Made to Stick - Reading Notes

This post is a summary of the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

I first wrote about Made to Stick: Why ideas survive and others die in March, 2011. I later included the book on a list of paradigm-changing books in 2015.

The notes below are from my 2011 journal. I have been reviewing my journals for blog post ideas, and I thought this would be a good follow-up to the initial book review.

Chapter 1 - Simple

• Have one core message stated at the outset.
• Avoid decision paralysis - don't focus on all options.
• The message should be compact - like proverbs.
• Using existing knowledge, add new information with comparison (new movie ideas are compared to other movies).
• Use metaphors.

Chapter 2 - Unexpected

• Get people's attention (surprise) and keep it (interest).
• Expose the part of your message that is "uncommon sense" (surprise, unexpected, twist).
• Create mystery to sustain attention (for example, wherever there are questions without obvious answers, unexpected journeys).
• Curiosity is created whenever there is a knowledge gap.
• Ideas should be provocative but not paralyzing.

Chapter 3 - Concrete

• Life is not abstract.
• Concrete language helps people, especially novices, understand new concepts.
• Teachers take an existing schema and overlay a new layer of abstraction.
• Concrete is memorable.
• The more concrete the illustration, the better (more memorable). If an idea can connect with multiple areas of mental processing, the more "sticky" it will be.
• Simulation is preferred to illustration.
• Use props because they encourage brainstorming and comprehension.
• Use specific examples rather than abstract statements.
• "What the world needs is more fables."

Chapter 4 - Credible

• Anti-authority - tell stories using real people, situations, and examples.
• Remember the power of details - specific details make a claim real and more believable.
• Translate statistics into meaningful, understandable units (1 out of 3 people in the U.S. vs 100,000,000 people in the U.S.).

Chapter 5 - Emotional

• Focus on the individual - not the population.
• When presented with charitable needs in Africa, people who read statistics gave less than those who read about a specific child.
• Feeling and calculating are processed differently with different behaviors.
• Semantic stretch occurs when an idea is overused (the word "unique" is no longer special).
• Get self-interest into every headline or presentation. Spell out the benefit of the benefit. 
• WIIFY = What's in it for you?
• If people can imagine themselves doing something, they are more likely to actually do it.

Chapter 6 - Stories

• Stories provide simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act).
• Stories let the audience mentally test how they would react - the audience is not passive.
• Simulating past events is more helpful than predicting outcomes.
• Mental practice done when visualizing a task from start to finish improves performance significantly. 
• Mental practice produced two-thirds of the benefits of actual physical practice.
• Stores put knowledge into a framework that is life-life.
• "We must fight against the temptation to skip directly to the 'tips' and leave out the story."
• Always be looking for stories to illustrate your content.
• In a study, 63% of participants remembers stories, but only 5% statistics.

If you found this summary to be informative, I encourage you to buy the book and create your own notes.