INFLUENCE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASION SUMMARY

What You’ll Gain from This Book

Most of us run on autopilot when it comes to our social interactions; we cannot explain why we think, decide, and act the way we do.  We can see this phenomenon in our everyday life when we can’t explain why our behavior is not the same to different sellers who are selling us the same product with more or less, the same price, specification, or quality.  Robert Cialdini essays the different persuasion tools, or psychological push buttons, used consciously or subconsciously by individuals or groups, especially marketers, politicians, and public figures, in order to influence or persuade us—not by appealing to our reason and logic but by influencing us at a deeper, subconscious level.  These tools of persuasion are reciprocity, social proof, consistency and commitment, liking, authority, and scarcity.  This book is empowering because it shows us how to influence and win others to our way of thinking by using these subtle tools, and it also helps us not to fall victim to exploitative or unscrupulous individuals and groups around us, who deliberately use these psychological push buttons to advance their goals and interests.

Nugget

“There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and who employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want…  The secret of their effectiveness lies in the way they structure their requests, the way they arm themselves with one or another of the weapons of influence that exist within the social environment. To do this may take no more than one correctly chosen word that engages a strong psychological principle and sets an automatic behavior tape rolling within us. And trust the human exploiters to learn quickly exactly how to profit from our tendency to respond mechanically according to these principles.”

                                                                                                                              -Robert Cialdini

In a Nutshell (Mnemonic for easy recall: R-CLASS.)

  1. Reciprocation
  2. Commitment and Consistency
  3. Liking
  4. Authority
  5. Social Proof
  6. Scarcity
  • Introduction
  • The behavior of turkeys against polecats illustrates the view that our rational and logical mind is bypassed by these six tools of persuasion. 
  • This fixed action pattern or “stupid” behavior of the turkey, also applies to us.
  • Reciprocation
  • Reciprocation is a universal culture and behavior.
  • This is illustrated by the story of a German soldier during the First World War.
  • Commitment and Consistency
  • People don’t want to renege on their commitments.
  • Consistency is admired by people.
  • This is confirmed by a social experiment for potential voters.
  • Social Proof
  • The use of canned laughter on TV is hated but the practice persists because it promotes social proof.
  • Staged popular support was allegedly used by the Billy Graham organization to create an impression of strong popular support.
  • The murder of Catherine Genovese reveals something unusual from the mass of the usual crimes committed in New York. 
  • Two explanations for the inaction were advanced. 
  • You can protect yourself when you find yourself in a similar predicament by doing two things: 1.by asking for help in a categorical manner and 2.by asking for help from a specific person.
  • Liking
  • Tupperware parties are very successful examples of the power of different subtle tools of persuasion being employed by corporations and salespersons as marketing tools. 
  • Attractiveness leads to the so-called halo effect.
  • People are suckers for compliments, according to the exploits of Joe Girard, the world’s “greatest car salesman.”
  • Authority
  • How far people would obey authority was confirmed by the experiments of Stanley Milgram.
  • Titles psychologically confer respectability and credibility.
  • The clothes that people wear significantly affect how others interact with them.
  • Trappings of wealth such as jewelry and cars also have this influence on people.
  • Scarcity
  • People put more value on things which are scarce.
  • People tend to do what you tell them not to.
  • This was also reiterated by an experiment on the effects of censorship.

Summary

Introduction

  • The behavior of turkeys against polecats illustrates the claim of Robert Cialdini that our rational and logical mind is bypassed by these six tools of persuasion.  According to him, turkeys are very protective of their chicks, and their mothering instincts are activated by the “cheep-cheep” sound of their chicks.  Polecats are predators and enemies of turkeys who are naturally hostile to the former, even to their stuffed imitation.  When these stuffed polecats however, are equipped with an audio player and simulated the “cheep-cheep” sound of the chicks at the push of a button, lo and behold, the mother turkey suddenly changes behavior and becomes protective of the stuffed polecat.
  • This fixed action pattern or “stupid” behavior of the turkey, also applies to us where psychological push buttons greatly influence our behavior because they bypass our logical mind and we behave like that turkey.  Why we act this way is a heuristic or psychological shortcut that may be good for us when it promotes our survival by helping us not to spend too much time pondering similar circumstances governed by these heuristics.  The downside however,  is when these psychological tools are deliberately used against us to manipulate, or take concessions from us against our better judgment or will, and to our detriment.
  • Reciprocation
  • Reciprocation is a universal culture and behavior where people feel the tendency of being under an obligation to reciprocate to those whom we are indebted to, because they gave us a gift or had done us a favor.  This imperative to repay is felt whether the gift is significant or otherwise, material or nonmaterial, whether we like the gift, and this is significant—even if we don’t.  This universal imperative to repay is used by advertisers, vendors, and even drug pushers when they give us their “free” gifts “with no strings attached whatsoever.”  We should do well to always remember that the Trojan Horse was a “gift” every time we receive one.  It goes without saying however,  that a lot of what we give has no ulterior motive other than affection, and this duty to reciprocate makes life easier, our social relations memorable, and in some instances, may even save our life.

  • The book poignantly tells the story of a German soldier during World War I who was routinely given the tasks of capturing enemy soldiers to be brought in for interrogation. “Because of the nature of the trench warfare at that time, it was extremely difficult for armies to cross the no-man’s-land between opposing front lines; but it was not so difficult for a single soldier to crawl across and slip into an enemy trench position. The armies of the Great War had experts who regularly did so to capture an enemy soldier, who would then be brought back for questioning.”
  • “The German expert of our account,” the story continues, “had often successfully completed such missions in the past and was sent on another. Once again, he skillfully negotiated the area between fronts and surprised a lone enemy soldier in his trench. The unsuspecting soldier, who had been eating at the time, was easily disarmed. The frightened captive with only a piece of bread in his hand then performed what may have been the most important act of his life. He gave his enemy some of the bread. So affected was the German by this gift that he could not complete his mission. He turned from his benefactor and recrossed the no-man’s-land empty-handed to face the wrath of his superiors.” 
  • Commitment and Consistency
  • People don’t want to renege on their commitments, and consistency is valued as an adaptive behavior usually considered as an admirable trait in an individual, and consequently, we don’t want to back out from our commitments, whether verbal or in writing (the latter imposes a stronger obligation).  Inconsistency on the other hand, is frowned upon as an undesirable personal trait, and “The person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don’t match may be seen as indecisive, confused, two-faced, or even mentally ill.”

  • Consistency is admired by people and a high degree of consistency is normally associated with personal and intellectual strength. “It is at the heart of logic, rationality, stability, and honesty…  It provides us with a reasonable and gainful orientation to the world. Most of the time we will be better off if our approach to things is well laced with consistency. Without it our lives would be difficult, erratic, and disjointed.”
  • In a social experiment for potential voters, they were asked whether they would vote and give the reasons why they would or would not.  The turnout of voters on election day, was greatly influenced by their commitment to the questions asked, wherein those who were asked whether they will vote had a turnout of 86.7%, as against 61.5% for those who were not asked.  The prior commitment to vote significantly affected the voter turnout.
  • Social Proof
  • Canned laughter on TV is hated by film writers, directors, and discerning audiences, but why is it that this practice continues to persist?  This is because according to Cialdini, television executives and industry experts “know what the research says. Experiments have found that the use of canned merriment causes an audience to laugh longer and more often when humorous material is presented and to rate the material as funnier. In addition, some evidence indicates that canned laughter is most effective for poor jokes.”
  • Staged popular support was allegedly used by the Billy Graham organization to create an impression of strong popular support, according to the report of an Arizona State University research team, where they claimed that Graham uses six thousand supporters with instructions on when to show up at different intervals and present an impression of spontaneous mass support and enthusiasm during his Crusade visits.

