Be on time to your meetings.

Today, my uncle called me late in the evening to his desolate Juice shop. Not many people bought juice on winter evenings. It is not a simple juice shop though; they sold almost anything that people might buy, primarily he called it a juice shop, but it is far more than that. It is as if my uncle noted down what people asked him on a daily basis on a cigarette wrapper and stocked them the very next day without any question. The juice shop now sold candles, chocolates, and even tissue papers. Demand meets supply. He hates to say no to any customer.

  He also sold products that did not bring him much profit, but sales anyway. I asked him why he should fill space with low profit margin goods. He explained, “Selling a Cadbury’s Diary milk will hardly give me a rupee per piece, but I get a customer, and I sell that meaningless product hoping that next time he will buy the juice that has a ten rupee margin.”     

  Do we have a lesson here? Yes you bet. You don’t make a sale by selling your biggest product that your user has no use for. You make sales by selling the smaller things that the user needs at that instant. Over a period of time, when he really wants that big product, he will definitely choose you over your competitor. To be more precise, business is more about building relationships than about selling fruit juices.

  What are the implications of this lesson in our daily life?  Small things build trust. For example, being to a meeting on time builds trust. The meeting itself may not be that important, but sticking to the clock even on a meaningless meeting would turn out to be important in the long run. Once you have built that trust, you will be trusted with higher responsibilities that demands more trust and of course equivalent rewards. So better be on time to your meetings.

Made to stick - Review

  Not many books make you think, “Made to stick” made me think. It is as if the ideas in the book were pre dipped in super glue. As I read, they seamlessly attached themselves to my mind. The book is all about exploring the super glue that can stick our ideas in the fast moving world.

 Chip Heath and Dan Heath have put together a series of ideas to make your ideas stick. Of course this is not a get rich quickly, or success by thinking positive kind of book.

 What are the reasons behind good recall value of urban legends?  Can the reasons be used in real time to solve communication problems? According to the authors there are six things that constitute an idea that will stick. For instance all the urban legends would have at least satisfied four out of six components. Therefore the argument is, these components if used well can improve our communication.

For the authors, a sticky idea is that has at least few of the components from their formula of SUCCESS.

  S- Simple

  U-Unexpected

  C- Concrete

  C- Credible

  E- Emotional

  S-Stories

None of the components of their formula are new, and yet it needs a well written reminder to wake us out of abstract conversations. When a concept is abstract, it goes over our head.

A lot of parallel can be drawn to the “Competent Communicator” manual of Toastmasters International. Though they have never explicitly mentioned about the components to make ideas stick, the references are undeniable.

 For example, every Toastmasters Project encourages Simple themes and sentence constructions than roundabout and lengthy constructions. Surprise (Unexpected) is a component used to catch the attention of the audience, especially in the introduction of a speech. The term ‘vivid imagery’ is frequently used  which is equivalent to the Concrete word usage recommended by the book. Including Stories in your speech, especially stories with strong Emotion is one of the frequent evaluation points I received for my projects. I just did not know how to use them?

For me to use them, I had to know some well executed examples. I had to understand the patterns of ideas that are still making waves. I had to learn specific ways to include the components of SUCCESS in my life. The ideas had to be reiterated without boring anyone. All that is what “Made to stick” does. The book drives home the importance of each component of their SUCCESS formula by using the same formula to explain each component. Filled with fascinating researches, and deep insights, it is entertaining apart from the value add, just like a good Toastmasters speech.

So why read “Made to stick” if you already have the CC Manual from Toastmasters International? Because, this book is about creating simple concrete credible emotional stories with unexpected twist. Don’t you want to create such stories?

Here is the link to a mindmap of this book if you aren't patient enough to read the entire book. But this mind map is just an ordinary glue, you ought to read the entire book to know what is super glue. 

 http://drbakker.nl/made-to-stick-summary-mindmap/

Anguished English- Time to wear dirty clothes

  One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Rightly subtitled ‘An anthology of accidental assaults upon our language ’, Anguished English is Richard Lederer’s collection of anecdotes and one liners from various facets of life. Wear old clothes while you read this book or even the excerpts in this article, you might dirty yourself rolling on the ground.

 Few of my favorites quips from Anguished English. They say, trying to dissect a joke is like dissecting a frog. It smells and the frog would probably be dead. So, I’m not attempting a dissection, but a commentary (in blue) to some delightful imagination.

Student bloopers from Anguished English:

 The below bloopers were performed by students with a different perspective on the World history. Just that they were blessed with an overworking imagination.

 The pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. The Egyptians built the pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. – Obviously the students thought that the Egyptians could build mountains by watering huge triangular cubes. I think the triangular cubes are one of the extinct shapes like the extinct bird dodo.

It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper. - I always wanted to know the author of the bible. I wonder what circulated in the veins before the invention of circulation of blood. And Sir Francis Drake’s feat is definitely unique – an expert circumcision.

 Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees.-  Probably why there are no apples in South India, too much of gravity too early.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between, he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present.- Did the musical composition create large number of children. He might have risen out of his grave to search the student who wrote this.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.-   Just another way to express death of great person.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. – Such a genius. A genius is 99% imagination and 1% tomfoolery.

Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. – How did B.Franlkin ride a horse with loaves of bread beneath his arms? He must have been in a tight spot. Did he eat them?  We have lots of cats in Tamilnadu, why can’t somebody rub cats backward and generate electricity. Apart from electricity, that would generate jobs too. Thank God Franklin is still dead.

 How I wish someone would publish the Indian assault on English language.  That will be revenge for the pathetic display of Indian cricket team against the visiting England team. What would they title it, Inflamed English?

Any contribution towards the revenge is welcome. This is your chance to take that revenge against English.

The Mathematics of Depression

   How can NGO’s gain better attention from general public? Any appeal to support charity by explaining the mission and vision of your NGO is not going to work, on the other hand explaining the plight of an individual at your NGO might have much better impact.

  Imagine Pravin running an NGO for educating young and underprivileged kids. He has put his heart and soul into it, but he is in dire need for more fund to serve the community better. How many people do you think will come forward to provide fund or help him in any other way? How many complete strangers will come forward to help him? May be some. But what if he wants more people to join hands with him, how can he achieve that?

  Research says that acting on the emotions of human beings is the answer. A simple or very often used method is to talk about a specific person helped by the NGO, providing a very natural story of an underprivileged kid in the NGO for that matter. Jack Nicholson adopts the Tanzanian  Ndugu Umbo in the movie ‘About Schimdt’ after hearing the six year olds circumstances. Nicholson writes letters to him and sends his photo. The kid responds by sending him a beautiful scratchy pencil sketch of an old man holding hands with a young kid. Tear swells up in your eye when you see that, at that moment you want to support someone with all that you can. Unfortunately, the NGO’s wouldn’t know that you’ve just watched ‘About Schimdt.’, and you probably will not know how to go about helping a kid.

   Stories about individuals have high impact and inspiration quotient than stories about a group of people or abstract things.  What do you think will inspire people? The integrity of your NGO or a story about a young kid who has beaten the odds to survive. We care about individuals, not about masses. Masses distract us, and often mislead us. We want individuals to take decisions, what we need is story tellers at NGO, not just people who have the passion to give back to the community.

The original research:

  The research was conducted by appealing for fund to a charity in two different ways. The first group tried to persuade by speaking about how the NGO has been helping people for so many years, how clean their balance sheets are, and stressing the certifications given by Government authorities etc.  The second group persuasive technique was simple personal stories. They told stories about kids or senior citizens sheltered by them, not more than one story to a person. Stories that inspire.

 The results were obvious; the second group had much better impact. They were able to create interest in almost 70% of the people they met. Compare this with 30% the first group was able to attract among the people they met. A clear indication of how simple specific personal stories can be of great help in persuading people to act.

So what about Mathematics?

 The second group continued experiments to the next level. The next time they went to canvas participants to create interest in their organization, they did not tell stories straightaway. They gave simple math problems to solve. May be they could have even challenged the participants with a Sudoku. They told the same inspirational stories after the math problem, and the results this time were not so obvious. Less than 50% of the people they met were interested in Charity. A simple math problem reduced the impact of the story by a good 20 people for every hundred participants.

 What is happening here?

  The math problem had deep impact that made the participants switch to the analytical mode. Even while the emotional stories were being told, their minds were still in a state of “analytical inertia”. They were prone to think analytically than emotionally, and in turn the impact of the personal story went down drastically. This also explains why analytical people are generally misers.

What about depression?

 Depression is an emotional situation, a state where someone is unnaturally anxious or at the grip of any other emotion. You may be depressed because of fear, anger, love, disgust or any other strong feelings. In the modern world, we tend to get into the depression mode quite often. We mostly close our door to the outside world, some people go out the malls and open their purse to the outside world, and in some severe cases anti-depressants are the only way out. The result of the research could provide one of the simplest solutions to depression.

If doing a math problem can bring keep us in analytical inertia and stop us from acting emotionally, can doing a math problem when you are depressed bring down the emotional conflict in your mind?

Ok here are the numbers.

1. During the second part of the experiment, nearly half of the sample showed interest in charity; these people broke the analytical inertia and were able to connect emotionally to the personal stories.
2.  Even with stories, roughly one third of the group did not show interest in the first experiment. Let us not consider these people at all.
3.  One fifth of the sample was unable to get out from the analytical inertia, and this group had the highest impact on the results of the two experiments.

 Considering all this, the third group has a good chance of getting out of depression by doing a simple Sudoku than any other group. Even if one fifth of the population can shake themselves out of depression by doing a simple math problem, the world would be a better place, and less depressed place to live. 

Disclaimer: There was no research on correlation between depression and mathematics yet; it is just a theory I’m proposing here. Try this when you are depressed next time and let me know which category you belong to. And one more thing, I’m not legally or morally responsible for your depression or anything that you do in that state of mind.