Simple Strategies - The science of getting better

I’m Kind Of Sick of the World

Posted on April 28, 2013 by bhennessy

I had three devices operating simultaneously, and somehow still managed to be wrong about everything. My flight from San Francisco arrived at 11:45 p.m., and I was exhausted. My car needed gas, extending my hour drive home (without traffic) to an hour fifteen. I just wanted to crawl into bed. Sucked Down the Information Sewer Then the damn local news and talk radio station started telling stories of a shooting in Boston at MIT. A campus cop was shot, according to the news, during hold-up at a convenience store near campus. Dozens of police SWAT vans, cars, and helicopters were on the scene. So I got home and flipped on a 24-hour news channel on the television. The radio news was at least two hours behind. The flashing lights and black panel vans had migrated to a suburb of Boston. Residents—now witnesses—reported a minute-long gun battle in their sleepy streets. (One minute may not sound

Thin-Slicing, Experts, and the Power of the Human Brain Help Capture Suspect Two Alive

Posted on April 20, 2013 by bhennessy

The police in Watertown responded magnificently. But the most brilliant strategic move gets little notice from the press. For about sixteen hours, hundreds of law officers, FBI agents, helicopters, and satellites scoured a relatively tiny area of Boston suburbs for one wounded terrorist. At the same time, they kept the public relatively safe, off the streets, and out of the way of their manhunt. But they didn’t find their man. By seven o’clock, Col. Timothy Alben admitted they didn’t know where Dzhokar Tsarnaev was. They believed he was still in the Greater Boston area, but they couldn’t know for sure. So authorities lifted the “shelter in place” request, allowing people to leave their homes with a powerful admonition: remain diligent. Col. Alben made clear that there was no “all clear.” The world is a dangerous place, but Watertown, Massachusetts was beyond dangerous. Somewhere in that quiet neighborhood lurked a dangerous, desperate, wounded animal who knew

How to Persuade Like the FBI’s Top Hostage Negotiator

Posted on March 15, 2013 by bhennessy

The clock is ticking. Three people are in a small frame house: a woman, her five-year-old son, and a man bent on killing them both. And the clock is ticking. Outside the house is a team of expert killers. And the clock is ticking. How this ends is up to you, and there are three possibilities: no one dies, someone dies, everybody dies. And the clock is ticking. You have only three tools: a video feed from the scene, a phone, and your brain. What’s your first move? You Are an FBI Hostage Negotiator Whether you’re a CEO, a marketer, or a mom, you live in a scaled down version of the hostage negotiator’s world. How so? Another party wants something, you want something, but on the surface your wants don’t seem to go together well. You’re about to learn how to bring those conflicting desires to a happy ending. Whether you’re trying to close

Here Is a Simple Solution to Global Warming and Hunger

Posted on March 12, 2013 by bhennessy

Allan Savory caused the slaughter of 40,000 elephants in a vain attempt to save the planet by stopping desertification. It turns out that he succeeded only in turning lush grasslands into desert. And, of course, killing 40,000 elephants. Savory loves animals. He grew up in Africa and adores elephants. So why did he kill them? Scientists Often Do More Harm Than Good Global temperatures are higher now, on average, than they were 100 years ago. I won’t deny that. Nor will I deny that human activity has contributed to that warming. It has. The question is: which human activities contribute go global warming, or AGW (anthropogenic global warming). Climate scientists like James Hansen labor to hide the truth. But they know. The answer is shocking. And the solution is delicious. In this TED talk, biologist Allan Savory explains how he and other scientists discovered that in their vainglorious attempts to improve nature climate scientists and

Affinity Bubbles Turn Simple Errors Into Mass Stupidity

Posted on March 8, 2013 by bhennessy

I think I coined a phrase a couple of years ago: affinity bubbles. (Image clipped from http://www.despair.com/idiocy.html. I love their stuff.) Affinity bubbles are the cocoons we build to protect us from challenges to our beliefs. They’re confirmation bias on steroids. And search engines and social networks help us build them. Sure, the sounds of our echo chambers can be as peaceful as a mother’s heartbeat to an infant. But what if you’re all wrong? Realizing You’ve Been Wrong All Along Is Better Than Being Wrong And Denying It Don Peppers is one of the smartest men alive because he actively challenges his own beliefs. He recently reviewed a book that discusses the importance of accepting that you might be wrong. The book is Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz. While there’s much to love about the book, I want to stress one point: you might be wrong. In fact,

The Sum Of Your Life Will Be a Legacy. Dare To Look At Yours?

Posted on March 4, 2013 by bhennessy

At the funeral mass for a nasty, stingy, mean-spirited, reviled parishioner, the priest asked someone from the congregation to recall at least one positive trait of the departed. Silence. “I can’t believe that a man can walk the earth for seventy-plus years and not touch a single person in a positive, loving way,” the priest said. Nothing. “I know many of us had our differences with Mr. Gilford, but this is his funeral mass and we are Christians. I won’t continue until someone says a kind word about our departed brother.” A few coughs echoed through the church. Some people nervously paged their missals. After a few minutes of quiet, a man in an old, gray overcoat rose slowly to his feet. He cleared his throat and said, “The brother was even worse.” What Will They Say About You? Will people line up to share your wonderful life stories at your funeral? Will they show

Don’t Miss The Brain Study That Tells You How to Influence Democrats And Republicans

Posted on March 1, 2013 by bhennessy

One of the most powerful tools of influence is fear. Decades of research shows that fear of loss is about three times as motivating as hope for gain. (This changes under certain situations, like conditions of certain loss, but that’s for another time.) So political message writers often use negative messages to influence voters to take a chance on a cause or a candidate. This tactic works well with Republican voters, and less well with Democrats. New neuroscience research tells us why—and what you can do about it. Republicans and Democrats Assess Risk With Different Parts of Their Brains When assessing risk, Republican voters use their amygdala, while Democrats use their left insula. The amygdala are the brain’s primary danger triggers. They kick off the flight-fight-freeze response. The left insula’s primary function involves consciousness of self and others. It processes social information. This is critical to understand if you’re asking people to take a risk.

The Line For Mailbox iPhone App Is Very Long and Moving Slowly UPDATE

Posted on February 7, 2013 by bhennessy

**UPDATE** The line sped up, I got in, and I love it. Mailbox is a huge improvement over every email app I’ve tried on iOS. It’s better than the gmail app, and way better than the built-in iOS email app. Too bad it works only with gmail. I wish enterprise email system (i.e. Exchange/Outlook) were biased to productivity and action like free, personal email systems. It seems silly that enterprise software slows us down and overloads us with crap, while personal systems let us focus on important things. Perhaps that’s one reason why big companies need government bailouts and regulations–to protect them from small companies that actually get stuff done. Original Post: Over 270,000 people are in line for access to a promising new email app for iPhone called Mailbox. It got a great review on LifeHacker today. The app hit the App Store today, but the company has been taking reservations for weeks. I

Why Big Companies Fail at Becoming More Entrepreneurial

Posted on February 6, 2013 by bhennessy

Companies often declare, “we’re going to act like entrepreneurs.” Two years later, they’re still acting like big businesses but with relaxed dress codes. And maybe a few exercise balls rolling around the corridors. Becoming entrepreneurial is all over the business press. Forbes. Techcrunch. Gallup Business Journal. But a new paper shows that the human brain might stand in the way of enterprise entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs Brains Are Different Managers and entrepreneurs brains make decisions differently. This study by Daniella Laureiro-Martínez and others using fMRI shows that entrepreneurs use their entire pre-frontal cortex when exploring opportunities, while managers use only the left side of the frontal lobe. While the public over-generalizes the specialization of the two sides, we know that thoughts that exclude the right side of the brain focus on linear, specific, concrete things, like numbers.Whole brain thinking adds more creative thoughts in the sense of considering things that aren’t yet real. The scientists watched fMRI

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