120 entries under "book"

[Help them move from "can't do" to "can with effort" to "effortless mastery", ideally skipping the second step.]

[Help them practice toward better outcomes by designing exercises that bring them within a session or two to 95% reliability for a small skill or task.]

[Through perceptual exposure, your brain is learning without telling you what it learned.]

[Good perceptual exposure training needs lots of high quality examples that seem different on the surface but aren't.]

[Ideally, the exercises don't explain but enables the learner's brain to "discover" a pattern.]

[A common theme when newbies get derailed is that they can't express their frustration to the product maker. You can at least acknowledge their experience and encourage them to continue or hint at what could make progress easier; tell them the struggle is normal and that it's part of getting started.]

[The manual's sin is not complexity but making people feel like they're idiots for not understanding.]

[Anticipate the faces they're likely to make and compensate for their inability to show you.]

[Find what needs compensating by looking in the top comments in discussion groups for the tool or its larger more compelling context.]

[Design a performance path with skills that motivate them towards mastery can also magnetize them away from derailers. Use existing paths based on training programs, discussion forums, or definitive guides. If you create a path, order skills from beginner (less time/effort) to expert and group by rank.]

[They need to believe they'll improve, then actually improve, and also realize they've improved.]

[The first thirty minutes is a critical period to support them doing something new or that they didn't know they could do: their first superpower]

[If they're worried about breaking something, they'll hesitate to touch anything. Make recovery easy. Help them feel free to just try things. Consider it a "Wild Experimentation Mode."]

["This product is awesome" really means "I'm awesome".]

[Most focus on product quality before quality of user results.]

[Businesses claim "world-class service" for their customers, but their customers are likely more interested in being a "world-class customer".]

[Make a better master rather than a better tool.]

[The post-UX UX of results begins after the clicking is done. What does it now enable them to do or show or say? How are they more powerful?]

[Substitute "How can we succeed at X?" with "How can our users or their users succeed at X?"]

[Imagine a scenario where your users are out-performing your competitions users in the bigger context.]

[Your price represents not just the product but also the documentation, support, and future roadmap.]

[Sage accounting software sucks, but you buy reliability in knowing it will update for new tax laws, your bookkeeper's likely familiarity with the product, and the support of staff who respond to forty thousand callers a day.]

[Black and Decker introduced their DeWALT drill seris by giving away pulled pork sandwiches and holding drill-off competitions at construction sites, and being present at rodeos and NASCAR races where their end users hang out.]

[The goal of having multiple versions at different prices is to be capable of selling to customers with different maximum thresholds. Versions could be created based on features, earlier access, economic demographics (students, hobbyists, professionals), geography, customer industries, platform (Apple users may pay more).]

[An app might be lower-priced in a country whose currency is lower-valued, but localized in their language which renders it useless to those in countries with higher-value currency.]

[A 'jumbo' size with zero sales will increase sales for the 'large'.]

This effect makes the newsrack and the traffic light interactive; the newsrack, the newspapers on it, the money going from people's pockets to the dime slot, the people who stop at the light and read papers, the traffic light, the electric impulses which make the lights change, and the sidewalk which the people stand on form a system - they all work together.

the urban taxi can function only because pedestrians and vehicles are not strictly separated. The cruising taxi needs a fast stream of traffic so that it can cover a large area to be sure of finding a passenger. The pedestrian needs to be able to hail the taxi from any point in the pedestrian world, and to be able to get out to any part of the pedestrian world to which he wants to go. The system which contains the taxicabs needs to overlap both the fast vehicular traffic system and the system of pedestrian circulation.

The playground, asphalted and fenced in, is nothing but a pictorial acknowledgment of the fact that 'play' exists as an isolated concept in our minds. It has nothing to do with the life of play itself. Few self-respecting children will even play in a playground.

[In a natural city, play happens in a thousand places within the cracks of adult life. Children become full of their surroundings through play, unless they're in a fenced-off cage.]

[Putting a concert hall beside an opera house is almost never practical to either audience, and only a consequence of that simple-minded part of us which puts things with the same name in the same basket.]

[Theories describing leadership by 'the government' (rather than 'governments') expect it will rush to the rescue whenever the market 'fails' and rely on economists to advise when and how, without any concept of private individials to solve collective problems among themselves.]

