SD#51: Single-tasking, non-coercive marketing and greatness
January 15, 2023
Hi friends,
Hope you’re having a good start to the year. Today we delve into the philosophy of travelling and politics within friendships. Both everyday subjects yet we don’t think about the deeper meanings often. We’ll also look at some ways to practice self-care when you feel anxious, which we all do let’s be honest.
Our seven ideas this week:
1. (Marketing) More messages mean less effectiveness If we were to look at ads that just went with a single key message we can treat this singular message as our index of 100. Add a second message and those remembering the first message now falls by a third but this is offset by equivalent levels of recall for the second message. Add a third message and the original message loses a little recall, the second message loses a lot, and the new third rights message makes very little impact at all. Add the fourth message and all four causes take a major hit and – for the first time – the total number of recalled messages declines. We are now officially throwing shit against the wall. There is usually one – perhaps two – big, hairy important drivers of brand switch or trial that need to be communicated. Other arguments exist but have significantly less persuasive power. By communicating four things badly, you lose the opportunity of communicating one or two more powerful arguments well. Less is therefore more. Mark Ritson via Marketing Week |
2. (Productivity) The case for single-tasking Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell defined multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously as effectively as one”. Trying to multitask can not only hurt our productivity but also our ability to learn. Fortunately, there is an alternative way to boost your efficiency: single-tasking. Researchers Kevin Madore and Anthony Wagner investigated what happens to the brain when trying to handle more than one task at a time. They found that “the human mind and brain lack the architecture to perform two or more tasks simultaneously.” That’s why multitasking leads to decrements in performance when compared to performing tasks one at a time. Furthermore, it is worrying that those who multitask often inaccurately consider their efforts to be effective, as studies have demonstrated that multitasking leads to an over-inflated belief in one’s own ability to do so. Not only are we bad at multitasking, but we can’t seem to be able to see it. Ness Labs |
3. (Marketing) Non-coercive marketing: A new philosophy of marketing, rooted in letting go of control, and trusting people to be their own authority Non-coercive marketing places full authority and trust in people. It creates the conditions under which they can make empowered decisions for themselves, and do so in their own time. It doesn’t seek to persuade, manipulate, or pester people into a decision that’s already been made for them. It merely opens new doors, tells the truth about what’s behind those doors, then surrenders the outcome, trusting that the right people will step through when they’re ready. In that way, non-coercive marketing is a leap of faith, rooted in the idea that if you stop trying to control people, and encourage them to be their own authority, you can build positive sum relationships that lead to organic and mutually-enriching transactions. This relational shift is also at the heart of how we begin healing the emotional wounds lying beneath humanity’s many problems. The key ingredient in non-coercive marketing is the golden rule. We should market to others the way we’d want to be marketed to ourselves. But when we’re at war with ourselves and when we treat ourselves in shitty, coercive ways, we often end up treating others that way without realizing it. Self-coercion and distrust are the emotional water our society swims in, and our external world reflects that. Turns out, when your inner world is full of conflict, and when your actions are rooted in insecurity and distrust, the golden rule isn’t worth a whole lot. Ungated |
4. (Productivity) Greatness is not about overnight successes or flashes of excellence, but periods of repeatable habits The first step in becoming great is recognising that you’re likely not already great. It comes from recognizing that there is no such thing as greatness at a specific instance in time. Greatness is instead a reflection of a period of effort since greatness in a single instance can be reduced to luck. Moreover, being “great” is not about being better than someone else. It is about being dependable and disciplined, and ultimately it is earned. There’s a false impression that success or notoriety comes with being flashy. This notion comes from the media focusing on outliers, whether it be events or personalities which diverge from the norm. Not only can this encourage people to aim for notoriety just for the sake of it (think Elizabeth Holmes), but it makes the rest of us believe that correlation (of those outliers) is causation; in other words, the success of those individuals is due to their offbeat ways. But here’s another storyline: the surest and therefore the best way to “success” is through consistency. There is no “magic moment” when you become great, so if you are looking for your path towards greatness, stop looking for “greatness” and consider that your most probable path there is just to focus on what’s good. If you have an understanding of what inputs equal favourable outputs then continue moving in that direction. As you move past the local minima and maxima, you’ll soon be beating out the 50% that quit at X time, the 75% that quit at Y time, and the 90% that quit at Z time. Soon enough, you’ll be the great one that was once just “good” among the rest, but stuck with it and learned something along the way. Steph Smith |
5. (Psychology) We travel initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves Getting lost in a foreign land is one of the best ways to get perspective on your own life. We travel “initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves,” as Pico Iyer writes. The breath of foreign air jolts you out of your entrenched ways and opens you up to new ways of being. The French call this dépaysement, the disorientation you feel when you travel to a strange land. Your world becomes topsy-turvy. Your sense of proper and improper shifts. You learn to laugh at things that would anger you at home. The majority becomes the minority. Surrounded by the echoes of a language you don’t know, you return to infancy when your mother tongue was foreign to you. You become a young fool again. Ozan Varol |
6. (Friendships) When politics is understood as war, genuine friendship becomes difficult because friendship contributes nothing to the cause All around us, friendships old and new are coming to grief over politics. What is the cause of this? Part of the problem relates to how we practice politics today: we have become more warlike and tribal. Another part of the problem stems from our contemporary understanding of friendship. Genuine friendship places weighty demands on us, and most of us prefer relationships that are quicker and easier, and thus less enduring. Politics and friendship are deeply connected. As strange as it sounds, how we understand what politics is, affects the kinds of friendships we are likely to enjoy. And, conversely, how we understand friendship will affect our practice of politics. What exactly is the connection between politics and friendship, and how should we assess the relative value of each when they come into conflict? Comment |
7. (Psychology) Ways to practice self-care when you feel anxious In an evolutionary sense, anxiety is designed to grip us, and not let us take our eye or our mind off the source of the threat. In modern times, when we’re anxious, we tirelessly overthink, trying to resolve the sense of threat we’re feeling. This is exhausting. It often disrupts sleep, relationships, and concentration. And it usually clouds our thinking rather than makes us feel clearer. Modern anxiety is usually about threats that we fear will spiral into catastrophes. For example, an imperfection within your performance is revealed, and you worry it will be the start of many mistakes and losing your status, career, and whatever else you have worked hard for. One simple but effective strategy, say to yourself, “there’s no emergency right now. I can allow myself to take my eye off this threat for the next minute.” Permit yourself to take a single minute off from stressing about the problem. Then, extend this, to five minutes or 10 minutes. Another technique is to think about what would someone who is just as smart or conscientious as you, but who thinks differently than you, think about the topic of your anxiety. What would they think are your options for resolving it or moving forward with your anxiety? Psychology Today |
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom