《Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die》
by
This is a book about to share ideas and have a bigger effect to the listeners.
Summary in a sentence: find the core, and then translate the core using the SUCCESs (simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories) checklist.
The first chapter “simple” emphasizes the core of what we should spread, find it and share it in an understandable words. A similar thing is that what we should teach our children is the core value, not the detail action. Another similar thing is the ” first principle” recommended by Elon Musk, find the core of the question and then to solve it.
The second chapter “unexpected” emphasizes that we should get people’s attention by surprise (the unexpected part of what we want to share) and then rebuild the logic.
The third chapater “concrete” emphasizes that we should share ideas using concrete and tangible way, because most people especially newhand/novince can understand through this way. In other ways, share ideas based on the targeted people’s thinking level. Only experts can understand easiy throught complex and intangible words. But most people and our brain prefers concrete and tangible information. And this is why visualization management is effective.
Introduction: the main idea of this book
Chip and Dan shared four stories in the introduction section, and told us some basic principles of sharing ideas efficiently or sticky. This is why some ideas survived and spread all over the world, while others dies quickly?
The four stories is about (1) kidney heist story, (2) papers distributed by a nonprofit organization, (3) the truth about the movie popcorn, (4) the toxic candy. (You can find the details in the book)
Methods is neutrual tools, that can be used for both good things and bad things. Scientists shared the truth about the movie popcorn, and let people have a more healthier life. But some bad guy shared some faked news to get some illegal benefits.
> By “stick,” we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact—they change your audience’s opinions or behavior.
>Sticky = understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior
> There are two steps in making your ideas sticky—Step 1 is to find the core, and Step 2 is to translate the core using the SUCCESs checklist.
>SUCCESs: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories.
Note: The SUCCESs methods remind me of the methods of improving our memory. When we use the “memory palaces” methods to memorize a series things or numbers, we also need to make a story using SUCCESs.
Note2: It’s important to brainstorm new ideas, but if we can not spread the ideas efficiently, there is no means for a good ideas. Therefore, we should emphasize both how to get good ideas and how to spread ideas.
Chapter one: Simple
Keywords: simple, core, priority, balance between complexity and simplicity
In this chapter, the author told us the first principle of making ideas sticky, that is to find the core of of what we should spread and then share the core.
What’s simple?
Simple means the core, essence, and priority.
Some examples in this chapter.
1. Commander’s intents (CI): soldiers know the CI all the time, and can change their actions based on the specific environments.
2. Southwest airlines: reducing costs is their key competitive strength and the employees can decide based on that.
3. Bury the lead: writers express their core ideas in the beginning and then give detailed information in the following, that is the “inverted pyramid” structure.
4. Clinton champion: “It’s the economy, stupid”. This is the core things that people should now.
5. Daily Record paper: names, names, names. The reason that Daily Record paper is very popular is that they pay attention on the local people always, that is their core.
6. Palm pilot: the success of the Palm is that they reduce some unnecessary function and focus on four main functions and become a better device compared with the current products.
If You Say Three Things, You Don’t Say Anything.
If you want to do too much, you will get nothing good enough.
The decision paralysis
It’s hard to prioritize when we make decisions. The first reason is the uncertainty. Things changed all the time and we worry to lose. Sometimes, even the irrelevant uncertainty can paralyze us, this is confirmed by psychologists. The second reason is the choice. If we can find the core messages, that can help us avoid bad choices by reminding us of what’s important.
Therefore, let’s prioritize first and then act!
How to share ideas: balance between complexity and simplicity.
A good tool of explaining complex things is to use schemas, that means to learn a complex and hard concept based on the easy-to-understand concept. This is similar with the Feynman technique, I think.
If we share the ideas to children, to use analogy is a good try.
>The Feynman Technique is a Mental Model named after Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize Winning Physicist. It is designed as a technique to help you learn pretty much learn anything – so understand concepts you don’t really get, remember stuff you have already learnt, or study more efficiently.—Google
>“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”—Albert Einstein
How to Use the Feynman Technique to Learn Faster (With Examples) | College Info Geek
Chapter 2: unexpected
keywords: emotion, guessing machine, break and rebuild
In this chapter, we will answer two questions: How do we get people’s attention? And how do we keep it?
The answer is :(1)use surprise to get people’s attention, because surprise will break the traditional pattern and let people think. (2) then show our core to rebuild the logic and the new link. In one word, break someone’s guessing machine and then fix it and relate to your core message.
To be surprising, an event can’t be predictable. Surprise is the opposite of predictability. But, to be satisfying, surprise must be “post-dictable.”
We started the chapter by pointing out that surprise happens when our guessing machines fail. The emotion of surprise is designed to focus our attention on the failure, so that we can improve our guessing machines for the future. Then we drew a distinction between gimmicky surprise, like dot-com ads, and meaningful post-dictable surprise.
So, a good process for making your ideas stickier is: (1) Identify the central message you need to communicate—find the core; (2) Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message—i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Why isn’t it already happening naturally? (3) Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension. Then, once their guessing machines have failed, help them refine their machines.
Chapter 3: Concrete
keywords: concrete/visualized vs abstract, tangible vs intangible, expert vs greenhand, subtraction, the memory theory (memory palaces), the curse of knowledge
If our messages are complex and abstract, if’s difficult to share them easily. Therefore, in this chapter, author analyizes why concrete is important and how to make ideas concrete.
Why concrete is important? (1) Abstract knowledge is diffcult to understand, especially to the beginer. Because the audiences have different thinking ability and tendency. (2) Abstract knowledge is difficult to memorize. According to the memory theory or the famous “memory palace technique”, concrete and visualized things is easy to memorize. (3)People is not conscious the thinking difference between expert and novice, and then can’t communite very well.
This is how concreteness helps us understand—it helps us construct higher, more abstract insights on the building blocks of our existing knowledge and perceptions. Abstraction demands some concrete foundation. Trying to teach an abstract principle without concrete foundations is like trying to start a house by building a roof in the air.
[[the difference of expert and novice!]]
Abstraction is the luxury of the expert.
The reason is simple: the ability to think abstractly between an expert and a novice is different.
Novices perceive concrete details as concrete details. Experts perceive concrete details as symbols of patterns and insights that they have learned through years of experience. And, because they are capable of seeing a higher level of insight, they naturally want to talk on a higher level. They want to talk about chess strategies, not about bishops moving diagonally. [[higher level thinking! <<principles>>]]
[[the curse of knowledge]]
The expert had lost the ability to imagine what it was like to look at a technical drawing from the perspective of a nonexpert. [perhaps most expert isn’t conscious about the difference.]
How to make ideas concrete? One answer is to think and share according the customer’s perspective and thinking level. Just like 《Principles》part 2读书笔记 //Ongoing, “Understand that people are wired very differently” and then think and communite with the proper “universal languages”.
Concreteness creates a shared “turf” on which people can collaborate. Everybody in the room feels comfortable that they’re tackling the same challenge.
Of the six traits of stickiness that we review in this book, concreteness is perhaps the easiest to embrace. It may also be the most effective of the traits. The barrier is simply forgetfulness—we forget that we’re slipping into abstract speak. We forget that other people don’t know what we know
Chapter 4: Credible
Chapter 5: Emotional
Chapter 6: Stories
Summary
2017.11.4 spend 1.5h to write reading note including introduction and chapter one.
2018.2.10 complete chapter 2 and 3.
2018.6.18 re-read and update chapter 1,2,3