Psychotactics

(You can listen to the audio of the article too. Click here: The Art of Misdirection)

When I was younger, I could easily get myself into quite a few friendly arguments.

Like everybody, I have opinions, and some of them are stronger than others.
The biggest problem with an opinion is that it is almost never tied to facts. You would think that facts would convince people otherwise, but they don't seem to matter at all — which becomes problematic, because if opinions are treated as facts and facts dismissed as opinions, where does that leave you as a communicator?

The reality is that you will always need to rely on facts, and you may not have a willing audience.
It's because most people have their own ideas firmly in place. This is where misdirection helps tremendously. Misdirection isn't as strange as it sounds. It is simply what a magician does: he gets you to look at one thing while he does something else entirely, and produces a result you weren't expecting.

This same principle can be applied when making presentations, writing articles, or creating any content meant to last. The trick is not to go head-on with someone who has a fixed point of view. That usually ends in a slightly ridiculous argument, and even if you win, it leaves both sides with an unsettled feeling. In presentations, articles and books, however, the reader or listener has time to sit with what you've said — to mull it over and quietly shift their thinking, because you have presented the facts the way a magician would.

Here is an example.
Almost everyone you know will say something like: “I can remember people's faces, but I can't remember names.” This idea has been repeated so many times that it has almost become a fact. If you try to convince someone directly that they can indeed remember names, they will smile and shake their heads. So you take the back door instead.

The first step is always to ask permission.
You might say, “Can I ask you a couple of questions on that subject?” Most people will agree — they are curious to know why you see it differently. Your first question: Can you remember the names of your family members? Your parents, cousins, friends, relatives, many of your teachers, and people you've worked with?

Generally, people will nod. Of course they can.
Then you move on to movie actors, politicians, musicians, sports stars — and suddenly hundreds of names are streaming through their minds, and they have to agree that yes, they remember all of those too. You ask permission to continue, and they agree, perhaps sensing the trap is already closing. You then list names of countries — some they've never visited: Afghanistan, New Caledonia, Fiji, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan. You might slip in one they don't recognise, and they'll say so — but the overall conclusion is now unavoidable.

They know thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of names.
Add in the names of everyday objects — sofa, pen, pencil, bird — then colours, plants, types of animals — and the argument is effectively over. There is nothing wrong with their ability to remember names. There is simply a belief that they can't, built on something else entirely.

And what is that something else?
The brain has a region called Broca's area. When you see someone's face, even briefly, it is stored in your memory. You might not see that person for years, or encounter them in an entirely different context — but the face remains. The name, however, has no dedicated retrieval system connecting it back to that face. We remember faces because we have a specialised mechanism for it. We remember names when we build that same kind of system.

What just happened there?
You've been misdirected. There's a reasonable chance that, before reading this, you believed you weren't good at remembering names. Yet you now recognise that you carry tens of thousands of them in your head. The only reason names sometimes slip away is that we don't pay attention to them in the moment — or because the name is genuinely unfamiliar, like Lakshman Sivarama Krishnan. If you're Indian, that's no problem at all. If the name is outside your experience, it takes effort, and without that effort, it doesn't stick.

Let's take another example: this one from the book Suddenly Talented, which examines how people become very good at learning quickly.

One phrase you hear constantly is: “I'm not good at maths.”
I had this conversation with my niece Keira when she was in Year Seven. I asked how she was getting on in maths, and she said it was a little difficult. I could have simply told her it wasn't — but as her uncle, she might have just smiled and agreed to keep the peace. That wasn't the point. I wanted to misdirect her so she would arrive at the conclusion herself.

So Keira agreed that Year Seven maths was difficult.
But what about Year Six? If given an exam from the previous year's syllabus, would she struggle? You can see where this is heading. I worked backwards — Year Six, Year Five, Year Four — and by the time I reached Year Two, she was rolling her eyes.

So it's just the current year that's difficult, then?
She had no trouble agreeing because she had already admitted that every prior year had been manageable, and going further back would have been almost insulting. The same thing happens with adults. Anyone who says they are bad at maths will walk through the same sequence as Keira.

They will agree that maths became difficult at a particular point — but hand them a Year Three paper and they'd sail through it. The last few years might need a little revision, but a couple of weeks of effort is a long way from a decade of dread and self-doubt. The belief that they were bad at maths was an opinion, not a fact — and a fragile one, once examined.

This is what misdirection actually does: instead of arguing, you agree, then gently lead the person down a side road. You get them to see a flaw in their own thinking without making them feel attacked or diminished. They arrive at the conclusion themselves, which means they own it. You haven't won an argument — you've opened a door.

I experienced this firsthand while writing The Brain Audit around 2002.
The central concept — that problems matter more than solutions in marketing — was quite radical at the time. Sales books told people to lead with benefits. To get readers to rethink this, I didn't directly challenge the prevailing wisdom. Instead, I showed them examples.

Seven identical red bags arrive on an airport carousel. One is missing.
When does the passenger leave? Only when all seven bags are accounted for. Nobody is thinking about the pleasant flight, the on-time arrival, or the excellent seat. They are focused entirely on the problem.

Add to that examples like a police car in your rear-view mirror, a small stain on a white shirt, or a storm warning on the news — and the pattern becomes undeniable. Problems command the brain's attention before solutions get a look in.

Once readers recognised that, they didn't need to be argued with.
The solution didn't become less important — it simply needed to come second. That single shift helped many people improve their sales because they finally had their customers' attention.

Misdirection, then, is not a manipulation tactic.
It is not about scoring points. It has a genuine practical use: most of us need to shift perception slightly — in customers, in colleagues, in students, sometimes in ourselves. It's only when people are willing to reconsider that real change happens.

And people become willing when they don't feel cornered.
A few well-placed questions can achieve what hours of argument cannot. The goal is not to defeat someone's position but to walk alongside them until they can see it differently — and feel that the new view was their idea all along.

In summary:
The next time you find yourself needing to change someone's mind, resist the urge to go head-on. Ask permission to explore the subject together. Lead them through their own knowledge and experience. Let them arrive at the contradiction themselves. That is misdirection at its most effective — not a trick, but a form of respect. Eventually, they see things a tiny bit differently because you've brought out that wonder.

It's like magic.

The post The Art Of Misdirection: How To Get Your Point Across Without an Argument appeared first on Psychotactics.

(Click here to listen to the article: Why All The Productivity In The World May Not Matter After All)

You are told that you have to be productive, but how productive is productive?

We have been working for close to 26 years, and we still have a full day of activity. Isn’t that a good enough reason to slow down or just do nothing at all for some of the days?

Let’s find out why productivity needs a break.

This morning, I had lots of plans. One of the major plans was to avoid wasting any time. Normally, I’d take a break in the middle of the morning and go to the cafe for a couple of hours, where there’s no internet, and just paint or chat with someone, maybe take some photographs.

Today, I decided that I was going to be productive, at least more productive than normal. And then something happened that I wasn’t expecting. I started to feel quite wobbly. Perhaps it’s just the heat because it’s summer here in New Zealand, and it’s been very hot recently, and I haven’t slept well at night.

