It’s day three after my flight back from North America to Europe. Jet lag skipped the first night, but kicked in last night.
I went to bed at 10pm, woke up at 1am, lay awake, got up, read for a while, went back to bed, tossed and turned some more.
I’m guessing it was 5am by the time I finally fell asleep again. I slept until 10am and woke up like I was emerging from a month-long coma.
I’m telling you this because it’s now a few hours later. I’ve gone outside to clear my head. I’ve had breakfast. None of it has helped.
It’s time to write my daily email. But because of this disturbed sleep and resulting confusion, and because it’s very late for writing by my usual standard, there’s absolutely nothing happening in my head.
No new ideas for today’s email.
Nothing good based on recent reader replies in my inbox.
Nothing in my extensive journal that sparks any kind of miserable light in my mind.
In situations like this, I have enough experience that I can brute-force my way and write something acceptable. And that’s what I started to do today as well.
But then I caught myself.
I realized that the fact that nothing is happening in my brain today is my topic for today’s email.
I recently listened to an interview with a stand-up comedian, Chris Grace. Grace was talking about what he does when things are not going well, when his jokes are falling flat, when the audience isn’t responding. He said:
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My main tool is that I never pretend that it’s not going the way it’s going. And I think this is a pretty common standup tactic, which is just to call out exactly what is happening in the room.
I think the skill level here is how aligned you can be with the exact energy of you plus the audience. So if there is a certain tone happening or if there is a vibe, the closest you can get to accurately naming that vibe and building from there, it can help you unify the room sometimes.
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I heard somewhere that the legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz threw out all of his winning sales letters and ads.
Schwartz didn’t have a swipe file to consult. He didn’t have templates. He looked at each sales situation as unique. And he tried to align himself and call out the exact vibe of the market he was writing to, right in that moment. This is how he paid for a penthouse on New York’s Park Avenue… a world-famous art collection… and an all-around ritzy Manhattan lifestyle.
It works in dating, too.
I once went on a first date with a Norwegian girl. She was a very smooth conversationalist. I believe she was a psychologist, or maybe a therapist.
Through her professional training, this girl kept the conversation on our date going without the slightest hitch. She made me feel she is very interested in my life story… what I’d studied in my many years of college and grad school… what I think about turtles, life, and the universe.
I kept talking and talking. Gradually, panic started to build inside me. I realized I was drowning in quicksand.
So when the Norwegian girl smoothly transitioned from one waning topic and opened up yet another avenue of promising scientific discussion, I cut her off.
“No, we’re not going to talk about that,” I said.
“We’re not?” she asked. “Why not?”
“Because we need to do some first-date stuff.”
She laughed. “What do you have in mind?”
“This is the moment during the first date when you and I have to work together. We have to see if we can create some kind of sexual spark between us.”
The girl’s eyes sparkled for the first time that night. And the conversation shifted to much more promising waters, about the strange hookup culture in Norway, about how dating worked in Hungary where I was living at the time, and about the kinds of things she found attractive in men.
I’ll leave off that story for now. And I’ll just remind you of the power of calling out the vibe, whatever it is — particularly if it’s not working in your favor.
That’s free, highly specific advice on persuasion and influence.
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