Category: Other Books

I recently finished reading “To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others” by Daniel H. Pink. The quotes I found most interesting are below. As always, if you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

“One of the most effective ways of moving others is to uncover challenges they may not know they have.” (5)

“In just three years, Kickstarter surpassed the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts as the largest backer of arts projects in the United States.” (31)

“A world of flat organizations and tumultuous business conditions – and that’s our world – punishes fixed skills and prizes elastic ones. What an individual does day to day on the job now must stretch across functional boundaries. Designers analyze. Analysts design. Marketers create. Creators market. And when the next technologies emerge and current business models collapse, those skills will need to stretch again in different directions.” (36)

“People who don’t have the power or authority from their job title have to find other ways to exert power.” (36)

“Start your encounters with the assumption that you’re in a position of lower power. That will help you see the other side’s perspective more accurately, which, in turn, will help you move them.” (73)

“A Dutch study found that waitresses who repeated diners’ orders word for word earned 70 percent more tips than those who paraphrased orders – and that customers with servers who mimicked were more satisfied with their dining experience.” (77)

“Several studies have shown that when restaurant servers touch patrons lightly on the arm or shoulder, diners leave larger tips.” (78)

“Yes, positive self-talk is generally more effective than negative self-talk. But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions.” (101)

“Researchers found that inserting a mild profanity like “damn” into a speech increases the persuasiveness of the speech and listeners’ perception of the speaker’s intensity.” (106)

“Once positive emotions outnumbered negative emotions by 3 to 1 – that is for every three instances of feeling gratitude, interest or contentment, they experienced only one instance of anger, guilt, or embarrassment – people generally floursihed. Those below that ratio usually did not.” (108)

“Optimism, it turns out, isn’t a hollow sentiment. It’s a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stoke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.” (111)

“When something bad occurs, ask yourself three questions – and come up with an intelligent way to answer each one “no”;
1. Is this permanent?
2. Is this pervasive?
3. Is this personal?

The more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity.” (119)

“Research has shown that “thinking about the future self elicits neural activation patterns that are similar to neural activation patterns elicited by thinking about a stranger.” (126)

“If I know precisely what my problem is, I can often find the information I need to make my decision without any assistance. The services of others are far more valuable when I’m mistaken, confused, or completely clueless about my true problem. In those situations, the ability to move others hinges less on problem solving than on problem finding.” (127)

“The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained…” Gretzels concluded. “It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship, that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field.” (129)

“People most disposed to creative breakthroughs in art, science, or any endeavor tend to be problem finders. These people sort through vast amounts of information and inputs, often from multiple disciplines; experiment with a variety of different approaches; are willing to switch directions in the course of a project; and often take longer than their counterparts to complete their work.” (129)

“In the past, the best salespeople were adept at accessing information. Today, they must be skilled in curating it.” (132)

“In the past, the best salespeople were skilled at answering questions. Today, they must be good at asking questions.” (132)

“We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation.” (134)

“Adding an inexpensive item to a product offering can lead to a decline in consumers’ willingness to pay.” (136)

“Several researchers have shown that people derive much greater satisfaction from purchasing experiences than they do from purchasing goods.” (136)

“As time goes by, we tend to forget the small-level annoyances and remember the higher-level joys. Experiences also give us something to talk about and stories to tell, which can help us connect with others and deepen our own identities, both of which boost satisfaction.” (137)

“Framing a sale in experiential terms is more likely to lead to satisfied customers and repeat business.” (137)

“In many cases the people who’d gotten that small dose of negative information were more likely to purchase the boots than those who’d received the exclusively positive information.” (139)

“Researched dubbed this phenomenon the “blemishing effect” – where “adding a minor negative detail in an otherwise positive description of a target can give that description a more positive impact.” But the blemishing effect seems to operate only under two circumstances. First, the people processing the information must be in what the researchers call a “low effort” state. That is, instead of focusing resolutely on the decision, they’re proceeding with a little less effort – perhaps because they’re busy or distracted. Second, the negative information must follow the positive information, not the reverse.” (139)

“The core logic is that when individuals encounter weak negative information after already having received positive information, the weak negative information ironically highlights or increases the salience of the positive information.” (139)

“Researchers tested two different Facebook ads for the same comedian. Half the ads said the comedian, Kevin Shea, “Could be the next big thing.” The other half said, “He is the next big thing.” The first ad generated far more click-throughs and likes than the second.” (140)

