries some new social tool; someone in Mozambique gets a mobile phone, someone in Shanghai checks out the Chinese version of Wikipedia, someone in Belarus hears about the flash mob protests, someone in Brazil joins a social networking service.
Our principal challenge is not to decide where we want to go but rather to stay upright as we go there. The invention of tools that facilitate group formation is less like ordinary technological change and more like an event, something that has already happened.
He talks about email overload and how beyond a certain point (reached faster than you expect) 'fame' kicks in and you cannot possibly respond to all the emails or blog posts or messages coming in - you then have to just reply in general terms.
He looks at cooperative creation; Linux and Wikipedia
Wikipedia, with none of those things, does not have to be efficient—it merely has to be effective.
On how social tools allows groups to form at the margins of society who would previously have been discouraged - though he notes we (society) may well not like such groups any more than we did before
The net effect is that it’s easier to like people who are odd in the same ways you are odd, but it’s harder to find them.
On how social networks actually function, a few highly connected people are the glue
It is the presence of these highly connected people that forms the backbone of the social networks.
People connected to groups beyond their own can expect to find themselves delivering valuable ideas, seeming to be gifted with creativity. This is not creativity born of deep intellectual ability. It is creativity as an import-export business. An idea mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another.
The number of people who are willing to start something is smaller, much smaller, than the number of people who are willing to contribute once someone else starts something.
Caterina Fake, one of the founders of Flickr, said she’d learned from the early days that “you have to greet the first ten thousand users personally.” When the site was small, she and the other staffers would not just post their own photos but also comment on other users’ photos, like a host circulating at a party. This let the early users feel what it would be like to have an appreciative public, even before such a public existed.
Then a section on innovation in organisations
the importance of encouraging failure to encourage innovation
So it is in many organizations: The systematic bias for continuity creates tolerance for the substandard.
Bill Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, once put it, “No matter who you are, most of the smart people work for someone else.”
This is not pure altruism; the person who teaches learns twice,
Friday 20 August 2010
The Way we're working isn't working - Tony Schwartz
A thoughtful book encouraging us to take a step back from the 'more, bigger, faster' world we seem to inhabit today. The book is written for individuals, leaders and organisations and develops ideas on how to improve the situation as well as uncovering the issues.
The main thrust of the book is that to operate at your very best you need periods of recovery in between bursts of high activity. This is true for mental activity as well as physical.
The idea that we have a certain capacity for avoiding temptation (or delaying gratification) and that this is consumed by every little thing we resist. So to help diet - hide the food, to avoid email interruptions turn off desktop alerts or flashing lights.
I actually tried out one idea - to turn off my email for a week whilst on holiday for 5 days. I did succeed (helped by turning off the flashing light on my PDA which is still off by the way) but in the end I still had over 300 emails to deal with, although I was more effective and efficient in dealing with them in one go.
The final chapter of the book was an interesting idea a summary of the key messages from each of the preceding 20 chapters (one summary per page)
The main thrust of the book is that to operate at your very best you need periods of recovery in between bursts of high activity. This is true for mental activity as well as physical.
The idea that we have a certain capacity for avoiding temptation (or delaying gratification) and that this is consumed by every little thing we resist. So to help diet - hide the food, to avoid email interruptions turn off desktop alerts or flashing lights.
I actually tried out one idea - to turn off my email for a week whilst on holiday for 5 days. I did succeed (helped by turning off the flashing light on my PDA which is still off by the way) but in the end I still had over 300 emails to deal with, although I was more effective and efficient in dealing with them in one go.
The final chapter of the book was an interesting idea a summary of the key messages from each of the preceding 20 chapters (one summary per page)
Monday 2 August 2010
Cognitive Surplus
This is the first of Clive Shirky's books I have read but I will definitely get his earlier Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. His style mixes insight with stories to illustrate his points.
For example this book opens with an explanation of how the gin drinking craze in the London of the 1720s was caused by cultural shift and technology and how it melted away some years later.
Overall it is a very positive book about how socially connected individuals can create seismic shift in a culture or society. How the vast amount of 'spare' cognitive resource formed from all those connected to social technology can be harnessed for good.
P38 a fascinating story of how a Korean fan club of young girls made a major change to the political elite's treatment of beef imports.
P12 another book encouraging us to look at how customers actually use or product or service rather than what they tell us they want as a source of innovation.
p72 how extrinsic rewards (money) often don't work and it is far more successful to draw on intrinsic motivations.
p78 basic rules to ensure a group can generate public or civic value (as opposed to just value for the individuals participating)
p180 real successful groups are hard work!
p186/p191 Talks about how disorientating it is to have so much content now published by new 'non professional' sources. How the best approach in this situation may well be to allow as many groups as possible to form and see what survives.
