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A lawyer friend sent this photo to me.
We thought the fishing bit was funny. It’s so cheesy! The author clearly loves fly fishing more than winning court cases.
Yes, it’s silly. But it’s also very persuasive writing.
I’ll explain why.
It’s not stupid, it serves a purpose. It’s memorable and easy to understand.
He could have been dry, detailed and verbose, but instead keeps it simple and abstract. Smart. The ‘delicate nibble’, the ‘hook’ and the ‘rainbow’ trout seem irrelevant, but these are important because they are dramatic and visual. They stick in your mind like super glue. See what I did there?
If this information was communicated as a speech instead of on paper, it would be even more persuasive.
For extra effect, the unnecessary words like “no more than the slightest”, “they become more reliable” would be removed, and the physicality would be ramped up. “Set the hook, wear him out, and reel him in” is something you could act out. It might be corny, but the audience would appreciate it.
Then there’s the main point, the thing he wants the reader to do. The action.
“Listen to your instincts.” He starts with it, and repeats it again, almost word for word when he returns from the river.
The action is important. But he’s missing one important thing, the benefit.
When you ask someone to do something, it’s helpful to include a benefit. You can see this played out in sales letters, banner ads, books and political speeches. Voting, buying or “not flushing anything other than toilet paper because it will clog the pipes and ruin your vacation”. Nearly all communication that has the goal of ‘action’ will use this technique.
The benefit caps the paragraph. “The witness, and often the verdict, will be yours.” That’s what the author wants you to think will happen if you follow his advice.
Trump didn’t ask people at his rally to just vote for him. He promised that if you do so, he will Make America Great Again™.
No backsies.
Roll your eyes at the trout, but the writer has pulled off some tricky moves in under 200 words.
• Simplified a complicated topic
• Made a boring topic slightly more entertaining
• Recommended a tactic
• Empowered and motivated the reader to try it
Hook, line, sinker!
The Leaky Goggle Principle
The other day, I was swimming laps in a local pool.
It was mid August in Brooklyn. Early in the morning, and the day was already hot. Pink sky and fluffy clouds. Mint blue water. A serene sight.
If I could see it.
Instead my eyes stung from chlorine. My vision was blurred. I could barely see my arms stretched out in front of me.
I reach the end of the lane, squint and lift my goggles off my face and tip out a teaspoon of water back into the pool.
My goggles were leaky.
An easy problem to solve, but until recently, I had no idea it was even a problem.
Let me explain.
Four weeks ago, I moved apartment.
We all know how we feel about moving. It’s not the most pleasant way to spend a Sunday.
At best, it’s painful. At worst it’s a nightmare. The road to hell is paved with cardboard and packing tape.
Maybe it’s the physical and psychological discomfort caused by disturbing your private space.
Or maybe it’s the banality. Carrying lots of little boxes from one box to another slightly more expensive box.
Who knows.
But it’s not all negative. Moving can also offer interesting and instructive perspective shifts.
I’ll show you.
Whilst packing, I came to the realization that I had accumalted a lot of stuff. Lamps, scissors, clothes, chairs, pots, pans, mirrors, paperclips. Drawers and drawers filled with things.
Let’s face it, we all own a lot of junk. And as a collective, that junk is choking the world.
That can be overwhelming to recognize, and most of the time, we simply don’t. But some of us do, and respond by doing what futurist Bruce Sterling calls “playing dead.” We stop buying stuff. We save. We re-use and recycle. It’s the opposite of consumer culture, and it’s the default position for most young, socially conscious people.
You might think that’s the good, morally superior position to take. I’ve learnt recently it’s not.
Playing dead is a terrible, reductive strategy, simply because you’ll never be as environmentally conscious as your dead great grandfather. Bruce calls this the “Great-Grandfather Principle.”
“You’re trying to save water, because you’re told to save water. All right, your dead great-grandfather is saving more water than you. You cannot possibly save any more water than a dead guy.
If you move into a smaller apartment, your grandfather is in a very, very small apartment. It’s underground, there’s no lighting, there’s no heating, he doesn’t have any broadband.
And furthermore, in a pretty short amount of time compared to the length of the problems you’re tackling, you’re going to be dead, like your great grandfather.”
Instead of playing dead, Bruce encourages young people to “do things you can do while alive. If your grandfather’s doing a better job at it, you can put that aside for later, when you’re dead, like him.”
One important thing to do while you’re still alive is to take a good hard look at all the everyday objects you interact with in your life.
To figure out what stuff to keep, and what to throw, he offers a simple triage method.
• Is it beautiful? Is it so beautiful that you’re going to proudly show it off to your friends?
• Is it emotionally important? Does it have a real story behind it that you would tell someone about?
• Is it useful? Does it work? “There’s nothing more materialistic than doing the same job five times because your tools are inferior.”
If your object does not satisfy at least one of those criteria, REMOVE it from your life. Virtualize it, store the data, get rid of it.
“You’re losing nothing by getting rid of these things. They have no real meaning for you. You are gaining time and light and space and health by removing these objects from your vicinity.”
