Psychotactics

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Your business will have a Zidane Moment. Some time in the future, you’ll run into a situation that you cannot foresee; cannot perceive; and one that will cause your business to feel an instant shudder.
What’s the Zidane moment, and how can you recover from one?
The [...]

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The economy is getting bad, they tell you.
The economy is getting worse, they tell you.
The implosion is about to come, they tell you.
And Leo Burnett would laugh (or at the very least, softly chuckle).
Leo, who?
It was the Great Depression. The economy had done exactly what [...]

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Let’s say you have to pee.
So this is a normal bodily function, eh?
It means that if you feel that sensation, and you don’t go soon enough, you’ll be in trouble.
But how many of us go to the loo when we first feel the sensation?
And how [...]

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You see it in sci-fi movies.
You see it at workshops.
It’s called the ‘force shield.’
Once the ‘force shield’ is up, nothing can penetrate the shield. The people within the shield are cocooned. And the people outside the shield are isolated.

Sticky-pairs cause force-shields at workshops
So what are [...]

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Imagine you pulled out a chair.
Or two large pieces of paper.
Or a balloon.
What you’re doing is waking up the audience with a prop.
And props wake up the sleepiest of audiences in a matter of seconds. Yes, even if the prop isn’t remotely connected to your [...]

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Examples have a singular goal: They help the reader understand a concept. But could the wrong example actually alienate an audience? And how would you know which kind of example would alienate you?

Let’s look at a simple example of a ‘rocking chair.’
So if were to [...]

I was on my way back from the airport, when I struck up a conversation with a taxi driver. He was originally a landscaper, but was now driving taxis (as part of his retirement plan) and he did like the job a lot. But he did have some regrets.
He wanted to write. It had [...]

In the year 2003, I got on a cruise ship from New Zealand to Australia.
And those cruise ships are so big, that you’d never believe you’d get seasick on one of them. And yet it’s quite easy to get seasick when the sea is churning and monstrous waves keeping battering the ship time and time [...]

Let’s say you’re writing an article. And let’s also assume that you’re writing a pretty good article when suddenly you manage to slip in a ‘throwaway line’.

So what’s a throwaway line?
A throwaway line is a line that’s often not related to the article. It’s probably just a thought that popped up in your head at [...]

How to use article writing techniques to produce a book
Have you heard of the story of the ‘Goose that laid the Golden Eggs’?
What about ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’?
And surely you must have heard of ‘The Fox and the Grapes’.
And what do those stories have in common?
All of these stories are credited to a Greek [...]

How to write a series of articles to make up a book
Imagine you wanted to write a book in December. And right now it’s January. When do you begin to write the book?
Should you start in August? Or is July a more auspicious month? And wouldn’t it be better to outline the whole book in [...]

Speeding up your articles writing: Is that really possible?
Do you want to write articles and write them faster?
Do you want to write outstanding articles and write them faster?
Do you want to avoid slogging over one darned article for three hours?
Let’s answer that question by looking at piano lessons.
If you started piano lessons two and a [...]