I commit myself to follow the set of rules we have devised in all instances except dire emergencies if the rest of those affected make a similar commitment and act accordingly.

Once appropriators have made contingent self-commitments, they are then motivated to monitor other people's behaviors, at least from time to time, in order to assure themselves that others are following the rules most of the time. Contingent self-commitments and mutual monitoring reinforce one another, especially when appropriators have devised rules that tend to reduce monitoring costs.

[Seeming simplicity is not equivalent to generality. Setting variables to a constant usually narrows the applicability of a model rather than broadening it.]

['I will if you will' becomes credible through monitoring that makes deviations visible.]

[Variables indicating benefits of proposed rules:]

1. Numbers of appropriators
2. Size of CPR
3. Temporal and spatial variability of resource units
4. Current condition of CPR
5. Market conditions for resource units
6. Amount and type of conflict
7. Availability of data about (1) through (6)
8. Status quo rules in use
9. Proposed rules

[Variables describing forecasted costs of changing the status quo:]

1. Number of decision makers
2. Heterogeneity of interests
3. Rules in use for changing rules
4. Skills and assets of leaders
5. Proposed rule
6. Past strategies of appropriators
7. Autonomy to change rules

[Variables describing resulting costs for monitoring and enforcement:]

1. Size and structure of CPR
2. Exclusion technology
3. Appropriation technology
4. Marketing arrangement
5. Proposed rules
6. Legitimacy of rules in use

[Variables affecting internal norms and discount rate:]

1. Appropriators live near CPR
2. Appropriators involved in many situations together
3. Information made available to appropriators about opportunities that exist elsewhere

[Better to view institutional choices as informed judgements about uncertain benefits and costs as opposed to mechanical calculation.]

whether grazing areas are used to produce milk or wool or meat can affect the ability of the appropriators to learn more rapidly about adverse conditions, should they arise. Milking occurs daily, and variations in yield are rapidly apparent to the herders. Wool is sheared less frequently, but the quality of wool is immediately apparent to those who herd sheep. The quality of meat produced for market is monitored less frequently and may not even be known by herders. Consequently, the quality and timeliness of the information that CPR appropriators obtain about their resource vary according to how a resource unit is used, as well as across resource types. The problems of groundwater pumpers in obtaining accurate and valid information about the condition of their CPR are more daunting than those of herders, regardless of the final products of herding activities.

[In a setting where external government has little effect on internal choices, the likelihood of appropriators adopting rule changes positively relates to whether:]

1 Most appropriators share a common judgment that they will be harmed if they do not adopt an alternative rule.
2 Most appropriators will be affected in similar ways by the proposed rule changes.
3 Most appropriators highly value the continuation activities from this
CPR; in other words, they have low discount rates.
4 Appropriators face relatively low information, transformation, and enforcement costs.
5 Most appropriators share generalized norms of reciprocity and trust that can be used as initial social capital.
6 The group appropriating from the CPR is relatively small and stable.

The typical assumptions of complete information, independent action, perfect symmetry of interests, no human error, no norms of reciprocity, zero monitoring and enforcement costs, and no capacity to transform the situation itself will lead to highly particularized models, not universal theories.

1. [Define clear boundaries for the resource and who can share in it.]
2. [Proportion the sharing based on local conditions.]
3. [Empower those affected by the rules to modify them.]
4. [Monitor with stakeholders who are accountable.]
5. [Sanction those who violate rules with gradual escalation based on context and severity.]
6. [Prepare low-cost local conflict-resolution mechanisms in the event of disagreement.]
7. [Recognize the right to self-organization without challenge from external authorities.]

Irrigation rotation systems, for example, usually place the two actors most concerned with cheating in direct contact with one another. The irrigator who nears the end of a rotation turn would like to extend the time of his turn (and thus the amount of water obtained). The next irrigator in the rotation system waits nearby for him to finish, and would even like to start early. The presence of the first irrigator deters the second from an early start, the presence of the second irrigator deters the first from a late ending. Neither has to invest additional resources in monitoring activities. Monitoring is a by-product of their own strong motivations to use their water rotation turns to the fullest extent.

personal rewards for doing a good job are given to appropriators who monitor. The individual who finds a rule-infractor gains status and prestige for being a good protector of the commons. The infractor loses status and prestige. Private benefits are allocated to those who monitor.

