From the Devil’s Playbook: The Right Tool for the Right Job

You will make little progress if you use the same tactics for every assignment. You must assess your target, identify its inclination, and attack accordingly.

For the weak-minded: Get them to commit deeply to things of little consequence. Increase their loyalty to a sports team. Get them to linger long in front of mirrors. Encourage infatuation with celebrities. By all means, fill their lives with thin and cheap things. Make the easy satisfying, and the difficult distasteful.

For the driven: Convince them that hard work is the highest ideal. Make the student believe “A” means average. Make the worker believe that only the lazy stop at 40 hours. Make them see the lawn to the right as a little better than theirs, and the lawn to the left a little worse, then make that a point of irritation to them. Make perfectionists of them.

For those who think themselves reasonable: Frivolous pursuits and hard driving perfectionism will not work, for they have seen the emptiness of the former and the elusiveness of the latter. Work to unbalance their well-organized lives. Turn options into necessities, and nudge their commitments into the realm of option.

A word about Christians. You will find them in all three of the above categories. These tactics will work just as well on them as the unfaithful.