Chevrolet dealers were taught to think in theater metaphors: onstage, where smiles greet potential buyers, and offstage, where sales representatives can take out-of-sight cigarette breaks.

Acting: You realize that the non-universal, you-specific part of the Who am I? question is not really that deep philosophically (the universal part is a different matter), and that the answer is merely a function of why and how you want to differentiate yourself at all. You abandon a meaningless search for authenticity, and revert to wearing masks to suit the situation: dating, business meetings, parties: each brings out a different persona, and you now start to enjoy the game, rather than resenting having to play it.

Fitness requires an investment of time. A lot of time. And after many, many months or years go by, and much effort is expended, one day you will find yourself standing in the gym, feeling tired, and you will ask yourself, “What am I doing here?” The correct answer is, “I am working up to squatting 315.” If your answer is, “I don’t know,” you start getting all philosophical. The gym is not a place for philosophy. The gym is a place for action. Goal-oriented action. Do you know what happens to philosophical types in the gym? They find themselves trapped underneath a bar while having an existential crisis. Don’t do that.

“People base their perceived values on reference points. If you’re selling a to-do list application, then people will look around and find another to-do list application. If they search the internet and discover that your competitors sell to-do list applications at $100 then this will set their perception of the right price for all to-do list applications.”

"Duck," I continued, "I want to know, when you use a clevis hanger, what keeps the sprinkler pipe from jumping out of the clevis when the head discharges, causing the pipe to..."

In the middle of asking the duck my question, the answer hit me. The clevis hanger is suspended from the structure above by a length of all-thread rod. If the pipe-fitter cuts the all-thread rod such that it butts up against the top of the pipe, it essentially will hold the pipe in the hanger and keep it from bucking.

CLASSIC Guy here. Here's how oblivious guys can get, from about a month ago: I was out with some casual friends that included a new girl. I had it in my head that I didn't have a chance with her, so I interpreted everything through that lens. The new girl paid alot of attention to me through the night, which, in my mind, made perfect sense because I was "safe" because we both knew she wasn't into me. After lots of drinks, she took my phone and snapped a picture down her own shirt. That pissed me off because at that point, I was sure she was just rubbing in the fact that she wasn't interested. I thought it was a particularly mean tease to do to a chump like me.

we’ve fallen victim to “feel-goodism,” the false idea that “bad” feelings ought to be annihilated, controlled, or erased by a pill. This intolerance toward emotional pain puts us at loggerheads with a basic truth about being human: Sometimes we just feel bad, and there’s nothing wrong with that—which is why struggling too hard to control our anxiety and stress only makes things more difficult.

Whatever it is, if the New Yorker asks you to profile a person, or you're simply trying to deepen your understanding of a friend or colleague, you want to figure out what is really keeping him up at night.

Selling a loser amounts to admitting you have made a mistake. Traders hate that, they much prefer to sell stocks at a profit, which makes them feel like a winner, as a result traders systematically weeded out good stocks from their portfolios and retained poor ones.

I defined “complaining” for myself as follows: describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem. I later added the usual 4-letter words and other common profanity as complaint qualifiers, which forced me to reword, thus forcing awareness and more precise thinking.

“Ugly” banner designs also look less “ad” like and more like a classified. Whats the difference? Ads are mainly run by companies, classifieds are run by individuals. It’s more personal.

As for fining parents, well, one study found that doing so actually increased the number of times they were late picking up their kids, because it changed their interpretation of the situation from, “It would be rude to be late too often” to “This is a fair exchange—I can stay at work for another 30 minutes and pay the day care center for that privilege.” It’s what’s inside people’s heads that really matters.

Here's a few ways to establish the strategy of preeminence:

You are not just selling information, you are selling qualitative leadership.

You have to develop empathy for where your prospective clients are.

You have to adopt a different mentality to be preemptive.

Being preemptive means that you are the only viable solution to a problem, that you are the only one who understands.

You have to want to help people and connect the dots for them. Make a commitment to start practicing this strategy in your business today and watch your results soar.

Ever notice that there's ice everywhere in this store? Why? Does hummus really need to be kept so cold? What about cucumber-and-yogurt dip? No and no. This ice is another symbolic. Similarly, for years now supermarkets have been sprinkling select vegetables with regular drops of water--a trend that began in Denmark. Why? Like ice displays, those sprinkled drops serve as a symbolic, albeit a bogus one, of freshness and purity. Ironically, that same dewy mist makes the vegetables rot more quickly than they would otherwise. So much for perception versus reality.

