Walking around the library I find my way to the new books shelve and start scanning the titles. It’s the usual suspects, latest bestsellers and graphic novels, stuff for the restless mind that wants to get away from it all. Then there is a book with a fairly convincing bit of duct tape on the cover. Why some ideas survive and others die. Hmm, sounds like my kind book. And it is.
Covering everything from the urban legend of the stolen kidney to the success of the Jared Subway commercials, this is really way cool stuff. Ok, saying really way cool stuff is the kind of thing the writers of the book want people to get away from. But saying something like-this slim volume was filled with useful anecdotes about the ability to convey the meaning and substance of your ideas in a manner that will allow them to be best remembered at a later date-well, that sucks too.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
The nub is what is the difference between an idea that sticks, like an urban legend, and ideas that don’t, like that memo your boss sent reminding you for the tenth time to call in your numbers everyday. It goes beyond the usual-wow that Nike ad in 1984’s Superbowl was a great ad- to how you can create your own ideas that stick. After reading Made to Stick, you’ll be able to look at ads and commercials and say-yeah that works, or no, they didn’t get it all.
Like most self-help books, I feel that it has done it’s job is it make me feel excited about the future while I was reading it. It’s advice is excellent, so much so that I feel like I would be giving away the fact that Luke is Darth Vader’s son if I went into more detail.
Read this book. Do it. Do it now.
The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie.