“People often find potential more interesting than accomplishment because it’s more uncertain, the researchers argue. That uncertainty can lead people to think more deeply about the person they’re evaluating – and the more intensive processing that requires can lead to generating more and better reasons why the person is a good choice.” (141)

“Rational questions are ineffective for motivating resistant people. Instead I’ve found that irrational questions actually motivate people better.” (145)

“In the old days, our challenge was accessing information. These days, our challenge is curating it.” (147)

“Their central finding was that the success of a pitch depends as much on the catcher as the pitcher… The catchers took passion, wit, and quirkiness as positive cues – and slickness, trying too hard, and offering lots of different ideas as negative ones. If the catcher categorized the pitcher as “uncreative” in the first few minutes, the meeting was essentially over even if it had not actually ended.” (157)

“Once the catcher feels like a creative collaborator, the odds of rejection diminish.” (158)

“The purpose of a pitch isn’t necessarily to move others immediately to adopt your idea. The purpose is to offer something so compelling that it begins a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you. In a world where buyers have ample information and an array of choices, the pitch is often the first word, but it’s rarely the last.” (158)

“Reducing your point to that single word demands discipline and forces clarity. Choose the proper word, and the rest can fall into place.” (161)

“Several scholars have found that questions can outperform statements in persuading others.” (162)

“The researchers also found that when the underlying arguments were weak, presenting them in the interrogative form had a negative effect.” (162)

“By making people work just a little harder, question pitches prompt people to come up with their own reasons for agreeing (or not). And when people summon their own reasons for believing something, they endorse the belief more strongly and become more likely to act on it.” (163)

“Summarizing your main point with a rhyme gives council members a way to talk about your proposal when they deliberate.” (166)

“Pitches that rhyme are more sublime.” (166)

“Utility worked better when recipients had lots of email, but “curiosity drove attention to email under conditions of low demand.” (167)

“Your email subject line should be either obviously useful (Found the best & cheapest photocopier) or mysteriously intriguing (A photocopy breakthrough!), but probably not both (The Canon IR5255 is a photocopy breakthrough). And considering the volume of email most people contend with, usefulness will often trump intrigue, although tapping recipients’ inherent curiosity, in the form of a provocative or even blank subject line, can be surprisingly effective in some circumstances.” (167)

“Readers assigned the highest ratings to tweets that asked questions of followers.” (169)

“A deep structure of storytelling involves six sequential circumstances: Once upon a time _. Every day, _. One day _. Because of that, _. Because of that _. Until finally _.” (171)

“During pitches/presentations: Go first if you’re the incumbent, last if you’re the challenger. The market leader is more likely to get selected if it presents first. But for a challenger, the best spot, by far, is to present last… The middle is the place you’re most likely to get run over.” (182)

“Granular numbers are more credible than coarse numbers. (i.e. Use 120 minutes instead of 2 hours.)” (182)

“Listening without some degree of intimacy isn’t really listening. It’s passive and transactional rather than active and engaged. Genuine listening is a bit like driving on a rain-slicked highway. Speed kills.” (191)

“Those who say ‘yes” are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say ‘no’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.” (202)

“Health and safety messages should focus not on the self, but rather on the target group that is perceived as most vulnerable.” (217)

“Another group of university call center employees read stories for five minutes from university alumni who’d received scholarships funded by the money this call center had raised describing how those scholarships had helped them before making calls. This group more than doubled the pledges they raised.” (218)

“The successful seller must feel some commitment that his product offers mankind as much altruistic benefit as it yields the seller in money.” (220)

If you liked the quotes, please buy the book here.

I recently read The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. As always, if you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

“Many circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come into view.” (1)

“A simple way to practices it’s all invented is to ask yourself this question:
What assumption am I making,
That I’m not aware I’m making,
That gives me what I see?

And when you have an answer to that question, ask yourself this one:

What might I now invent,
That I haven’t yet invented,
That would give me other choices?” (15)

“I actively train my students that when they make a mistake, they are to lift their arms in the air, smile, and say, “How fascinating!” I recommend that everyone try this.” (31)

“The player who looks least engaged may be the most committed member of the group. A cynic, after all, is a passionate person who does not want to be disappointed again.” (39)

“The secret is not to speak to a person’s cynicism, but to speak to her passion.” (39)

“Giving yourself an A is not about boasting or raising your self-esteem. It has nothing to do with reciting your accomplishments. The freely granted A lifts you off the success/failure ladder and spirits you away from the world of measurement into the universe of possibility. It is a framework that allows you to see all of who you are and be all of who you are, without having to resist or deny any part of yourself.” (46)

