The Goal of This Post

This post is a synthesis from the book The Diary of a CEO, by Steven Bartlett, sharing some of the key lessons and wisdom around how to thrive in your personal and professional life.

I hope you enjoy it!

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1. Useless absurdity will define you more than useful practicalities

• The most absurd thing about you says everything about you.
• Convention, similarity and rationality convey no message about who you are and who you aren’t.

Normality is ignored. Absurdity sells.

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2. Avoid wallpaper at all costs

Habituation
A phenomenon in which the brain adjusts to repeated stimuli by ignoring or downgrading their significance.

Semantic Satiation
When the meaning of a word or phrase becomes temporarily inaccessible due to repetition and the brain’s inclination to tune out of things it doesn’t need to commit resources to.

Mere Exposure Effect
The tendency of people to develop a preference for things or people that are more familiar to them, because of repeated exposure.

Reciprocity
A psychological phenomenon that shows people will do something for you if they feel you’ve done something for them.

In order to be heard, tell stories in an unrepetitive, unfiltered, and unconventional way.

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3. You must piss people off

• Indifference is the least profitable outcome for a marketer.

If we’re not being slightly disruptive, then everyone’s going to like us, but they’re not going to love us.

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4. Shoot your psychological moonshots first

• It’s nearly always cheaper, easier and more effective to invest in perception than reality.
• Customers will judge their entire experience on just two moments.
• Lack of transparency breeds distrust, and distrust makes us skeptical, resentful and disloyal to a brand.
• It’s less psychologically stressful to know something negative is going to happen than to be left in uncertainty.

Do not wage a war on reality, invest in shaping perceptions.

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5. Friction can create value

• Value does not exist. It’s a perception we reach with expectations we meet.

Humans aren’t logical – they’re irrational, unreasonable and fundamentally illogical in their decision-making and behavior.

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6. The frame matters more than the picture

• The way that something is packaged has a big impact on how it’s received. How something is framed affects how consumers perceive and value the brand.
• Framing is about knowing how to present your product or service through the most factual and compelling lens.
• Reality is nothing more than perception and context is king.

What you say is determined by the context in which your message, product, or service exists. If you change the frame, you change your message.

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7. Use Goldilocks to your advantage

Anchoring
A cognitive bias where individuals rely too heavily on seemingly irrelevant information when making decisions.

• By presenting two ‘extreme’ options next to the option you’re hoping to sell, you can make the middle option appear more attractive or reasonable.
• We search for cues within context and pricing to help us make our decisions.

People are inclined to make value judgments based on context, so offering a range of options can tell a story and affect potential customers’ perception of your standard offering.

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8. Let them try and they will buy

Endowment Effect
A cognitive bias that causes people to overvalue an item simply because they own it, regardless of its objective value.

Let them touch it, play with it, test drive it, and try it out.

Through the lens of ownership, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary.

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9. Fight for the first five seconds

• The first five seconds, in any story, is do or die.
• Tell stories that demand attention.
• Start with a hook; a clear, compelling promise explaining why “they should care”.

If you want your story to be heard, you must aggressively, passionately and provocatively design those first five seconds to be thumb-stoppingly compelling, annoyingly magnetic or emotionally engaging.

You must earn the right to the attention you’re seeking within those first five seconds.

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All content credit goes to the author(s). I’ve shared the bits I’ve enjoyed the most and found most useful.

Cheers ’til next time! Saludos!
Alberto