Loss aversion: People would rather avoid pain than reap a reward.

Selling: Tell a story that matches the worldview of the buyer.

Fairness: People act irrationally when they deem they have been treated unfairly.

Momentum: If you want someone to take action, take the first two steps for them. This worked with a punch-card at a gas station.

Momentum pt 2: Change blindness causes us to ignore major changes. People are much more likely to pay attention to something in motion.

Telling a story: Stories work better than facts because people like to place themselves in the story and imagine they’re a part of it. You can’t imagine you’re a part of facts.

Marketing Products: The product is the marketing. Marketing needs to be in charge of what is made.

Learning from others: When learning from someone successful, do not copy their tactics – copy their strategy.

The Purpose of the Internet: The Internet is a connection tool, not organized as a commerce machine or promotional engine.

Being Successful Online: The secret of the web: patience. Google was a good search engine for 2 years before anyone started using it.

Ubiquity: Sales increased when the message changed to “If all operators are busy, please try again.” Acting bigger than you are can work.

Labeling: People often fulfill the prophecy labeled to them. Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field is a great example of this.

Disruption: It is much easier to beat competitors when they are motivated to flee instead of fight.

Competition on Disruption: If you create and attempt to sell a better product into an established market in order to capture the best established customers, the competition will be motivated to fight instead of flee.

On Growth: Be patient for growth. Impatient for profit.

Personal Proclamations: The more vocal someone is about an action, the less likely they’ll actually do it. When I worked as a valet, 95% of people who said “I’ll tip you on the way out” never did.

On Feedback: Always start feedback with “It works because…” or “It doesn’t work because…” Feedback of “I like it” isn’t helpful.

Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig and read my book. 

The 2 star review:

The reviewer found a few things amusing, but ultimately thinks reading the Twitter hashtag #FirstWorldProblems is more enjoyable.

Later in the evening I found this tweet:

Hopefully not a hashtag-collation! Free today for Kindle:”First World Problems:101 Reasons Why The Terrorists Hate Us”:amzn.to/FQE2m4

— Prashanth Narayanan (@iPrash) March 18, 2012

I assured him it wasn’t a collection of tweets:

@bennesvig Heh – I see that. Just started reading – hilarious!

— Prashanth Narayanan (@iPrash) March 19, 2012

One person wishing the book was like Twitter and another happy that it wasn’t.

I can’t make everyone happy and neither can you.

All you can do is create work that you’re proud of. Work where your happiness extracted from it doesn’t entirely rely on external validation. Every product ever released has been hated by someone. Everything. Some people hate everything Apple releases yet there are always people lined up to buy on opening day.

Even classic literary works received bad reviews in their day. I’m by no means calling my book a literary work of art, but it’s interesting to see a book held to such a high standard as a classic be torn apart.

Here is a review of Moby Dick from 1851:

“This is an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed. We have little more to say in reprobation or in recommendation of this absurd book. Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature—since he seems not so much unable to learn as disdainful of learning the craft of an artist.” —HENRY F. CHORLEY, IN London Athenaeum via You Are Not So Smart

James Altucher has interesting thoughts about negative reviews:

“Ben has just self-published an excellent book:

It’s really funny.

The only problem is: he only has five star reviews. What’s so bad about that? I, for instance, HATE when I have a one star review. It killsme. It makes me question my entire existence. Someone actually read my book and thought so poorly of it they took the time and effort to log onto Amazon and spend a precious few minutes trashing my whole life in view of anyone.

But that’s what sells books. When people are arguing, that’s controversy. Controversy sells. The #1 book on the Kindle has 81 1 star reviews (and 3000 5 star reviews). But the TOP-RATED kindle book, with 697 five star reviews and zero reviews of any other sort, is ranked down at #10,000 in the kindle store. So thank your one star-reviewers. They will drive more sales than your five star reviewers.

A few months ago I read the excellent short story colletion “Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock. Afterwards, I read the reviews. Some were one star reviews and when I read why it showed they had totally missed the point of the book. But I wrote Pollock to cheer him up and told him the one star reviews were almost better advertisements than the five star reviews. All the people offended by the “sex and violence”. Hell! I’m a buyer when I see that.”

Trying to please everyone and pleasing no one is cliche, but true. Every product should have outsiders. People who don’t get it. I think you need people who don’t understand what you’re doing. People who don’t get your jokes. People who don’t believe what you believe. Because if you don’t have people outside the circle, you can’t have an inner circle, which is full of people who really care about your brand.

I have failed to make everyone happy and I’m happy about it.

Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig and read my funny book that just received a 2 star review but has many more 5 star reviews.

The problem is that most people seek out experiences that are fun not ones that will bring happiness.

Getting drunk. Watching TV. Eating fast food. Doing nothing all day.

All fun.

But it doesn’t bring happiness, which is what is ultimately satisfying and enduring.

What’s the difference between fun and happiness?

Fun is what you experience in the moment. Happiness is the feeling after the fact.

Eating dessert after every meal is fun, but most people would be happier if they were 15lbs lighter.

Learning an instrument isn’t fun. Every kid who quit piano knows that. I regrettably quit piano lessons. I didn’t like learning how to play guitar. I still don’t enjoy learning scales or difficult songs, but I’m happy after I’ve learned it.