  • Religious cults had always been obsessed with doomsday predictions, since time immemorial.  What happens when those predictions do not come to pass?  “Since the only acceptable form of truth had been undercut by physical proof, there was but one way out of the corner for the group. They had to establish another type of proof for the validity of their beliefs: social proof…It was necessary to risk the scorn and derision of the nonbelievers because publicity and recruitment efforts provided the only remaining hope. If they could spread the Word, if they could inform the uninformed, if they could persuade the skeptics, and if, by so doing, they could win new converts, their threatened but treasured beliefs would become truer.”  Looking at the behavior of the social group that we belong to, and following its example, is always easier than looking after the truth.
  • Cause of Death: Uncertain(ty)
  • The murder of Catherine Genovese reveals something unusual from the mass of the usual crimes committed in New York.  She had not been a victim of a quick, silent death—it had been a protracted, agonizing, loud, and public spectacle.  Thirty-eight of her neighbors watched from their apartment windows as her assailant chased and attacked her in the street three times in a period of about thirty-five minutes, until he stabbed her to end her many cries for help.  No one helped, much less, called the police during the long and repeated assaults against her.
  • Two explanations for the inaction were advanced.  First, everybody thought that perhaps someone else will help the victim, with the painful result that nobody did.  The second is the so-called pluralistic ignorance effect grounded on social proof where people don’t act because they are not sure whether or not there is indeed an emergency, and they wait for social proof from others to act first to confirm that there was indeed an emergency. 
  • You can protect yourself when you find yourself in a similar situation by doing two things: 1.by asking for help in a categorical manner and leaving no doubt in the eyes of observers that you are indeed, under an emergency; and 2.by asking for help from a specific person, who will feel responsible for you and will not wait for someone else to act.  The latter is better than making a general call for help from everybody who will most likely wait first for social proof before taking action.

Chapter IV- Liking

  • Tupperware parties are very successful examples of the power of different subtle tools of persuasion being employed by corporations and salespersons as marketing tools.  Commitment, consistency, social proof, etc., and the most notable of which is the principle of liking, are routinely used to induce sales for its products.   Liking is employed to consummate the sale because buying from the hostess of the party who happens to be a well-liked friend is an effective subconscious tool which ensures the success of the sales pitch which is otherwise not possible when the pitch is given by someone that we don’t like i.e., not our friend.
  • Attractiveness leads to the halo effect which takes place “when one positive characteristic of a person dominates the way that person is viewed by others. And the evidence is now clear that physical attractiveness is often such a characteristic. Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence.”  These individuals have a marked advantage in winning elections, getting hired for jobs, and even receiving lighter penalties in terms of fine and imprisonment in case of unfavorable decisions in legal cases because of the subconscious influence of the halo effect. 
  • Similarity is an effective tool of persuasion because people like others who are like them.  Cialdini asserts that “This fact seems to hold true whether the similarity is in the area of opinions, personality traits, background, or lifestyle. Consequently, those who wish to be liked in order to increase our compliance can accomplish that purpose by appearing similar to us in any of a wide variety of ways.” 

  • People are suckers for compliments, according to the exploits of Joe Girard, the world’s “greatest car salesman,” whose secret was to send each month, to every one of his more than thirteen thousand former customers, holiday greeting cards with the message “I like you.”  Obvious and simplistic as it seems, it worked on his trade, with obvious and auspicious consequences to his career and financial success.
  •  Authority
  • Just how far people would obey authority was confirmed by the experiment of Stanley Milgram where the subjects of the experiment, or “teachers” administered electric shocks to “learners” in obedience to the lab-coated “authority”.  The research found out that “To Milgram’s mind, evidence of a chilling phenomenon emerges repeatedly from his accumulated data: “It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study.” There are sobering implications of this finding for those concerned about the ability of another form of authority—government—to extract frightening levels of obedience from ordinary citizens.”  The experiment is proven by history which is replete with examples as to how people would do unimaginable things in obedience to authority (and strengthened by social proof), especially during wars and periods of crises.

Connotation, Not Content

  • Titles psychologically confer respectability and credibility to the owner and substantially affect how others interact with that person.  A well-travelled professor often finds himself talking to strangers everywhere.  “He says that he has learned through much experience never to use his title—professor—during these conversations. When he does, he reports, the tenor of the interaction changes immediately. People who have been spontaneous and interesting conversation partners for the prior half-hour become respectful, accepting, and dull.”
  • The clothes that people wear significantly affect how others interact with them especially when these clothes project an aura of wealth and status.  This was verified by a research where the subject violated the law by crossing the street against the traffic light, sometimes wearing ordinary street attire and on other occasions, pinstriped business suit and tie.  In the latter case, the number of pedestrians who followed the man across the street was three and a half times as many compared to the times he was wearing street clothes.
  • Trappings of wealth such as jewelry and cars also have this influence on people.  Cialdini asserts that “According to the findings of a study done in the San Francisco Bay area, owners of prestige autos receive a special kind of deference from us. The experimenters discovered that motorists would wait significantly longer before honking their horns at a new, luxury car stopped in front of a green traffic light than at an older, economy model. The motorists had little patience with the economy-car driver.”
  •  Scarcity         
  • The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.        -G. K. Chesterton
  • People put more value on things which are scarce, and we tend to be more motivated to act based on what we will lose than on what we will stand to gain.  Marketers knew and exploit this by always telling their prospective buyers that “stocks won’t last,” “for limited time only,” or “Mr. and Mrs. so and so are also interested to buy this house,” etc.  Cialdini’s brother cleverly used this principle in selling used cars, by scheduling to arrive at the same time, the interested buyers who responded to his ads and who want to see his car, so that he can sell it at higher price because the presence of many buyers affects their decision to buy.
  • People tend to do what you tell them not to, a phenomenon which is very prevalent among adolescents.  According to Cialdini, “Nothing illustrates the boomerang quality of parental pressure on adolescent behavior quite so clearly as a phenomenon known as the “Romeo and Juliet effect.” As we know, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet were the ill-fated Shakespearean characters whose love was doomed by a feud between their families. Defying all parental attempts to keep them apart, the teenagers won a lasting union in their tragic act of twin suicide, an ultimate assertion of free will.”
  • This was also reiterated by an experiment on the effects of censorship on reading, wherein students were divided into two groups.  The first group had the book with the warning, “a book for adults only, restricted to those 21 years and over” while the second group had no such restriction.  The study concluded that the censorship had two results: first, it actually increased the readership of the book; and secondly, those who were restricted liked the book better than those who were not restrained.

To Recap (Mnemonic: R-CLASS)

  1. Reciprocation
  2. Commitment and Consistency
  3. Liking
  4. Authority
  5. Social Proof
  6. Scarcity
  • Introduction
  • The behavior of turkeys against polecats illustrates the view that our rational and logical mind is bypassed by these six tools of persuasion. 
  • This fixed action pattern or “stupid” behavior of the turkey, also applies to us.
  • Reciprocation
  • Reciprocation is a universal culture and behavior.
  • This is illustrated by the story of a German soldier during the First World War.
  • Commitment and Consistency
  • People don’t want to renege on their commitments.
  • Consistency is admired by people.
  • This is confirmed by a social experiment for potential voters.
  • Social Proof
  • The use of canned laughter on TV is hated but the practice persists because it promotes social proof.
  • Staged popular support was allegedly used by the Billy Graham organization to create an impression of strong popular support.
  • The murder of Catherine Genovese reveals something unusual from the mass of the usual crimes committed in New York. 
  • Two explanations for the inaction were advanced. 
    • You can protect yourself when you find yourself in a similar predicament by doing two things: 1.by asking for help in a categorical manner and 2.by asking for help from a specific person.
  • Liking
  • Tupperware parties are very successful examples of the power of different subtle tools of persuasion being employed by corporations and salespersons as marketing tools. 
  • Attractiveness leads to the so-called halo effect.
  • People are suckers for compliments, according to the exploits of Joe Girard, the world’s “greatest car salesman.”
  • Authority
  • How far people would obey authority was confirmed by the experiments of Stanley Milgram.
  • Titles psychologically confer respectability and credibility.
  • The clothes that people wear significantly affect how others interact with them.
  • Trappings of wealth such as jewelry and cars also have this influence on people.
  • Scarcity
  • People put more value on things which are scarce.
  • People tend to do what you tell them not to.
  • This was also reiterated by an experiment on the effects of censorship.

