Say it Better

From Obesity to Resilience, Performance and Happiness – How We Can Do Better By Our Children

NurtureShock. From the real root cause of obesity to where the worst bullying really happens this book is a wake-up call for parents and anyone involved with schools or children. I’m betting it will spark some excited – and heated conversations.    

From letting kids sleep longer to starting school later to keeping kids off the “hedonic treadmill”, this heavily-researched yet highly captivating book takes on many of the major myths about how we raise our children.  Some findings have already generated pushback from school administrators who “just feel it doesn’t make sense.”

From the first page I was pulled in as any parent will be.  So much of what Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman discovered in their three years of wading through the research is startling – and runs counter to public policy and how we spend money, ostensibly in support of children.  The co-authors were inspired to write this book after covering the groundbreaking research by Carol Dweck on fixed vs growth mindsets.

Some findings in the book:

• Rather than praising most everything a child does, offer focused praise that helps your child see “strategies he could apply the next day.”  (This book is worth the price just to read about the study comparing the very different ways American and Chinese mothers encourage their children that enable one group to gain greater confidence and success.

• Children’s sleeping patterns and needs are substantially different than adults. Over time, “a loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to (the loss of) two years of cognitive maturation and development” in children.  “Sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories, yet recall gloomy memories just fine.”

• From obesity to mood and performance, children did better when school started at 8:30 a.m. instead of the more usual 7:30 a.m. In one study in Lexington where schools changed to the later hour, “teenage car accidents were down 25%, compared to the rest of the state.”

Even if you aren’t a parent you’ll find this a fascinating read for what it tells us about human development, lying, longing for love and other behavior. Or about how we make education policy (for the convenience of the adults or the kids?) - and what specific actions we can take as parents and as citizens to give children a better start in life. Now I’ll get off my soapbox.

If it looks good ...

... you’ll see it.

If it sounds good, you’ll hear it.

If it’s marketing right, you’ll buy it.

Yet if it’s true, you’ll feel it, wrote Kid Rock.

As instinctively inspiring as his conclusion feels it is often not true, unfortunately. Yet, since we crave certainty, so we can be swayed to be certain about what is, for example “true.” 

The upside is that we can learn how to avoid common decisionmaking traps including the paradox of choice. In so doing I observe how much my thoughts create my reality (no, not a new notion):

“Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

—    Leo Tolstoy

Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid

Many smart people aren’t wise. (You’re an exception, of course.) High I.Q. people are more likely to fall into faulty thinking. That’s Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid concludes Yale professor, Robert J. Steinberg. Perhaps because he is a smart-sounding expert, he remains fuzzy in defining stupidity.

Yet you’re likely to make smarter decisions by sidestepping four traps:

1. The Egocentrism Fallacy: thinking that the world revolves, or at least should revolve, around you. Acting in ways that benefit your, regardless of how that behavior affects others.

2. The Omniscience Fallacy: believing that you know all there is to know and therefore do not have to listen to the advice and counsel of others

3. The Omnipotence Fallacy: believing that your intelligence and education somehow make you all-powerful.

4. The Invulnerability Fallacy: believing that you can do whatever you want and that others will never be able to hurt you or expose you.

Improve your performance. Get motivated to persist longer.

Consider this insight from Carol Dweck's experiment. Students were randomly assigned to read one of two articles, the first suggested that intelligence is "fixed”; the others argued that it was or "malleable" – open to improvement. Then all asked to do a difficult task. 

Those who’d read that intelligence was malleable were more persistent in gaining mastery in that task.

Most gratifyingly, other studies found that:  “teaching students the malleable theory of intelligence not only aided their performance in the face of obstacles on an individual intellectual task, it actually raised their college grade point average and their commitment to school.” 

There's more good news. 

Since, as Malcolm Gladwell and others suggest that mastery of a subject requires 10,000 hours of learning and practice, this strengthened desire to persist on a task (or subject) could evoke a self-fulfilling prophecy of mastery.

To further hone your performance, understand the Incentive Caused Bias, other decision making traps we all fall into - and how to argue better.