So, with my mind blown, I easily sorted through all my possessions. Stuff I had relied on, used, looked at, protected, heated, stored, organized, every day of my life.
Gone. I donated a lot of stuff.
It was an interesting psychological experiment too. I’m a minimalist compared to most people, but I still found myself hemming and hawing over lots of things that weren’t particularly beautiful, meaningful, or even useful.
And I’m not the only irrational one. We all cling onto this crap.
Later, at a bar, I notice all the tiny scratches covering my friends sunglasses.
“Look!” I shout, pointing at her face.
“This is what I’m talking about! If there’s one thing that should work properly and look good, it’s anything you put in front of your eyes!”
She laughed, “Aww, they’re not that scratched…”
Point proven.
Back to the pool.
Despite my revelation, I was still clinging onto one last remnant of my former pretend-dead life.
And when I say clinging, I mean strapped around my face.
Standing at the end of the lane, I ripped off the goggles and flung them away.
Find your leaky goggle, whatever that might be, and remove it from your life, because you don’t need it.
If you do this you will be able to make room for the important stuff.
A few weeks later, I’m can now see where I’m swimming.
I think my great grandfather would be proud.
Bonus: I made a PDF with Bruce’s rules. Feel free to use it as a guide the next time you move house!
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The diversity in the world’s cultures, political and social systems, and ideologies is a source of global health. It feels like everyone should be encouraged (and supported) to spend a year abroad before, during, or after college, prior to entering the world, just to understand just how much socially acquired knowledge is path dependent and essentially arbitrary.
Eugene Weiundefined
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撑死胆大的，饿死胆小的.
·Chengsi dan dade, esi dan xiaode.
“The timid die of hunger, the bold of overeating.”
(Chinese saying)
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#productfeedback
https://www.behance.net/gallery/55894491/productfeedback
A new portfolio piece I just posted to Behance. This was a very small project, it probably took a week of design effort, and shipped maybe another week later.
There’s also nothing particularly ‘wow’ about it. It’s honestly not something you’d see in a design portfolio.
But I’m very proud of it.
Why? We did something, and it had a positive effect on the customer, and the business.
My focus for the rest of the year is to improve two distinct things.
Delivering more value (perceived or real) to customers, and also learning from each effort.
Value is not output. It’s not features for the sake of features. Value is a real, positive, validated outcome. A real improvement.
In terms of my projects, this will mean less shooting in the dark and hoping lagging indicators will move, and more controlled, defined, smaller experiments that improve specific behaviors.
Thinking this way makes better stuff for users. Jeff sums up this mindset really well on this podcast.
Money & Wealth
Quoting Lu Xun, via ‘China in Ten Words’ by Yu Hua
“Money is an unseemly topic that may well be deplored by gentlemen of lofty principle. But I tend to think that people’s views differ not only between one day and the next but also before and after meals. When people admit that money is necessary to feed oneself but still insist on its vulgarity, then one can safely predict that they still have some undigested fish or meat in their systems. They’d sing a different tune, I’m sure, if you made them go hungry for a day.”
And from redpill rag RibbonFarm -
“About the only path to wealth-building available to the average premium mediocre young person in the developed world today, absent any special technical skills or entrepreneurial bent, is cryptocurrencies.
The traditional wealth-building strategy in the US, home ownership, has turned into a mix of a mug’s game and unassailable NIMBY rentierism.
The public markets are no longer reliable wealth builders, while the private markets exclude almost everybody who isn’t already wealthy.
And the tech-startup options lottery and media-celebrity games are not open to those who can’t program at world-eating levels or shitpost at election-winning levels.”
Like all good redpill literature, it’s energizing (and painful) to read such a clear, unusual description of reality.
Based on the archetypes Venkatesh outlines, I’m clearly premium mediocre — with a dash of hipster from my upbringing and social group in Australia.
A few years ago, I moved to a big, coastal city, learning skills as I needed them, in the (not completely clueless) hope for some sort of success that my parents, and their parents have found in their lives.
(I was) “optimistically prepared for success by at least being in the right place at the right time, at least for a little while, even if you have no idea how to make anything happen during your window of opportunity.”
He continues…
“In a world where actual mobility is both difficult and strongly dependent on luck, but there is a widely performed (but not widely believed) false narrative of pure meritocracy, it pays to signal apparent control over your destiny, while actually playing by the speculation rules of a casino economy.”
He explains that the reason why millenials act this crazy way, is because of this ‘new economy’ that is emerging. The fact is, it’s not emerging as quick as we’d like, and we’re just trying to save face in the meantime (especially to our parents). The world-builders (the facebooks, apples etc), need us to keep this dream alive, so they can continue building it.
In many ways, I’m in this mainstream group, looking for a landing — and very much aware that I might run out of fuel before I make it.
But I also work in tech, I’m close to the metal. I can code, build interfaces, and sell stuff.
I work with a group of coders and designers that “believe sincerely and strongly in their theories of how the world they are creating works.“
I believe “a new prosperity is taking root and I “genuinely want prosperity for all.” I believe software can do that.
This position I’m in, makes reading about ‘premium mediocre’ all the more uncomfortable, but necessary.