To know more about Robert Cialdini or to order his books: https://www.influenceatwork.com/

Download here the PDF version of this summary or my other titles: https://romelbaja.home.blog/book-summaries/

BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING SUMMARY

What You’ll Gain from This Book

You will learn that our mind has two modes for making judgments—the slow mode based on reasoning and logic, and the fast mode based on intuition and feelings.  Malcolm Gladwell will show you that two seconds of snap judgment based on thin-slicing or intuition can be more accurate than fourteen months of rigorous analysis and scientific investigation.  This book will teach you how to develop this power of snap judgment, how you can make very accurate judgments without relying too much on your usual method of using your left brained logical and analytical mind because of our usual perception that it is more reliable and accurate than our intuition.  This book will also show you the limitations of thin-slicing, when to use, and when not to rely on your intuition and feelings.

Nugget

“The psychologist Nalini Ambady once gave students three ten-second videotapes of a teacher—with the sound turned off—and found they had no difficulty at all coming up with a rating of the teacher’s effectiveness.  Then Ambady cut the clips back to five seconds, and the ratings were the same. They were remarkably consistent even when she showed the students just two seconds of videotape.  Then Ambady compared those snap judgments of teacher effectiveness with evaluations of those same professors made by their students after a full semester of classes, and she found that they were also essentially the same.  A person watching a silent two-second video clip of a teacher he or she has never met will reach conclusions about how good that teacher is that are very similar to those of a student who has sat in the teacher’s class for an entire semester.  That’s the power of our adaptive unconscious.”

                                                                                                         -Malcolm Gladwell

In a Nutshell

  • Introduction: The Statue that Didn’t Look Right
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum in California was offered to buy a kouros.
  • Other experts however, sensed that the statue didn’t feel right.
  • The Theory of Thin-Slicing: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way
  • John Gottman asserts that rapid cognition is reliable.
  • Thin-slicing is not a supernatural power but a fairly common but seldom recognized human capability.
  • The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Judgment
  • The power of words or priming was the subject of John Bargh’s experiments.
  • The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall For Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men
  • The rise to power of Warren Harding was exceptionally fast.
  • His presidency is the dark side of thin-slicing.
  • Appearances alone, is not sufficient for thin-slicing, as Bob Golomb’s success in selling cars aptly shows. 
  • Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory: Creating Structure for Spontaneity
  • The Millenium Challenge was one of the largest and most expensive war games in US military history.
  • The Blue Team was the most sophisticated force ever assembled by the US military. 
  • They were dealt a resounding defeat by Van Riper.
  • Does more options lead to better decisions?
  • Iyengar’s research concluded in the negative.
  • Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right-And Wrong-Way To Ask People What They Want
  • Kenna is an enigma.
  • Sensation Transference was a theory popularized by Louis Cheskin.
  • The Pepsi challenge and New Coke is on point at how Sensation Transference works.
  • Coke shouldn’t have changed their original formula.
  • Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind-Reading
  • The Amadou Diallo Case is illustrative of failure to do mind-reading. 
  • The failure to mind-read based on facial expressions leads to erratic thin-slicing.
  • Silvan Tomkins, Paul Ekman, and Wallace Friesen contributed much to the growth of our knowledge on mindreading.
  • Ekman and Friesen created a taxonomy of facial expressions based on the anatomy and minute movements of facial muscles which was the general technique employed by Tomkins in reading people. 

Summary

Introduction: The Statue that Didn’t Look Right

  • The J. Paul Getty Museum in California was offered to buy a kouros—a marble sculpture of a nude male youth, in September, 1983.  The museum made a thorough investigation through its panel of experts for fourteen months before deciding to buy based on the recommendation of Stanley Margolis, a respected geologist from the University of California who examined the statue for two days with a high-resolution stereomicroscope and analyzed it using an electron microscope, electron microprobe, mass spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, or in short, the best tools that science can offer.

  • However, other experts sensed that the statue didn’t feel right within two seconds after watching the kouros for the first time, and they set forth their doubts that the statue was a forgery.  The statue was brought to Greece and a symposium was convened among experts who also concluded that the kouros was a forgery, which was also reaffirmed upon further investigations.  This book is about how we can make use of the power of a two second hunch that knows better than fourteen months of expert and rigorous scientific analysis, how to use and develop this power of rapid cognition, and when not to use it by recognizing its limits.

The Theory of Thin-Slicing: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way

  • John Gottman asserts that rapid cognition is reliable, based on his studies of soon-to-be and married couples on his “love lab” near the University of Washington campus. He videotapes each couple and analyzes them using a coding system corresponding to every emotion that the couples show during their conversation.  His method can predict with 95 and 90 percent accuracy respectively, whether those couples would still be married fifteen years later if he watches them for an hour or for fifteen minutes.  An associate of his who also made a new study can also attain a fairly accurate prediction for only three minutes of interaction.  It is counter-intuitive but entirely possible to determine the outcome of a marriage in a fairly short time.
  • Thin-slicing is not a supernatural power but a fairly common but seldom recognized human capability. “We thin-slice whenever we meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation. We thin-slice because we have to, and we come to rely on that ability because there are lots of hidden fists out there, lots of situations where careful attention to the details of a very thin slice, even for no more than a second or two, can tell us an awful lot.  It is striking, for instance, how many different professions and disciplines have a word to describe the particular gift of reading deeply into the narrowest slivers of experience. In basketball, the player who can take in and comprehend all that is happening around him or her is said to have “court sense.” In the military, brilliant generals are said to possess “coup d’oeil”—which, translated from the French, means “power of the glance”: the ability to immediately see and make sense of the battlefield. Napoleon had coup d’oeil. So did Patton.”

The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Judgment

  • The power of words or priming was the subject of John Bargh’s experiments wherein he gave his subjects one of two scrambled-sentence tests. The first group was sprinkled with words like “aggressively,” “rude,” “bother,” etc.  The other was written with words like “respect,” “considerate,” “appreciate,” etc.  After the test, the subjects’ behavior were observed when they passed two accomplices in the experiment, who were talking to each other and were blocking the path of the subjects.  It was observed that the behavior of the subjects corresponded to the words that they were exposed to during the test.  Our subconscious responds to our environment and our mental programming is significantly affected whether we are exposing our minds either to empowering or destructive words and beliefs.

The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall For Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men

  • The rise to power of Warren Harding was exceptionally fast.  “Early one morning in 1899, in the back garden of the Globe Hotel in Richwood, Ohio, two men met while having their shoes shined.  One was a lawyer and lobbyist from the state capital of Columbus.  His name was Harry Daugherty.  He was a thick-set, red-faced man with straight black hair, and he was brilliant.  He was the Machiavelli of Ohio politics, the classic behind-the scenes fixer, a shrewd and insightful judge of character or, at least, political opportunity.  The second man was a newspaper editor from the small town of Marion, Ohio, who was at that moment a week away from winning election to the Ohio state senate. His name was Warren Harding.  Daugherty looked over at Harding and was instantly overwhelmed by what he saw…  In that instant, as Daugherty sized up Harding, an idea came to him that would alter American history: Wouldn’t that man make a great President?”  In a few short years, that man indeed became a president—but he was anything but great.
  • His presidency is the dark side of thin-slicing—his ascent to prominence was attributable solely to his good looks and the stage management of Daugherty, not to any merit of competence, statesmanship, or talent.  Gladwell reiterates the conclusions of Robert Cialdini in his book Influence, where the latter elaborated on the observable and easily verifiable fact that attractive people have a decidedly distinct advantage in winning public office, at being hired for the job, in making that sale, etc., because of the halo effect, where people attribute many positive qualities to someone solely on the basis of the latter’s attractiveness.
  • Appearances alone, is not sufficient for thin-slicing, as Bob Golomb’s success in selling cars aptly shows.  “He follows, he says, a very simple rule. He may make a million snap judgments about a customer’s needs and state of mind, but he tries never to judge anyone on the basis of his or her appearance. He assumes that everyone who walks in the door has the exact same chance of buying a car.  “You cannot prejudge people in this business,” he said over and over when we met, and each time he used that phrase, his face took on a look of utter conviction. Prejudging is the kiss of death.”  A grimy farmer may already have a lot of farm vehicles to his name, and adding one more would not hurt, and a grungy and skinny youth may be checking out the cars at the behest of parents who have money to spare.

Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory: Creating Structure for Spontaneity

  • The Millenium Challenge was one of the largest and most expensive war games in US military history, which was undertaken to test the American forces’ readiness and capability in asymmetrical or unconventional warfare.  Their forces were divided into the Blue Team, or the good guys, and the Red Team skippered by Van Riper, a well-decorated Vietnam veteran, as the bad guys.
  • The Blue Team was the most sophisticated force ever assembled by the US military.  It “was given greater intellectual resources than perhaps any army in history.  JFCOM (Joint Forces Command) devised something called the Operational Net Assessment, which was a formal decision-making tool that broke the enemy down into a series of systems military, economic, social, political—and created a matrix showing how all those systems were interrelated and which of the links among the systems were the most vulnerable. Blue Team’s commanders were also given a tool called Effects-Based Operations, which directed them to think beyond the conventional military method of targeting and destroying an adversary’s military assets. They were given a comprehensive, real-time map of the combat situation called the Common Relevant Operational Picture (CROP). They were given a tool for joint interactive planning. They were given an unprecedented amount of information and intelligence from every corner of the U.S. government and a methodology that was logical and systematic and rational and rigorous. They had every toy in the Pentagon’s arsenal.”
  • They were dealt a resounding defeat by Van Riper, who did not behave according to plan but relied on spontaneity and improvisation, and made decisions on the spot.  Likewise, he also authorized his subordinates to make tactical decisions on their own so long as they prosecute the general strategic goals.  The matrices and databases of Blue Team cannot anticipate the intents and actions of an unpredictable and flexible enemy.  Moreover, sophisticated tools of the Blue Team are like the “impedimenta” or excess baggage that the Roman generals abhor when they pursue an elusive enemy.  The complex technology of the Blue Team encumbered and slowed down its decision-making capability in the face of an unpredictably difficult enemy led by a commander relying on thin-slicing and improvisation.
  • Does more options lead to better decisions?  This was the subject of Sheena Iyengar’s study “in which she sets up a tasting booth with a variety of exotic gourmet jams at the upscale grocery store Draeger’s in Menlo Park, California. Sometimes the booth had six different jams, and sometimes Iyengar had twenty-four different jams on display. She wanted to see whether the number of jam choices made any difference in the number of jams sold.  Conventional economic wisdom, of course, says that the more choices consumers have, the more likely they are to buy, because it is easier for consumers to find the jam that perfectly fits their needs.”
  • Iyengar’s research concluded in the negative; according to the results of her study, too much of a good thing is bad for our snap judgments—too many choices swamp our subconscious mind’s capacity to process information which affects its usual ability to make sound decisions based on thin slicing.  In the said experiment, people bought more jams when they were offered only six choices than when they were offered twenty-four choices—too many choices led to the decision not to make a choice i.e., not to buy.

Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right And Wrong Way To Ask People What They Want

  • Kenna is an enigma.  According to Gladwell, he “is very tall and strikingly handsome, with a shaved head and a goatee.  He looks like a rock star, but he has none of a rock star’s swagger and braggadocio and staginess.  There is something gentle about him.  He is polite and thoughtful and unexpectedly modest, and he talks with the quiet earnestness of a graduate student.  When Kenna got one of his first big breaks and opened at a rock concert for the well-respected band No Doubt, he either forgot to tell the audience his name (which is how his manager tells it) or decided against identifying himself (which is how he tells it.)  “Who are you?” the fans were yelling by the end.   Kenna is the sort of person who is constantly at odds with your expectations, and that is both one of the things that make him so interesting and one of the things that have made his career so problematic.”
  • Sensation Transference was a theory popularized by Louis Cheskin, where he posited the view that people don’t make a distinction at the subconscious level between the product and the packaging i.e., the product is not the product by itself but the product and the packaging combined.  Kenna is a good product, he is extremely talented according to talent scouts and fans who have seen him perform personally on auditions and when he front acts for other artists; but he has a packaging problem, others who have not seen him in person cannot make sound snap judgment about his talent which accounts for the dismal reception of his music in terms of radio play time and records sales.     
  • The Pepsi challenge and New Coke is on point at how Sensation Transference works.  The New Coke was introduced in response to blind tests which showed that consumers preferred the sweeter taste of Pepsi over Coke.  The result was an utter fiasco—their sales did not go up as expected, but dismally plummeted because Coke fanatics hated the new product and demanded the return of original Coke.  On hindsight, Coke did not have a product problem but a packaging that is, a branding or marketing problem according to Sensation Transference.  
  • Coke shouldn’t have changed their product because according to Gladwell, “when we put something in our mouth and in that blink of an eye decide whether it tastes good or not, we are reacting not only to the evidence from our taste buds and salivary glands but also to the evidence of our eyes and memories and imaginations, and it is foolish of a company to service one dimension and ignore the other. In that context, then, Coca-Cola’s error with New Coke becomes all the more egregious. It wasn’t just that they placed too much emphasis on sip tests.  It was that the entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous.  They shouldn’t have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn’t at all be surprised that Pepsi’s dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world.  Why not?  Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.  We transfer to our sensation of the Coca-Cola taste all of the unconscious associations we have of the brand, the image, the can, and even the unmistakable red of the logo.”

Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind-Reading

  • The Amadou Diallo Case is illustrative of failure to do mind-reading.  Gladwell narrates that Diallo was from Guinea, and in 1999, when the case happened, he was twenty-two and was, “working as a peddler in lower Manhattan, selling videotapes and socks and gloves from the sidewalk along Fourteenth Street.  He was short and unassuming, about five foot six and 150 pounds, and he lived at 1157 Wheeler, on the second floor of one of the street’s narrow apartment houses.   On the night of February 3, 1999, Diallo returned home to his apartment just before midnight, talked to his roommates, and then went downstairs and stood at the top of the steps to his building, taking in the night.   A few minutes later, a group of plainclothes police officers turned slowly onto Wheeler Avenue in an unmarked Ford Taurus.  There were four of them-all white, all wearing jeans and sweatshirts and baseball caps and bulletproof vests, and all carrying police-issue 9-millimeter semiautomatic handguns.   They were part of what is called the Street Crime Unit, a special division of the New York Police Department, dedicated to patrolling crime “hot spots” in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.”
  • The failure to mind-read based on facial expressions leads to erratic thin-slicing.  Diallo’s failure to mind-read the intention of policemen who merely approached him, made him overreact and run right away.  The policemen’s failure to mind-read Dallio led them to fire at him when at the end of the chase, he raised his hand and took out his black wallet (Investigators surmised that he might have thought that they were out to rob or extort money from him because they were not in uniform.).  In the darkness (The event happened a little past midnight.) and adrenaline rush, they failed to mind-read his intentions and mistakenly thought that the black wallet was a gun.
  • Silvan Tomkins, Paul Ekman, and Wallace Friesen contributed much to the growth of our knowledge on mindreading.  Tomkins has an extraordinary ability to know much about the personality and background of people based on their facial expression alone.  When he was shown a film about two primitive tribes (He has no prior knowledge of the people shown on the clip.), he described them in this wise:  “These are a sweet, gentle people, very indulgent, very peaceful,” he said.  Then he pointed to the faces of the Kukukuku. “This other group is violent, and there is lots of evidence to suggest homosexuality.”  This uncannily accurate description of the first tribe applies accurately to the peaceful South Fore Tribe of Papua, New Guinea, and to another hostile tribe who had a social norm of subjecting their adolescent boys to sodomy by the elder male tribe members.