Because the appropriators tend to continue monitoring the guards, as well as each other, some redundancy is built into the monitoring and sanctioning system. Failure to deter rule-breaking by one mechanism does not trigger a cascading process of rule infractions, because other mechanisms are in place.

The first step is that the village forester marks the trees ready to be harvested. The second step is that the households eligible to receive timber form work reams and equally divide the work of cutting the trees, hauling the logs, and piling the logs into approximately equal stacks. A lottery is then used to assign particular stacks to the eligible households. No harvesting of trees is authorized at any other time of year.

[It was considered reasonable for the land violations detective to demand cash and sake from infractors and use it for their own enjoyment. In addition to those penalties, contraband harvest was confiscated along with equipment and horses, the latter two only retrievable by paying a fine to the village.]

The first thing to understand is that there are probabilities at work. A trader with 55% winning days will average two or three 5day losing streaks per year and probably one 6day losing streak. A 6 day losing streak is enough to make the best trader feel like a complete moron. But he isn't. It's just probability

[Markets with bearish sentiment without many positions is primed to fall as new entries reflect their perspective, whereas with many positions is more st risk of reversal as there may be no one left to sell.]

['Buy the rumour, sell the fact' refers to markets pricing in an event ahead of time and then reversing when it takes place. Often the moment of a news release is the apex of this sentiment and you may notice counterintuitively that good news getting priced in over time ends up reversing on its announcement]

Instead of gyrating back and forth for a while before finding equilibrium, the market now finds equilibrium very quickly after the release of economic data. Hedge funds and banks use regression analysis before the data release to estimate how far each asset should move on various outcomes and they execute trades via algorithm at the moment of release. They will buy or sell until all asset classes are approximately in line with where history suggests they should be and this will happen in microseconds. There is nothing left on the table for the human traders because all the liquidity in the market is hoovered by the bots in the first few microseconds.

[P&L targets remind you of the point where your job is done and so to book profits rather than increase leverage.]

[If the average moves on two instruments are respectively 1.2% and 0.6%, you wouldn't want the same position size in both.]

[The market only cares about how economic data releases compare to expectations; so not in relation to last month or year but rather the median awaited by economists and traders.]

[When markets react to old or random news, focus more on what's happening rather than whether it makes sense.]

[If you backtest and find an optimal moving average that worked in the past, that doesn't guarantee success in the future. Better to pick what fits your timeline granularity.]

Trading is a serious intellectual pursuit that is also incredibly fun. The joy of attempting to solve an unsolvable puzzle. A nearly impossible daily test of discipline and selfcontrol. An endless emotional rollercoaster of instant feedback, frequent disappointment, sudden euphoria, and nearly unbearable periods of crushing selfdoubt.

A Simple Marketing Worksheet

• Who's it for?
• What's it for?
• What is the worldview of the audience you're seeking to reach?
• What are they afraid of?
• What story will you tell? Is it true?
• What change are you seeking to make?
• How will it change their status?
• How will you reach the early adopters and neophiliacs?
• Why will they tell their friends?
• What will they tell their friends?
• Where's the network effect that will propel this forward?
• What asset are you building?
• Are you proud of it?

[Trusted marketers earn enrollment because they make a promise and keep it. With trust comes attention that lets them tell a story uninterrupted. The story can lead to more enrollment, more promises, more trust.]

[Everyone is famous to 1500 people. In our culture, fame breeds trust.]

[It takes more (stress) for a customer to say yes than to walk away.]

[Make sure your most loyal customers have a megaphone to tell others: people like us do things like this.]

[Building new things for your customers (instead of finding new customers for your things) implies investing in their lifetime value.]

[A supermarket might expect the lifetime value of their regulars to be thousands of dollars, so they would do well to 1. sponsor events for new residents in the area and 2. do right when a local complains about the fruit not being ripe.]

[People won' tell their friends because you wanted or asked. You need to make your offer worth sharing.]

[Facebook during their initial growth was well-positioned as a status signal for insecure and high-status students who craved to move up in some invisible hierarchy.]

