All posts in Notes and Summaries

After a barrage of recommendations on my twitter, I finally ended up reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. The central premise of the book is simple: everyone has got about four thousand weeks to live, and spending that limited time chasing efficiency is wrongheaded.

The message seems old. The entire self-help industry revolves around saying variations of it. Stay in the present. Enjoy the moment. Seize the day. But where the book differs from the rest is that it’s both poetic and philosophical. It’s the kind of the book that, once you finish, you end up mumbling: gosh, I should have written it. ...  Read the entire post →

This one is a dated book – it describes advertising in the age when digital channels didn’t exist. But that doesn’t make it irrelevant.

Rather, the basic principles that made a great ad in the TV/print era remain the same. Consumer psychology is shaped by a million years of evolution, so while mediums change, what makes people buy stuff doesn’t.

My notes from the book

How to work with an agency

• Leaf through the medium you’re interested in and see which ads strike you the most
• Find out who made those ads
• Talk to their head and creative director
• Ask them to give their best ads
• Go with the one who appeal you the most

Principles of writing headlines

• Spend a lot of time getting the headline right (5 times more people read it vs copy)
• Headline should promise the reader a clear benefit
• News style headlines work (introducing, amazing, now, suddenly)
• Include brand name in headline (most people don’t read copy and wouldn’t know what product is being advertised)
• Personalise. If a product targets certain people, put a word in the headline to address them.
• Specifics work better than generics.
• Helpful information work great as headline (e.g. how to do xyz).
• Don’t put full stops in headlines, as they stop the reader.
• Use a standard font that everyone can read easily (those that people are accustomed to reading)
• Drama belongs to what you say, not in the typeface.

Principles of illustrations

• The job of illustrations is to catch interest while the reader is leafing, though. It should inspire curiosity (what’s going on), that the copy will answer.
• Photos work better than drawings.
• Keep illustrations simple (one person)
• Before and after ads work great
• People notice advertisements that feature models of their own sex only (men notice men, while women notice women)
• More people read captions under images than copy, so always put captions under images. The caption should include brand name and promise.

Principles of copy

• Write in story format (hook people)
• Write in everyday language (simple words)
• Don’t use analogies (people don’t understand)
• Don’t use celebrities (people remember them, not the product)
• Include the price always (people move on when they don’t know the price)
• Long copy works better than short copy (as the more facts you tell, the more you sell), but with long copy, the first paragraph should be a grabber (and not generic)
• A subheadline helps whet the appetite for the copy
• Limit opening paragraph to 11 words

Layout

• Readers first look at illustration, then at headline, then at copy (so put them in that order)
• Headlines below illustration are read by 10% more than headlines above illustration
• Advertisements shouldn’t look like ads (they should look like editorial)

General

• Copy what’s working (don’t innovate until you have a better idea)
• Pretend you’re an editor (not an ad creator) and you’ll get more sign-ups
• Never set copy in black background over white (they’re hard to read)

Posters ...  Read the entire post →

What’s the most effective way to change habits?

I’ve been diving deep into this topic lately, and here’s what I’ve learned. Relied mainly on two sources:

• [Review article] Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2016). Healthy through habit: Interventions for initiating & maintaining health behavior change. Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(1), pp. 71–83
• [Podcast] Huberman Lab, The Science of Making & Breaking Habits

Why habits are important?

Habits allow for certain actions to happen by default whenever a certain context/cue is encountered. You wake up and you brush your teeth. It’s not something you do with any cognitive load. It just happens.

This automaticity of habits makes them powerful because you can pretty much rely on you executing the actions you’re habitual to. For example, research has found out that healthy eaters don’t inhibit themselves in front of unhealthy snacks. Instead, they simply eat better and exercise without conscious thought. That’s the power of habits. ...  Read the entire post →

Recently finished “The Spike: An Epic Journey Through The Brain in 2.1 Seconds” by Mark Humphries and here are my notes from it.

1/ As the book’s subtitle suggests, it’s about the neural code our brain uses for doing what it does.

The book is rich with details and I learned a lot of new facts and ideas about the brain. I highly recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in neuroscience.

2/ Since writing about an object as complex as the brain can fill encyclopedias, I will focus my notes on what I know now that I didn’t know before reading the book. ...  Read the entire post →

(a massive, 100-part essay)

I recently finished this excellent short book titled What Has Government Done To Our Money. It’s available on the Internet for free and I highly recommend reading it. But in case you want the key insights, here are my notes.

Money as a medium of exchange

1/ In an economy, there’s a variety of people. Different folks specialize in producing different things and each one of them desires different things.

2/ If there are only two people, they can barter (i.e. directly exchange) what each one of them has with what the other one needs. Even with two people, an exchange rate emerges (e.g. how many loaves of bread you both agree on for a pair of shoes?) ...  Read the entire post →

The most beautiful aspect of a SaaS business is that your monthly revenue is more or less stable. Unlike buying a soap, an automatic monthly or a yearly subscription means that customers aren’t frequently re-evaluating their decision for what to purchase.

However, when times are hard, people do think deeply about where their money is going. This year’s pandemic forced everyone to do such introspecting, including customers of VWO – a product that my company builds.

Even though the impact of economic slowdown due to coronavirus pandemic was not existential for our business, we did get impacted. ...  Read the entire post →