But the wobbliness continued. The first time that I felt even slightly good was by 5 pm that evening. In effect, my very productive day ended up with a lot of lying down and sleeping.

And this lesson is something that I’ve had to relearn time and time again. When we started Psychotactics in the year 2000, we had a really interesting concept. I thought I could write enough articles within five years, and then we’d be well set.

I didn’t think we’d need to do a lot of work after putting in a full five-year sprint, but here we are 26 years later, and there’s still a full day of work, no matter how much work we put in.

It almost feels like a YouTube channel where you have to continuously feed the system. There’s always work. There are always things to do, which is why, at some point, we just have to be non-productive. We just have to wait and see if we can. Especially if there is no client waiting for the work that we’re doing, there is no crazy deadline.

I first realised this concept when we were getting married. Right up until we went on a honeymoon, people were constantly asking me about the deadline and how I could get their jobs done. Then we were gone for a few weeks, and nobody bothered.

The same kind of thing plays out when we go away for a month on holiday: nobody bothers, and neither do we. We don’t feel the need to be productive while we’re away.

It’s possible to live a life where you can be productive for many days in a week and at other times just be completely wasteful. It’s not normal to be productive the whole time, all the time, despite what you are told.

I hope you have a lazy day. I’m probably going to need some more sleep, because I feel that sleep needs some productivity level as well.

The post Why All The Productivity In The World May Not Matter After All appeared first on Psychotactics.

(Click here to listen to the article: Why Feedback Barely Helps Progress)

There's a reason aeroplane windows aren't square.
In the early 1950's, one of the most futuristic planes was the de Havilland Comet. It was considered the world's first commercial jetliner. And yes, it had square-shaped windows. Then, suddenly in 1954, two Comets broke apart mid-air right after take off.

Every time the plane takes off, the cabin is pressurised, and when it lands, the pressure is released.
During the lifecycle of a plane, this cycle repeats itself over and over again. With every change in pressure, the stress concentrated at the right angle of the square windows. Over time, thousands of microscopic cracks began to form.

Eventually, and without warning, the metal would tear open, tearing the plane open and causing it to suddenly rip apart in mid-air. The square corners were the points of pressure.

When we ask for feedback, we also create sharp corners.
This, in turn, creates intense pressure. However, if we want to improve quickly, we need this level of pressure. Yet, we often do the opposite. We create feedback with “rounded rectangles”, thus reducing the pressure. In a way, we're jeopardising the way we get feedback.

How do we get solid feedback and keep the pressure up? Let's cover three points:
1- Don't preemptively defend your work.
2- Being too vague leads to poor, unusable feedback.
3- Timing matters: When you ask for feedback matters as much as what you ask for.

1- Don't preemptively defend your work.

Imagine someone says something like this: “I had a really difficult time doing this artwork, and it took me three hours.”

Any statement, no matter how small, is defensive
It's saying: I put in time; I put in effort; it was difficult; my dragonfly died suddenly. Any additional information creates a wall for the person reviewing your work. They're immediately less inclined to give you the feedback you need. Yet, almost without fail, you will find people who add a tiny bit of information. The information reduces pressure on the person asking for the feedback. What happens next is a bit of a travesty.

The person asking for the feedback gets some watered-down nonsense.

Asking for “kind feedback” seems logical.
Usually, the reason for “kindness” is largely because feedback has been brutal in the past. Maybe you had a parent for whom criticism was the only way. Or maybe you remember your third-grade teacher who said your work was terrible. Yet no matter what your history, any defensive statement is going to lead to feedback that's kind, but often not enough. Without enough pressure, you're going to improve so slowly that your work will almost always be considered shallow, or even stagnant.

The first step is to disregard past feedback and focus on how you can get better feedback in the future. Which takes us to the next point: vagueness. What is a vague feedback request? And why does it make a difference?

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2- Vague feedback requests.

When I used to go to a networking meeting, we had a routine every week. We would stand up and tell the rest of the group what kind of referral we wanted. So you would say something like, “I'm in marketing, and I would like a referral and would like to work with small businesses.” As the months passed, I noticed that some people not only received more referrals but also consistently gained new business. The difference was that they were not vague.

But what was vague about the statement above?
When you think about it, there is no clarity at all. Let's talk about the sentence:
1. I am in marketing. So, what does that mean? What kind of marketing?
2. I would like a referral and would like to work with small businesses. What is a small business, and how do they work with you?

Notice how the statement seems perfectly good until you analyse it and realise that it makes no sense at all. The people who got consistent referrals were those who were extremely specific. They would say something like, “I'm in marketing for hairdressers, and I would like it if anyone could put me in touch with Rodney Wayne”. At this point, almost everyone would stop eating breakfast and focus on the request.

We have to maintain the same level of specificity when we ask for feedback, but we rarely do.
More often than not, we say, “I would appreciate all sorts of feedback.” But you can see how that appears really vague? That's because we don't know exactly what you're looking for. Which is fair because at times you don't know what you're looking for either. When you're learning a skill, for example, you don't know what you're doing wrong. But you have a sense that something isn't going right, so you need to start there.

It would be much better to ask a question like, “I have been drawing this snowman, but I'm not getting the hat quite right”, or “I have been drawing this snowman, but the fingers seem to be slightly off.”

What you are doing at that point in time is asking for specifics, and the moment you ask for specifics, everybody drops their cutlery and starts trying to help you in that area.

Here's another example: Can you help me with my sales page?
The problem with a sales page is its vastness and numerous elements. However, do you really want feedback on the entire page? Perhaps you’re unsure what specific areas need improvement. There’s a logical solution: focus on the relevant elements.

Could you please provide some feedback on the headline and the first two paragraphs? I’m writing to reach “women returning to the workforce after a long break.”

Your request is very clear, with some specificity, which reduces intimidation.

Because it’s so specific, it reduces the cognitive load on the other person.
That “other person” could be your coach, a friend, or anyone whom you trust. However, that person has to stop what they're doing and focus on you. If we are less vague with our requests, the reviewer can be far more accurate with their feedback.

What could we do to improve accuracy?

A. Shrink the target
Don’t ask for feedback on the entire piece. Choose a small, defined area that can be evaluated quickly. A headline or paragraph. Or in the example of the snowman: the hat and the hands. When the target is small, the feedback becomes sharper.

B. Name the problem, even if imperfectly
You don’t need to correctly diagnose the issue. You just need to point to where it feels wrong. Saying “something feels off here” is far better than asking for “general feedback”. Naming the problem gives the reviewer a place to start.

Once you narrow the focus, you get more precise feedback. Which, in turn, moves us to the third and final point: “timing matters”. When you do something, it's almost as important as what you're about to do.
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3- Timing matters
Researchers at two universities decided to examine more than 1,000 decisions made by eight judges.

