My friend Gretchen Rubin, of the Happiness Project, posted a great one-minute video titled "The Years Are Short." Awesome pictures of New York City with one of those relaxing soundtracks that always puts me at ease. Oh, and the idea that "the days are long, but the years are short" is worth remembering. Well done, Gretchen.
Obviousness Hinders Your Persuasion Ability
Last weekend I spent one full day at a liberal event / conference and one full day at a conservative event / conference. They were unrelated but happened to be on consecutive days. It was fascinating to get inside the heads of people who are leading the political movements on both ends of the spectrum.
The line of the weekend came at the conservative event, where one person said: "Organized and wrong beats unorganized and right, election after election." Translation: We may have the better ideas, but if we don’t organize ourselves we’re still going to lose.
It sparked a somewhat related idea. Sometimes we get so enamored with our ideas — so convinced of their moral goodness! — that we forget about actually trying to convince those who do not just "get it".
The more obvious something is to you, the worse a persuader you are to the uninitiated. Because of its obviousness to you, the harder it is to really truly actually understand how someone arrives at the idea through deliberation versus common sense snap judgment.
Assuming you seek to convert skeptics, the best evangelists, then, are not necessarily the most passionate believers in the cause / product, but rather those who took some convincing in order to see it your way.
In other words, an environmental organization that seeks to engage new, uninvolved people in their movement should hire someone who used to be an uninvolved person. Someone who needed to be persuaded, as then they can employ the same logic unto others. Yet I’m guessing most environmental organizations are headed by life-long tree huggers, who probably have a hard time seeing the world any other way.
Tell ‘Em What You’re Gonna Tell ‘Em, Tell ‘Em…
And then tell ’em what you told them. That’s a presentation / public speaking golden rule.
The easy way to incorporate this principle into persuasive speaking is to be very explicit about all the stages of your presentation and then announce when you’re in each stage.
Here’s one reason why. While listening to someone speak the other day, I zoned out. I disengaged. When I was ready to re-engage in her talk, I didn’t know where she was — I had no guidepost — and so it was harder to know how and when to start focusing again. So, I stayed “checked-out” for the rest of her speech. My take-away: A great way to keep the attention of your audience over a longer talk is to break your speech into chunks and announce when you’re entering a new chunk, which is like offering a life raft to someone who wants to re-enter the concentration zone at the beginning of a thought, rather than in the meandering middle.
Optimize Activity for Location
A few weeks ago Auren made a point that I always think about when I’m on airplanes and see people squeeze their elbows in and struggle to open and use their laptops. Unless you’re in a spacious first class cabin, working on your laptop during a flight is almost always sub-optimal from a productivity perspective.
Your efficiency at the activity is affected by the physical environment you find yourself in. Flights can be bumpy, elbow room skimpy, and wi-fi or power sources non-existent. Yet many people make it a habit to work on their laptop all during a flight. Sure, there are some times when you absolutely have to get some work done, but this isn’t every day.
The single most efficient activity to do on a plane, in my opinion, is reading. I get tons of reading done of a flight, due to my physical immobility, consistent light, and general quiet (especially if you’re wearing a Bose headset).
To take the reading point one step further, some types of reading are better for different environments. I usually read harder stuff / academic books on airplanes because I have maximum concentration. I usually read magazines and lighter fare (paperback) on the stationary bike because there are noises and, well, I’m exercising. In the car I listen primarily to fiction audiobooks, because I have less a desire to underline / take notes with fiction. In bed I read hard stuff (and anything I want to remember — we remember that which we read / do right before going to bed). At restaurants or cafes, when I’m reading alone, I usually bring magazines or articles because they’re easier to fold and place on a table while you’re eating (impossible with hardbacks).
So, when thinking about what you’re going to do, think about where you’re going to be, and how that place will affect your productivity at completing the activity.
The Illusion of Knowledge
The illusion of knowledge is worse than knowledge itself.
One risk when receiving a broad, liberal arts education, replete with generalist courses like “Questions of Civilization,” is that it’s tempting to believe that the two days your Civ class spends on the Koran is all you need to know. In other words, you spend a couple days on the Koran, and then move on, and in your mind you check the “Koran” box, and don’t feel it necessary to really dig into it later on.
Sure, perhaps that limited exposure actually motivates you to dig into the text in a way blind ignorance would not. But I’m not so sure.
I think chipping away in superficial, very high level way at a massively complex topic or book can almost be worse than spending no time on it at all. I’d rather have college students walk around knowing they were completely ignorant about the Koran than think they even understand something.
I prefer knowingly ignorant to superficially informed. Of course it’s possible to be both superficially informed and aware of that fact, which is the best of these worlds, but I wouldn’t place this bet on a typical college campus.