[One kid brings a yo-yo to school but it doesn't create much traction. A charismatic fifth-grader who is good but not intimidating opens the Yo-yo Union club to all with three spare yo-yos to share; then there's three early adopters leading the way and soon there's thirty kids with yo-yos on the playground.]

[We only notice ideas that cross the chasm beyond neophiliacs.]

[You serve many but profit from few; whales pay for minnows.]

If the goal is to get it over with, get the person off the phone, deny responsibility, read the script, use words like "as stated" and "our policy," then, please, sure, yes, keep doing what you're doing and watch it all fall apart.

['Cheap' can mean 'scared', a last refuge when there are no other ideas.]

[Status is an omnipresent layer in how people make decisions. It's always relative but what is perceived by others can differ from is believed internally. Some people want to hold on, and some want to move up; some even want to move down because it may mean safety and less competition.]

[Consider what the person you're serving measures with respect to their status before they make decisions.]

"Who eats first" and "who sits closest to the emperor" are questions that persist to this day. Both are status questions.
One involves dominion; the other involves affiliation.

[Amateurs create what they like, whereas professionals create what other people will like.]

[Spam scams are poorly worded to filter you out quick. They seek people who are dominated by greed and avoid wasting time on the careful and well-informed.]

[A brand is not your logo: it's a shorthand for the customer's expectations when they buy from or meet with you. Your brand is the promise they think they're making.]

If people care, you've got a brand.

[Start not with solutions but with people you seek to serve and a problem they want solved.]

[Commodity work isn't lucrative when other options are a click away.]

[Charging ten times more isn't about quantity: it's for a different story.]

[Grateful Dead favoured extremes on the XY axis (live recordings over polished albums, long jams for their fans over short radio hits) and owned them.]

[Beside the intended audience, there's also an accidental audience who ends up getting more satisfaction from tearing down the work.]

["For those who want A and believe B, choosing C is perfect." Based on who they are and what they want and know, everyone is always right.]

[Launching an extreme (fastest, cheapest, . most convenient) means breaking the former extreme's status.]

"I made this" is a very different statement than, "What do you want?"

[Specific is kind of brave as it's accountable: it either worked, matched, spread, or it didn't. Are you hiding behind everyone or anyone?]

[Find a corner of the market that can't wait for your attention, where you are the perfect answer.]

["How can I start a business?" is contrived, whereas "What would matter here?" relates to real needs of others.]

Focus on the smallest viable market: "How few people could find this indispensable and still make it worth doing?"

Instead of looking for members for your work, look for ways to do work for your members.

Everyone is lonely, insecure, and a bit of a fraud. And everyone cares about something.

[Pet food caters to the owner; humans don't even know what it tastes like.]

[Conspiracy theories might attract out of a desire for uniqueness or belonging in a small group.]

[When you show up with a flotation device to help someone drowning, they don't need ads to understand or be persuaded.]

[Old-fashioned marketing centers the one buying ads, and is done to the customer rather than for them.]

Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven't made an impact until you've changed someone.

[Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve their problem.]

Marketers don't use consumers to solve their company's problem; they use marketing to solve other people's problems. They have the empathy to know that those they seek to serve don't want what the marketer wants, don't believe what they believe, and don't care about what they care about. They probably never will.

[Humans tell themselves stories. We should consider those as indisputably true and not persuade otherwise.]

[Not the drill bit, not the quarter-inch hole, not the shelf, but rather the satisfaction of doing it themselves or the admiration from a spouse or a room free of clutter. Understand how the utility of an object is to serve their real wish: to feel safe and respected.]

[We buy how it makes us feel, and there aren't so many feelings to choose from. To deliver belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or other desirable emotions likely means something worthwhile.]

with correct deep breathing, the ribs gently massage the spine and internal organs.

Blood circulation throughout the body happens via blood vessels (veins, arteries, and capillaries). There are around 100,000 miles of blood vessels in an average adult body! These lie across or underneath, or are surrounded by muscles. Relaxed muscles that are not stiff and over-contracted won't squeeze and pinch the blood vessels, meaning they transport blood more effectively.

Remain relaxed, even when you are doing exercises that may seem at first to be primarily strength building; consider all the movements to really be a stretch.