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1) “Nobody wants to read your shit.”
Nobody wants to read your shit.
Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.
Pressfield’s not being cruel. He’s saying you need to give the reader a reason to care. Don’t assume they will. Be fun or informative.
2) Before you try to be clever, be clear.
Don’t get fancy until you’re sure you’re getting your point across.
Research shows things that are easy for our brain to process
3) Tell stories, not stats.
Stories are
In the average one-minute speech, the typical student uses 2.5 statistics. Only one student in ten tells a story. Those are the speaking statistics. The “remembering” statistics, on the other hand, are almost a mirror image: When students are asked to recall the speeches, 63 percent remember the stories. Only 5 percent remember any individual statistic.
4) Consider your audience.
You are powerfully attracted to and influenced by
It’s as simple as thinking about what words they use. Research shows mimicking another person’s word choice
5) Your words matter. Your metaphors matter.
In
It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.
Some words and metaphors may seem interchangeable to you but people aren’t always that rational.
Back in the mid-1990’s, a majority of Americans (55 percent) said that emergency room care “should not be given” to illegal aliens. Yet only 38 percent said it should be “denied” to them.
Same end result but “denying” feels more harsh than “not giving.” When crime is described as a “beast” people favor police and jails,
Don’t just think about what you’re literally trying to say, think about how the reader will emotionally interpret your words.
Again, the five are:
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Key Ideas
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Whenever writing on a given or chosen topic, make sure that you have chosen a subject people will actually feel like reading.
Do not just start telling the story of your life, but rather present facts or ideas that could appeal to anybody.
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We all like to talk smart. However, when expressing your ideas, the most important is that you make sure they reach the other person.
For that to happen, it is safer to use smaller words and less complicated phrases.
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When transmitting your information, try doing this by presenting the fact as elements of a story rather than simple statistics.
Research has shown that individuals tend to remember more easily speeches than figures.
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If you want to make sure that your message will be successfully received and understood, you must first know and understand your audience.
Being familiar with your audience’s preferences will lead to advantages on both sides.
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Next time you write an article bear in mind that you must be as accurate as possible. Therefore, choose words that can be understood by everybody at anytime, in the same way.
And do not forget: people cannot know what you know, so why taking the risk of not being clear enough?
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Readers understand and remember material far better when it is expressed in concrete language that allows them to form visual images. So trying to make the reader “see” is a good goal and b...
Don't increase the complexity of your vocabulary just to give the impression of intelligence. This actually makes you look stupid.
Treat the reader as an equal. If you’re trying to impress, at best you will make the reader feel dumb. And nobody likes to feel dumb.
Once you know something you assume others do too. It’s human nature. And that leads to bad writing.
'The curse of knowledge' refers to the inability that we all have in imagining what it’s like not to know something that we do know.
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Key Ideas
Logic is fundamental to most of humanity’s knowledge, but there are common fallacies in logic and reasoning, errors of judgement which happen due to:
If two incidents or things happen at around the same time does not mean that one thing is the result of the other. Often many things occur at the same time yet are completely unrelated.
A correlation of data, like:
1) Increase in social media usage, and
2) Increase in anxiety and depression
does not mean that one set of data is caused by the other.
The Slippery Slope fallacy is a mistaken belief that one relatively mild unaddressed problem or allowance will automatically lead to other negative consequences.
The mind races on to the next negative consequence like a downward spiral, creating fear and anxiety.
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Key Ideas
... and boils down to what we give up to attain something. Our mindsets are inclined towards pleasure and resistive towards pain. We normally like to think in terms of gai...
Decisions are a cost-benefit analysis of risking something small for the opportunity to gain something big.
Trade-offs are not something as simple as flipping a coin. Our values guide us towards what we want in life, and it is not the same for all. Example: Buying a house has a trade-off of mortgage for the next ten or more years. This is subjective and depends on what we value in life.
Indecisive people suffer because they don’t know their inner values and what they care about.