Finally p210 a salutatory point "Those responsible for solving today's problems, tend to ensure those problems persist"
For example this book opens with an explanation of how the gin drinking craze in the London of the 1720s was caused by cultural shift and technology and how it melted away some years later.
Overall it is a very positive book about how socially connected individuals can create seismic shift in a culture or society. How the vast amount of 'spare' cognitive resource formed from all those connected to social technology can be harnessed for good.
P38 a fascinating story of how a Korean fan club of young girls made a major change to the political elite's treatment of beef imports.
P12 another book encouraging us to look at how customers actually use or product or service rather than what they tell us they want as a source of innovation.
p72 how extrinsic rewards (money) often don't work and it is far more successful to draw on intrinsic motivations.
p78 basic rules to ensure a group can generate public or civic value (as opposed to just value for the individuals participating)
p180 real successful groups are hard work!
p186/p191 Talks about how disorientating it is to have so much content now published by new 'non professional' sources. How the best approach in this situation may well be to allow as many groups as possible to form and see what survives.
Finally p210 a salutatory point "Those responsible for solving today's problems, tend to ensure those problems persist"
Sunday 25 July 2010
Blue Ocean Strategy
This is a great book with some useful tools to help construct a growth strategy for a business that maximises the chances of creating a new market space (the blue ocean of the title) whilst minimising the risks.
It covers formulating blue ocean ideas (going beyond existing market boundaries, looking at how customers use, or try to use, your product or service)
And then how to improve the chances of success in executing a strategy.
Of particular interest to me was the concept of thinking about non-customers rather than existing customers, commonalities before differences and de-segmentation (p103).
The concept of a strategy canvas gives a visual way to depict your strategy, that of the competition and the desires of the market (p84 gives the process to follow)
The concept of engaging the whole team in strategy is not new but the description of what the authors call 'fair process' gives insights into why it sometimes doesn't work.
It covers formulating blue ocean ideas (going beyond existing market boundaries, looking at how customers use, or try to use, your product or service)
And then how to improve the chances of success in executing a strategy.
Of particular interest to me was the concept of thinking about non-customers rather than existing customers, commonalities before differences and de-segmentation (p103).
The concept of a strategy canvas gives a visual way to depict your strategy, that of the competition and the desires of the market (p84 gives the process to follow)
The concept of engaging the whole team in strategy is not new but the description of what the authors call 'fair process' gives insights into why it sometimes doesn't work.
Thursday 1 July 2010
The Case for Working with your hands
The language is a little heavy in the book but I completely support the idea of craft or technical education alongside academic subject in our education. It then goes onto give examples (through motorcycle repair) of why such skills should be valued in the wider world too.
p158 inverse correlation between giving praise to a child and subsequent persistence at a task
p194 rewards produce reduced engagement with tasks
p204 the need for failure in education and the current vogue to remove all chances of this for every child.
p158 inverse correlation between giving praise to a child and subsequent persistence at a task
p194 rewards produce reduced engagement with tasks
p204 the need for failure in education and the current vogue to remove all chances of this for every child.
Friday 18 June 2010
Glow - How you can radiate Energy, Innovation and Success
Lynda Gratton follows on from her previous book Hot Spots to look at the personal characteristics of positive people who glow when they are in the right environment.
They glow because they have built deeply trusting and cooperative relationships with others
They glow because they have extended their networks beyond the obvious to encompass the unusual
They glow because they are on an inner quest that ignites their own energy and that of others.
One of the themes of the is to take time to wonder, to make connections with interesting people and ideas.
They glow because they have built deeply trusting and cooperative relationships with others
They glow because they have extended their networks beyond the obvious to encompass the unusual
They glow because they are on an inner quest that ignites their own energy and that of others.
One of the themes of the is to take time to wonder, to make connections with interesting people and ideas.
Friday 11 June 2010
Life Strategies
A pretty hard hitting, no-nonsense self coaching book. That basically gets you to shake yourself and sort out a plan for what you want. I read it after seeing a quote from it in Nigel Risner's email newsletter - it is similar in style to his approach.
p21 Some sad US statistics: divorce rate 57.7%, average length of new marriages 26 months. 62% of society is obese. Emotional neglect of children has increased 330% in last ten years. 1 in 4 women has been sexually molested. 1 in 6 will experience a serious depressive episode during their life. 74% are victims of property crime........
p30 Ask not is the strategy right - ask is it working (this was a similar approach to goal setting that I found worked from a previous book I read)
p45 Grey Dog Wisdom:
There ain't no Santa Clause, there ain't no pony, and Elvis is way dead. If your life is going to get any better around here, it will be because you make it better. Pray to god but row for the shore.