These judges were ruling on convicts' parole requests. This means they had the power to set the convict free or keep them in jail. In this particular study, they found the judges granted 65 per cent of the requests early in the day. Then, as the morning wore on and they got hungrier, the judges started denying more requests. Right after a snack break, the approvals went up again. However, in a separate study conducted during Ramadan, the researchers found that hungry judges were actually more lenient.

Hence, while hunger is not a good enough variable, fatigue is very consistent.
Those very judges were fresh at the start of the day, then slowed down until the snack break perked them up again. As the day got longer, they got “grumpier” as we all do. Think of any dealing you have in the real world, and you'll notice that fatigue plays a big role:

Almost anyone you know gets tired as their day progresses.

Which means the point you ask for feedback on also matters.
Let's say you're taking an online course and you post your assignment early in the day. Would that work? It would if it were also early in the day for the teacher. However, figuring out when the teacher is more likely to give you precise feedback should be part of your strategy. It's possible that you work on your project later at night, and you don't always need to change your working plan. However, you may need to work ahead so you can post earlier in the day. Why? It's because everyone's day (including the teacher) has finite boundaries. Whether it's parole you're seeking, a bowl of pasta, or feedback on an assignment, the same principles apply.

When seeking feedback, ask yourself: Is the person likely to be distracted?
Is that person likely to be tired? There are many other parameters that could possibly cause the other person to be a bit restricted with their feedback, but if you can control just the time of day, you're more than likely to get a person eager to give you a lot of detail.

It also brings us full circle to the three elements that you need to work with to get good feedback.

Summary:
1: Don't defend your work too soon.
If you say something like, “I was really tired when I did this assignment,” or you pre-qualify what you're about to say by saying things like, “I need kind feedback,” then immediately, you are not going to get the feedback that you're looking for. You will get some pathetic little cheerleading that will not help you improve. While there are days when you don't need a full blast of criticism, you can make sure that you get a limited amount.

2: How do you get limited feedback?
You’ve asked for specifics, mentioning the headline and the first two paragraphs. This will help reduce the amount of information you receive. You can fix two or three things at a time, even if the feedback is a bit intense. If you get fifty things to fix, well, you know how that story ends, right?

3: Finally, timing matters.
If you can control when you submit your work, do so. Even if you work late at night, it is not a good idea to submit the work so late that the person looking at it is also going to be as tired as you are. Hence, possibly working a little in advance and submitting it when the reviewer is fresh is to your advantage and theirs. They want to give you the best feedback possible, and you want to improve dramatically and quickly. Hence, timing really matters.
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Most of us look for praise.

Praise is the default system that we long for every hour, and possibly most of the minutes, of our day. Yet feedback makes us so much better at our work and in our lives. If you want to regulate feedback and get it to your advantage, you know what to do.

The post Why Feedback Barely Helps Progress (And Why “Instant Feedback” is Crucial, Instead) appeared first on Psychotactics.

(Click here to listen to the article: Why Habit-Change Is Almost Always Temporary)

How long does it take to create a habit?

In general, people will tell you that it takes about 21 days for a habit to settle in. However, that statistic is slightly misplaced. It takes just one second to make a decision. It also takes one second to make quite another decision.

Let’s say you enter a hotel and they offer you tiny, warm baked muffins.
You had no intention of eating those muffins, but there they are, right in front of you. How can one measly muffin harm your health? Every time you return to the reception, you are offered yet another muffin, and in a short while, you have developed a habit.

But the habit started at the moment you took the very first muffin.
If you had decided that sugar wasn’t good for you, or that you had a health concern, you would have avoided the temptation in the first instance. In that case, there would be no habit to develop at all.

If it takes just a second to create a habit, why aren’t we able to sustain it?
The answer is that habits don’t last without a system. A habit system is not about doing more things. It is about reducing inefficiencies so that the behaviour becomes easier to repeat over time.

Let’s say you decide that you want to learn a language. On the first day, you spend 30 minutes learning Greek. You do the same the next day, and the day after that. However, after a week or a month, the habit hits a pothole. Despite putting in your twenty-one days, you’re back where you started.

To learn a language, you need time, a place, and a learning method.
At first, you don’t always know what you’re doing. However, after 15 to 20 days, you begin to notice inefficiencies in the system. You find a better place to work. You adjust the timing. You narrow down the learning method, because following half a dozen approaches only creates confusion.

In those first two or three weeks, you are not “building a habit”. You are creating efficiency. Without that efficiency, the habit becomes tiring, and giving up is easy.

It’s a similar issue with muffins.
Let’s say you’re home from that “muffin hotel”. If you have muffins in the house, you’re going to eat them. But what if you reduce the ease of getting to them? If you put them in the freezer, it’s no longer easy to grab one on impulse. If you don’t buy muffins in the first place, you have to jump through several hoops to get one.

Having muffins close at hand and ready to eat is inefficient for your health. Once you remove those inefficiencies, you automatically have a system that works.

A system is what I needed in my business as well.
When I started out with Psychotactics, one of my main goals was to get consulting clients. However, consulting takes up a lot of time, so I decided instead to speak at events and sell The Brain Audit. Things didn’t work out smoothly at first. At my very first event, I forgot what I had to say and took a ten-minute break. At other events, people fell asleep or looked clearly disinterested. Sometimes we sold fifty copies of the book, and sometimes just three.

All of these were inefficiencies.
It would have been easy to say, “I’m just not good at this.” But for anything to work, a system has to be developed. Over time, I figured out which parts made people laugh, when to involve the audience, and how to segue into a sales pitch so that people were keen to line up and buy the product.

All of this selling might not seem like a habit, but it is.

A habit is just a momentary decision to change your behaviour.
What makes that decision repeatable is the system you build around it. Only when you remove inefficiencies does the habit become smooth and, often, almost effortless.

Habits survive not because you try harder. They survive because your system works.

The post Why Habit-Change Is Almost Always Temporary (And How to Create Lasting Habits) appeared first on Psychotactics.

(You can listen to the audio of the article too. Click here: How to speed up answering e-mail)

Here's how I leave messages on an answer phone.

Hi, this is Sean. Full stop. I wanted to let you know that we might meet tomorrow, comma, and then meet again next week, em dash, but only if you're okay with it, full stop. 

You probably noticed there are lots of punctuation marks in the sentence, and that too on an audio message. This odd behaviour began when I began using dictation for most of my communications. For a while, I had no choice. At one point, I lost a lot of weight, which put enormous pressure on my tailbone.

For a whole year, I couldn't sit down at my desk at all and was forced to dictate. 

Yet, the experience of dictating was extremely frustrating. I use an iPhone and a Mac, and we are in 2026, but dictation, in particular, works worse than it did around 2010. Back in 2010, a program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking existed, which did an excellent job of enabling anyone to dictate quickly and, most importantly, accurately. 

Then things changed—for the worse, and flawless dictation was back.

If there's one tool that I'd recommend for 2026 and beyond, it's Wispr Flow.