  • Ekman and Friesen created a taxonomy of facial expressions based on the anatomy and minute movements of facial muscles which was the general technique employed by Tomkins in reading people.  They were able to catalogue forty-three such movements which they call action units and developed this into a system and a book called Facial Action Coding System (FACS) which is a tool that can accurately read what a person is thinking, what he or she went through, or is about to do and opened up new avenues for research in diverse fields from schizophrenia to heart disease.  Beyond science, FACS has also seen creative applications in revolutionary movie making done through computer animation at Pixar (Toy Story) and DreamWorks (Shrek).  In a more mundane note, there is now a scientific basis for lovers’ eternal obsession with looking into each other’s eyes, there is a world of learning and truth that we can glean from a person’s face, and a picture—or a video clip, indeed speaks a thousand words.

To Recap

  • Introduction: The Statue that Didn’t Look Right
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum in California was offered to buy a kouros.
  • Other experts however, sensed that the statue didn’t feel right.
  • The Theory of Thin-Slicing: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way
  • John Gottman asserts that rapid cognition is reliable.
  • Thin-slicing is not a supernatural power but a fairly common but seldom recognized human capability.
  • The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Judgment
  • The power of words or priming was the subject of John Bargh’s experiments.
  • The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall For Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men
  • The rise to power of Warren Harding was exceptionally fast.
  • His presidency is the dark side of thin-slicing.
  • Appearances alone, is not sufficient for thin-slicing, as Bob Golomb’s success in selling cars aptly shows. 
  • Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory: Creating Structure for Spontaneity
  • The Millenium Challenge was one of the largest and most expensive war games in US military history.
  • The Blue Team was the most sophisticated force ever assembled by the US military. 
  • They were dealt a resounding defeat by Van Riper.
  • Does more options lead to better decisions?
  • Iyengar’s research concluded in the negative.
  • Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right-And Wrong-Way To Ask People What They Want
  • Kenna is an enigma.
  • Sensation Transference was a theory popularized by Louis Cheskin.
  • The Pepsi challenge and New Coke is on point at how Sensation Transference works.
  • Coke shouldn’t have changed their original formula.
  • Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind-Reading
  • The Amadou Diallo Case is illustrative of failure to do mind-reading. 
  • The failure to mind-read based on facial expressions leads to erratic thin-slicing.
  • Silvan Tomkins, Paul Ekman, and Wallace Friesen contributed much to the growth of our knowledge on mindreading.
  • Ekman and Friesen created a taxonomy of facial expressions based on the anatomy and minute movements of facial muscles which was the general technique employed by Tomkins in reading people. 

To know more about Malcolm Gladwell or to order his books: https://www.gladwellbooks.com/landing-page/about-malcolm-gladwell/

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For the PDF version of this summary and for more of my titles: https://romelbaja.home.blog/book-summaries/

THE WAR OF ART SUMMARY

What You’ll Gain from this Book

If you honestly feel that you’re not really happy with yourself and you would rather be someone else, or if what you’re currently doing is sucking the life out of you, then this is the book for you.  If you’re an artist who is not practicing your art, an entrepreneur who didn’t start your startup, a scientist who is not figuring things out on a laboratory, an activist or social entrepreneur who is not working on social problems, or just someone who keeps putting off going to the gym, giving up that pack of cigarette, or making that proposal, then this is the book for you.  This book will help you to start, or persevere on the path of the empowering and creative life that is your birthright, which you gave up when society (translation: the people around you) conspired and told you to get real or to get a “real” job.  This book will teach you how to fight your battles by first knowing your enemy, which Pressfield calls Resistance—“a destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us, or others something that’s actually good,“ and by taking that first small step now, not tomorrow.

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Nugget

“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.  Do it or don’t do it.  It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself.  You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.  You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.  Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it.  Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

                                                                                                                         -Steven Pressfield

Summary of Summary

INTRODUCTION

•          Resistance is the arch enemy of creativity.  It is a destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a course of action that might do for us or others something that’s actually good.

•          We have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us.  What separates our two lives is Resistance.

BOOK ONE RESISTANCE

Defining the Enemy

  • Resistance is an inveterate liar and will do whatever it takes to persuade us to stay away from our life’s work, or at least to distract us, or convince us to do it tomorrow.
  • Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.
  • Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five.
  • The tale of Odysseus teaches us that Resistance is strongest at the finish line.
  • When a writer begins to overcome her Resistance—she may find that those close to her will resent her awakening and will oppose her efforts.

BOOK TWO COMBATING RESISTANCE

Turning Pro

  • While the amateur plays for fun, the professional plays for keeps.  While the amateur is a weekend warrior, the professional shows up daily. 
  • A professional does not wait for inspiration before working; he just works and sure enough, inspiration comes.
  • Pressfield’s training in Marine Corps taught him how to be miserable, which is invaluable for an artist.
  • These are the qualities of a professional: 1. we show up every day; 2.we show up no matter what; 3.we stay on the job all day; 4.we are committed over the long haul; 5.the stakes for us are high and real; 6.we accept remuneration for our labor; 7.we do not overidentify with our jobs; 8.we master the technique of our jobs; 9.we have a sense of humor about our jobs; and 10.we receive praise or blame in the real world.
  • In the real world, there is no such thing as poetic justice: adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls are hazards of the trade that we must deal with.
  • Pressfield advocates working and incorporating as a corporation because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and-consciousness-running-the-show.

BOOK THREE BEYOND RESISTANCE

The Higher Realm

  • There are invisible psychic forces that support us toward our craft.  We can opt to give these forces a personality and call it our daimon, genius, angel, or muse, or we can also consider these forces as impersonal laws such as gravity. 
  • Goethe: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.
  • A hack is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. The hack condescends to his audience.
  • Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: We have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, and that we must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune, attention, or applause
  • According to King Leonidas, contempt for death is the cardinal virtue of a warrior.  Contempt for failure is the cardinal virtue of an artist.

Summary

Introduction

  • The book starts by exposing Resistance as the arch enemy of creativity.  It is what Freud termed the Death Wish, “a destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that’s actually good.”
  • According to Pressfield, we have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us.  What separates our two lives is Resistance.  “Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever bailed out on a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace, or to preserve the environment? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.”

Book One Resistance

Defining the Enemy

                         The enemy is a very good teacher.                                                                           -The Dalai Lama    

 

RESISTANCE’S GREATEST HITS

Resistance opposes any act that progresses from our lower to higher nature, or any act that eschews immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, success, or happiness, such as, but not limited to the following activities: 1) the pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional; 2) the launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise; 3) education of every kind; 4) any act of political, moral, or ethical courage, including the decision to change for the better some unworthy pattern of thought or conduct in ourselves; 5) the undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others, etc.                  

RESISTANCE IS INSIDIOUS

Resistance is an inveterate liar and will do whatever it takes to persuade us to stay away from our life’s work, or at least to distract us, or convince us to do it tomorrow.  It has no scruples whatsoever, it will offer heaven, earth, and anything in between to entice our gullibility. Nothing is above it and will resort to anything, fair or foul to dissuade us—it will perjure, fabricate, falsify, seduce, bully, cajole us into submission.  It is amorphous and will take on any form and reason with us like a lawyer or stick a 9 mm. in our face like a highwayman. 

RESISTANCE IS INFALLIBLE

Pressfield maintains that “Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.  We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.  Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

RESISTANCE NEVER SLEEPS

Pressfield reveals that “Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”

RESISTANCE IS STRONGEST AT THE FINISH LINE

Odysseus was almost home when disaster struck, he laid down for forty winks because they were close enough to see the smoke from their families’ cooking fires on shore.  His men cut up the bag which contained the adverse winds because they believed that the bag contained gold.  The winds blew forth and drove their ships back from whence they came and suffered more privations and deaths until it was Odysseus alone who successfully came home.  The perils are worst near the finish line when Resistance gives everything it has to dissuade the professional, who should be wary of that bag of wind.

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RESISTANCE RECRUITS ALLIES

Pressfield holds that “When a writer begins to overcome her Resistance—in other words, when she actually starts to write—she may find that those close to her begin acting strange. They may become moody or sullen, they may get sick; they may accuse the awakening writer of “changing,” of “not being the person she was.” The closer these people are to the awakening writer, the more bizarrely they will act and the more emotion they will put behind their actions.  They are trying to sabotage her.  The reason is that they are struggling, consciously or unconsciously, against their own Resistance. The awakening writer’s success becomes a reproach to them. If she can beat these demons, why can’t they?  Often couples or close friends, even entire families, will enter into tacit compacts whereby each individual pledges (unconsciously) to remain mired in the same slough in which she and all her cronies have become so comfortable. The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket. The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.”

