Smarticles

Hanlon’s Razor

Read time: 2 mins

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Everyone has been in a situation where people have made mistakes. Some people have genuinely had people out to get them. Hanlon’s Razor offers a way to be both kinder to ourselves and to others by suggesting that the chance of an action being genuinely mean is far less likely than it being an accident.

When things go wrong, it’s very easy to believe that people are deliberately getting in your way. You find yourself telling yourself little stories. They deliberately didn’t do the washing up so you have to do it. They made sure they didn’t get the thing from the shop you asked them to get, just to spite you. Once you start down this path, it’s easy to get tunnel vision. You begin to remember the little things in the past that got on your nerves. And if you’re not careful, it’s easy to build a whole conspiracy around things which are almost always mistakes and human error.

Hanlon’s Razor is a heuristic (or guiding principle) that helps us to navigate the world more kindly. It goes something like this:

“One should not attribute to malice what can be more easily explained by stupidity”

The idea behind Hanlon’s Razor is that it’s actually quite hard to act maliciously and achieve a particular goal against one particular individual.

An evil plot usually requires a lot of moving parts. This takes a lot of energy first of all, which is often difficult to fit in among all of life’s mundanities and pleasures. It also makes a conspiracy inherently difficult to manage.

So truly plot against someone requires the bad actor to spend an awful lot of time with you as the centre of their world. As most of us know from personal experience, the person we spend most of the time thinking about it ourselves. To dwell on another person to the point of plotting their downfall would be quite a feat of focus.

A quote by German general Kurt von Hammerstien-Equord. Notable for his wit and use of Hanlon’s razor in the above. His biography is well worth exploring as he was a decorated officer and war hero and yet very active in the German resistance throughout World War 2.

In most instances, people are people. They’re doing life, making mistakes, and trying to manage as best they can.

When you’re walking somewhere fast and you’ve got someone walking slowly in front of you, it’s easy to seethe and think they’re the most ignorant person in the world.

Another example – English people take queuing very seriously (and rightly so) – when someone cuts in the queue, it’s easy to feel personally violated. Common practice is to sigh an entire lungful of sigh, as irritated-ly as you can, before making an under-the-breath, comment about how unbelievable it is, and how dare they.

Hanlon’s razor suggests that we take a step back. It’s more likely that the person you’re stuck behind on your walk simply doesn’t know you’re there. It’s even more likely they don’t know that you’re trying to get somewhere quickly. Your partner or flatmate who didn’t do the washing up probably didn’t know it would upset you. They could be having trouble at work which is making them distracted. They might just not think about washing up as much as you do.

By ascribing ignorance to these things, rather than malice, Hanlon’s Razor opens up an opportunity for us to discuss how we feel and focus on the actual problem (dirty dishes) rather than the imagined one (a wider-reaching conspiracy to make your life worse).

Hanlon’s Razor also helps us in a wider context. There is a lot of profit to be made in the world at the moment by channeling outrage and casting intent. Mainstream media and social media are by far the best examples of this as they remove nuance from stories and context from individuals in order to create an easy, good-versus-evil narrative. They capitalise on creating daemons from situations that could be mostly explained by error. Hanlon’s razor is a great guide to help move against this influence and approach the world more rationally.

By considering first that people have most likely a mistake, treating them with generosity and communication first, life becomes a kinder, more tolerant and less paranoid place.

There is one exception – people who cut queues are in fact evil.

This is a rearrangement of a “mental model” from Farnam Street. Their website provides brilliant, high signal articles about lots of different things. Their philosophy is to try and provide people with the lessons that others have already learned so that they don’t have to spend as much time learning those lessons themselves.

Their website is available and recommended here: https://fs.blog/blog/

The Pareto Distribution

Read Time: 3 mins

For the most part, there’s nothing wrong with being average. Expectations are reasonable, you are liked by some, not by others. The paparazzi take a limited interest in who you snog and what colour your socks are. Being average typically means you fall somewhere towards the middle of what mathematicians call a normal distribution. This is a fancy name for a bell curve and it applies to a great many human qualities – height, IQ, blood pressure, shoe size. Even birth weight follows a normal distribution.

The un-bell curve

This changes a little when we look at other elements. Unlike the normal distribution or bell curve, the pareto distribution looks very different.

Rather than the majority being focussed in the average as in a bell curve, the majority in a pareto distribution is focussed toward a tiny minority. The graph typically forms a massive hockey stick which is skewed to one side or other. A great example is allocation of wealth. If you look at the distribution of wealth in the US (or indeed across the world) a tiny group of Elon Bezos’es have pretty much all the money. In fact, they have almost as much as the 2 billion poorest people in the world.

This graphs shows the distribution of wealth in the US. While this graph has always been a pareto distribution, it’s stark to see how much things have changed in recent decades as governments and corporations have overseen the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in recorded history.

This isn’t the only area where the pareto distribution exists. In 2020, there were 275,232 titles published in the US. These sold over 700m units in total. It just so happened that one of these books was the autobiography of former U.S president Barak Obama. His book sold nearly 2.5m copies by itself and was the bestselling book of the year by far. The next best author sold just under 1.5m copies. The following author sold just over 800K copies. And the list continues.

The effect was that the top 10 books hoovered up a mammoth proportion of total unit sales over the year, leaving the other 275,222 books to scrap over what was left.

In the same vein, there have been hundreds of classical pieces written over the course of time, and yet, you will likely only hear a tiny fraction of artists played on Classic FM. Of all the literary classics you’ve ever studied, almost everyone will have read Shakespeare. Most other books from the same era will have been lost to the sands of time.

The Pareto Distribution at work

One of the fascinating applications of this comes into play in business. IQ and personality types follow a standard distribution and most of the workforce will fit somewhere in the middle of the normal distribution, as expected.

Some of the people at the end of the curve will be very talented. They will have the skills, accumen and personality types that tend to lead to corporate success. There will be a similar number on the other end of the scale.

What doesn’t follow a normal distribution however, is how productive these groups are.

Invariably, the skilled and hardworking minority will be more productive than the vast majority and significantly more productive than those in the lower quartiles. It follows a pareto distribution.

As it happens , the top 20% of the top performers in a company will do something like 50% of the work. For a company, this isn’t necessarily the end of the world – part of the reason high performers perform is because they have the personality skills, motivation, background, confidence and drive to do so – in a company that uses good incentives, where teams support each other, the company can continue to profit despite the uneven distribution of productivity.

However, sometimes companies go bad. Lots of things can precipitate a company going bad but usually the symptoms are the same – a cut throat culture, bad incentives, pay freezes, no promotions, inaction when it comes to feedback, bad product development and worse customer service.