“The drive to be successful and the fear of failure are, like the head and tail of a coin, inseparably linked,” (56)

“The fearful question, “Is it enough?” and the even more fearful question, “Am I loved for who I am, or for what I have accomplished?” could both be replaced by the joyful question, “How will I be a contribution today?” (57)

“Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.” (59)

“A person cannot live a full life under the shadow of bitterness.” (64)

“A monumental question for leaders in any organization to consider is: how much greatness are we willing to grant people? Because it makes all the difference at every level who it is we decided we are leading.” (73)

“Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so godamm seriously.’ ‘Ah,’ says his visitor. ‘That is a fine rule.’ After a moment of pondering, he inquires, ‘And what, may I ask, are the other rules?’ “there aren’t any.’” (79)

“Humor and laughter are perhaps the best way we can “get over ourselves.”” (80)

“Frank Sulloway (MIT) suggests that we think of “personality” as a strategy for “getting out of childhood alive.”” (82)

“Whenever somebody gives up their pride to reveal a truth ot others, we find it incredibly moving.” (89)

“Unlike the calculating self, the central self is neither a pattern of action nor a set of strategies. It does not need an identity; it is its own pure expression. It is what a person who has survived – and knows it – looks like. The central self smiles at the calculating self’s perceptions, understanding that they are the relics of our ancestry, the necessary illusions of childhood.” (95)

“Being present to the way things are is not the same as accepting things as they are in the resigned way of the cow.” (100)

“The capacity to be present to everything that is happening, without resistance, creates possibility.” (101)

“If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.” (102)

“Shine attention on obstacles and problems and they multiply lavishly.” (108)

“Enrolling is not about forcing, cajoling, tricking, bargaining, pressuring, or guilt-tripping someone into doing something your way. Enrollment is the art and practice of generating a spark of possibility for others to share.” (125)

“I genuinely wanted to share the music with the children, and I trusted their ability to respond to it and to be partners with me in our whole undertaking.” (134)

“Money has a way of showing up around contribution because money is one of the currencies through which people show they are enrolled in the possibility you are offering.” (173)

“If we describe revenge, greed, pride, fear, and self-righteousness as the villains – and people as the hope – we will come together to create possibility.” (190)

If you liked the quotes, please buy the book here.

I recently read “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character” by Paul Tough. Here are the quotes I found most interesting. As always, if you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

“What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence.” (xv)

“It wasn’t poverty itself that was compromising the executive function abilities of the poor kids. It was the stress that went along with it.” (20)

“It was the licking-and-grooming habits of the rearing rat mother that mattered. When a pup received the comforting experience of lickign and grooming as an infant, it grew up to be braver and bolder and better adjusted than a pup who hadn’t, whether or not its biological mother was the one who had done the licking and grooming.” (30)

“It showed that, in rats at least, subtle parental behaviors had predictable and long-lasting DNA-related effects that could actually be traced and observed.” (31)

“Babies whose parents responded readily and fully to their cries in the first months of life were, at one year, more independent and intrepid than babies whose parents had ignored their cries.” (33)

“Pure IQ is stubbornly resistant to improvement after about age eight. But executive functions and the ability to handle stress and manage strong emotions can be improved, sometimes dramatically, well into adolescence and even adulthood.” (43)

“There was always this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful. Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that.” (56)

“People who have an easy time of things, who get eigh hundreds on their SATs, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.” (57)

“Duckworth finds it useful to divide the mechanics of achievement into two separate dimensions: motivation and volition.” (64)

“A psychologist found that the test that most reliably predicted a high-school student’s future didn’t measure IQ; it measured how a student’s peers rated him on a trait Smith called “strength of character,” which included being “conscientious, responsible, insistently orderly, not prone to daydreaming, determined, persevering.” This measure was three times more successful in predicting college performance than any combination of cognitive ratings, including SAT scores and class rank.” (72)

“Regardless of the facts on the malleability of intelligence, students do much better academically if they believe intelligence is malleable.” (97)

“Most people won’t tell teenage girls (especially the together, articulate ones) that they are lazy and the quality of their work is unacceptable. And sometimes kids need to hear that, or they have no reason to step up.” (120)

“A lot of people with attention issues crave intense experiences and serious stimulations, they want to be absorbed in some sort of all-encompassing pursuit.” (130)

“When it comes to ambitions, it is crucial to distinguish between ‘wanting’ something and ‘choosing’ it. Decide that you want to become world champion, Rowson explained, and you will inevitably fail to put in the necessary hard work. You will not only not become world champion but also have the unpleasant experience of falling short of a desired goal, with all the attendant disappointment and regret. If, however, you choose to become world champion, then you will “reveal your choice through your behavior and your determination. Every action says, ‘This is who I am.’” (131)

“Standardized-test scores were predicted by scores on pure IQ tests and that GPA was predicted by scores on tests of self-control.” (153)

“Whether or not a student is able to graduate from a decent American college doesn’t necessarily have all that much to do with how smart he or she is. It has to do, instead, with that same list of character strengths that produce high GPAs in middle school and high school.” (153)

If you liked the quotes, please buy the book here.