The more painful the initiation, the more likely we are to want to stick with the program. The more inspiring and metaphoric we make our stories, the less they seem to resemble the dull and comfortably literal world that the rest of us live in. We start to think that we’re different, that the laws don’t apply to us – that all we have to do is let manifest destiny take its course. This denies the fundamental role of hard work and sacrifice and luck in everything. Narration conveniently ignores the day we laid around and watched tv and the week where we were sure we were going to quit but didn’t. It’s just not honest.


Still, that is not easy either. We are wired to think a certain way – linearly, towards purpose, in terms of justification. Ambivalence, in the jungle, was death. The mind strives for congruency and lashes out violently when there isn’t any. It’s also why people wake up one day and have no idea how the world works anymore. That’s why people say things like “Do you have any idea who I am?” with a straight face.

It’s the complexity of the world we’ve created which is the main problem. Faced with vast amounts of data and a shortage of time we opt for simplicity, and focus on a few salient signals which generally work.

The Stanford admissions office is busy every year. With an acceptance rate around 12%, it has lots of tough decisions to make, and it rejects thousands every year (enough valedictorians to fill the freshman class, actually). But it doesn’t have to spend time considering the thousands of students who don’t even bother to apply. I’m talking about the ones who say, “I’m not going to apply there because I could never get in.” Good! Less wasted time! With this in mind, they don’t try and they don’t get in. In fact, they don’t deserve to get in. They just made it easier for Stanford.

http://www.ted.com Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

In the last 40 years, there has been one Fortune 500 company that I can think of that truly grasped this concept that businesses never buy anything, only the people within those companies do. This company built a massive advertising campaign around this in the 1980′s. Which company was it? It was IBM. You might recall their tag line at the time: "Nobody Ever Got Fired by Buying IBM." Though IBM was in the business-to-business mainframe business and PC business at the time, they realized what business they were really in. They were not in the business of selling computers. No, they were in the business of selling job security and computers just happened to be involved.

The auctions were part of the Significant Objects Project, an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that “narrative transforms the insignificant into the significant.” Or, put differently, the goal was to determine whether you could take an object worth very little and make it worth much more by giving it a story, by endowing it with meaning.

The first impression is made within seconds, on the walk over to the girl, before one word is spoken. The way a guy carries himself, moves his body, his hands and arms, positions his feet, stands, maintains eye contact, and interacts non-verbally with girls is half his game. You can spit the words of Voltaire, but if your body is incongruent with what you’re saying, you will get blown out.

When you feel the alpha in you, you know that girls are noticing the alpha in you. A small adjustment in a trivial thing like nodding can redound to your attractiveness in bigger ways. To be sure, a nod will not get you laid. But you start adding up all these little changes intended to emphasize alpha male characteristics, and suddenly you’re cooking with gas.

“Norm violators are perceived as having the capacity to act as they please” write the researchers. Power may be corrupting, but showing the outward signs of corruption makes people think you’re powerful.

"I train for failure"

If you believe that something's going to taste good, you look for the qualities that confirm that. If you believe the milk is spoiled, you drink the milk looking for confirmation of that, too.

This has great implications for wine. If you buy cheap wine, you think it's going to be terrible.

The positive but superficial emotions that an exciting player instills in her quickly dissolve once she’s back home and decompressing. Emotions generated from rapport are longer lasting if for no other reason than that they are unique to her — most men will not have the skill or knowledge to successfully engage a girl in deep conversation on the first meet.

There was an experiment recently by one of Cialdini’s former students, Noah Goldstein. He went to look at hotels, which are always begging us to recycle our towels. He tried to figure out what message would be the most persuasive. They decided that if you applied the Cialdini principles, you would need to have a message that appeals to people, and tells them that other people like them are behaving in this way. What they came up with was the message, “76% of the people who have stayed in your room have been recycling their towels.” And it turns out that that was the most successful intervention.

Incredible food interview with Wansink

In summary: emoticons, friendly greetings, and a little enthusiasm!

