Category: Attention
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Projecting Backward From Today
I moved to India for three months back in 2004-2005. It was a great trip and I would love to return, but it is quite a bit different from the US. What I found most fascinating however, is how quickly you adapt to the changes. When we first arrived, it was very noticeable how often…
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Remembering The Non-Event : How we corrupt our own conclusions
This morning, we went to go catch a cab and I remarked that when I walk to the street that has cabs, an empty one always drives by about 1 minute before I get to the corner. Always drives by? Really? Obviously as you are walking down the street to where you catch the cab,…
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Nickel & Dime – How To Destroy Trust
I’ve recently been flying a bit and have been considering the business of nickel and diming that seems so popular with airlines these days. If the long lines for the Southwest are any indication, people are not enjoying being taken for a ride (so to speak). Compare and contrast this with the experience of buying…
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Commoditizing Information
The hackers of old have long held that data must be set free. Google is doing just that by aggregating the content of the internet, it no longer mattes where information comes from. When people are questioned afterward regarding the source of the information they are reciting, they respond: Google. The problem, of course, is…
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Immediate Gratification
I have been listening to a very good book (“Rapt”) and she mentioned a study that was done measuring the way we respond to situations where there is an immediate payoff which offsets some longer term goal. Essentially, if you are presented with the choice between taking $100 now, or $200 three years from now,…
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Fertile Fallacies
Recently while reading George Soros’ book on the Crash of 2008, he discusses something he calls “Fertile Fallacies” which I found quite interesting. The basic idea is that there is some knowledge that seems very true and early experiments in that information continue to confirm it’s veracity, but eventually the fallacy catches up with you…
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Focus Management
How many times has someone asked you about an action that you committed to and you responded: “I’m sorry. I haven’t had time to get to that yet”. Many of these tasks would take only 5 minutes or less to do, so are you really saying you didn’t have 5 minutes to perform this…
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Kings & Marketing To Perceived Desire
Earlier this spring, NBC announced a new show called “Kings”. They advertised it heavily, trying to build momentum for a show about what life might be like if we lived with a modern monarchy. I saw the ads and had little interest in watching (or even DVR’ing the show) and I wasn’t alone. The show…
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The Context Matters
A couple of weeks ago, while visiting Colorado, I noticed a number of people advertising their businesses on their cars to varying degrees of success. It made me think that while you do get a lot of people looking at your “ad”, you are also providing a lot of context about your company based on…
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Terminator, Attention and Storytelling
This last week, we went and watched the latest Terminator movie. Essentially, it takes place after the machines are trying to kill all of the humans and ends up providing more of the backstory to the previous two movies. In the movie, there are several fight scenes that take place in factories where the robots…