It's a normal dictation program, but what's very normal about it is that it makes no mistakes. The Mac or the iPhone may make an error only 3% of the time, but to find those 3 errors, I have to scan 97 additional words. With Wispr Flow, the only time I've ever had a problem was when I was lazy with my speech. If I speak normally and reasonably clearly, it transcribes my words correctly 100% of the time. 

The funny thing is that I don't even have to speak loudly. Wispr Flow works even when you are literally breathing into the phone. This means you could be at a meeting and make lots of notes, or you could be in a crowded room and still have an absolutely accurate transcription. 

And unlike the earlier method, where I had to manually add punctuation, Wispr Flow adds it wherever applicable. 

It even makes lists, so I could have something like “Go to the market, buy some tomatoes, bring them home,” and it will list it for me without me having to create bullet points.

Wispr Flow has already saved me dozens of hours in the early weeks of January. When I am chatting with my friends on WhatsApp or another app like Messenger, I can very quickly dictate, and while they are still fiddling with their keyboard, I have finished dictating half a book. 

But as I head back to work and have to deal with dozens of emails, that is where Wispr Flow helps tremendously. 

That's because I can answer emails in enormous detail; writing the same email would take me 5-6 minutes, but I can do it in under 30 seconds with Wispr Flow. Since we conduct courses, there are also regular assessments. Once again, clients love it when you give them lots of detail. On any given day, I might have to deal with about 200 comments, and this quickly adds up to 3-4 hours of typing.

All of this is not because I want to be more productive; instead, it is a method that saves you from wasting needless time and mostly energy. 

If you spend several hours a day fiddling around with the keyboard, then those are the hours that you could spend sleeping, with your family, or just sitting around doing absolutely nothing at a cafe. Productivity by itself is pointless because if all the productive tools make you scratch that, end up with you doing more work, then that's kind of a dead end. But if the productivity helps you waste more time, then that's why these tools were designed in the first place 

Wispr Flow is not flawless.

• The list doesn't always work despite my best intentions
• It's possible that I will work it out as I go along

It also fails to put a full stop at the end of every sentence because it's trying to detect whether you finished your thought or not. If the thought seems a little incomplete or your speaking suggests you need to move forward, it just stops suddenly without the proper full stop.

Other than that, it is a fabulous tool and something that I cannot do without. 

Even though I've been using it for just five or six weeks, the accuracy is so great that it switches between languages just as easily as someone speaking. I can say “¿Dónde está su coche?” and the app will write it correctly in the language. Est-ce assez grand pour toi? I don't have to stop mid-stride because it recognises that I am speaking another language. This means that I could switch between about a hundred different languages, and it would flawlessly pick up the information and insert the correct grammar. 

Probably the best part is that if you change your mind while speaking, it will pick up the last idea you used. For instance, if you were to say something like, “Let's meet at 7:30. Or rather, let's meet at 8:30 instead,” it would avoid the incorrect timing and simply convey the message you intended after all. 

I know this message is just for those who use the Mac and iPhone, which means it is restricted to the Apple environment. I don't know of any Android-driven software that does the same activity. However, if you use the Mac or the iPhone, I would very strongly suggest that you try this tool out because you will be hooked within less than a day.

Renuka was a little sceptical about it.

I installed it on her phone, and she has already started using it consistently and is now keen to have it on her computer as well. If you really want to be productive and spend more time doing absolutely nothing, I suggest you try this tool right away. There is a coupon code at the bottom that gives you a month free. And if you continue, it gives me a month free as well. I don't get paid for it. 

Check out the link below and judge for yourself. I think you will be quite amazed at how cool this software turns out to be for your day-to-day activities, and for any messages, chats, or even social media, if that's what you are into. 

I might still use commas and full stops when I leave a message on the answer phone. That's going to be a hard habit to break. But who knows? Maybe I'll change in 2026, once and for all. And so will you.

Here’s the link for the free month:
Try it. I've been using it for messages and for lots of other work.
It's far, far superior than Siri and makes no mistakes.

You can listen to the audio too. Click here: How to speed up answering e-mail

The post How To Consistently Save Time On E-mail (And Other Digital Communication) appeared first on Psychotactics.

This article takes you on a surprising journey from airport walkways to creative entrepreneurs, revealing how a simple shift in perspective can unlock untapped markets and breathe new life into what you offer.

With real-world success stories and a healthy dose of marketing wisdom, you’ll discover why the path to innovation might be as easy as seeing your product—and your audience—in a whole new light.

Right click to save this episode.

Why don't we have walkways everywhere? At the airport, it seems to speed up things at least by a little bit. You can step onto a walkway and reach your gate much faster than before. The reality is that people have been trying to install walkways in cities since 1893.

This is why urban planners assumed that walkways would soon take over most cities. There would be three core platforms:

“Take off” is a slightly ironic term to use, because it was the “take off” bit that made walkways popular again. After over 70 years, as airports got wider, people got annoyed at having to walk so much. Dallas Airport installed the first walkway. Similar walkways were then rolled out across other American airports and spread to Europe and Asia.

The walkway was designed solely for urban transport. Yet, the problem it solved was quite different. It got people to the gates quickly, whether they were boarding or tired after a long flight.

This shows that, while we as creators may assume our product solves one problem, we get no traction. The moment we change how the problem is perceived, the same product or service is eagerly adopted by the public.

At Psychotactics, we conduct a cartooning course. What problem does it solve? It promises to help you create a very unique character. A character that's like no other, and you can call your own.

That character can then be put on a website, blog, presentation or all of the millions of places where we seem to communicate. Hence, many, if not most, of the people who sign up for the course use it for business purposes.

Let's say we announce that the very same course, with a few changes, is meant to create storybooks. Yes, we have AI, and we also have tens of thousands of illustrators. However, many people would like to write—and illustrate — their own books. It could be a story for kids in general, or even a one-off book that is for their grandchildren.

However, even if you don't budge from the audience, you can still make tweaks to the problem. You could sell the very same “story” course as something that brings “stress-relief”. But wait! Doesn't the person who draws for their website also get great joy from learning to draw?

Sure, they do, but in that case, the stress relief is seen as a side benefit. For the third audience, “stress-relief” is the core reason they're joining. Hence, it's the same product or service, but depending on the audience you're selling to, you can expand your marketplace.

It's not like it's easy for a small business to simply do different types of courses, or even start selling to a variety of audiences. However, knowing that every product or service serves many audiences helps you to test which audience works best for you.

All of which depends on your goal and your strategy. In the case of stress relief, the class could be much like a yoga class and could potentially go on for months, even years, at a time.

The storybooks or even the creation of a character may have a limited life, but it's possible that you want to do other things, and not sell the same offering forever. When you change the problem and get a response that aligns with your goal, you've got a good thing going.

I happen to know a person—Holly—who has a candle-making business. Well, candles are candles, aren't they? Not really. There are paraffin-based candles, soy wax, beeswax, coconut, palm, gel, blended, and other speciality waxes. Who knew! Anyway, when everyone is just waxing eloquently about wax, you can solve the problem in a slightly different manner.