Before your life can go in the right direction, you have to pull your head out and stop going in the wrong direction.
You don't have to stick your hand in your blender to know it's not a good idea to stick hands in blenders.
Make a plan and work the plan, life is not a dress rehearsal.
They will use you if you let them. When they come around thinning the herd, or taking away people's lunch money, get a really serious look on your face, and dig in.
Life is a competition. They are keeping score, and there is a time clock.
p49 ten common people characteristics
p64 don't play the victim, accept accountability
p173 shut up, move on (see also SUMO review)
p21 Some sad US statistics: divorce rate 57.7%, average length of new marriages 26 months. 62% of society is obese. Emotional neglect of children has increased 330% in last ten years. 1 in 4 women has been sexually molested. 1 in 6 will experience a serious depressive episode during their life. 74% are victims of property crime........
p30 Ask not is the strategy right - ask is it working (this was a similar approach to goal setting that I found worked from a previous book I read)
p45 Grey Dog Wisdom:
There ain't no Santa Clause, there ain't no pony, and Elvis is way dead. If your life is going to get any better around here, it will be because you make it better. Pray to god but row for the shore.
Before your life can go in the right direction, you have to pull your head out and stop going in the wrong direction.
You don't have to stick your hand in your blender to know it's not a good idea to stick hands in blenders.
Make a plan and work the plan, life is not a dress rehearsal.
They will use you if you let them. When they come around thinning the herd, or taking away people's lunch money, get a really serious look on your face, and dig in.
Life is a competition. They are keeping score, and there is a time clock.
p49 ten common people characteristics
p64 don't play the victim, accept accountability
p173 shut up, move on (see also SUMO review)
Life Strategies
A pretty hard hitting, no-nonsense self coaching book. That basically gets you to shake yourself and sort out a plan for what you want. I read it after seeing a quote from it in Nigel Risner's email newsletter - it is similar in style to his approach.
p21 Some sad US statistics: divorce rate 57.7%, average length of new marriages 26 months. 62% of society is obese. Emotional neglect of children has increased 330% in last ten years. 1 in 4 women has been sexually molested. 1 in 6 will experience a serious depressive episode during their life. 74% are victims of property crime........
p30 Ask not is the strategy right - ask is it working (this was a similar approach to goal setting that I found worked from a previous book I read)
p45 Grey Dog Wisdom:
There ain't no Santa Clause, there ain't no pony, and Elvis is way dead. If your life is going to get any better around here, it will be because you make it better. Pray to god but row for the shore.
Before your life can go in the right direction, you have to pull your head out and stop going in the wrong direction.
You don't have to stick your hand in your blender to know it's not a good idea to stick hands in blenders.
Make a plan and work the plan, life is not a dress rehearsal.
They will use you if you let them. When they come around thinning the herd, or taking away people's lunch money, get a really serious look on your face, and dig in.
Life is a competition. They are keeping score, and there is a time clock.
p49 ten common people characteristics
p64 don't play the victim, accept accountability
p173 shut up, move on (see also SUMO review)
p21 Some sad US statistics: divorce rate 57.7%, average length of new marriages 26 months. 62% of society is obese. Emotional neglect of children has increased 330% in last ten years. 1 in 4 women has been sexually molested. 1 in 6 will experience a serious depressive episode during their life. 74% are victims of property crime........
p30 Ask not is the strategy right - ask is it working (this was a similar approach to goal setting that I found worked from a previous book I read)
p45 Grey Dog Wisdom:
There ain't no Santa Clause, there ain't no pony, and Elvis is way dead. If your life is going to get any better around here, it will be because you make it better. Pray to god but row for the shore.
Before your life can go in the right direction, you have to pull your head out and stop going in the wrong direction.
You don't have to stick your hand in your blender to know it's not a good idea to stick hands in blenders.
Make a plan and work the plan, life is not a dress rehearsal.
They will use you if you let them. When they come around thinning the herd, or taking away people's lunch money, get a really serious look on your face, and dig in.
Life is a competition. They are keeping score, and there is a time clock.
p49 ten common people characteristics
p64 don't play the victim, accept accountability
p173 shut up, move on (see also SUMO review)
Wednesday 19 May 2010
The Greatest Show on Earth - Evidence for evolution
One of Richard Dawkin's better books that outlines the reasons why he sees evolution powered by natural selection as the only plausible explanation for the wonderful breadth of beauty in the natural world around us.
He gives lucid arguments against the common creationist explanations though not in such reactionary terms as some of his other works.
I hope it becomes a school textbook - it would inspire a wonder in understanding the natural world.
He gives lucid arguments against the common creationist explanations though not in such reactionary terms as some of his other works.
I hope it becomes a school textbook - it would inspire a wonder in understanding the natural world.
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