SIMPLE: Make your message simple. Lose the clutter (simple right?)
UNEXPECTED: When you don’t expect something your brain goes ‘huh’ making the just read text noticeable (just like the title of this post)
CONCRETE: Don’t try to fancy your message with expensive over complicated words. Make it concrete so people know what you are talking about.
CREDIBLE: Stick in some convincing stats or testimonials to make your point more trustworthy.
EMOTIONAL: Try to get the reader to imagine the point you are making so they can make an emotional connection with what you’re trying to tell.
STORY: Package your argument as a story. We humans are geared to stories. Movies, books, tv series, we like great stories. Actually… We love ANY story.

Try to follow as much of these above rules when creating a message and it’s more likely to be remembered by it’s receivers. Your message will be made to suck..ehh…stick!

• Like success stories, how they build an empire on pizza’s, programming and Diet Coke.
• Grew up playing games. Around every 10 pages you will be thrown back into your childhood reminiscing about all the great games you used to play.

P.S: Considering how well ‘The Social Network’ has done I think (and hope) this might be the next book about Nerds turned into a Hollywood Blockbuster.

In his book “Tricks of the Mind” the magician/illusionist Derren Brown explores (and sometimes explains) very diverse subjects such as simple magic (making a coin vanish), enhancing your memory (remembering twenty different objects with little effort), hypnosis (how to hypnotize someone) and mind reading (unmasking the quacks). Although there is no core thought the different parts are very entertaining separately. I really liked the way it uncovered things which seems mystical at first sight such as hypnosis. Brown just shows how suggestible people can be.

Read this book if:

• You want to enhance your memory. (I’m able to memorize a grocery list with 20+ items within a minute).
• You want to know more about hypnosis and mind reading.
• Learn how to read people (whether they are telling the truth).

According to Gladwell it comes down the the 10.000 hour rule.  If you practice something for 10.000 hours you’re bound to get good at it. Outliers: The Story of Succes is loaded with great examples which demonstrate this 10.000 hour rule.

How does this 10.000 hours of practice apply to a designer?
Dee Barizo made a blog post about how to practice as a designer. He gives some great pointers:

• Practice is not enough, you need to improve. Doing the same thing over and over again won’t help you unless you improve.
• Seek feedback. Without feedback it’s hard to determine if you improve.
• Don’t overdo it. Your brain can handle so much, straining it won’t do you any good.

So, stop reading this blog and start practicing!

P.S: Dee Barizo talks about another book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. I haven’t read it but it looks very similar to Outliers. Fascinating.

• The age of Kroc. He was relatively old (52) to start something new but his energy and drive is really motivating.
• That said, his arrogance can be annoying sometimes. In the book he doesn’t elaborate on any mistakes. He is always right. He claims that it isn’t interesting to read about his mistakes but I would say you can learn a lot by mistakes.
• The book was published when Kroc was still alive (1977) and McDonalds didn’t even expand international yet! Little did Kroc know at the time that it would be much bigger now.
• It’s funny to read how he sees McDonalds also as support for the community. But lately it only helps people eating themselves to dead. Once it was an example of a great American product. Now it’s associated with bad and unhealthy food.

All in all it’s a nice read but I would like to have seen more about the standardizing process. How he took this one McDonalds restaurant and changed the operation so it can be easily be copied by other McDonalds restaurants. There is some of that in this book, but not nearly enough. One downside, my McDonalds cravings were really kicking up reading this book but so far I have restrained myself. It is after all, bad food.

It’s a nice read with about 200 pages. The advise is obvious, but very important. These are the lessons that stuck most for me:

• Dare to take a risk.
• Don’t try to be a perfectionist. ‘Good’ is good enough.
• Profile yourself. (Work on your physical appearance, network and online identity.)
• Really listen to your clients and try to solve their problem and address their problems in presentations and communication.

All in all a good book with some inspiring advise.