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41 " Trying to fight inertia and indifference with analytical arguments is like tossing a fire extinguisher to someone who’s drowning. The solution doesn’t match the problem. "
― Chip Heath , Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
42 " When people know the desired destination, they’re free to improvise, as needed, in arriving there. "
― Chip Heath , Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
43 " What did you guys fail at this week?” “If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed,” Blakely said. "
― Chip Heath , The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact
44 " Self-control is an exhaustible resource. This is a crucial realization, because when we talk about “self-control,” we don’t mean the narrow sense of the word, as in the willpower needed to fight vice (smokes, cookies, alcohol). We’re talking about a broader kind of self-supervision. Think of the way your mind works when you’re giving negative feedback to an employee, or assembling a new bookshelf, or learning a new dance. You are careful and deliberate with your words or movements. It feels like there’s a supervisor on duty. That’s self-control, too. "
45 " But for an individual human being, moments are the thing. Moments are what we remember and what we cherish. Certainly we might celebrate achieving a goal, such as completing a marathon or landing a significant client—but the achievement is embedded in a moment. Every culture has its prescribed set of big moments: birthdays and weddings and graduations, of course, but also holiday celebrations and funeral rites and political traditions. They seem “natural” to us. But notice that every last one of them was invented, dreamed up by anonymous authors who wanted to give shape to time. This is what we mean by “thinking in moments”: to recognize where the prose of life needs punctuation. "
46 " The researchers have found, in essence, that our advice to others tends to hinge on the single most important factor, while our own thinking flits among many variables. When we think of our friends, we see the forest. When we think of ourselves, we get stuck in the trees.§ "
― Chip Heath , Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
47 " So, a good process for making your ideas stickier is: (1) Identify the central message you need to communicate—find the core; (2) Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message—i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Why isn’t it already happening naturally? (3) Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension. Then, once their guessing machines have failed, help them refine their machines. "
48 " Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving. "
49 " Solutions-focused therapists believe that there are exceptions to every problem and that those exceptions, once identified, can be carefully analyzed, like the game film of a sporting event. Let’s replay that scene, where things were working for you. What was happening? How did you behave? Were you smiling? Did you make eye contact? And that analysis can point directly toward a solution that is, by definition, workable. After all, it worked before. "
50 " Why are habits so important? They are, in essence, behavioral autopilot. They allow lots of good behaviors to happen without the Rider taking charge. Remember that the Rider’s self-control is exhaustible, so it’s a huge plus if some positive things can happen “free” on autopilot. "
51 " work to make the core message itself more interesting. "
52 " If the Rider isn’t sure exactly what direction to go, he tends to lead the Elephant in circles. And as we’ll see, that tendency explains the third and final surprise about change: What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. "
53 " This is the great trap of life: One day rolls into the next, and a year goes by, and we still haven’t had that conversation we always meant to have. Still haven’t created that peak moment for our students. Still haven’t seen the northern lights. We walk a flatland that could have been a mountain range. It’s not easy to snap out of this tendency. It took a terminal illness for Gene O’Kelly to do it. "
54 " How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences? "
55 " There's no such thing as a passive audience. "
― Chip Heath
56 " We can't unlearn what we already know and there are only two ways to beat the curse, the first is not to learn anything, the second is to transform our ideas. "
57 " Because identities are central to the way people make decisions, any change effort that violates someone’s identity is likely doomed to failure. (That’s why it’s so clumsy when people instinctively reach for “incentives” to change other people’s behavior.) So the question is this: How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences? "
58 " make a switch, you need to script the critical moves "
59 " Mystery is created not from an unexpected moment but from an unexpected journey. We know where we’re headed—we want to solve the mystery—but we’re not sure how we’ll get there. "
60 " weaknesses—the tendency to get lost in analysis. "