When I went across to her workshop, Holly had dozens of candles, but what caught my eye were these Christmas trees. What problem would a Christmas tree candle solve? It could be a collectable. People may want a new design every year.

Now, while there are hundreds, or possibly thousands, of Christmas tree candles, this one candlemaker can solve the “collectable” problem, and therefore gift-giving becomes easier and still very much a fun activity every year.

I want to put up the tree every year, and yet you may not. You may like the feel of having a Christmas tree without all the bother. Hence, it solves a problem in a tiny yet elegant manner.

In spring, Holly might create floral candles for home décor; in autumn, pumpkin-spice candles for seasonal gifts. Same product, different problem, different audience.

If you've read The Brain Audit from cover to cover, or even a chapter or two, you're likely to be on board with the concept of “one problem”. That “big” problem, you're told, is the core of your marketing. If you're selling a book, that book should solve one problem. If you're selling a course, training or even a service, stick to one problem.

The issue has been that most people don't stick to one problem. If they're selling a cartooning course, they'll try to stuff “stress-relief, character development and creating storybooks” into the same headline and first paragraph.

The advice to stick to one problem remains the same. You still need to adhere to that principle, because people can't cope with many ideas at once. They not only have to remember what you've said, but then pass on that idea to others. Hence, the one problem doesn't change.

Every product or service solves multiple problems at once. When you find your audience, you'll find the problem it solves for them, and that's when you're more than likely to meet your goal.

The post How A Slight “Problem-Change” Can Dramatically Make A Massive Difference To Your Business Model? appeared first on Psychotactics.

There are millions of articles, books and stories out there. Yet, there’s always a way to cut through the clutter. No matter how much information exists, some people are still able to communicate in a way that gets and keep your attention.

Here’s how you go about it.

Saturation of information has already been achieved. However, the client is always looking for something new, different, easier, better etc.

And that's why no matter how much stuff is churned out, your voice can still be heard. It's also the reason why you should get better at:

1- Being able to write

My theory is that “practice” is pointless. Of course, it’s not meaningless, but you have to take a position to see if you can prove something or not. Now, like everyone else, I believed that practice was everything you needed to get skilled at something.

“Practice, practice, practice, practice – we’ll turn that into a song.

A theory that seems to appeal to you might be completely wrong, but let’s say you have a different take on things. Usually, the best approach is to assume that things aren’t as good as they seem. Hence, I believed that perspective in drawing was difficult. I also thought that using a camera in manual mode meant sacrifice to the camera gods.

And so on, the list goes on. You run into a belief system that is like the sword of Excalibur. It’s wedged in the rock. To be a better explainer, you have to have at least some doubt in the system that exists and try to provide a little insight into a different way of doing things.

It wasn’t even much of a debate. I lost every time because she said, ‘Practice does help.’ And I had to agree. But I knew that there was something wrong with that idea. Why? Because when there are twenty random people in the room, practice doesn’t guarantee a result.

Even in the now overly famous experiment of 10,000 hours, K. Anders, the author, couldn’t say who would make it. Some people reach a certain level in fewer hours (say 8,000 hours), while others get it in 15,000 hours. Well, whatever the reasoning behind the practice, it’s nice, but who has those many hours anyway?

I said, “It’s not practice, it’s a pattern”. And I think I knew I’d just won the Renuka vs moi battle. I knew it because she confirmed my new concept. It was indeed the pattern that mattered—and matters. However, to explain something that seems entirely new, you have to be new.

You have to break a tiny piece of the Excalibur sword, not the whole sword. And somehow you have to win the Renuka vs you battle. However, sometimes just solving the problem isn’t the end. You have to have an elegant analogy to explain the concept.

Let’s wander down that trail, shall we?

“I used to play three-four high-pressure games, and then on the weekend, I couldn’t walk around the block. I pushed myself,” she said. Then she went on to explain all the symptoms of burnout, such as constant fatigue and disinterest.

“The problem with burnout,” she said to me, “is that you’re at peak performance level right before everything falls apart.”

But it does. Let me give you an extremely brief analogy that goes like this: A rocket is at top speed and on target, right before it runs out of fuel.

It’s more of a “like” statement. It’s like “stepping in dog poo”, like “making sure the avocado is at the correct ripeness”. It’s like this, or like that. You begin with a single statement and build a story around it. The personal story of the hockey player is a good one, but it only hits home when you hear about the rocket. That’s when you have to stop and think: Am I the rocket?

Hence, when I started out trying to sell The Brain Audit, I was already competing against tens of thousands of sales and marketing books. Just trying to explain myself would work. I could say “I’m a marketing coach”, and someone would take notice. However, what I decided to do was to isolate “one word”. That word happened to be “hesitation”.

As you probably know, that’s how the “seven red bags concept” came about. The concept works for selling the book, but it would work just as easily if you were writing a report, an article, or selling a workshop. If you simply slip in a personal story, that’s not going to cut any ice.

People can relate to a story, but they often struggle to share it with others. They haven’t lived the life of the hockey player, but they sure can relate to a rocket hurtling through space, only to lose all momentum instantly.

You often don’t need to do a lot to go from boring to elegant. You start with boring—that is incredibly important. If you want to start with “elegant”, well, that’s almost too much pressure. Once you’ve put your boring analogy on paper, that’s your starting point.

You just have to take something so out of the realm of the topic that it feels “creative”. Like “sandwiching” when learning about article writing. Or “roller coasters” when talking about how the brain continues to scan for problems.

Or how “getting the avocado to the right ripeness” is like playing the stock market. You don’t have to think about the analogy. You feel it immediately. It’s grounded in something tactile or emotional.

If an analogy of a sharpener seems too boring, talk about a blunt sharpener. If it’s about a mobile phone on low battery, talk about the last 1% that seems to linger forever. The tweak is always something small that no one is thinking about, and you’re just making a tiny change.

You have your theory that’s slightly against the grain.

Those two are cool, but it may not be enough. We must consider the third factor: multiple angles to explain the same thing.

The Brain Audit seems to suggest that instead of leading with a benefit or solution, you should start with the problem. Then, there's a litany of examples. How many? Let's make a list.

Well, I barely remember writing them, but the point is that no one seems to notice. Why is this the case? The answer is “pushback” or “objections”. If we were to examine the first point in this article, it suggests that we introduce an idea that goes against the grain.

If you're going to be slightly out there, then you're more likely to get objections. The angles of explanation are directly proportional to the pushback. If the idea is easily understood, then people don't need a lot of detail. But the moment you start to say something like “orange juice for breakfast is a terrible idea”, they want to tie you to the stake.

That's what's going to decide how many angles you use to explain the concept. You will also need to alternate some explanation with the angle.

Story/analogy

You've brought up a concept, but you can't dump everything on the reader just yet. Hence, let's assume the reader believes that “reviews or testimonials” are effective. Your article is about “reverse testimonials”, which suggests that the testimonial shouldn't be “nice” at the start.