This is a problem. When companies go bad and fail to act quickly, people leave.

The first people to get a new job are almost always the top performers. Afterall, they have the best earning potential, the most developed skills, the most suited personality types for their roles and a track record to prove it. They are the first to get new jobs when they become dissatisfied. The problem is, when they find a new job, they take the all of the work they’ve been doing with them.

What’s interesting is that this trend continues all the way down the curve. Of the remaining employees, 20% of them are doing 50% of the remaining work. Guess who’s next to find a new job?

If unmanaged, this bleed can continue as company rips through its long standing employees, seeing a disproportionate and rarely understood dip in productivity as they go. The process is rarely a complete nose dive as most companies will continue to recruit as they lose people. However, if the company has gone bad then its likely they will invest less into recruitment, leading to younger, cheaper, less experienced employees. These employees can occasionally be great fits and high performers but their inexperience will impact their productivity and the company will never get back to the high highs that it may have enjoyed before. More importantly, exceptional new hires are likely to leave as soon as they realise the grass is greener on the other side.

The pareto distribution in terms of productivity can kill companies if they don’t recognise the value of people who are productive. It’s important to consider it’s impact and make sure that incentives are good, the support is there and that people are generally happy.

Also, don’t bother publishing a book the same year as an ex-president.

This is inspired by some of the details in Jordan Peterson’s lecture series on Personality types. Jordan Peterson strikes a controversial pose and his views on the extreme left and extreme right have earned him not-always-glowing notoriety. But one thing that can’t be argued – the man knows distributions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcEWRykSgwE&t=97s

Smarticles Sales Tips #2

Read time: 12 mins

In most of our interactions, we are probably trying to persuade someone of something. Sometimes it’s a friendly tiff with our friends, sometimes it’s trying to pry a refund out of customer support, sometimes it’s trying to convince a bouncer that your mate’s fine.

Whether we’re hoping to sell a particular idea or simply trying to forge an easier path through the world, knowing some sales tips can make a huge difference.

This series is designed to look at some of the key ideas that sales people are taught, along with wisdom from other areas such as hostage negotiation and relationship counselling that might help turn the tables slightly during those moments where a little persuasion can go a long way.

The angel’s cocktail and the devil’s cocktail

What’s your immediate reaction when someone orders you to do something?

Please F**k Off.

This can be the reaction even if the thing that you’re being told to do is genuinely for your own good.

Luckily there are some good ways to deliver negative information without triggering this explosive rejection and it is born from the very roots of our ability to communicate. In business or with friends, knowing how to deliver bad news can provide a route to more effective communication and help you to be heard while limiting the emotional toll on both you and your counterpart.

Storytelling

Language started to develop around 90,000 years ago. To survive in the wild, our ancestors needed ways to learn from each other that went beyond simple observation / deduction. Watching your dearly beloved eat a death cap mushroom and immediately keel over wasn’t an ideal way to learn that death cap mushrooms shouldn’t be eaten. We needed a better way.

So, in a world devoid of YouTube or For Dummies guides, humans eventually started to tell each other stories. Stories like “there’s food here” or “don’t eat that mushroom” helped humans conquer the world.

These stories would evolve into the tropes and themes that still dominate the media that we humans consume today. Stories of heroism, romance and coming of age are favourites. Lesser favourites include Health and Safety seminars and the pre-holiday “what to do if your plane crashes” chat.

What do stories do to you?

A good story controls how you think. It does this by ensuring that the right emotions, subject to the right hormones, are surging through your bloodstream at the right moment. Depending on the content of the story, there are likely to be one of two hormonal cocktails coursing through your veins:

The Angel’s cocktail:

Made up primarily of dopamine and oxytocin.
Encourages feelings of open-mindedness, generosity and trust
Improves recall, curiosity, focus and attention

Simply put, you are more likely to accept, engage with and remember something when you are imbued with the Angel’s cocktail.

The other is the Devil’s cocktail:

Made up primarily of cortisol and adrenaline
Increases feelings of agitation and intolerance
Inhibits concentration and focus
Reduces recall

Put simply, you are less likely to engage, remember or like the person or problem when you are dealing with the Devil’s cocktail.

Application in the real world

When you’re about to have a difficult conversation about something challenging, it’s important to think about the type of cocktail that you want to evoke while you’re planning your strategy.

Dopamine

How can you inspire the release of dopamine and increase focus, attention and open mindedness in your counterpart?

The best way to increase dopamine levels in someone is to make them laugh, but it can also be done by creating suspense in your message, building rapport and connecting with the other person’s interests. Controlling the way you speak can help here. Building variety into the structure of your message can help capture and keep attention. Silence is powerful too.

A great example of this is prosody. Prosody is the name for the elements of speech that make some actors so captivating. The intonation, stress and rhythm of their speech make some individuals unforgettable. Christopher Walken, actor and ex-tap dancer, could do a speech about his favourite pen, and it would likely be enjoyable. Why? Because his rendition would increase the levels of dopamine.

Christopher Walken reads 3 Little Pigs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4IrfObVzJo&t=28s

Oxytocin

How can you build levels of oxytocin and increase the trust and generosity of the other party? Being honest, genuine and vulnerable tend to evoke this element of the cocktail. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should lay all the cards on the table, but people appreciate knowing how and why something bad has happened.

The FBI negotiator turned author Chris Voss uses a technique called an accusation audit to help make these conversations go more smoothly. He presupposes all the terrible things that the other party could say about him off the back of the bad news he’s about to impart, and before the discussions begin in earnest, he runs through them one by one:

“You are going to think we are taking advantage of the situation”
“You have a lot of experience and this will seem more rushed than you’re used to”
“You’re going to think we are trying to push you out as a smaller business”

This is known as “taking the sting out” and is used by almost all of us in one form or another when talking to friends (“sorry if this sounds harsh, but…”). This inspires the release of oxytocin by encouraging empathy which, in turn, increases feelings of trust and generosity which will help smooth the conversation.

Avoiding the Devil’s cocktail

While it’s important to encourage and boost the levels of focus and trust throughout the conversation, it’s also essential to avoid panic. There is no point in trying to make someone laugh if they feel like their house if on fire. They will not listen. Their only focus will be how to get out of the house.

When a mistake has been made, a powerful (and yet surprisingly rare) thing to do is to own the mistake. Immediate ownership, accountability and control of a mistake will reduce tension. There may still be stress, depending on the gravity of the error, but there will be less stress if you can demonstrate that you know something has gone wrong, how and why it happened and a plan about how you’re going to fix it.