Here’s quotes I found most interesting from Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis. If you find the quotes useful, please buy the book here.

“I think it is easier to take someone in the fishing industry and teach him about currency trading,” Stefan Alfsson says, “than to take someone from the banking industry and teach them how to fish.”” (34)

“A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will.” (97)

“There is an ancient rule of financial life – if you owe the bank 5 million bucks, the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank 5 billion bucks, you own the bank.” (125)

“The scary thing about state treasurers,” Meredith Whitney said “is that they don’t know the financial situation in their own municipalities.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I asked them!” (177)

“Those who have money and can move do so,” Whitney wrote in her report to her Wall Street clients, “those without money and who cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance. It becomes effectively a ‘tragedy of the commons.’”” (177)

Arnold Schwarzenegger: “There were times of disappointment. But if you want to live rather than just exist, you want the drama.” (189)

“The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death.” (202)

“The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. THey’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences.” (202)

“Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward.” (205)

“Nobody cared in 2007 how much I made. If I made six figures they said, ‘Shit, man, you deserve it. You run into a burning building.’ Because everyone had a job. All they knew about our job is that it was dangerous. The minute the economy started to collapse, people started looking at each other.” (210)

As always, if you liked the quotes, please buy the book.

Here’s the quotes I found most interesting from The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie To Everyone – Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely. As always, if you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

“People are more apt to be dishonest in the presence of nonmonetary objects – such as pencils and tokens – than actual money.” (34)

“The more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips.” (34)

“Generally speaking, if you wear down your willpower, you will have considerably more trouble regulating your desires, and that difficulty can wear down your honesty as well.” (106)

“We should face situation that require self-control-a particularly tedious assignment at work, for example-early in the day, before we are too depleted.” (115)

“The bottom line is that we should not view a single act of dishonesty as just one petty act. We tend to forgive people for their first offense with the idea that it is just the first time and everyone makes mistakes. And although this may be true, we should also realize that the first act of dishonesty might be particularly important in shaping the way a person looks at himself and his actions from that point on – and because of that, the first dishonest act is the most important one to prevent.” (137)

“We have a gut feeling about what we want, and we go through a process of mental gymnastics, applying all kinds of justifications to manipulate the criteria. That way, we can get what we really want, but at the same time keep up the appearance – to ourselves and to others – that we are acting in accordance with our rational and well-reasoned preferences.” (167)

“The individuals who were more creative also had higher levels of dishonesty. Intelligence, however, wasn’t correlated to any degree with dishonesty.” (176)

“I think that these results suggest that once something or someone irritates us, it becomes easier for us to justify our immoral behavior.” (178)

“(In our vending machine) we almost tripled sales by probabilistically giving people back their money.” [70% chance of paying full price of $1.00, 30% chance of getting all their money back/free] (194)

“It’s important to realize that the effects of individual transgressions can go beyond a singular dishonest act. Passed from person to person, dishonesty has a slow, creeping, socially erosive effect.” (214)

“Whereas altruism can increase cheating and direct supervision can decrease it, altruistic cheating overpowers the supervisory effect when people are put together in a setting where they have a chance to socialize and be observed.” (228)

“This study suggests that as dentists become more comfortable with their patients, they also more frequently recommend procedures that are in their own financial interest. And long-term patients, for their part, are more likely to accept the dentist’s advice based on the trust that their relationship has engendered.” (230)

“Very few people steal to a maximal degree. But many good people cheat just a little here and there by rounding up their billable hours, claiming higher losses on their insurance claims, recommending unnecessary treatments, and so on.” (239)

“The amount of cheating seems to be equal in every country – at least in those we’ve tested so far.” (242)

“Negative emotions (like sadness) by themselves do not create a desire for self-inflicted pain. However, those in the guilty condition were far more disposed to self-administering higher levels of shocks.” (251)

If you liked the quotes, please buy the book here.