RESISTANCE AND SEX

Pressfield suggests that an obsessive preoccupation with sex is a manifestation of Resistance because it gives us a quick fix when someone sleeps with us because through it, we feel validated and accepted.  It distracts us and keeps us from contemplating or doing our life’s work.  However, not all sex is within the purview of Resistance, and the more incomplete and empty you feel afterwards, the greater the probability that your real motivation was not love but Resistance. This also holds true for drugs, TV, gossip, alcohol, shopping, masturbation, and the excessive consumption of fat, sugar, salt, or chocolate.

Book Two Combating Resistance

Turning Pro

                 It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.                                                                                                           -Telamon of Arcadia,           mercenary of the fifth century B.C.    

 

PROFESSIONALS AND AMATEURS

Pressfield points out the distinction between amateurs and professionals.  The latter term does not refer to doctors, lawyers, or other professionals, but refers to an ideal or way of life, not a way of doing our livelihood.  While the amateur plays for fun, the professional plays for keeps.  To the former, the game is his avocation, to the latter, it’s his vocation. While the amateur is a weekend warrior, the professional shows up daily. 

“The word amateur comes from the Latin root meaning “to love.” The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money.”  This is not how Pressfield sees it because according to him, “the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.  The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it.  He commits full-time.  That’s what I mean when I say turning pro.  Resistance hates it when we turn pro.”

A PROFESSIONAL

A professional does not wait for inspiration before working; he just works and sure enough, inspiration comes.  Showing up for work, not waiting for inspiration, is the job description of the pro.  Working will set into motion a sequence of events leading to inspiration.  Pressfield narrates a story to drive home this point.  “Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro. In terms of Resistance, Maugham was saying, “I despise Resistance; I will not let it faze me; I will sit down and do my work.”

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HOW TO BE MISERABLE

Pressfield had so many different jobs before heeding the call of his muse.  His training in the Marines served him well as an artist, and he avers that “The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.  This is invaluable for an artist.  Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction from having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don’t know how to be miserable.  The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.”

WE’RE ALL PROS ALREADY

Being a professional means that we must also learn from our previous life as an amateur on our day jobs, in order to approximate the work ethic required of a professional.  These are the qualities of a professional: 1. we show up every day; 2.we show up no matter what; 3.we stay on the job all day; 4.we are committed over the long haul; 5.the stakes for us are high and real; 6.we accept remuneration for our labor; 7.we do not overidentify with our jobs; 8.we master the technique of our jobs; 9.we have a sense of humor about our jobs; and 10.we receive praise or blame in the real world.

A PROFESSIONAL ACTS IN THE FACE OF FEAR

Pressfield advocates a healthy and realistic approach in dealing with fear.  He would have us note that “The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.  What Henry Fonda does, after puking into the toilet in his dressing room, is to clean up and march out onstage. He’s still terrified but he forces himself forward in spite of his terror. He knows that once he gets out into the action, his fear will recede and he’ll be okay.”

A PROFESSIONAL PLAYS IT AS IT LAYS

Pressfield reminds us that the playing field is level only in heaven.  In the real world, there is no such thing as poetic justice: adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls are hazards of the trade that we must deal with.  If we persevere however, good breaks and lucky bounces will also pay our game a visit.  Visits of Murphy’s Law should be expected, but it is not a permanent guest in our craft.

YOU, INC.

Pressfield advocates working and incorporating as a corporation.  “For a writer to incorporate himself has certain tax and financial advantages. But what I love about it is the metaphor… Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and-consciousness-running-the-show. No matter how much abuse is heaped on the head of the former, the latter takes it in stride and keeps on trucking. Conversely with success: You-the-writer may get a swelled head, but you-the-boss remembers how to take yourself down a peg.  If we think of ourselves as a corporation, it gives us a healthy distance on ourselves. We’re less subjective. We don’t take blows as personally. We’re more cold-blooded; we can price our wares more realistically. Sometimes, as Joe Blow himself, I’m too mild-mannered to go out and sell. But as Joe Blow, Inc., I can pimp the hell out of myself. I’m not me anymore.  I’m Me, Inc. I’m a pro.”

Book Three Beyond Resistance

The Higher Realm

The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words, and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends, and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage.                                                    –Xenophon,                                        The Cavalry Commander    

ANGELS IN THE ABSTRACT

There are invisible psychic forces that support us toward our craft.  We can opt to give these forces a personality and call it our daimon, genius, angel, or muse, or we can also consider these forces as impersonal laws such as gravity.  Regardless of how we see it, it works either way, and these forces are our allies in pursuing our vocation.

Description: Mountaineering, Climbers, Storm, Rough

THE MAGIC OF MAKING A START

Pressfield shares this powerful quote from W. H. Murray of the Scottish Himalayan Expedition:  “Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.”

THE HIERARCHICAL ORIENTATION

“Most of us define ourselves hierarchically and don’t even know it. It’s hard not to. School, advertising, the entire materialist culture drills us from birth to define ourselves by others’ opinions. Drink this beer, get this job, look this way and everyone will love you.  What is a hierarchy, anyway?  Hollywood is a hierarchy. So are Washington, Wall Street, and the Daughters of the American Revolution.  High school is the ultimate hierarchy. And it works; in a pond that small, the hierarchical orientation succeeds. The cheerleader knows where she fits, as does the dweeb in the Chess Club. Each has found a niche. The system works.”

THE DEFINITION OF A HACK

Pressfield knew the definition of a hack from Robert McKee, who quipped that a hack is “a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.  The hack condescends to his audience. He thinks he’s superior to them. The truth is, he’s scared to death of them or, more accurately, scared of being authentic in front of them, scared of writing what he really feels or believes, what he himself thinks is interesting. He’s afraid it won’t sell. So he tries to anticipate what the market (a telling word) wants, then gives it to them… The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He’s a demagogue. He panders.”

Pressfield attributes the success of The Legend of Bagger Vance to his decision to write what he thinks he should write rather than what he thinks his readers would want, considering that first novels sell poorly, especially a novel about golf, which is hardly a popular topic.  His honesty to his self, paid off, his decision to trust what he wanted rather than condescend to what the reader want led to his string of subsequent successful titles.  He can’t overemphasize the importance of writing territorially rather than hierarchically.

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THE FRUITS OF OUR LABOR

Pressfield reiterates the instruction given by Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, and that we must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune, attention, or applause. “We were put here on earth to act as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us. Every breath we take, every heartbeat, every evolution of every cell comes from God and is sustained by God every second, just as every creation, invention, every bar of music or line of verse, every thought, vision, fantasy, every dumbass flop and stroke of genius comes from that infinite intelligence that created us and the universe in all its dimensions, out of the Void, the field of infinite potential, primal chaos, the Muse. To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion, is as true to reality as it gets.”

THE SUPREME VIRTUE

“Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: “Contempt for death.”  For us as artists, read “failure.” Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue. By confining our attention territorially to our own thoughts and actions—in other words, to the work and its demands—we cut the earth from beneath the blue-painted, shield-banging, spear-brandishing foe.”

To Recap

INTRODUCTION

•          Resistance is the arch enemy of creativity.  It is a destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a course of action that might do for us or others something that’s actually good.

•          We have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us.  What separates our two lives is Resistance.

BOOK ONE RESISTANCE

Defining the Enemy

  • Resistance is an inveterate liar and will do whatever it takes to persuade us to stay away from our life’s work, or at least to distract us, or convince us to do it tomorrow.
  • Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.
  • Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five.
  • The tale of Odysseus teaches us that Resistance is strongest at the finish line.
  • When a writer begins to overcome her Resistance—she may find that those close to her will resent her awakening and will oppose her efforts.

