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It changes your brain, literally, and it changes the people around you. It’s the nearest thing we have to magic.
we don’t always have an accurate view of our own potential.
Don’t assume you know how much potential you have. Sometimes the only way to know what you can do is to test yourself.
It’s hard to imagine any business or social activity that doesn’t require a basic understanding of how the human brain perceives the world.
Almost any decision you make is
in the context of managing what other people wi...
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a real-estate salesperson might show you the worst house first, knowing it will make you appreciate the better home you see later, and it might make you reach deeper in your pockets.
Even an engineer who deals mostly with the material world needs to understand how his boss feels, how customers
feel, and how users will perceive the product. You can’t get away from the need to make decisions based on psychology.
The sudden improvement was entirely due to Sarah’s compliment of my artistic ability.
Quality is not an independent force in the universe; it depends on what you choose as your frame of reference.
We failed to predict how customers would compare us.
I don’t mean a simple comparison of one thing with its competition. If the competition is simply better than you, your problem is more than customer perceptions.
Success in anything usually means doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t,
It’s a good idea to make psychology your lifelong study.
Below is Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases.1
You’ve heard the old saying that knowledge is power. But knowledge of psychology is the purest form of that power.
I decided against it because I didn’t want to be in the business of selling my time.
People who study hypnosis start to view humans as moist machines that are simply responding to inputs with programmed outputs.
Jobs’s worldview led him to a business model with high margins, whereas Windows computers have become commodities.
Rational behavior is especially useless in any situation that is too complex for a human to grasp.
As it turns out, business writing is all about getting to the point and leaving out all of the noise.
Clean writing makes a writer seem smarter and it makes the writer’s arguments more persuasive.
Accounting is part of the vocabulary of business, and if you don’t understand it on a concept level, the world will be a confusing place.
No one with accounting skill would get involved with a business model that can’t work on paper.
The smarter play is to learn enough about accounting and spreadsheets that you understand the basics.
Now we’re all expected to have a working understanding of design.
The most common is the L-shaped layout.
You might start a conversation to . . .
Exchange information Plan Complain Entertain Feel connected Befriend Seduce Persuade Be polite Avoid awkward silence Brag
All you do is introduce yourself and ask questions until you find a point of mutual interest.
What’s your name? Where do you live? Do you have a family? What do you do for a living? Do you have any hobbies/sports? Do you have any travel plans?
I would go so far as to say that 99 percent of the general public love talking about themselves.
When you ask a stranger a personal question, you make that person happy.
Best of all, it signals that you have interest in the stranger, which most people interpret as friendliness and social confidence, even if you’re faking it. And faking socia...
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Your job as a conversationalist is to keep asking questions and keep looking for something you have in common with the stranger, or something that in...
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Everyone is interesting if you make the situation feel safe.
Ask questions. Don’t complain (much). Don’t talk about boring experiences (TV show, meal, dream, etc.). Don’t dominate the conversation. Let others talk. Don’t get stuck on a topic. Keep moving. Planning is useful but it isn’t conversation.
Keep the sad stories short, especially medical stories.
The point of conversation is to make the other p...
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So how do you get a stranger to like you? It’s simple, actually. It starts by smiling and keeping your body language open.
If you’re physically attractive, it probably isn’t a good idea to talk too much. People are predisposed to liking attractive people.
As a writer, I reflexively translate whatever I observe into a story form with a setup, a twist if there is one, and some sort of punch line or thought that ties it in a bow. You can do the same thing.
It’s a good idea to always have a backlog of stories you can pull out at a moment’s notice.
funny stories.
The most important key to good storytelling is preparation. You don’t want to figure out your story as you tell it. If
one important rule for a story setup: Keep it brief. And I mean really brief, as in “So, I took my car in for a brake job . . .”
Establish a pattern that your story will violate.
Foreshadowing means you leave some clues about where the story is going.
Every story involves characters, and you might be one of them. For people who know all of your foibles, defects, and preferences, no elaboration is required.