Instead, the testimonial should demonstrate realism. The reader isn't ready to suddenly drop their point of view and hug yours. In the case of the reverse testimonial, you'd have to explain concepts such as:

As you tackle the stages, you must help your reader understand each idea with a story or analogy. That's how you chip away at the concept and develop a very sound explanation.

Which is why some explanations seem so much better than others, and how you can stand out, despite “everything” already being covered.

And that's how I win the discussion battle with Renuka, too. Though not all battles.

The post How To Explain Concepts Elegantly (And Keep The Attention Of Your Audience) appeared first on Psychotactics.

While self-help books promise transformation, true change often stems from a shift in environment. Explore how small differences can influence your daily routines.

Let's jump on the environment bandwagon because it knows where you and I are headed.

The National Endowment for the Arts was more than a little concerned, as adult reading rates had dropped ten percentage points in a single decade. However, the slump was a lot worse for teens and early adults.

Suddenly six out of ten children changed their minds about reading. My nieces, for example, worked their way through 4224 pages of Harry Potter, and then went on to the Percy Jackson series. While Harry Potter sold hundreds of millions of books, the Percy Jackson series sold a staggering 35 million copies.

Why? Did the kids suddenly hate reading again? No, that's not the case at all. Kids expressly stated that the reason they were reading much more was that they started with Harry Potter. 65% also said they did better at school since reading the books. So why did the reading decline all of a sudden?

Think of how you and I went to school as kids. We didn't clamber into a giant gas-guzzling SUV. Instead, at a particular time, we'd wave goodbye to our parents and walk down to the bus stop.

In 2022, over half of students took a private car to school. In countries where cars are not the primary mode of transport, people often clamber onto motorcycles. Yes, there are many reasons why people can't take the bus. These include budget cuts, driver shortages, and other factors, but the biggest reason is remarkably linked to Harry Potter.

If you're the only one in school with a load of books, you're considered weird. As humans, we all look for external cues. If “all the parents” are taking their kids to school by car, maybe we should too. In a world where parents are overworked, they spend two hours a day getting kids to and from school.

The environment decides what we need to do; otherwise, we are quickly excommunicated. You can't convince a 12-year-old that a mobile phone isn't crucial, and you sure can't convince parents that the school bus makes sense. They take their cues from the outside world.

Take almost anyone who drives in a country like India, and you will find they honk the horn a lot, while driving. Even on empty roads, the horn is used endlessly. Put them on a plane and let's say that person lands in Bangkok and then rents a car.

The first time they honk, they get stares from other motorists.  The second time, it's a similar set of stares. Within a matter of streets, their behaviour radically changes. Put them back on the plane, and the honking takes hold again.

We tend to find our comfort in books on “how to change our habits”, yet we make only temporary fixes. The people who change their behaviour almost overnight tend to be in a different environment.

Just deciding that you'll go to bed early isn't going to help if you live in a country that sleeps late. While Kiwis, Australians, and even Japan will have finished their meals by 6 pm, Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Indians, and much of Asia will still be snacking.

If everyone around you is still up, you're pretty much like the only kid in school without a smartphone. You're considered the weird one. Often, you don't even have to go outdoors because an internal environment can prevent you from going ahead with your plan.

However, if your partner sleeps late, there's little point in you going to bed early because you're likely to be disturbed. An internal environment can dominate your behaviour just as easily.

Your environment isn’t just the city or culture you live in. It’s your desk, your phone screen, your playlist, the people in your chat window. Each of them is quietly shaping your behaviour.

We believe grit, discipline, and willpower are what drive change. But even the most determined person struggles when the environment is working against them.

Just as kids stopped reading when the cues disappeared, we can deliberately design cues back into our lives. Leave the book on the pillow. Keep the phone in another room. Sit next to people doing the thing you want to do.

When I joined a French course last December, the environment looked perfect: real people, real energy, a proper classroom. But it was chaos in disguise. There was no sequence, no accountability, no design.

Yet, when you encounter a well-designed environment, everyone benefits. People stop honking, start reading, go to bed earlier, and do things that they know are beneficial to their needs.

We like to think change happens from the inside out — that if we shift our mindset, our world will follow. But most lasting change happens from the outside in. The right environment shapes our attention, and attention shapes our reality.

Without design, the environment is just noise.

The post Why Habits Can Be Temporary And Environment Matters More, Instead? appeared first on Psychotactics.

However, when those grumps happen to be your prospects or clients, you better pay close attention. Why? Because they’re they are key to finding out your uniqueness for your products and services. Uniqueness seems so hard to find, but grumpy people are everywhere.

Here’s how you harness the grumbles to your benefit.

I subscribe to Netflix and Beamafilm, and I watch hours of YouTube, but I keep coming back to Apple TV.

Why do I do that? The answer doesn't lie in my behaviour alone, but drives the behaviour of tens of thousands, possibly millions of viewers. They re-subscribe, not because they want to get back to Apple TV. Instead, they're eager to watch just one series.

The name of the series is Slow Horses. The series bumps up subscriptions—and pulls back clients, like me, who've left a long time ago. Slow Horses pulls people back because it's utterly unique.

Like any idea, it’s difficult to pin down. We tend to think of it as an inherent quality—as if some products are born unique. They’re not. Almost always, uniqueness has to be invented. Invention, as you might expect, is a costly process. How are you supposed to guess what your clients are thinking?

People don’t know what they want. What they do know is what annoys them. They’ll complain endlessly. And if you listen closely when they’re grumpy, you’ll find they’re handing you clues about what to fix—or how to stand out.

Almost anyone can write a good story, but the great ones are where the characters come alive. For me, I needed a series where I could recognise my own family. Characters that worked with each other—but also against one another.

That messy, interlocking dynamic makes a story come alive. Slow Horses gave me that. It wasn’t Apple TV that solved my problem—it was Slow Horses. But because Apple TV gave me access to it, the platform became unique in my mind.

That’s the essence of uniqueness: it’s born from listening to frustration, then solving it in a way that others don’t.

When we step into a modern marketplace, we're swamped with dozens, sometimes thousands of options. The uniqueness—or grumpiness—gets buried under pricing and features. But they ignore one issue::what turns people into grumps?

One of New Zealand's national comfort foods is a pie. Many Kiwis grow up eating meat pies at school, sporting events, or family gatherings. Classic fillings in the pies include mince and cheese, steak and cheese, chicken and mushroom, or bacon and egg. At lunch time, it's not uncommon to stop for a pie.

“Well, they're not like they used to be,” said the owner, Lewis Mazza. “Pies made in New Zealand often have filler; they're not made with good ingredients.” The list goes on: Too generic tastes, mass-produced, tough, or rubbery pastry.

But what's the biggest gripe of all? It's called “butter”. Pies used to be made with a generous helping of butter. “Our pies—Rollas Pies— are exactly 50% butter”, says Lewis.

And yet it does quite the opposite. Rollas has existed since 2024. In barely a year, they've got four outlets on the go. Apparently, people felt grumpy enough to want the original buttery version of the pie.