BOOK TWO COMBATING RESISTANCE

Turning Pro

  • While the amateur plays for fun, the professional plays for keeps.  While the amateur is a weekend warrior, the professional shows up daily. 
  • A professional does not wait for inspiration before working; he just works and sure enough, inspiration comes.
  • Pressfield’s training in Marine Corps taught him how to be miserable, which is invaluable for an artist.
  • These are the qualities of a professional: 1. we show up every day; 2.we show up no matter what; 3.we stay on the job all day; 4.we are committed over the long haul; 5.the stakes for us are high and real; 6.we accept remuneration for our labor; 7.we do not overidentify with our jobs; 8.we master the technique of our jobs; 9.we have a sense of humor about our jobs; and 10.we receive praise or blame in the real world.
  • In the real world, there is no such thing as poetic justice: adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls are hazards of the trade that we must deal with.
  • Pressfield advocates working and incorporating as a corporation because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and-consciousness-running-the-show.

BOOK THREE BEYOND RESISTANCE

The Higher Realm

  • There are invisible psychic forces that support us toward our craft.  We can opt to give these forces a personality and call it our daimon, genius, angel, or muse, or we can also consider these forces as impersonal laws such as gravity. 
  • Goethe: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.
  • A hack is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. The hack condescends to his audience.
  • Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: We have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, and that we must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune, attention, or applause
  • According to King Leonidas, contempt for death is the cardinal virtue of a warrior.  Contempt for failure is the cardinal virtue of an artist.

Click here to download the PDF version of this summary: https://romelbaja.home.blog/book-summaries/

Know more about Steven Pressfield, or order his books on this link: https://stevenpressfield.com/about/

MY BEST TOOLS SERIES: PART 1-ACCELERATED LEARNING SYSTEMS

How to Learn More in Less Time

Prologue            

                                Still wondering why you bungled an exam despite your preparations, hard work, prayers, and four bottles of Red Bull?  Or had you experienced days when the planets magically aligned and everything you did in your basketball game fell into place, only to find later that the zodiac changed when you were manned by a foul-mouthed trashtalker who had an equally foul-smelling armpits?  Is it possible to replicate the master-wizard proficiency of Floyd Mayweather in professional boxing, and Miyamoto Musashi in swordsmanship, who had never tasted defeat? 

                                These are the questions that entered my mind when I contemplated the meaning of life, even if I’m not really that philosophically inclined, because I was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder induced by my subpar (translation: dismal) performances in basketball games or exams despite my diligence and preparations.  I noticed that in everything that I do, and in all areas of my life, my results started to go north when I began to ask the preceding questions and started to develop a system composed of tools, mindsets, and hacks that helped me to perform better and more consistently.  This article is part of a series about the tools that I used in my system, which had greatly helped me to become more productive, focused, creative, impactful, and did I say happy, awesome, amazing, and ubercool? 

                                This is not an exhaustive survey of all the tools out there, but I will only limit myself to the tools that I had actually used and are battle-tested in the great arena of life and in the real world of Warcraft.  I don’t want to offer conjectures about the merits of tools I haven’t used because clairvoyance and precognition are not really my strong suit, despite dabbling in the I-Ching and Tarot.  I want to focus instead, on the scant knowledge that I actually derived from the empirical use of these tools.  Besides, at the end of these series, there would actually be too many tools that may be too cumbersome for you to use as a system—but this should not pose a problem because designing an optimum system for yourself means picking up and using only the tools that make sense to you.  I myself no longer use all of them because I continually look for better and slicker tools, and I discard like a soiled, sweaty, and smelly pair of socks, the tools that are no longer as useful on my journey.  Happy picking!  Or pick at your own risk? 

ACCELERATED LEARNING SYSTEMS

  • DiSS-CaFE Method by Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss is one of my favorite wizards and he is one of my virtual mentors.  His book, “The 4-Hour Workweek,” catapulted him to fame and he published more bestselling books, such as “The Tools of Titans,” “Tribes of Mentors,” “The 4-Hour Chef,” “The 4-Hour Body,” and “The Tao of Seneca.”  He is also the creator of the Tim Ferriss podcast, an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, a Yabusame (horseback archery) practitioner in Japan, a National Chinese Kickboxing champion, and a Guinness record-holder in tango (no kidding).  He calls himself a human laboratory and a professional dilettante on peak performance and his exceptional exploits speak a lot about the efficacy of his system, if you want to look for a proof of the pudding.  DiSS-CaFE is his mnemonic for this system, which sounds like that ubiquitous brown bottle of caffeine overloaded magic potion that boosts your power level.  Which is close enough actually, as to how this system works.

“D” stands for deconstruction or analyzing or taking apart the skillsets or areas of the field that we want to study.  In basketball, we can deconstruct this into shooting, dribbling or ballhandling, passing, defense, speed and strength training, etc., plus toilet training for child prodigies who start really that young. 

CTTO

The second step would be “S” which means selection.  This is the process of choosing or evaluating the important skills or the metaskill which is the most important skill that impacts how you use the other skills.  The Pareto Principle is a good framework for evaluating 20% of the skills that may account for 80% of the results of the training.

The next “S” is sequence or the order of how we will train for the different skillsets.  In my case, I usually do first the metaskill because the other skills will just fall into place.  Sometimes, I also opt for training first in the area which is the weakest link in my repertoire of skills.  Other times, I may go for a Band-Aid approach on my weaknesses and just cover them up, to focus instead, on optimizing my strengths.

The third “S” means stakes or committing to a voluntary and unpleasant task that will penalize your failure to achieve the timelines for achieving the goals.  Ferriss suggests giving donations to organizations that you hate, like the Ku Klux Klan.  Or why not the Lady Gaga or Blackpink Fans Club, or Trump for President Movement?  I like Lady Gaga and Blackpink just so you know.  Trump?  Uhmmm…ahhhh…uhmmm…my lawyer-friend is telling me to invoke my right to remain silent.

“C” stands for compression or how to make the most of our time by using methods or materials which compress or accelerate the acquisition of skills.  In football, playing futsal is the training which compresses the skills because futsal players have more contact with the ball because of the fewer players and smaller area of play compared to football.  In exams, compression means using materials which significantly reduce the learning curve, or the time required to master the topics such as summaries or cheatsheets.  BTW, cheating is not considered as compression—it’s acceleration. 

The next step is “F” or frequency of practice or study.  According to Daniel Coyle in his book, “The Talent Code,” the frequency of deep practice has a direct relation to the amount of myelin in our body.  Physiologically speaking, myelin is basically, the building blocks of talent.  The 10,000-Hour Rule, or sometimes known as the Ten-Year Rule, is the popular conception that it takes this period of time to produce world-class talent.  This was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller, “Outliers.” 

Tim Ferriss does not believe this, and he interposes the view that high-level skills can be developed in twelve weeks, or even six, based on his experience.  It is respectfully submitted that the latter is entirely possible, because modesty aside, I was able to achieve world-class mastery not in twelve, not in six, but in as little as three weeks, in playing Plants vs. Zombies by neglecting my job and my social life. 

The last step is “E” or encoding, which refers to the method for remembering the skills or process, in order to achieve consistency in performance.  This may refer to a framework, an X-step process, or mnemonics, such as that used here by Tim Ferriss, and other similar methods.  Keeping, and staring at the rejection letter that you had received from the head coach, or from your puppy love, is way more vivid and works much better and faster.

  • Speedreading, Memory Techniques, Mindmapping, and Study Techniques by Tony Buzan

There are many books and articles treating these topics separately, but all of these can be found on “Use Your Head” by Tony Buzan.  He has many other books about these topics but I had only read two of his books.

  • Speedreading

In essence, speedreading is done in the following steps:

  • Reading in groups of words, instead of single words.
  • Reading not at the normal speaking speed, but as fast as you can.
  • Using a pen or index finger as a pointer.
  • Not pausing at difficult passages but continuing on to the end.  The parts that are hard to understand may be contextualized and understood, if you have seen the entire picture.  Besides, you will have so much more time to review the difficult parts compared to conventional reading.
  • Memory Techniques

This book contains different systems on how to memorize concepts, names of persons, number strings, a deck of cards, etc., which unfortunately, cannot be elaborated on the limited space of this post.  These are similar to the methods used by Dominic O’Brien, to win at the World Memory Championship eight times.  O’Brien also published books along this line. The time you’ll spend to study the memory techniques which are applicable to your specific field, or for your education in general, is really worth it, like all the time you’ve spent shooting terrorists and fighting avatars on your mobiles. 