Telling a story rather than just cutting straight to the issue can radically change the outcome of the conversation. The story flips the person into a mode that has been engrained in them over thousands of years, it helps to slow the pace of the conversation, encourages curiosity, humanises you and gives you an opportunity to diffuse the stressful points one by one. If used in the right way, this can also give you chances to increase the levels of dopamine and oxytocin – increasing focus, trust and generosity along the way.

Chris Voss also talks about his late night DJ voice – a calm, deep and soothing way of talking that is designed to reassure. This is particularly effective if someone is shouting at you – the contrast will feel jarring and encourage them to mirror your energy.

Another tip to avoid stress is to guide the conversation away from the rocks with something called an Up-front agreement. This sets out the agenda and helps you keep on track. It also gives the other person a chance to get their bearings, ask any questions, ensure they are comfortable and know what to expect. This lessens the chance that you’ll end up shocking your audience.

Typically, an upfront agreement will follow this structure:

Summary
Agenda for call
Define roles
Define outcomes

Here’s an example of an upfront agreement:

“So, we’ve been talking for months about how this product can help BPM industries with your problem.

We’ve spoken about the functions it will bring, potential benefits, returns and threats as well as why you’re in the market in the first place. It feels like we are reaching a natural conclusion with one final point to address which is the cost.

I’ve put together some pricing and different options which I’d like to take you through. Your job is to listen and let me know your thoughts and be comfortable talking through red lines or areas we could discuss more.

By the end of the meeting, I’d like us to reach a point where we know whether we want to move forwards or otherwise. If it looks good, we’ll run through next steps. Does that work for you?”

If you can avoid surprises and shocks then it is likely that the conversation will be less stressful and the audience will be more trusting and cooperative.

Conclusion

Being mindful of the emotions of the other person during a challenging conversation can make the difference between progress and pain.

Encouraging the release of oxytocin and dopamine (the angel’s cocktail) will increase levels of trust and focus. Make people laugh, vary your tone, rhythm and structure (aka your prosody) and be honest.

Reducing stress will lessen the levels of cortisol and adrenaline (the devil’s cocktail) in the other person. Lower levels will help reduce intolerance and narrow mindedness. Telling a story, keeping your tone soft and reassuring and planning a structure for your conversation or meeting are all techniques that help reduce levels of anxiety.

Ultimately, no one likes having a stressful, panicky conversation. More importantly, conversations like this are rarely successful. Managing the emotions of both parties are a sure fire way to have better conversations and greater success in the long run.

Some of the ideas are based on the work of David JP Phillips, a coach and public speaker with a brilliant TED talk on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj-hdQMa3uA

Chris Voss’ book, Never Split The Difference: Negotiate As If Your Life Depended On It gives a fascinating, soft skills approach to persuasion, infused with some exciting FBI drama: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/1847941494/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=never+split+the+difference&qid=1630337781&sr=8-1

Ken Robinson

Read Time: 1 min

There is a wonderful story about a 6 year old girl. She was a pain in the neck usually. She was persistently distracted, chit-chatting to the other children, gazing out the window and generally causing trouble.

One day however, during a drawing class, she was completely engrossed. Her teacher, fascinated (and somewhat relieved), went to see what had captured her attention.

“What are you drawing?” the teacher enquired.

“God” the girl said plainly, without looking up.

Naturally the teacher was bemused. “But, I’m not sure anyone knows what God looks like”

Without hesitation, the girl replied “Well they will in a minute.”

Ken Robinson was a fascinating force in the world. His Ted talk about schools killing creativity was on of the first Ted talks ever released on YouTube. This is an adaptation of a story in his book The Element which talks extensively about the benefits of finding the place where your passion and creativity combine.

For him, the story demonstrated the immutable confidence that children have in their creative potential, something that is beaten out of us grown ups by ever narrower standardised testing and calcified corporate culture.

The key to unlocking a better world, according to Ken Robinson, is for all of us to embrace this intersection between passion and creativity.

The full video can be found here: Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything has some great stories written with characteristic wit and is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Element-Finding-Passion-Changes-Everything/dp/0141045256

Pulp Non-Fiction

Read time: 3 mins

At a time where politics is polarised and distrust is at an all time high, it’s good to look back and understand some of the events that have fertilized the chaotic and bewildering landscape we find ourselves in today.

The following is a story told by Noam Chomsky about his experiences trying to publish a book in 1973. It is a troubling exposé of the power of large corporations when it comes to censorship.

At the time, companies such as Amazon, Apple, Samsung and Google were barely even getting started. Censorship had to be done the old fashioned way, i.e. book burning or pulping. The story is still poignant now, with big tech corporations able to censor and silence in new and more comprehensive ways. Chomsky’s story was a forewarning and a stark look at how absolute power can corrupt absolutely.

pulp (noun)

A soft moist shapeless mass of matter.

On the 14^th February 1989, the Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, author of the novel The Satanic Verses. The death threats and demands for book burnings were decried internationally as an example of the worst kind of attack on freedom of speech.

Around the same time, something else happened. Two of the world’s largest media corporations, Time Inc. and Warner Communications, merged. Together they formed a monolith of media influence, which was lightly criticised by the public for its potential influence on freedom of expression.

To highlight why this was so important, Noam Chomsky delivered a speech at the University of Wisconsin in 1989. The speech contained troubling details about his experience with Warner Communications nearly a decade earlier in 1973. Chomsky – a professor, author, liberal and intellectual, had published his first book with co-author Edward Herman, with whom he later published his famous book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

The book in question was a detailed and brutal analysis about American foreign policy called Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda (1973). It’s relatively unknown and Chomsky’s speech gave compelling reasons as to why.

The publisher for Chomsky’s book at the time happened to be a subsidiary of Warner Communications. On seeing the advertising for the book for the first time, one of the executives didn’t much like what he saw.

The executive ordered a copy of the book to be sent to his New York office. When he read it, he liked it even less. So, in the spirit of free speech, the executive took the executive decision to immediately shut down the publisher. The 20,000 copies of Chomsky & Herman’s book which had been printed were pulped. Not only that, the executive also pulped every other book the publisher had released.

There are three things that make this story remarkable. The main difference between the mass pulping of these books and the propaganda threats made by the Ayatollah against Rushdie is that this actually happened. The books were actually pulped and the publisher shut down indefinitely. Rushdie remains un-fatwa’d.

Secondly, the pulping was not limited to a single book. Every single publication which had been contaminated by Chomsky’s book; contaminated by virtue of simply being held in the same stock room, was pulped as well.

