🎯 Work Smart Wednesday - February 14, 2024
How to 2x your reading, a book to improve your marketing, and a quote on the difficulty in making positive changes
Work Smart Wednesday
👋 Hey there!
Here is your weekly dose of Work Smart Wednesday
In these emails I will share with you 3 things to help you work smarter in 3 minutes or less. That leaves you with 10,077 more minutes to conquer your goals this week
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1. 📑 How To 2x Your Reading →
No, the answer here is not a speed reading course. Though, they can help.
I use a much simpler method to improve my reading speed (and enjoyment!): have both a “snack” and a “meal” book.
I benefit from having two books at any given time:
🍎 A Snack Book – Entertaining, simple to understand, and easy to read. You can read this on the go, when you’re tired, or when you only have a few minutes available. Books with short chapters are particularly good for snack books.
🍽️ A Meal Book – Information-dense, more complex, and require deep thinking. They require time, energy, and focus.
It is perfectly okay for either to be fiction or non-fiction. We don’t have to read non-fiction all the time, fiction is equally useful.
My current meal book is HBR at 100, a collection of the most influential and important articles from Harvard Business Review over the last 100 years. I am also reading H.P Lovecraft’s Necronomicon in Spanish when travelling.
My current snack book is The Help, ideal as a snack with short chapters with frequent break points. One of my favourite snack books is The Examined Life.
My partner and I also read one book together every night, usually a Nordic Noir or Stephen King book, but currently we are reading The Martian.
This is one of those rare instances where having a split attention can actually help, rather than hinder. The meal book provides something to ‘work out’ with, but it can feel difficult to find time to sit down and read. Having a snack book can really help us to continue reading. Time is a vacuum, you will fill it with whatever is easiest. Rather than a junk activity, you can create the conditions to make reading easier so you read more often. Try it.
P.s. I am always open to suggestions for both snack books and meal books! Reply to this email or leave a comment below to share your favourite books with me.
2. 📖 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a book that I always recommend to clients. The book provides a strong foundation to a number of absolute fundamental skills that every entrepreneur should be aware of. You might not like marketing or sales, but you sure need to know how it works.
What is the psychology behind why people are influenced and persuaded to take certain actions?
Cialdini identified six key principles of persuasion:
🎁 Reciprocity: When someone does something for us, we feel obligated to do something in return. Go above and beyond, help people and they will help you.
🔄 Commitment and Consistency: Once people make a commitment or take a stand on something, they tend to remain consistent with that commitment to avoid cognitive dissonance. Small initial commitments can lead to larger actions later. Ask for small favours or commitments from your leads/clients can lead them to be more likely to help you and buy from you. Take things one step at a time, deepen the relationship progressively. Always have a next step.
👍 Social Proof: People are more likely to follow the actions of others, especially when they're uncertain about what to do. When individuals see that others are doing something, they tend to believe it's the correct or popular choice. You see this all the time via reviews and testimonials, or even things like tickers on sites counting how many people have bought an item. Reduce uncertainty, show others have taken the leap.
😊 Liking: People are more easily persuaded by those they like or find attractive. Building rapport, similarity, and genuine connections with others can increase the likelihood of persuasion. Compliments help, as does finding some kind of common ground (even if tenuous!). Whether we like it or not, “looking the part” has a big impact. As evidenced by the Halo Effect, among other things. Use pictures that show attractive people or people to aspire to. Be nice and friendly. Find common ground.
👩⚕️ Authority: People tend to obey authority figures or those perceived as experts. This principle alone is more powerful than you think, it can even make people go as far as killing others. How can you make yourself seem more authoritative? Who’s authority can you lean on to improve the persuasiveness of what you do? Use this principle to do good.
⏳ Scarcity: The fear of missing out (FOMO) or the perception that something is limited in availability can drive people to take action. Scarcity, in availability or time, creates a sense of urgency and can lead individuals to make decisions more quickly. Urgency is important, people often delay decisions or taking action as inaction is perceived (incorrectly) as easier and lower risk. Scarcity also drives higher perceived value. Enforce boundaries., limit availability. It is better for you and for your clients.
🧑🤝🧑 Unity: Cialdini also recently added a seventh principle, “Unity”. Us vs them. Creating a group culture, and an enemy, creates a sense of unity that majorly influences behaviour. Lots of studies on this, here is a short video showcasing one (and the unity principle in action!). Who, or what, are we against? What are we in favour of? For me, the enemy is busyness - wasting time looking busy, working 50+ hours per week, and people who think “more hours = more productive”. I am in favour of leveraged results, of enjoying ourselves, and working less by improving efficiency.
In the book, Cialdini supports these principles with research findings and real-world examples, demonstrating how they are employed in various contexts across marketing, sales, and everyday interactions. I highly recommend it.
3. 💡 Quote I'm pondering
"It can be hard to go from this hill to that hill because we have to go through a valley - Johann Hari
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This quote comes directly from Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus, which I recommended in the very first edition of Work Smart Wednesday.
Often, we know that we need to make a change but we are scared about the pain and effort we will endure to implement the necessary change. Much like navigating a maze, sometimes you have to go back to go forwards.
Change is always uncertain, you normally don’t know if things will be better or worse after the change until you have tried it - you can only make an educated guess. The only thing you need to know is that the current situation isn’t good enough. That alone should spur you into action, we can then iterate to find the right solution. I often use these two tips to help me ‘travel the valley’ when necessary:
A quick but great question to ask yourself when setting goals: What might you have to give up in order to achieve your goal? Awareness is always the first step to a solution.
This is often paired with fear setting: one of Tim Ferris’ greatest insights.
Try them. It will help you make the difficult decisions that are needed for you to achieve success and happiness.
That's it! I can't wait to hear what you think. What did you find most useful? What do you want more or less of? Reply to this email now and let me know
Also, if you have anything interesting to share, I want to know about it😊
Have a great week,
John
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