I finished Influence the other day and have a lot of insights about it, which I am still digesting. However, today, I read something very powerful in The Tipping Point.

For the longest time, I thought I had a black thumb and even had the nickname of “Cactcus Killer”. Many years ago, a friend gave me a small planter with three cacti. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it, so I put it in a window in our bathroom that had a shade that was...

Enhancing Decision-Making with The 6 Thinking Hats

About a year ago, Damien found Edward de Bono’s work on The 6 Thinking Hats for decision-making strategy. We implemented our own process within the business and have found it very useful when making big decisions (even for...

The Influence of Social Proof

The thread I seem to be following today concerns how we are influenced by social proof and how illogical we are as a species.

A friend mentioned that her annual local stream cleanup happened yesterday, and the woman who organized it stacked...

Evaluating the Price of Goals

Yesterday, we discussed some changes one of our clients wants to make to their business, and Damien asked, “What price are you willing to pay to reach your goal?”.

Understanding the Fourfold Pattern

The Fourfold Pattern in Thinking Fast and Slow really brought the last few chapters together nicely. It organizes the high probability (certainty effect) and low probability (possibility effect) with gains and losses. 

Reflections on Commitment and Consistency

I have read quite a bit since I last wrote, but unfortunately, I haven’t documented my insights. I am going to try to go back to some of my notes.

The information about Commitment and Consistency from Influence was very powerful....

Exploring the Psychology of Goals

If goals are reference points, since a goal is in the future and not achieving it is seen as a loss and exceeding it is seen as a gain, then we are more motivated by bad events than we are by good events. 

Exploring the Endowment Effect

The Endowment Effect is the section I finished today in Thinking Fast and Slow, and it talks about loss aversion (similar to the section I’m reading in Influence).  

Last year, Damien introduced me to Dan Sullivan’s ABC Model, which is a method to help you shift your time, energy, and focus on activities that fascinate and motivate you, rather than ones that are irritating or just okay. We both liked the model so much that we adopted...