System for pricing a car at dealerships

To say that a test is 99% accurate means that it is on average right 99 times in 100. Now suppose that this disease is pretty rare, and only one in 1,000 people have it. Suppose we test a random group of 1,000 people. If the test is, as we assumed, 99% accurate, then on average 990 people will get an accurate test result. This means that 10 people will get a false result. But if only one person out of 1,000 has the disease then the most likely result is that these 10 will receive a “false positive”; that is, they have a positive test result but no disease.

Esther C., Erin R., and Scott P. sent in an interesting video, “Sexy Girls Have It Easy,” showing woman testing how her physical appearance affects whether she can get free things. She asks for a number of free things — ice cream, baked goods, a cab ride, carousel rides, and so on — while dressed in two ways to see if she is treated differently when she conforms more closely to standards of feminine beauty:

Once individuals find a group of link minded people online, they are prone to stay within that community. <br />
<br />
You see this in the HackerNews effect, reddit effect, entreporn. 

Commitment generates success as people are nudged into continuing

Next time you’re in a conversation with a friend or stranger, try imagining that you’re carrying the ace card, act with a matching confidence, imagine everyone else holding the same card, and treat them with the respect that other aces deserve.

From the very first days of the U.S. recession, all three big car manufacturers announced unheard-of discounts to shift their stock. They continue to offer their cars at cost, and despite this, nobody's buying. The problem is not the cars, but the proposition which has failed to take the fear factor into account. The Korean car manufacturer Hyundai took this cautious mood into account and began and offering very real assurances. They say, “Buy any new Hyundai, and if in the next year you lose your income, we'll let you return it.” In just a month Hyundai increased its sales by more than 20% in the U.S. alone. You may wonder if the company's sitting with a lot of returned stock. Well, as this goes to print, supposedly only two cars have been returned. You cannot build brands in a recession unless you are able to manage fear. It's essential that you understand how fear works, and consequently how it affects purchasing behavior.

While recently in Istanbul I took the opportunity to study the city’s market system, trying my hand at some negotiating. What techniques have sellers developed to gain the upper hand against savvy buyers?

The graph is dramatic. It shows that the odds that prisoners will be successfully paroled start off fairly high at around 65% and quickly plummet to nothing over a few hours (although, see footnote). After the judges have returned from their breaks, the odds abruptly climb back up to 65%, before resuming their downward slide. A prisoner’s fate could hinge upon the point in the day when their case is heard.

Motivation for behavior change comes from arranging the situation so that the intended / desired behavior results in the best outcome. <br />
<br />
In the case of a lion sitting on a rock, It turns out the rock he sat on was temperature controlled. It was warm on cold days, cool on hot days. No need to train the lion or tie him to the rock or hope he likes the view. Just make the rock a place he wants to sit.

When they gathered at that first meeting to hash things out, Jefferson made sure to show up with meticulously prepared architectural drawings, detailed budgets for construction and operation, a proposed curriculum, and the names of specific faculty he wanted to import from Europe. No one else in the room was even remotely as prepared; the group essentially had to capitulate to Jefferson’s vision, and the University was eventually founded more or less in accordance with his plans.

However, the best negotiator that I've known (and this guy was better than all the others, by a long shot) operated completely differently.  When you met with him, he really didn't talk much.  He would just ask you questions about what you wanted and listen really carefully.

The truth is, anywhere in the world, a man who’s seen as

As I would tell my salespeople: If you want to be an expert deceiver, master the art of self-deception. People will believe you when they see that you yourself are deeply convinced. It sounds difficult to do, but in fact it's easy—we are already experts at lying to ourselves. We believe just what we want to believe. And the customer will help in this process

Wansink on WWII food research / Kurt Lewin neckmeat experiment

Would you drive ten minutes out of your way to save $10 on a $25 blanket? Now consider this question: Would you drive ten minutes out of your way to save $10 on a $125 jacket? If you’re like many people, you’d be more willing to drive to save the $10 in the first example than in the second. Why? Isn’t $10 worth $10? Why does the value judgment seem to change depending on the situation? Because people determine the value of the savings relative to the cost of the item, $10 seems to be worth a lot more in comparison to $25 than to $125. People evaluate choices in relative rather than in absolute terms.