Finally, the Satanic Verses scandal received huge publicity. The UK broke diplomatic relations with Iran and the mass media decried the affair as a savage attack on freedom of speech, something deemed as sacrosanct at the time. In contrast, the pulping and dissolution of an entire publishers was barely covered in the media.

Fast forward to now. We live in a time where there are incredible levels of distrust in the mainstream media, corporations, communities and even in other individuals. It’s important to pay attention to stories like Chomsky’s because they help make sense of the recent surge in conspiracy theories and anti-establishment movements. These have not come from a vacuum. Rather they are the result of endemic distrust in governments and corporations, fuelled by decades of scandal and misinformation.

When you read stories like this, its hard to avoid compassion with those people who have abandoned all hope and seek comfort in conspiracies. Compassion, kindness and tolerance will be the key to trying to undo the damage of decades of mass deceit and manipulation.

So, next time that you speak to someone who doesn’t believe in vaccines or thinks the pope eats babies, just consider that their distrust is deep rooted and that their cynicism may come from the same place as yours – just pointed in a different direction.

There is a recording and transcript of Chomsky’s 1989 speech that can be read in full below: https://chomsky.info/19890315/

Chemistry and Compatibility

Read time: 2 mins

Sometimes you can literally feel the power of a connection with another person. It envelopes you, they cloud your mind, send shockwaves through your soul and tingle your fingertips. Throughout the history of story-telling, lust, passion and love have all had this physical component.

It’s interesting that the words we use to describe the passionate side of our relationships are fundamentally physical – we often talk about relationships using physical words. And yet, the words we use to describe our actual connection tend to be far less physical. When we consider our friends for example, the words we use are far more likely to centre on feelings. Instead of sparks, we talk about soul mates. We identify levels of affection, trust, importance and kindness and often abandon reference to the physical completely.

*Shakespeare talking about a relationship as if it were a physical thing such as food. Note the physical language – being “driven on by the flesh” suggests a relationship high in chemistry. It’s also worth noting the specific character who is speaking here…

And yet, common wisdom suggests that lasting relationships tend to require a healthy dose of both.

Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k and Everything is F**ked: A Book About Hope, has some interesting thoughts on the topic.

He defines the raw physicality of a relationship as chemistry and the abstract emotional side as compatibility. His definition provides an interesting perspective to our relationships. Below is a matrix inspired by his work, that compares chemistry in a relationship with compatibility, along with some suggestions about what each of these combinations can create:

This matrix is interesting and provides a simplistic and high level perspective to considering existing or new connections. However, it misses an important factor – time.

Both axis can fluctuate over time, with life events and children being a famous example. New colleagues and old friends can commonly flutter between high chemistry and high combability, and vice versa, based on something simple like proximity, careers or even hobbies. Meeting new people with new chemistry or compatibility can throw the whole balance into flux too.

In the appropriate words of Judith Viorst:

For more of Mark Manson’s work, you can subscribe via his website. His newsletter is great reading for anyone interested in this sort of content: https://markmanson.net/

Smarticles Sales Tips #1

Read Time: 4 mins

In most of our interactions, we are probably trying to persuade someone of something. Sometimes it’s a friendly tiff with our friends, sometimes it’s trying to pry a refund out of customer support, or potentially it’s trying to persuade a bouncer that your mate’s fine.

Whether we’re hoping to sell a particular idea or just the idea that we’re a cool dude, knowing some sales tips can make a huge difference.

Tip # 1

SPIN Selling

“You’ve got 2 ears and one mouth for a reason”. A famous castigation from parents through the ages and something everyone has been told throughout their lives. It’s great advice without a doubt but there is another layer that is worth considering.

Listening to the another person can sometimes give you essential clues to their hopes, dreams, aversions and desires. But people don’t always want to give these things away so easily. It’s important to listen but also pay attention to what they don’t say. This will likely provide clues about areas they may be avoiding or things they simply don’t know how to articulate.

SPIN was a technique developed by Neil Rackham in 1988 to help uncover these nuggets of info. It suggests some themes for questions that will help you understand a person’s perspective and the things that might nudge them forward or could be holding them back. It focuses on layered questioning, the answers to which can be used to present options that might help whoever you’re talking to.

While they are meant to asked loosely in order, the most proficient questioners zip between each section as new information arises in order to get a complete picutre.

S – Situation

The first element is understanding the territory that you are stepping into (or at least a map of the territory – see https://fs.blog/2015/11/map-and-territory/).

These questions are about the state of play and what’s happening, who’s involved and what’s at stake.

For example:

What do you want to get out of this?
Where should we start?
What do you see happening next?
Have you done anything like this before? What happened?

Ideally these questions provide context for what’s happened before the conversation and what is likely to happen after. This will help you narrow the conversation down to a more manageable arena and provide the foundation for the rest of the discussion.

P – Problem

This is where things start to get juicy. These questions focus on what needs to be fixed or what could be going better. They are meant to focus on the facts that have been eked out through Situation questions. While the situation questions tend to be more open, problem questions are designed to hone in on specific issues. You may hear more phraseology like:

So it sounds like this might be a problem?
This looks good, but this feels like it could be better?
Would changing this help?

There is a shift in tone as this type of probing can be a little personal. Using phrases like “it feels like” and “it sounds like” are non-committal and non-threatening (something that will be covered in detail later) and also encourages people to correct you if you’ve misunderstood. The idea is to garner a mental list of what is keeping someone up at night so you can align your insight and experience with this in order to help.

I – Impact

Now that you have a rough idea of the territory surrounding the conversation and you’ve uncovered some problems that need solving, the next stage is to prioritise them. This can help you understand what will help them the most and make the biggest difference. Knowing this can be a black swan when it comes to persuading someone. For a friend, their problem may be impacting their quality of life, for a client, the problem might be impacting revenue generation. The point is to try and ask more emotive questions about the problems uncovered.

For example:

What’s problem X stopping you being able to do?
If you fixed problem Y, what would happen then?
How does problem Z make you feel about the future?
What happens if you ignore problem X?
What impact is this having for other people in this situation?

From a true sales perspective, being able to prioritise the problem can help you create value and help you understand where the price point should be. For a friend, it will help you understand the help they might value the most.

N – Needs Payoff

Finally, these questions tie the whole thing together. They combine the situation and problems with the impacts and present options for the person that will help them the most in any given situation. It also allows you to put a point of view across while speaking their language (another point we’ll discuss in more detail). When someone feels like they have been listened to and are having a new point of view suggested to them in language they feel comfortable with, they are more likely to be open to it. Needless to say, it’s great here if you can provide some actual help that will lessen the impact and fix some problems.

