

Surprise gets our attention (You use only 10% of your brain), and interest keeps it (gossip and conspiracy theories keep us coming back for more). To understand the answers to these two questions, we have to understand two essential emotions: surprise and interest.

In trying to make an idea sticky, we need to ask two essential questions: How do I get people’s attention? And second, How do I keep it? We only become aware of them when something changes. Think of the hum of a fan, or traffic noise, or a familiar smell. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to patterns. The most basic way to get someone’s attention is to break a pattern. “Finding the Core” and expressing it in the form of a compact idea can make it stick enduringly. They connect with information people already have in their head, so they can be shorter and simpler.Ĭoming up with a profound compact phrase is actually incredibly difficult. The challenge is how to be core and compact in a way that is also memorable. We can learn and remember only so much information at once. That probably seems obvious: we know that sentences are better than paragraphs, easy words are better than hard words, etc. Keep your message/idea simple.īesides being core, simple messages also need to be compact. Core messages help people make choices by reminding them of what’s important, and enabling that to guide their decisions.

When people have too many choices, they tend to get paralyzed and find it difficult to make decisions. A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue ten points, even if each is a good one, the jury won’t remember any.” It means to relentlessly prioritize, and create ideas that are both simple and profound. Here is a summary of the six principles: Principle 1: Simplicityĭon’t misunderstand this as being short in length it means stripping an idea down to its core. This doesn’t mean that there is a formula that guarantees success, but it does mean it is possible to greatly improve our odds. Sticky ideas shared certain traits that made them more likely to succeed. In researching successful, “sticky” stories, six principles emerged.

Made to Stick by book is about how to do just that. Why do some ideas succeed while others fail? How do we nurture our ideas so they’ll succeed in the world? Many of us struggle with how to communicate ideas effectively, how to get our ideas to make a difference. We are all familiar with the opposite experience-reading an article that we can’t remember five minutes after we have finished, or listening to a lecture that leaves our brain as quickly as it enters. Long after we hear them, we could easily re-tell them. PICHA BOOK CLUB: Made to Stick – Chip Heath & Dan Heath