When you are deciding what you want to do with your life, look at peoples’ lifestyles. Ask yourself if you want that lifestyle. Don’t tell yourself you’ll be different. Statistically, that is absurd. And why put yourself in a situation where you have to be different than all the people you choose to be around every day?

You are a fuck target. This is the entire thing you should take away from this.Phase 1: Sow doubt. They don't need to worry about being appealing themselves here, they just need to destroy trust between you two. Money is an easy target in our insecure capitalist world.Phase 2: Find the weakness. One of these days, you'll say "I wish he (went to college for x | applied for y | didn't screw up z)" after their tirades designed to generate insecurity in you. Phase 3. Slow bleed. It's all over now, it just takes time. Days and weeks pass with your insecurities constantly being exploited, and your happiness drains away.Phase 4: Pounce. Once you're sufficiently weak, one of them will break from the pack. He didn't really mean all that money stuff, he was just going along with those guys. They can be real assholes. It sucks that you two have been arguing so much lately.

Quora: What does it feel like to be rich?

Stupid things that smart people say

When items vary in price, like he said from $3 to $299, the test for statistical significance of difference between conversion rates assumes an implicit hypothesis that is treated as truth.<br />
<br />
 What is the solution for a situation like Dave’s? Either you explicitly test this assumption first or as simpler option, segment your data and test each segment for statistical significance. Since you have a range of price points I recommend you test over 4-5 price ranges.

Tim Ferriss's interview by Ramit Sethi on Testing

 Books mentioned in this thread:The Humane Interface by Jeff RaskinHow The Mind Works by Steven PinkerThe Tyranny of Choice by Barry SchwartzThe User Illusion by Tor NorretrandersProust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah LerherThe Art of Human-Computer Interface Design by Brenda LaurelDigital Ground by Malcolm McCulloughWhere the Action Is by Paul DourishDesign of Everday Things by Donald NormanPsychology Of Everyday Things by Donald NormanEmotional Design by Donald NormanThis Means This, That Means That: A User's Guide to Semiotics by Sean HallSketching User Experiences - Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill BuxtonThe Laws of Simplicity by John MaedaHow We Decide by Jonah LehrerPersuasive Technology by BJ FoggDesigning Interactions by Bill MoggridgeA Theory of Fun by Raph KosterContextual Design <br />
Designing for Interactions The Semantic Turn - a new foundation for design Neuro WebDesign - what makes them click About Face 3 Designing for the Digital AgeDon't Make Me Think 

10 mistakes in behavior change

* Never, ever, throw out the first number unless you have enough information to anchor your acceptable price. [1]
* Be confident in all matters (even when you dont know).
* Learn how to be persuasive, 50% is in your body language or tone.
* Hype it up, talk a good game.* Understand what value you know you can add, and what you can figure out later.  * Solve a problem, ask for reciprocated value.* Exploit counter-party weaknesses.* Identify win-win solutions.* Learn empathy, see it from their point of view.  * Understand that the counterparty needs are not always relevant, but sometimes tangential.  * Learn the difference between features and benefits.* Feel their pain, solve it.

Psychology of marketing: 12 months for $100 is more compelling than 1 year for $100 (just like 4 for $1 at the grocery store)

Here’s one. There are five animals — a lion, a cow, a horse, a monkey and a rabbit. If you were asked to leave one behind, which one would you leave behind?

So the lion represents pride, the horse represents work, the cow represents family, the monkey represents friends, and the rabbit represents love.

A small ask is better. Remember that you’re being introduced to someone who you know is getting this type of request all the time, but has offered to help. Just ask for one thing, and ask for it in the form of a response by email. If you have 3 questions, ask them by email instead of forcing the person to get on the phone with you real time.

Door-in-the-face (DITF): first you make a very large request which is easily turned down; this is where the metaphorical door is slammed in your face. But, then follow up straight away with a much smaller request which now, comparatively, looks very reasonable. This has been shown to substantially increase compliance.

Pick your target. This is someone who you want to have trust you as quickly as possible.  Your target can be anyone — a customer, a prospective employer, the most attractive girl at the bar, etc.

And narratives matter. Nothing is more central to journalistic practice than the telling of stories. Stories are how we capture, comprehend, explain and deliver the news. Without stories, we would be wandering lost across the landscape of events and sensations. We need a narrative, or we have no organizing idea.

And once we have established such a narrative, everything is under control. Everything, that is, except whatever fails to fit the narrative.