These are the least general questions out of all of them because by this point, you should know a lot about the person, what’s happening and what it’s doing to them . However, I’ve included some general themes you could consider as a guide:

If we did this together, would that help you feel less of the impact of your problem?
Do you feel that doing this would make problem X better?
It sounds like changing this particular element would save you a lot of money?

Like all techniques, the most important thing when trying to persuade is to remember that both parties are human. This means that people can use different words, phrases, emphasis and litotes – all can lead to confusion and miscommunication. In the end, few things can beat genuine curiosity and connection.

Part 1: The Crypto Revolution

Read Time: 8 mins

Buy Dogecoin. Actually don’t, buy Bitcoin. No, don’t do that either. Wait, actually, buy both. Questionable excitement and advice from friends, mixed with attention grabbing headlines have left a lot of people scratching their heads. What is crypto? Why should I care?

Like any new thing, the sensible and fact based information is often drowned out by the sheer tonnage of blogs, YouTube videos and articles, most of which are technical, dull and most of all, confusing.

This series will look at different elements for crypto and its underlying technology which is known as blockchain. It aims to provide a general overview of crypto, what it is and some of the people you might encounter talking about it. Needless to say, nothing you read on my blog (or indeed any blog) constitutes financial advice.

What is blockchain?

In its most simple form, blockchain is a timeline baked into code. Each “chain” is made up of a string of code. Each “block” is a piece of that code that refers to a specific transaction in time. Each line of transactions or “chain” of “blocks” are unique. They are attributable to a single thing at a single time. A token can be a virtual asset, like a virtual coin (known as cryptocurrency) or attached to a physical asset, like music or a digital asset whereby the blockchain acts as an infinite receipt for everyone who has bought and sold or traded the item or token or coin or whatever it may be.

The second key component of blockchain is that its decentralised. There is no central bank looking after Bitcoin, no dusty old book in the high offices of a financial authority that can dictate who owes who or can change things like interest rates. There’s no Mint who can make more crypto coins (for the most part – there are some “scam coins” which can produce as many coins as they like) and there isn’t massive spreadsheet where some pasty teen can copy and paste a whole blockchain like it’s nothing more than overdue science homework.

Instead, the information relating to any specific blockchain is stored across hundreds of different databases, all independent. Each database holds a complete copy of the digital ledger and all the blockchains within it. This means that no one individual can change anything without consensus from the majority.

What can blockchain do?

In Leeds, if you’re a student and you’re hungry, it is likely you’d order some food. If you were lucky, you’d enjoy some of the finest deep fried cuisine that the north has to offer. If you were unlucky, you’d order from one of the many take-away restaurants with a 0 hygiene rating from the UK’s Food Standards Authority. As you were hunched over, stomach cramped and life sucking, you might consider for a moment how on earth this could happen and what might be done to fix it.

This is one area where blockchain could help. In Victoria, British Colombia, the government set out to save stoned students everywhere by using blockchain. The idea was that each owner of a restaurant would have a passport that anyone would be able to view. It would contain an entire history of the owner’s assessments and inspections, all stored via Blockchain – things like hygiene ratings, infractions and accreditations could all be stored on this passport which would give credibility to restaurants and mean that punters could make sure they knew the performance and background of the owners whose restaurants they were frequenting.

This is an example of how the blockchain, and the immutability of the information it holds, can be used in real life situations beyond the bars and graphs of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Although interesting, such applications remain fairly niche. One of the more common applications you may have encountered is known as an NFT or Non-Fungible Token. These use Blockchain technology much like a receipt that will track the creation and ownership of digital content (or physical assets in some cases) throughout their entire history of owners – the idea being that, while one may have a copy of a particular album or artwork, the NFT can define who actually owns it.

This carries some potential, especially as the world of art increasingly shifts towards digital media. As we shall see later, this is a technological leap that is exciting those who follow crypto technology – especially those with a view to hold a stake in the next big crypto boom. There are some criticisms of the NFT, most notably that the information is only good so long as the information has context. There is no point in being able to track the owners of an asset if half of the owners have forgotten their passwords or have disappeared from the annals of history. In this sense, and especially when associated with physical items, there is little difference between a digital NFT and a paper receipt. Eventually they could get lost. Ownership does not guarantee possession. Not only that, but when one factors in the environmental impact of crypto technology, paper receipts might be better for the planet too.

Despite the potential for its application in saving students from dysentery and making sure that artists get fair dues for their work, by far the most common and well known usage of blockchain is Cryptocurrency. This is a new age currency that exists exclusively on blockchain. They act a little bit like stocks and shares, where the number of coins held, bought and sold dictates their value. Just like stocks, there are different people looking for different things in their cryptocurrencies. I’ve included a brief and unserious bio of my favourites below:

The crypto crowds

There are elite, casuals and chancers in each of these cohorts and this list isn’t exhaustive or meant to be take too seriously:

The Holders

Some people place value in a crypto currency based on its technological merit; how fast are the transactions? How much does a transaction cost? What applications are there for the underlying blockchain?

One of the most popular cryptocurrencies is Ethereum. However, it’s notoriously slow and expensive to transact with. More modern cryptocurrencies offer incredibly fast transaction speeds and low fees. Others are vying to become the primary technology controlling NFTs or non-fungible tokens we discussed above.

The holders hope to be early adopters, investing in the technology that will eventually become popular and be picked up by a large organisation; or even an important nation state. The idea being that as soon as this happens, the value of the currency will sky rocket as the technology is deployed en masse.

Something similar has happened in the past and had an incredible impact on some of the coins you probably have stashed in a loose change jar somewhere. The value of the traditional or “fiat” currencies that relied on oil exports spiked during the winter of 1973. Known in the UK as the winter of discontent, in 1973, the OPEC countries shifted the balance of power in the world sharply away from the rotting industrial age empires of England, France and Germany. They tripled the price of oil overnight. The impact for OPEC was astounding and the value of their currency increased exponentially almost immediately, and in many cases has been incredibly high ever since. Anyone holding a reserve of Saudi Riyal in 1971 would have been a very happy chappie.

This is the kind of event that the Holders would love to capitalise on.

Chart showing the massive spike in the Saudi Riyal, a traditional or “fiat” currency following the price hike of oil in 1973. This trend is replicated across the Qatar Riyal, the Kuwaiti Dinar and the UAE Dirham.