Look at the videos that I made below. Stop-motion isn’t exactly fun to shoot. It’s extremely tedious – making the tinniest of changes, snapping a picture. Repeat 400 times.

But I had to make the videos. I knew that after all the effort I put into it, that it would be something I would be happy that I made. And I was right.

So what? Make the tedious work that leads to happiness fun. Focus on the end result, not just the feelings during the process which are fleeting. Do what you can do make the boring things that lead to happiness fun.

Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig

Just like the first blog post in the chain mentioned, missing that day was a choice.

After picking up some positive traction with my book, the desire to write a second one surpassed my desire to blog daily. I’ll still update this blog, likely just twice a week now.

What did I learn from blogging daily?

Quantity Over Quality

There is no doubt that if I posted once or twice a week that my posts would have been better, but I likely would have missed some great insights along the way if I didn’t post consistently. The daily habit of posting forced me to reflect on my day and what I learned. I didn’t always mine gold, but I did come up with a few things that would have slipped by.

The Whole Point of Blogging (and the Internet) is to Connect with People

I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure this out. People who I really, really, really enjoy (Seth Godin, Derek Sivers, James Altucher) left comments on things I wrote. That blew my mind. And of course in giving away free ideas, I was able to connect with a lot of interesting people. A blog is an amazing connection tool.

I Don’t Know What’s Going To Work

A post that took me 5 minutes to write (How I Wrote a Book: Step by Step) is my most popular blog post with over 20,000 unique visits. Some blog posts that I spent over an hour on (Rethinking The Book) didn’t receive that much traffic. But traffic wasn’t entirely the point of blogging. It was just a nice side-effect. The main reason was to experiment and develop my thinking.

Blogging Daily Isn’t That Hard

Blogging daily isn’t hard if you make it a priority. People shower daily, eat daily, drive to work daily, watch tv daily. When you choose to blog daily, you’re making it a priority and shifting down something else. For me that was likely reading articles on Hacker News or books.

Where I’m going from here…

I’m switching gears to posting twice a week. Not sure if I’ll set two specific days or not yet. All I know is that I’d rather have a 2nd book out this year than write a daily blog. I’ll still be blogging, but a 2nd book is the priority.

Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig or read my book.

I was provided two blogger passes to the opening night of American Idiot at The Orpheum in Minneapolis in exchange for a review.

My history with Green Day goes back to fourth grade when I was first introduced to the album Dookie. After hearing Basket Case on the radio, I grabbed a blank tape and waited for hours until I heard it again just so I could record it. Today you find and download the song in 30 seconds. Kids are spoiled. Anyway…

So I went in excited, but had absolutely no idea what to expect.

The Story

Via Wikipedia:

The story, expanded from that of the concept album, centers on three disaffected young men, Johnny, Will, and Tunny. Johnny and Tunny flee stifling suburbia and their parents’ restrictions. The pair look for meaning in life and try out the freedom and excitement of the city. Will stays home to work out his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend. Tunny quickly gives up on life in the city, joins the military, and is shipped off to war. Johnny finds a part of himself that he grows to dislike, has a relationship and experiences lost love.

What did I think?

I had no idea what to expect from this. No idea. My only reference was from hearing the soundtrack ahead of time, which didn’t give much indication of what the actual performance would be like.

From the opening track, you get a good idea of what you’re in for. The musical was quick moving, high-energy, and fun.

Again, no idea what to expect from dancing. How do you choreograph Green Day? Some of the dancing reminded me of a much more structured version of Girl Walk//All Day, which isn’t a critique, but a compliment. And for the most part it worked.

Even the high-wire flying worked, which could have easily been just used as a neat stunt. The dream sequence it was used for ended up being a perfect fit.

The story was mostly worked out through the songs, with little bits of dialogue stuffed in between. If you’re familiar with the arc of the album, it won’t be difficult to follow, though most first time listeners could pick up on it anyway.

And of course–the music. Several of the songs were slightly tweaked for the musical to fit with a full cast. This is an easy place to screw up, but many of the songs are enhanced through the additional vocals and instruments. This is great proof.

The Verdict:

If you hate Green Day’s music it’s likely (though not impossible) that you wouldn’t enjoy this. But if you’re a fan, this is something worth checking out. It’s fast paced, fun, and unlike anything else you’ve seen in the theater. It’s not perfect. One of the supporting characters wasn’t quite up to par. But overall, it’s an fun event for any Green Day fan.

Rating: 4/5. Learn More and Find Tickets.

The allure of using a cliche is that it’s easy and effortless. When people can save time, they generally do.

When I worked as a valet, I heard one of the same jokes/phrases from a customer every night.

When I spent two weeks cleaning cars at the state fair, I heard the same 5 jokes every day.

In the first 20 days of December, I received at least 10 emails from companies with the subject line “Give the Gift of_________”

All of this just becomes noise.

If you want people to pay attention to what you’re saying and have your message stick, break away from using cliches.

Of course, that means actually doing some mental work.

Connect with me on Twitter: @BenNesvig

Lack of a path isn’t always a problems. Often it’s an opportunity.

JP Auclair Street Segment (from All.I.Can.) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.