Common wisdom for negotiations. Anchor theory + making the first (aggressive) offer.

The 99 cent store was never popular because there's some magical power about the price that is a penny less than a dollar. No, it's because it represents an attitude, that this stuff is CHEAP. Not absolute cheap, just relatively cheap. Not even a good value, just cheap. Cheap compared to its non-cheap competition.

At the other end of the spectrum, the prices at the Hermes store appear to be missing a decimal point or two. The attitude is, "wow, this stuff is expensive." It's not about what you get, it's about how it feels to pay that much.

Make the button you want pressed green on every page. Soon, your users will naturally gravitate to green buttons...

This works in Powerpoint presentations and even contracts. A little goes a long way.

# Correspondence Bias: The tendency to infer that people's behavior corresponds to their disposition (personality). # Actor/Observer Difference: The tendency to see other people's behavior as dispositionally caused but focusing more on the role of situational factors when expla

Debt collection email for freelancers. Hits on emotional chords w/ the target.

You have to make your own success first, before you ask the industry for help.

1. Hi Tim, I'm Jodi Glickman Brown with Great on the Job; I didn't want to interrupt but I'm fascinated to hear about what you do.
2. Please, continue and I'll just listen in.

Things I learned from my horse trainers #42: practice saying, "Hmmmm... how interesting." Say it when you're frustrated. Say it when you're mad. Most importantly, say it before you say or do anything else (including hit the "send" or "post" button).

A customer complaint dialogue is structured around a two-position toggle: a) it’s terrible, b) it’s nothing. The first one to grab a position forces the other person to assume the only one left. When Dear Customer calls, “Canon Law” dictates the first words out of my mouth: ‘This is terrible, how could we have let this happen to you!’. This forces the caller to concede: ‘Well, it’s not the end of the world, I just would like to…’ A cooperative conversation ensues.

1. The distraction principle While you are distracted by what retains your interest, hustlers can do anything to you
2. The social compliance principle Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers exploit this "suspension of suspiciousness"
3. The herd principle Even suspicious marks will let their guard down when everyone next to them appears to share the same risks. Safety in numbers? Not if they’re all conspiring against you.
4. The dishonesty principle Anything illegal you do will be used against you by the fraudster, making it harder for you to seek help once you realize you've been had.
5. The deception principle Thing and people are not what they seem. Hustlers know how to manipulate you to make you believe that they are.
6. The need and greed principle Your needs and desires make you vulnerable.
7. The Time principle When you are under time pressure to make an important choice, you use a different decision strategy.

A true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.

“Canon Law” dictates the first words out of my mouth: ‘This is terrible, how could we have let this happen to you!’. This forces the caller to concede: ‘Well, it’s not the end of the world, I just would like to…’ A cooperative conversation ensues.

A sparsely populated train is better than a packed one; it’s easier to work the crowd.

The cars on the No. 3 train are too loud; you’ll have to yell; it’s very unprofessional.

The A and J trains are too big, with too much ground to cover; intimacy is important.

The Nos. 2, 5 and 4 trains through Harlem are the best: the right audience, smaller cars, and long relatively quiet stretches to make his pitch.

"He seemed so pleased," she said. "It was as if he'd never been asked to do something for someone else before."

Ahlrichs says there are 4 types of bosses with varying needs for information and relationship. The strategy for selling to each one varies:

- Concentrate on your weaknesses. Make them stronger. When you get to your 30s you can work from your strengths, but there has to be some time in your life to work on shit you suck at, and for me it was when I had the most motivation, my 20s.


- Create. With a passion. There are two major kinds of people in this world, consumers and creators. The herd will push you to consume, life will push you to consume, consumption is the easy and default path, but true joy and a full life come from creating. It does not matter one bit how many people like what you create, just create. Write. Blog. Make videos. Make a movie. Write a program. The longer the format and the more creativity involved, the more you are going to turn on and exercise key parts of your brain. Nobody wants to be 80 and only have stories of being at the office, but fuck, if you were at the office creating something at least you tried to make a difference. I'd rather be that guy than the one who watched Sumo wrestling everyday (or played 20,000 hours of WoW during his 20s) The only thing you're going to have at the end of your life are the decisions you made, the things you created, and memories. Learn to maximize these things.