The Day Traders

Some people see value in the volatility of crypto currency. These people bet lots of money on the movements of specific cryptocurrencies each day, week or month. In this sense, they are no different to those who trade stocks, commodities or futures in the same way.

If a particular cryptocurrency is going to be released on a new exchange (similar to an IPO in the stock market) or starts to be accepted or backed by a new company, then these are signals to buy. These people will try to game the system and make money from the highs and lows on every given day.

Naturally this is a high risk strategy, but there are some insane stories of crypto currencies appreciating 300,000% in the space of a month. Stories like this perpetuate the idea that putting the £10 into the right coin at the right time could make you a millionaire. These people dream of a margarita infused infinity pool, except they want it tomorrow and are prepared to lose some life savings to get it. And with crypto being so early in its lifecycle, there’s a likelihood that someone will get lucky. In fact, some people already have.

A snippet of the chart showing Nano’s stratospheric rise from the equivalent of £0.005p in March 2017 to £27.67, only 10 months later.

The shit coiners

Shit coins refer to a branch of coins that have no technological value whatsoever. Their only purpose is to ride the waves of popularity and jump on early hype and/or the whims of Reddit. Much like the day traders, the fun here is jumping on a coin with a ridiculous name and a hilarious logo before it hits the forums and becomes huge. There are other reasons that one may wish to invest in a shit coin. In some cases, entities like football clubs and e-sports teams may release their own tokens. These tend to appreciate and depreciate in value depending on how the team performs.

Occasionally, the makers of some of these coins will shift the messaging and reason to invest in a short space of time. Typically this happens in response to a downward trend. The coin Smegmars for example, changed it’s mission statement from wanting to “put the first dicks in Space” to beating testicular cancer following a dramatic crater. While an honourable cause in principle, the very nature of crypto currency means that the accountability for coins like this is limited. For those wishing to give to charity, there are likely more transparent and accountable ways to do so.

Shit coins can have a variety of successes, but the best thing about them is usually the ingenious things people call them. Some classics have been around a while, favourites like Dogecoin and the Shiba Inu Coin. Others, such as Smegmars, are brand new and oscillate in value like the strings on a guitar (currently $0.00005 at the time of writing). People who invest in these coins are more like the day traders but tend to play with pocket change rather than life savings. Their decisions are based more on taste and hype than analysis. Plus a sense of humour.

The Shiba Inu, Dogecoin and Smegmars Logos

This is part 1 of a series looking at the rise of crypto currency technology for beginners.

How normal is new?

Read time: 8 mins

Imagine you are WordPress. WordPress has 148 million unique visitors per month. This is only slightly fewer than Twitter. They run websites for some of the largest players in the world; companies such as Disney, Playstation and Microsoft. And yet they employ only 1170 staff globally. Those staff iterate 1000 deployments per week. And unlike any of the other companies at their level, WordPress staff work wherever and whenever they want.

The idea that you must be at work to be productive is a hangover from the days of the industrial revolution, when time not spent in the workplace was necessarily dead time. Employees were needed in the factory to operate machinery and fix problems, trying their best to avoid involuntary amputations along the way. This meant that home working was never an option. You had to be at work to be productive. After all, it’s difficult to set up a loom in your front room. But how well does this 19^th century mentality translate to modern companies?

Matt Mullenweg is the CEO and founder of WordPress and their commercial parent Automattic. He is a visionary when it comes to the modern way of working. As the current global pandemic unfurls, we see swathes of the global workforce needing to become productive in new working environment – most typically working from home. Different companies are adapting to this in different ways. Below are the 5 levels of distributed working, as suggested by Matt Mullenweg.

Where does your company sit?

Level 1

These companies are completely office reliant. This may be for good reason as there are some sectors such as manufacturing which absolutely require boots on the ground – employees need to be in the office to have access to specialist machinery or technology that simply cannot be managed outside of the company’s four walls. However, most companies are what’s known as “knowledge” based companies. These companies trade in expertise, services and consultancy. So why do so many of these companies still operate in a way that relies on being in the office?

People in these companies are typically connected to the modern world in their personal life. They have mobile phones and home computers which they can use as a back up if they need to work from home. Basics like staying up to date and doing some essential work when necessary can still be completed, albeit not very efficiently. But for the most part, core processes and decision making are all done from the office. The connectivity enjoyed in their personal life is not reflected in the way they work.

Communication and data sharing in these companies is typically pretty antiquated. Data is propbably stored in discrete locations (the classic L drive or something similar) sat on particular computers or on office-based servers, only accessible physically. Sharing documents and information is typically done via paper or emails – occasionally via an internal network area.

In terms of productivity, when employees who work for an office reliant company can’t can be in the office, they are more likely to put off important work until they’re back and have access to these location based resources. Management share the anxiety of a factory foreman if people aren’t in the office. Companies like this are likely to force employees to cancel holidays or come in when it’s not advisable or appropriate for them to do so. In an attempt to remedy this, employees may resort to taking specialist equipment home with them, loading up the boot of the car with monitors and a desktop. From a security standpoint this is a disaster, let alone the impact if the company’s financial data was lost due a desktop hitting the side of the car after a too-sharp turn.

The outlook for these companies in situation like the one we’re currently facing is almost certainly bleak, with employees needing to be furloughed or have their hours cut since the infrastructure of the company is simply not flexible enough to enable employees to be at all productive outside the office.

Level 2

Most companies fit into this level. They have made some moves towards remote working. Perhaps they have installed instant messaging technology or one or two of their systems, like emails, are cloud based and can be accessed outside the perimeter of the office.

However, these companies are essentially trying to recreate what they do in the office like for like, with collaborative technology being used as an accessory to support the typical 9 – 5 work day with the same style of communication and types of interaction that exemplify the everyday office grind.

Despite using some of the technology, the specific advantages of remote working medium are not utilised. For example, these companies may share files through something like DropBox so that people aren’t relying on emailing big files all the time. However, more advanced options that promote collaboration (such as automatic version control and editing in real time) might not be used. So creating and sharing ideas in these companies is still reliant of a linear process with people working with their own personal documents in their own cliques. The outcome tends to be, at best, duplication of effort and at worst a complete lack of clarity about the goal of the project or initiative.

When you look more closely at how these companies run day to day, there may be some elements which appear remote. For example, they may use VPN connections to access office-based software. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of using the VPN or Virtual Private Network, they are temperamental beasts. Sometimes you need a little key code or pager type gizmo. These can be easy to lose or worse misplace just before an important meeting. Furthermore, lots of office-based software isn’t designed to be accessed via a VPN. This can lead to IT teams botching connections to try and make it work, leaving the back door open to valuable and confidential data.