Yes, they're grumpy about pastry, about having to deal with fillers and terrible tastes, but the butter reminds them of the past. Their biggest grumble may not even be about the butter content, but rather about how things “seemed better in the past.”

The question is: if you have endless money, why should you be grumpy? I'll tell you why. It's because your neighbour is also filthy rich. Somehow, you want to demonstrate that you're richer. To do so, you have to buy a car where you can talk about the paintwork.

The Lamborghini Revuelto Opera Unica sells for over $3 million. At first glance, it’s just another hypercar. But the paintwork tells a different story—a two-tone fading effect that took 475 hours of hand-painting using a spatula, with another 85 hours spent on the interior. There's no machine spraying paint on this car. It's just painstaking human attention that turns engineering into art. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can get a cheaper version of this car for a mere $608,000.

When you realise why they're grumbling, you can increase the value severalfold merely by something with paint. That's because you know it's not the paint you're selling. Just like the pies sold “the wholesomeness of the past”, the paintwork is signalling “I'm richer than you”, and that's what makes it unique.

Before I moved to New Zealand, I couldn't remember seeing a range hood in a home. Rangehoods are extractor fans. You cook, they sit above your stove top and suck out the smoke, steam, and especially the cooking odours from your kitchen.

Well, I grew up in India, and the smoke, steam, and the aroma of food were a plus. Even so, rangehoods are almost in every kitchen in New Zealand, and so reluctantly, I used it as well.

At high setting, it's about 70-80 decibels, similar to a vacuum cleaner. I love listening to podcasts or music while cooking, and without my noise-cancelling headphones, I hear nothing. However, even when speaking to my wife, Renuka, I have to turn the rangehood low or off.

The Schweigen Silent Rangehoods solved this grumble in a clever way—the motor isn’t in the kitchen at all. It’s mounted outside the house. Suddenly, the kitchen becomes a quiet, social space again. The problem wasn’t “how do we make a better fan,” but “how do we stop the noise?”

Interesting, isn't it? People are continuing to grumble about noisy rangehoods, but most manufacturers continue to turn out rangehoods with features and benefits. Yet, they don't tackle the main point of contention.

Our marketing business started in 2000. Hence, despite being around for over 25 years, we at Psychotactics have stayed below the radar. You don't find us advertising, doing mega launches, and despite having many books, we aren't on any bestseller lists. Theoretically, this is a formula for hardship, if not a lot of uncertainty. Yet, we've thrived for decades because one of the main sources of income is the courses we do every year.

At the very core, we're dealing with a grumpy audience. What are they upset about? Most online courses feel cold and disconnected. You log in, you watch a few videos, and you never hear from the instructor again. At Psychotactics, the focus isn’t on videos or lectures—it’s on conversation and feedback.

You’re not left alone. You post your work, you get critiques—often within minutes, and you learn from others. The grumble was “online learning is isolating.” The sales page on some other course may say “it's a cohort,” but that's just another catchphrase. You still end up feeling quite alone. On a Psychotactics course, this problem is solved very elegantly.

You come to rely not on the teacher, but on the group. On days when you don't feel like showing up, you do so because of your colleagues in the course. On other days, when you're running at full steam, you also want to show up to bolster the spirits of your group. People learn from each other's mistakes and discover how to solve the same problem in various ways.

Clients don't always know what they want, but they know what they don't want. The solid proof of this grumpiness doesn't show up in client comments, but instead in their behaviour. Once people get to know each other, they tend to reach the end of the course and acquire a skill. But where do you get the most dropouts? It's in the first or second week.

I want you to think about that phenomenon for a minute. The first week is when people are most eager to learn. They signed up and spent a few thousand dollars, so why bail out right at the start? The reason they do so is that they haven't formed bonds with each other.

It's easy to simply believe that you're not so good at something and quietly leave. It's much harder to leave once you realise that everyone wants you around, needs you, and you need them.

Or as an African proverb says: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a group. People are constantly looking for a group of friends. Smart, interesting people, a bit like them, but also opposites of each other.

But it's the primary reason why they come back. We also know this fact to be true, because if they join another course and the group isn't as vibrant as the one they'd experienced, the clients complain. Our job, therefore, is to pay attention to this grumpiness and make sure they never feel alone.

Whether it’s a silent kitchen, a pie, a hand-painted car, a spy series full of flawed characters, or a course that actually talks back to you—uniqueness always starts the same way: by listening to complaints and solving them better than anyone else.

If you want to find uniqueness, start listening to grumpy people

The post How To Use Grumpy People To Find Your Uniqueness appeared first on Psychotactics.

However, a lot of this understanding of talent is an illusion. It’s based on what we have been told and also our current behaviour. How can we overcome these barriers and become better learners?

Let’s find out.

Sold as a luxurious gourmet ingredient, it is marketed to mimic the earthy decadence of real truffles. But here's the catch, there are no actual truffles in most truffle oils. What you're tasting isn't the essence of a rare foraged fungus, but a synthetic compound, usually 2,4-dityapentane.

This is manufactured in labs to simulate the aroma of truffles. Chefs and foodies are often misled into believing that they are experiencing the complexity of real truffles when in reality they are being served a chemical illusion.

Real truffles are subtle, they are nuanced, but truffle oil is blunt and it's loud. The fact that the label says truffle is borderline dishonest. Consumers pay a high price for this opulence.

We grew up believing that we are talented in some areas and not so talented in others. And these ideas are a bit like truffle oil. It's an illusion that we buy into. So how do we know it's an illusion? In this article, we'll cover three points.

When my niece Marsha was about five years old, I looked down at a piece of paper that she was holding, and there was this scroll. Why is your handwriting so bad? I asked her. I can't do anything about it, she responded quickly. Everybody in our family writes badly.

I asked her. Oh, she said, my mama told me. She told me that everybody in our family has bad handwriting. As you're listening to this story, you realize that something is wrong here. There is an illusion being created, and this is an illusion that has been perpetuated by the source.

The source of all of our learning is a parent, a teacher, a friend, and then finally ourselves. We have four separate sources. Let's start out with the teacher.

We go to school, and we're five or six, and the teacher is probably 22 years old. She's just out from teacher school. She doesn't know much about anything, let alone teaching.

And she tells you that you're good at drawing, you're good at writing, you're good at this, you're good at that, and you start to believe it. As a five-year-old, as a six-year-old, you believe what adults tell you. Because you don't know any better.

She believes that some students are smarter and others not so much. She believes that some have skills and others have other skills. And in a very short time, we get saddled with this kind of information that we take for the rest of our lives.

We think that we're talented or not talented. We want to live up to the expectations of our teachers, so we do what they think is important. And then when we go home and we show our parents, they encourage us.

What happens is we start to go down pathways that are engineered by our teachers and then unwittingly fostered by parents. Now parents are also or also were 22 year olds. They barely knew what they were doing with their lives.

They probably had two or three kids. There's all this balancing act of just keeping a household together. They're paying bills, and then they have to get across a message to you.

And while they care for you and bring you up to the best of their abilities, they're still fudging through it like most parents do every single day. Your teachers, they're one source. Your parents are another source, but then you have friends.