  • Mindmapping

Mindmapping is a method for jotting down, organizing, and presenting ideas.  It is organized around a central idea or the title of the concept which branches out into subheadings which are organized according to the relative importance of the ideas.  The main topics or headings are found near the center while the more specific subtopics and subheadings are projecting outwards.

  • Pros:
  • Easier and faster to read than conventional notes because it’s less verbose and wordy.
  • The ideas are presented in a more logical manner.
  • The relationships between different ideas are more apparent.
  • Better aesthetics because of the spiral pattern like a galaxy’s, and may incorporate drawings, symbols, colors, graphs, and other visual cues.
  • There is better comprehension and retention because of the preceding reasons.
  • Cons:
  • It takes more time to prepare.
  • Not suitable for lectures where full attention is required—the thought required for organizing the mindmap divides one’s attention and focus away from the lectures.
  • During lectures, it draws a lot of stares, questions, and sarcasms from seatmates.  Trust me on this because I speak from experience.  Unless, you want your crush to notice you…
  • Study Techniques    

Tony Buzan has a system on how to study faster, more efficiently, with better retention, and greater mastery which he calls BOST or Buzan Organic Study Techniques.  Lack of space precludes me from discussing extensively his system except that it incorporates speedreading, memory techniques, mindmapping, a method on how to study, and how, and when to review for optimum retention.

  • Photoreading and Direct Learning by Paul Scheele
  • Photoreading

Paul Scheele is an author of books and courses on photoreading and other mind hacks.  If speedreading is badass, think of photoreading as speedreading on steroids.  In our information age, the ability to process information faster is a god-send whether you are consuming books, articles, blogs, or girly sites.  Photoreading is a 5-step process:

  • Prepare

To prepare means bringing our mind to a relaxed state of awareness and stating our purpose for reading.  Our purpose, whether to have an overview of a new material, master a difficult field, to just read for sheer pleasure, the ultimate and most decadent bacon-wrapped meatloaf recipe, will determine how we will finetune the other steps.

  • Preview

Previewing means to browse the material and mentally note the structure and organization by going over the front and back covers, inside jacket, table of contents, keywords, highlighted or bold fonts, summaries, index, and other visual cues.

  • Photoread

It is said that only about 10% of our mental processes is at the conscious level, the rest is subconscious.  In essence, photoreading is different from conventional reading because its process seeks to leverage the power of the subconscious mind.  This is done not by reading in single words or group of words as in conventional and speed reading respectively, but as its name implies, by taking snapshots of the pages at the rate of about a page a second.  This is done by using “soft” gaze or peripheral vision to scan the whole page.  Soft gaze and photoreading are superpower, but the gaze used by Cyclops to obliterate an entire library is not the kind contemplated here.

  • Activate

At this point, the reader has the option to continue with the next step, or take a break to allow the material to sink in, and give the subconscious mind more time to process the material, especially if you’ve photoread an entire book, a very lengthy online article, or an entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica.  Kidding.  Spare the encyclopedia, or your eyes.  Sleeping, the domain of the subconscious, helps a lot, if you have the time.  Activation is done by super-reading and mindmapping, whether a mental or physical one.  I usually do the mindmapping first so that I can organize the material and test my understanding of the topics. 

Super-reading is done not by reading entire pages but by sort of, flying over a page and homing in on the parts where instinct, or inspiration, or similar terms, used to signify the action of the subconscious takes you.  If a difficult passage is encountered, it is better not to linger too much and continue the super-reading because the difficulty may be clarified by the other contents, or by seeing the entire perspective of the book.    

  • Rapid Read

Rapid reading is done by reading the parts that you still need to work on.  Like super-reading, rapid reading also does not require reading the entire material, but only the more important passages because not all pages or chapters are created equal.  You should focus on the passages, pages, or chapters that provide the knowledge or information that you need.  The exception is when you’re reading Fifty Shades of Grey for pure reading pleasure (translation: voyeurism) and you want to read the book in its entirety.  You’re saying?  Did I read it?  WHAT A DUMB AND INSENSITIVE QUESTION!!!  Of course, no self-respecting gentleman like me would do that!  Not trying to change the topic, but shall we continue?

  • Direct Learning

This is another of Paul Scheele’s accelerated learning system for mastering new fields in a short period of time.  In essence, direct learning is done by collating the best books on the field that you want to master, and using his photoreading system as a metaskill to master the skillsets required to accelerate learning in this new field.  Direct learning does not imply reading all the books from cover to cover but also uses survey reading or partial reading of books, depending on its relative importance or the needs of the reader.           

  • 3-Pass Method by Tai Lopez

I like this dude.  His “67-Steps Program” made him famous at a young age.  But he became even more famous for interrupting our Youtube viewing pleasure with his ubiquitous ads.  On second thought, I unlike this dude.  This is his 3-Pass Method:

  • First Pass

Previewing the entire book.  Browse the front and back covers, inside jacket, about the author, table of contents, summaries, or anything of significance.  Do this for about 5 minutes.

  • Second Pass

Skim through the chapters until the end of the book.  Find the chapter that looks the most interesting to read.  This can be done for about 30 minutes.

  • Third Pass

Read an entire chapter or two, for about one hour.

Wise asses will object that this is a very superficial way to read.  It is.  But so are a lot of books out there.  So many full-length books are best written as an essay (which has little or no prospect for royalties), and can be summed up in a single paragraph, or even a single sentence (compound-complex, hehehe).  These kinds of books are inflated with anecdotes, examples, repetitions, redundancies, circumlocutions, and other fillers.  So unlike this scholarly article which is not only full of substance, but is also backed by the highest standards of research and scholarship, written in elegant prose, conforms to the most meticulous APA standard for format and style, and presented with all the complexity, depth, nuances, and subtlety of zombie movies.  

The 3-Pass Method can be used as a filter for these kinds of books and to determine if a book deserves the full treatment.  BTW, since the devil is in the details, the fine print, or the Terms of Agreement with a red “Accept” button, there is actually a secret Italian sauce for the 3-Pass Method to work—the Pareto Principle.  Choosing the chapter or two to focus on, is all about finding the kernel or golden nugget of the book, which is the 20% of the pages that accounts for 80% of the main ideas of the book.  As a rule of thumb, or any available finger in case you have none, this is usually found at the preface or introduction, the first chapter, the last, or if there is a planetary alignment—in a summary or chapter summaries.  When the zodiac does not so cooperate because of a certain guy named Murphy, you should don your Sherlock Holmes hat and stalk this kernel at the table of contents.

Epilogue

Now you know the secrets of those who claim to read a book a day.  Or those who trounced you “effortlessly” in academics.  But a few reminders: First, these systems may take some time to get used to.  Do not learn them in the middle of your preparations for important exams or competitions, unless you are prepared to risk a temporary confusion and dislocation of your methods for a longterm upside.  Secondly, not all readers are leaders…  If you read the profiles of celebrities and leaders profiled in Tim Ferriss’s “Tools of Titans,” a lot of them emphasize the importance of taking action.  Success is not about how well you read, but how well you execute.  As Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby, would put it, “If information were the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”  Finally, don’t raise your expectation bar too high because you will not become the wizard of Hogwarts yet—there is more to achieving excellence than meets the eye.  As a counterpoint to the tools, Einstein would say that “Too much reading creates lazy habits of thinking.”  Comprende?  

Now, how’s that for an anticlimactic and demotivational ending for an article on how to pursue excellence.  If you have ubercool tools on your belt, toolbox, or two-thousand square foot walk-in closet, feel free to share your tools at the comment section, or you can email me at my “Contact” page.  I will update this in the future after I have used better and slicker tools.  Watch out for Part 2 of these series.  Pax, pax!

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