There also tends to be anxiety in these companies. Remember that despite some moves towards a remote environment, they are still wedded to the “factory mentality” of working. From this perspective, an employee being behind a desk is seen as the prime (or sometimes only) way that an employee can be productive. As a result, level 2 companies will often introduce policing – things like arbitrary activity tracking and a big brother approach like daily meetings and calls to micromanage an employee’s daily tasks. Companies do this because they think that the metric for success is how an employee is productive. The opposite happens as it drags productive employees away from important work, impacting their focus and detracting from value generation in order to tick boxes and ameliorate managers.

In many ways, level 2 companies are less productive than level 1 companies because they tend to introduce so many blockers into the daily routine. In the current climate, level 2 companies have some of the infrastructure to support them through this shift. However they may face push back from already stressed out employees who see the additional work around activity tracking as new, unfair and unnecessary burden. However, companies in this bucket are starting to think in the right way. They need to tough it out and begin to think about what’s next.

Level 3

Level 3 companies take the first major step away from the influence of the factory model as they start to take advantage of the medium properly.

In level 1 and 2 companies, engaging more senior members of the business can be difficult. Getting time in the diary is hard and emails can be simply lost in the ether. Level 3 companies shift to different forms of internal communication, using forums or chatter tools which are transparent and can be seen across the company. This shift leads to a flattened business hierarchy where senior, experienced and sought-after resources can be easily accessed by others. Also, people can quickly jump into an issue and make an impact, whether that’s advice, removing an obstacle or simply approving a plan. This removes the elongated “CC” chains where it takes hours to find the specific information needed to make a decision. The upshot is that the whole business can benefit from cross divisional and cross departmental support from all seniorities and skills.

Internal Meetings start to move away from a speaker and audience style. Instead meetings are collaborative and utilise new technology, for example Teams or Slack. A good example of how this could work is the nomination of someone in the meeting to take notes via a google sheet that everyone can see. People use words in different ways to mean different things, especially in a meeting environment. This can sometimes lead to confusion or even conflict further down the line. When people see their ideas presented back to them in real time, on a google sheet for example, it promotes discussion and understanding. While this may initially seem distracting, it actually provides clarity of ideas and a shared understanding around the expectations and outcomes of the meeting. On the same note, people can start to share data and charts really quickly by just bringing them onto screen. This would be much more difficult in a traditional office environment.

Companies start to invest in tech at this point – from collaborative software to noise cancelling audio. Cloud based platforms are pervasive. For example, some cloud based back office systems are linked meaning information is shared and available across the whole business. For example, absence of a key member of the team can often lead to lost revenue and frustrated customers because work needs to be rescheduled, impacting expectations and deadlines. With cloud based software, an absence logged in the cloud HR system from an employee at home using a mobile app can immediately link to the project system. The project system then sends a notification to other available team members of a similar skill level via mobile automatically. The work gets completed and the customer is none the wiser.

At this stage, investment in communication becomes essential. From a move to video-based conferencing to better writing; communicating with clarity, quality and skill becomes more important as the workforce becomes more distributed.

Level 4 & Level 5

The next steps are to move away completely from the view that employees need to visible (physically or virtually) at any point in order to be productive. Level 4 companies adopt an asynchronous working environment where employees are measured more on the success and quality of their work rather than how that work is completed.

For level 1 to 3, due to the company set up and culture, success depends on staff being available to work within specific working hours, defined by the company (though almost always 9 – 5). The perception is that this is the only way that the organisation can work together and achieve. However, this stops employees being able to design their own day and their own profile for productivity. After all, if you ask people to describe their ideal working environment, few people say they would be most productive after a long, cramped, costly hour-long journey so they can sit in a large, noisy room surrounded by people they don’t really know dressed in clothes they might not feel comfortable in for 8 hours in a row.

The focus for level 4 and 5 companies starts to become more humanistic. Employees are given the licence to design their working day around their physical and mental wellbeing.

An example of this could be the need to cool down after an intense meeting. The energy after a negotiation or dispute can get you firing on all cylinders – adrenaline pumps and energy is high. The last thing you can do in an office environment is go for a sprint, do some burpees or beat the devil out of a punch bag. Equally some people find focus in working with a candle at the desk. Others find that doing work on a treadmill helps them concentrate as well as help them get into exceptional shape. Working at a treadmill means you can clock up tens of thousands of steps every day. Could this be done in an office? Imagine 1,500 employees with 1,500 candles on 1,500 treadmills sprinting around the corridors after every meeting. It would be chaotic, not to mention dangerous. Working from your chosen location means you can be in the environment that’s most conducive to being productive.

Thinking about the working day differently has other benefits too. An asynchronous working environment opens up the global talent pool. In an office, work is corralled between the hours of 9 and 5. When you shift this to a distributed working environment, people from across the world can do great work during their specific hours in their time zone. When they’re done working, they can pass the baton to people working in US, Asia Pacific or European time zones. This is simple because of the use of collaborative tools and cloud based software. It also means that these companies effectively have a 24 hour working cycle instead of 8. Work that usually takes 3 days can theoretically be completed in 1.

The other great advantage in shifting to asynchronistic is rooted in decision making. When meetings and ideas are delivered across a distributed team, decisions tend to take a little longer. But they also tend to be better.

In an office environment, decisions are often made in a meeting with a group of people. In these environments, unconscious biases tend to creep in. The most senior, extraverted people will tend to get the most air time. Their opinions will carry the most weight and while these ideas can be good, there will always be those with great ideas who don’t make it into the mix. This means companies lose valuable ideas from the clever people they’ve hired. Moving away from this style of meeting gives more space for introverts to create thoughtful and in-depth ideas which could be really impactful. Though it takes more time, reaching a decision with a distributed team means that the decision itself is guided by rounded and comprehensive thought. As such, it should be a better decision.

What about level 5? This does not involve a direct interface between mind and technology. The definition of a level 5 company includes everything in levels 3 and 4 except that a level 5 company are doing better work with a distributed team than any in-person organisation is able to do.

The theory is that if everyone can reach a higher level of physical and mental wellbeing, they will hit a higher working level too. It means employees can enjoy their life, knowing the measure of their success is not based on the shirt they put on or how bad the traffic was on the M25, but on the work they produce.

So what?