This Year’s Most Obnoxious Phrases

For the ten most irritating phrases we turn to Oxford University’s massive language database that tracks useage, with Damp Squid author, Jeremy Butterfield as our guide. In “the great hierarchy of verbal fatigue” they are:
1. At the end of the day

2. Fairly unique

3. I personally
4. At this moment in time

5. With all due respect

6. Absolutely

7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7

10. It's not rocket science

Butterfield notes, “We use language in chunks of words--as one linguist put it, ‘we know words by the company that they keep.’"

Now, the word of the year according to Countdown’s Susie Dent is credit crunch. I guess the English can turn a frequently-used phrase into a word. In her Words of the Year, Susie Dent also discusses newer words including boytox, moofer, ninja loans, funt, jingle mail, rickrolling, nomophobia and the inevitable googleability.

Can you make up a word that will appear in Dent's book next year?

How Companies Play on Our Fears

“We desperately need a ‘fence around us’” to feel safe in these bad economic times warns Buyology author, Martin Lindstrom. Appealing to our fears is a successful way to sell, Lindstrom discovered from his brain-based, three-year, $7 million study. Many of the products that are pitched at us activate the brain’s fear center, the amygdale. Examples:
“Are you afraid of not being able to pay the school fees for your kids?”
“Are you concerned about losing your retirement money?”

Watch how these products are sold:
• refrigerators which can store tons of foods
• quantity buys at certain discount stores
• fuel efficient heating products
• clothes with multiple functionalities; less fashionable yet more practical
• “how-to-products” for living well on less

The limbic or emotional part of our brain can motivate us more than the rational. Knowing that, we can guard against impulsive, less smart choices. Example: Psychologists asked students to choose between two Amazon.com gift vouchers. They could get either use a $15 gift voucher immediately or wait two weeks and use a $20 gift certificate. Yes, the immediate gratification won out. Similar studies involving boomers and seniors had the same results.

Yes, fear can sway us in politics too. Yet warnings against smoking actually stimulate cravings.

From his brain study, Martin concludes that “successful brands (Nike, Harley-Davidson) stimulate the brain's emotional centers in a positive way—a lot like religion. They create community, rituals and a common adversary.” Others such as Clay Shirky, Jeff Howe, Chris Brogan and Seth Godin describe positive ways we are appealing to the same yearnings for belonging.

Ah, mmm, well you see our verbal stumbles

...blunders, bloopers, Spoonerisms and Freudian slips may reveal our emotions and self-image or simply reflect deep thought or avoidance suggests adroit science writer, Michael Erard in his, err… book, Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean. He’s open to all possibilities. This presidential campaign, like the last, provides ample fodder for talk about verbal gaffes and body language.

For example, In speaking I might be stuck momentarily when I say “uh” and need more time to re-group when I say “um”. Context matters. Psychologists Jean Fox Tree and Herb Clark found that these space fillers might mean that someone who is speaking needs time to think of the right word or wants to maintain control of the conversation at that point or wants to think a moment to consider correcting something said earlier.

For lovers of language and human behavior, Um is a fun if uneven tour through “two of humanity’s signature traits: using language and messing things up” and a possible companion book Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought and Mardy Grothe’s I Never Mataphor I Didn’t Like.

Most valuable question to ask customers

This question is key to growing your business.

The two most effective ways to grow a business are to retain existing customers and to inspire customers to refer others. Consequently it should come as no surprise that The Loyalty Effect author, Fred Reicheld, believes the most revealing question to ask your customers is “Would you recommend our service to your friends and colleagues?”

Now, if you want really honest answers, get someone else to ask your customers this variation, “Would you recommend this business to your friends and colleagues?”

I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like. Have You?

“I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When in turmoil about choosing my college major I asked a favorite, visiting professor, Howard Raiffa, “How do I choose? “

His advice seemed flaky, especially for a decision sciences expert.

“Walk up to a wall of books in a familiar part of our library,” he suggested. "Pull out a book, open to any page, scan your finger down and start reading somewhere with your question in your mind. That will focus your mind on what you truly want to do."

“We boil at different degrees.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reluctantly I followed his advice. Afterwards I left the library knowing I wanted a journalism major, not business. Only many years and random page readings later did I begin to understand myself better and the life patterns I set up for myself.

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it”
- Rabindranath Tagore

Once a Big Man on Campus (BMOC) Dr. Mardy Grothe took a more dramatic approach to self-discovery. Seeking deeper meaning for his life, he abruptly resigned as president of his fraternity, vice-president of the student-senate and from several social clubs. He even moved off campus and spent all his spare moments, not in dating or with friends but in reading Emerson, Thoreau, Camus and more.

“Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.”
–- Charles M. Schulz, writing for Charlie Brown

To reinforce his self-discovery, Grothe thumb-tacked to the wall of his room his favorite quotations. That practice morphed into typing them onto his computer and continues to this day, a habit for which thousands of us are grateful. His newsletter of quotations and the remarkable stories of the people behind them is the mental candy break for many of us.

“Life is like a cobweb, not an organization chart.”
- H. Ross Perot

After devouring Grothe's first three books, Never Let a Fool Kiss You or Let a Kiss Fool You, Oxymoronica and Viva la Repartee, I dove into his fourth “intellectual smorgasbord” I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like, and you will too.

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”
- Henry Winkler

With chapters on wit, sex, stages of life, humor and the human condition, this may become the book you open to try my college professor’s suggested exercise - figuring out what you really want to do. Or, more deeply, what you are about in this life you are living.

His droll chapter titles include
The Lights May Be on, But Nobody’s Home (Insults & Criticism)
A Relationship Is Like a Shark (Relationships)
An Actor is a God in Captivity (Stage & Screen)

“Luck is the residue of design”
- Branch Rickey

“Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms.”
- Louis de Bernieres, Corelli’s Mandolin

By the way, my favorite story in his book begins the chapter, Humor Is the Shock Absorber of Life.

“Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion”
- Joseph W. Alsop, Jr.

The quotes in this post are culled from over 2,000 gems in his book. For those much-needed mental vacations, keep this book within easy reach on your bed stand or in your bathroom, study or kitchen.

“Whether your book is about pregnancy, porn ….

… or plastic surgery mistakes” your writing doesn’t end when your book’s done, says Isobella Jade, author of Almost 5’4”. Next, one must get the attention of a publisher, perhaps as Jade did, using free online tools.

Jade was a homeless model. She wrote her memoir in an Apple Store. She wrote on Fridays when she had time off her job. First she self-published it through Amazon.com's BookSurge program. Next she secured and dropped an agent, chronicling that adventure in an irreverent tone that Dooce would love. Finally, a British publisher, The Friday Project, partnered with HarperCollins to publish her book in 2009. How did it happen? Jade knows "how to pitch your book when you're broke."

Here’s three bits of advice, summarized from Jade and from mediabistro’s Ron who’s been following her journey to a signed book deal.

1. Have a blog.
2. Make guest appearances on other blogs, along with vlogs and podcasts.
(This convinces agents and publishers that you're capable of being an active participant in the marketing of your book.)
3. Your goal in doing #1 and #2 “isn't to tell people you have a book out, but to let them know you're ‘an interesting person who has something to say.’”

How Non Sequiturs Led to a Book Deal and So Can You .......

... in less than a year. Hear the collective sigh from writers everywhere in reading this news. Several people have edited books on others' bloopers, very short stories and secrets. And politics provides rich fodder for the humor found in mangled language and actions of public figures. Yet, this past February, freelance writer, Mathew Honan, was the first to see the opportunity in a tongue-in-cheek chronicling of the "lesser-known accomplishments" of much-covered Barack Obama. He told Erik Zorn that, "My wife is an avid cyclist, and loves to talk about bikes and cycling. Recently, she's gotten really active in the Obama campaign, and I had been kidding her that 'Barack Obama is your new bicycle.' There seem to be a lot of people who feel that way."

Honan launched the site, €œBarack Obama Is Your New Bicycle.€ Within hours, it was mobbed by contributors and attracted often biting comments and "buy me" opportunities on others' blogs. (Yep, all you see is a fortune cookie-length saying. Click on it to see the next one,) Now, to the envy of authors and would-be authors, he will be the happy host of a Barack Obama is Your New Book party over in San Francisco this Wednesday. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy (I mean Honan.) Expect more Obama books.

From the site:
Barack Obama said he really wanted to meet you.
Barack Obama fixed your car.
Barack Obama relates to what you are saying.
Barack Obama checked under your bed for monsters.
Barack Obama took off when he heard you were not coming.

Lightening fast we have "me too" sites ... sorta.

Does this have a Chauncey Gardner feel to it?