Made to Stick (book)

Connect

🔼Topic:: Communication (MOC)

✒️ Note-Making

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas To make a message memorable:

1. Simplicity - Find the easiest way to display your idea, strip it down into the core message, and use the audience's existing knowledge to your advantage, to make mental shortcuts.
2. Unexpected - the idea needs to both surprise and interest us. The surprise has to be related to the core idea of the message.
3. Concrete - the idea has to be clear, not abstract. Use visuals and avoid using complicated jargon.
4. Credible - the idea has to be believable, backed by either a trustworthy person, data, or with vivid examples
5. Emotional - the idea has to cause an emotional reaction, connect to our identity, to what we care about most
6. Story - a story form is the best format for lasting ideas. We can either focus on a story of challenge, of discovery, or connection.

🗒️Relate

⛓ Life lessons, action items

🔍Critique

✅ by following this method, what will happen?

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... I enjoyed reading the book, I think that the message is very clear and direct, easy to follow. The best part is probably the workshops where they take a message and tweak it to match the recommendations. That way when you compare the before and after you can really see the effect of these recommendations, and it gives you a good direction to follow.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

Intro

why some ideas last more than others, and affect us more deeply? we can narrow it down to six components:

1. Simplicity - a simple yet profonde message
2. Unexpected - the idea needs to both surprise and interest us
3. Credible - the idea has to be believable, connect with our intuitions
4. Concrete - the idea has to be clear, not abstract
5. Emotional - the idea has to cause an emotional reaction
6. Story - a story form is the best format for lasting ideas

Intro

• To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission—sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. (Location 232)
• For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. (Location 239)
• Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience. (Location 246)
• Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. (Location 250)
• We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. (Location 258)
• hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively. (Location 264)
• To summarize, here’s our checklist for creating a successful idea: a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story. (Location 267)
• This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind. (Location 293)
• If you want to spread your ideas to other people, you should work within the confines of the rules that have allowed other ideas to succeed over time. You want to invent new ideas, not new rules. (Location 356)

Chapter 1 - Simple

the main idea of "simple" is to strip the idea to its core components, it focused on having only the essential parts, an Addition by subtraction methodology, that an idea is complete only when there's nothing more to remove. Simplicity So start with what's most important, say it in as few words as you can.

This simplicity could give clarity for people on what to think or how to act in ambiguous or confusing situations, this will become their heuristic.

But simplicity is not only compactness, it's also choosing words that connect to the audience's existing mental models and perceptions, use as much of their knowledge for your favor. For example, I can either do a 100 word paragraph on what a pomelo is, or just say "pomelo is like a grapefruit but larger and purple", which one is easier to remember? Mental Shortcuts

Analogies are therefore keys for connecting to a pre-built schemas in the audiences mind, using established concepts, beliefs and expectations.

SIMPLE

• What we mean by “simple” is finding the core of the idea. (Location 403)
• Core messages help people avoid bad choices by reminding them of what’s important. (Location 542)
• compact ideas are stickier, but that compact ideas alone aren’t valuable—only ideas with profound compactness are valuable. So, to make a profound idea compact you’ve got to pack a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging. And how do you do that? You use flags. You tap the existing memory terrain of your audience. You use what’s already there. (Location 757)
• People are tempted to tell you everything, with perfect accuracy, right up front, when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more, then a little more. (Location 825)
• Proverbs are the Holy Grail of simplicity. Coming up with a short, compact phrase is easy. Anybody can do it. On the other hand, coming up with a profound compact phrase is incredibly difficult. (Location 895)

Chapter 2 - Unexpected

humans are used to getting use to. When we begin to perceive something, we are already trying to guess if it similar to something that we've heard and if we can guess the ending. The more similar it is, the less attention we give to it since we can "finish the sentence" without really listening. Expectations That's why your idea has to be surprising, but it can't just be surprising for surprise sake. When something surprises us, we pay more attention so that we could learn from it for next time. That unexpected thing we are trying to learn has to be related to your core message. Showing an ad about a band that suddenly gets eaten by wolf is surprising but there is no message, so it's a worthless ad. Showing an ad about a nice family car that drives around the neighborhood but suddenly gets slammed by a truck is not only surprising, but also relevant if the core message is "it can happen anywhere, so buckle up".

Unexpectedness can also come from a mystery, creating curiosity in the audience is a good way to spark interest. a common method is called the knowledge gap, which is to start with a question, pointing at a knowledge gap that audience has, something that they don't know and now they need to listen in order to find out. For example, instead of saying " only 10% of our young customers are contributing to...", you can start with "why young people who are 40% of our customers, are only 10% of total donations..."