Office working makes it much easier for people to merely exist. An employee who’s well dressed, punctual, starting early and clocking off late can usually get away with average work for some months. When someone’s contribution is measured by their output alone, regardless of what time they clock in or whether their workspace looks out over a city scape, rolling fields or the sea front, there’s really nowhere to hide. If there is a problem then it can be identified and support provided early, helping people achieve more. The happier, healthier, more focussed a workforce is, the more likely the quality of their work will elevate too. The crucial index should not be time served. It should be what you produce.

Attention Grabbers

Read Time: 10 mins

Everyone wants you to pay attention. Recent exposes about the goose step of big tech into our minds and wallets has got people thinking more about their attention and where its spent. While Netflix has thrust documentaries like The Great Hack (2019) and The Social Dilemma (2020) into the public eye, there is a whole history behind tech monoliths like Facebook, Amazon and Google and the advertising model that drives their profits. This history is one of how our attention has been increasingly and now unceasingly manipulated.

In his book, The Attention Merchants, author Tim Wu introduces us to generations of pioneers; advertising frontiersmen who have refined the taking of your money by harnessing your attention. It’s essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of the “ad-man” and the funny ways that society pushes back once this ever hungry enterprise has overstepped the boundaries of our social contract. What follows is a potted history of the attention merchant, inspired by Tim’s book which is linked below:

Snakes, Posters and Sex on the Moon

“You disgust me sir and I shan’t stand for it”

For the average cap in hander of the early 1800s, newspapers were rubbish. They were expensive and boring. The Sun, a British newspaper now more popular as overpriced kindling, once published stories like “Forest of Dartmoor.”, concerning the potential repurposing of land for agriculture, or a notice of the publication of Guthrie’s Geographical Grammar, a map book – a stark contrast to the lurid and loud stories adorning today’s newsagents.

A nail biter from The Sun, 1^st January 1820

This tedium led to opportunity. On 3^rd September 1833, a 23 year old named Benjamin Day published the first issue of the New York Sun. The paper promised to provide the common man with all the news of the day, while also taking the unprecedented step to fill the pages with adverts. He would sell the paper for a penny and fill it with lurid and captivating tales of horrific suicides and murders, tales of strange violence and uplifting romance. Though a loss maker, Day would sell the advertising spots to companies, providing the first regular and unfettered access for advertisers to the minds (and cash) of previously hard to reach members of society.

Day’s plan was a success. Within 3 months, the advertising revenue started to make a profit. In a year, it had a circulation of 5000 readers, a significant threat to the established press and an irresistible cash cow for likeminded peddlers of sensationalism. Within 2 years, new members of the penny press had sprung up, some focussing on a specific niche such as spots coverage or stomach churning accounts of morgue visits. This competition began a race to the bottom, with the different papers coming up with more and more outrageous stories to try and capture and steal more readers. Journalistic rigour was quickly abandoned along with any semblance of fact or truth. In a famous 1835 issue, the New York Sun reported the findings of a civilisation of promiscuous bat-like creatures who lived on the moon. Despite it’s ridiculousness, the story was a wild success and had a massive impact on the paper’s circulation. The success of the Penny press proved how capturing human attention could make a lot of money. The first attention merchant, according to Wu, had been born.

The capture of attention had begun in a place where people devoted their time to a specific activity. But why stop there? Soon the race to capture people unawares would begin in earnest.

“The Great Wave of Parisian Posters”

Woodblock printing is famously associated with Japan and most people will know some of its iconic art, such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa. What fewer people know is that in the 1800s, Japanese artists pioneered the first use of colour prints and pictures as advertisements instead of the graffiti seen in ancient Greece and Rome or block lettering that was starting to appear in the West.

The detail and eye catching colour is reminiscent of the fashion magazines of today, with elegant figures, finely dressed, perusing the streets and shops. These pieces represent the first documented effort to encourage patronage through illustrated advertisements.

Soon a French artist, Jules Cheret (b. 1836 – d. 1932), would build on this inspiration, along with a new technique of painting oil on limestone, known as lithography, and combine them with some of the baser instincts of humanity. With this combination, his legacy would improve the profits of thousands of products by capitalising on human distractability.

Cheret’s posters were captivating, using colour and the sense of motion to create huge, dynamic posters of to promote different products and companies. The posters also started a well-worn path of capturing attention when it was wandering, while waiting for a friend or an appointment, or even stealing attention when people were trying to focus on something else (perhaps a particularly thrilling newspaper article about the forest of Dartmoor).

While initially described as brilliant and as an eye based education, as with the penny press, copycats soon sprung up, generating a garish race to the bottom and eventually covering the Parisian skyline with base attention triggers – colour, motion, monsters and sexualised muses all had their introduction in the Parisian streets. Paris was defined as a wall of posters, from sidewalk to chimney stack – something that was soon noticed and then cursed by its residents.

These techniques would be refined over the years in an attempt to saturate and compel our limited attention and turn it into profit. These days, the humble poster has been up-scaled into sprawling strings of billboards along road sides, designed to catch people gazing out of the window as passengers or while on autopilot driving from A to B. With the progression of technology, posters would become digitised with even more captivating techniques like flashing lights and pictures that actually move.

Patent medicine:

Cowboys are not often sought after for medical advice, but the idea of a secret quick fix has overcome even the most cynical. In 1893, moushtacheoed bandana wearer, Clark Stanley (b. 1854 – d. c 1916) was offering an elixir that would cure all ills. His snake oil liniment, he claimed, would cure rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, toothaches, sprains, swelling and much more.

These types of elixirs were known as patent medicines. They would take many forms, almost always advertised by an alluring character (Cowboy Clark Stanley for example) and feature some form of secret ingredient. In an age of limited entertainment, Stanley would take his caravan across the USA and put on shows. These were extravagant productions where Stanley would take a live rattlesnake and squeeze the life from it in front of a captivated crowd. He’d throw the dead snake into a mysterious steaming broth where it would simmer. Soon an oily meniscus would form which Stanley would skim off the top and pour into a bottle and sell for a tidy profit to the enraptured people who stood before him.

The patent medicine men would pioneer the hard sell – the art of telling customers that a product will cure their wildest dreams regardless of the truth of the matter. They would also be the first to generate profits from direct mail or spam campaign techniques, sending millions of pamphlets through people’s doors, many of whom would spend 91 cents on a patent medicine product before realising it was complete garbage.

The legacy of patent medicine would be extreme with many techniques still used today (consider modern cosmetics with their secret ingredients or celebrity endorsements). Plunging into a gloomy future, peppered by advertisements and hard sell of spam, social media, scams and popups it would be easy to think that the ad- saturated world we live in will forever be the norm. The reason why it’s so important to understand the history of each of these attention merchant mediums is to understand what happens next.