And maybe some of those friends run faster than you or draw better than you, or at least that's what you believe to be true. And after a while, that becomes a reality, and you become the fourth source. You start to look in the mirror and go, I'm not talented enough.

And just at that moment, you become like my niece. She's five years old. She doesn't know Sunday from Monday, but she does know that everyone in her family has bad handwriting.

We believe in what we see, how we do things and how much struggle is involved. And then we come to a conclusion that we are either talented or not talented. This takes us to the second part, which is about simplified structure.

If you look at a chair catalog, you'll find hundreds, maybe thousands of options, different sizes, different colors.  But there's one thing that is common for every single chair, and that is that you can sit on it.

It doesn't matter whether you're underweight or overweight, and overweight by quite a lot. You have that confidence that when you sit on the chair, it's not going to break. And the reason why it doesn't break is because it has structure.

The shapes, the sizes, the colors, they're all what we call vocabulary. They're a different way of expressing the same thing, but the underlying structure has to exist. Now, when you ask your parents or your teachers, or even your friends to explain structure, they don't do a very good job of it.

And right up in the front is this whole bunch of numbers, 2.8, 5.6, what are they supposed to mean? If you ask a photographer, they will tell you that's the aperture, and immediately you're intimidated.

You don't know the structure, and you're already scared about something that you can't remember or can't figure out. There is shutter speed, and then there is ISO. There's ISO 100, 200, 500, 25,000, even 100,000.

And finally, shutter speed, which also has numbers, 2,000th of a second, 500th of a second. All of these are numbers and names, and there doesn't seem to be any structure. But that's not the way a trainer looks at it.

And then you're supposed to figure out how this triangle works. Now, if you go on YouTube, you don't have to spend more than five minutes before you start yawning. And the reason why you're so intimidated and so tired immediately is because there is no simplified structure.

And this is very important. You can have structure, but it can be very tedious. And when you have simplified structure, you realize, oh wait, somebody has taken this apart. Somebody has deconstructed it. Somebody has said, let me make this less boring and more exciting for the learner.

People understand a concept and then they don't know how to explain it. So they don't have simplified structure. My other niece, Kiera, was going to a camp, and she wanted to know how to use a manual camera.

They were not allowed to use their phones, but they could take a camera. When I gave her my manual camera, she looked at all the numbers, and she said, what are all these about?

Now try explaining to a nine or 10 year old what aperture, shutter speed, and ISO means. So I told her, look at this numbers right in the front, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. If one person is standing in front of you, you go to one.

If four people are standing in front of you, four. And if eight people, and she says eight. So we sorted that first part out, and then we went to the second part, which is the ISO. And I told her, just keep that at a fixed amount. And she said, oh, I can do that. And finally, we didn't even look at the shutter speed and all those fancy numbers.

I just told her to turn the knob until she had enough light. So that was simplified structure. And when I explain this concept, it's better if I have a camera in my hand, and I'm showing you what I'm doing.

But even here over audio, you can understand approximately what's happening. So it's simplified structure. And when you have this simplified structure, people get it.

And better still, you become the teacher because you can explain it to someone else. Without simplified structure, we go back to our source, our teachers, our parents, our friends.

And then we say things like, we have to practice, practice, practice. We have to work really hard. You have to do a lot of this while learning, simply because there is no simplified structure in place.

You were given something that was complicated, something like the exposure triangle. And that is a bunch of exposure triangles that you're dealing with every single day of your life. Everything is made complicated because someone did not know how to explain it to you, or when they explained it to you, it was just complex.

The source, which you're depending on, it's usually not reliable. The structure is often in place, but it's not simplified enough. And this is where the concept of working hard comes in. But the problem is that you can end up working too hard, and it is counterproductive.

This takes us to the third part, which is where we don't have to work harder, but we have to work smarter. But what is smarter? Let's find out.

I once heard a neuroscientist talking about how we learn. But she wasn't talking about the brain. She was talking about our stomachs. She explained the sensation of feeling full. When we are so stuffed that we feel like rolling across the floor, we can't add another morsel.

We should stop at around the 30 or 40-minute mark, because that's all it can take, especially when it's dealing with new things. When it's dealing with elements that it hasn't encountered before, 30 minutes is a very, very long time.

If you are already familiar with whatever it is you're doing, then you could go for much longer. But in general, when you're learning, that's what the whole idea of learning is about, is that everything is new.

And if you go past the 30 or 40-minute mark, all you're doing is going back to what your parents told you to do, what your teachers, what your friends, and what you told yourself, that you have to work harder.

But after a point, that work, whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter. Your brain is like your stomach. It's stuffed. And while you can understand this phenomenon, you still feel the need to somehow keep going.

When I started learning French, I started out with 25 new sentences, and then 25 existing sentences. I found that I could eventually have 25 new sentences, and then 75 existing sentences. And that took me no more than about 45 minutes.

I wanted to work harder. So some days, I do 600 sentences. Some days, 800. And I'd be proud announcing this to other friends who were also learning the language. But what did I remember?

Out of 25 sentences, I might remember 5. And even those would have grammatical errors in them. Which isn't to say that you shouldn't put in more time in the day.

This morning, when I woke up, I did my French for about 40 minutes. And when I went to the supermarket, I was listening to the sentences all over again. So there is an advantage in leaving something, putting in a space, and then coming back after a little while, then putting in an even longer space, and then coming back.

A professional will use this technique a lot of the time. A writer will do a first draft, walk away from it, get some feedback, then work on the second draft. And depending on the size of the chapter, depending on the size of the material being written, work on the third draft.

She's not learning something new, but the subject matter is new, the words are new, the thoughts are different. And so, there is this slowness about it.

They're actually learning what they don't know, and that's why the process is slow. That's why the process needs the space in between. Unsurprisingly, this is how it works for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not all at once, but with the space in between. And this brings us to the end of this article.

In this article, we covered the source, which is our parents, teachers, friends, and ourselves. We then moved on to the fact that we didn't just need structure, but we needed simplified structure. We need a system that is so simple that we don't have to think about it.

And finally, we looked at the space between the learning, that instead of just cramming everything together, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we should have space. And that's how the learning process becomes smarter, not harder. Spending more time on something, that's usually counterproductive.

You get slower, you struggle more for no reason whatsoever. You think that you should work much harder, and this brings us to the most important point in this article, and that is the source is what you have to look at. You have to determine whether the source of the information was credible in the first place.

Was that 22-year-old teacher, 25-year-old parent, your friend who was six years old, are they reliable sources? Were they reliable sources? And all of the information that you're getting right now, is it a reliable source, especially when it comes to talent?

Because we see that people can draw, write, dance, cook. When they're 30 years old, 40 years, 50, the age doesn't matter, and it happens in a matter of weeks, sometimes days. The source is like the truffle oil.

It is an illusion, and we bind to that illusion, and we think it's real, and it's not real. Well, not most of the time. Some of the time, you do get good truffle oil.

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