UNEXPECTED

• The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern. (Location 918)
• Surprise is triggered when our schemas fail, and it prepares us to understand why the failure occurred. When our guessing machines fail, surprise grabs our attention so that we can repair them for the future. (Location 966)
• The easiest way to avoid gimmicky surprise and ensure that your unexpected ideas produce insight is to make sure you target an aspect of your audience’s guessing machines that relates to your core message. (Location 1021)
• Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages. When messages sound like common sense, they float gently in one ear and out the other. (Location 1038)
• To hold people’s interest, we can use the gap theory of curiosity to our advantage. A little bit of mystery goes a long way. (Location 1254)
• Unexpected ideas, by opening a knowledge gap, tease and flirt. They mark a big red X on something that needs to be discovered but don’t necessarily tell you how to get there. And, as we’ll see, a red X of spectacular size can end up driving the actions of thousands of people for many years. (Location 1336)

Chapter 3 - Concrete

To make our ideas understandable, we have to avoid two issues:

1. the curse of knowledge - after we know something its hard for us to image what it is like to not know it, what do regular people think about it? Curse of Knowledge
2. abstract ideas - sticking with general abstract ideas are difficult to understand

To solve these problems we have to be concrete. We need, tangible, clear, visual ideas that are easy to understand even if you're not familiar with the field. It cannot rely on jargon or concepts known only to experts. we have to avoid Ambiguity and get Clarity

CONCRETE

• Concrete language helps people, especially novices, understand new concepts. Abstraction is the luxury of the expert. If you’ve got to teach an idea to a room full of people, and you aren’t certain what they know, concreteness is the only safe language. (Location 1487)
• The barrier is simply forgetfulness—we forget that we’re slipping into abstractspeak. We forget that other people don’t know what we know. We’re the engineers who keep flipping back to our drawings, not noticing that the assemblers just want us to follow them down to the factory floor. (Location 1854)

Chapter 4 - Credibility

to add credibility we have 3 sources we could use:

1. Persona - either an expert, a famous person, or a person who has experienced what we're talking about as a live example
2. Vivid details - the more vivid the idea sounds, the easier it is to consume
3. Statistics - while the numbers themselves are usually forgotten after a while, statistics is useful to create a connection between variables, which could last for a long time.

for example, you could say that drowning is 12 times more dangerous than a shark, but since both cases sound dangerous, and don't trigger an "unexpected" affect, this could be better. for example, saying that Bambi is more dangerous than a shark, by 300! (if you hit it with your car).

CREDIBLE

• it can be the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allows them to act as authorities. Sometimes antiauthorities are even better than authorities. (Location 1962)
• The use of vivid details is one way to create internal credibility—to weave sources of credibility into the idea itself. Another way is to use statistics. (Location 2029)
• Statistics are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. Statistics will, and should, almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. It’s more important for people to remember the relationship than the number. (Location 2061)
• the most obvious sources of credibility—external validation and statistics—aren’t always the best. A few vivid details might be more persuasive than a barrage of statistics. (Location 2362)

Chapter 5 - Emotional

To make us invested in a story, to make it memorable, it has to Trigger an emotion within us. The thing that reduces emotional reaction is statistics and facts, this cause us to switch to the analytical mind, which is less emotional. Econs For example, people tend to donate more when they are shown with a picture of a starving child, rather than hearing that 1 million children are starving in Africa.

Another way to trigger emotional reaction is to talk about what people care most, which is sometimes their self interest. By "tempting" the audience we can have a strong emotional reaction. Headlines like "5 tips to reduce your stress". Also, by making the reader the focus of the story, talking to him in second person rather than a description of something far away could be very helpful.

However, self interest is not always the solution, we should keep Maslows pyramid in mind. People are also after self actualization, a higher purpose, Identity. By saying messages that connect with who they are or who they want to be, we have a much higher chance of success Emotional Contagion

EMOTIONAL

• The mere act of calculation reduced people’s charity. Once we put on our analytical hat, we react to emotional appeals differently. We hinder our ability to feel. (Location 2405)
• How can we make people care about our ideas? We get them to take off their Analytical Hats. We create empathy for specific individuals. We show how our ideas are associated with things that people already care about. We appeal to their self-interest, but we also appeal to their identities—not only to the people they are right now but also to the people they would like to be (Location 2940)

Chapter 6 - Stories

stories are a powerful method of delivering information because they invoke the creation of mental representations or simulations, which would lead not only to stronger memory, but also make it easier to follow through with the message. Storytelling

There are three main archetypes of stories you can use:

1. Challenge - a story how someone overcame a difficult challenge - a David and goliath story
2. Connection - a story about human kindness, sacrifice, compassion - like the good Samaritan
3. Creativity - a "eureka" story, where someone discovers something new and incredible

STORIES

• Why does mental simulation work? It works because we can’t imagine events or sequences without evoking the same modules of the brain that are evoked in real physical activity. (Location 3070)
• Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something, but it’s the next best thing. And, to circle back to the world of sticky ideas, what we’re suggesting is that the right kind of story is, effectively, a simulation. (Location 3096)
• Where Challenge plots involve overcoming challenges, Connection plots are about our relationships with other people. (Location 3323)
• springboard stories go beyond having us problem-solve for the main character. A springboard story helps us problem-solve for ourselves. A springboard story is an exercise in mass customization—each audience member uses the story as a springboard to slightly different destinations. (Location 3408)