Causation

Just how bad are you at multitasking?

by

Nobody called me out on it. But yesterday, I made a kind of preposterous claim.

​​I was talking about the following headline:

“If you’ve got 20 minutes a month, I guarantee to work a financial miracle in your life”

… and I said that his was an example of a concrete promise, something real and palpable.

As of this writing, nobody wrote me to challenge me on that. So let me do your job for you:

“Really Bejako? A ‘financial miracle in your life’? That’s your example of a concrete and real and palpable promise?”

Yes, really. And to prove it to you, let me tell you a story.

This story involves a man. A man named Tony. Tony Slydini.

Little Italian guy.
​​
Wrinkled, like a salted cod fish.

Spoke with a heavy Italian accent.

Performed magic tricks like you wouldn’t believe.

One of Slydini’s magic tricks involved making a bunch of paper balls disappear, only to appear in a hat that was empty at the start of the trick.

Before making each paper ball disappear, Slydini performed a few elaborate hand gestures. He’d wave the paper ball around in front of him, close it in his hand, sprinkle some invisible magic dust on it, open his hand, close it again, etc.

If you haven’t seen this trick, I have a link to it at the end.

​​But before you go watch, read on. Because I’m about to spoil the magic for you, and that’s important.

How does Slydini make each paper ball disappear?

​​And how does he teleport them inside the hat?

If you don’t want to know, then stop reading now. Otherwise, I’ll tell you.

Still here?

Fine. Here’s the trick behind the magic, from an article in Scientific American:

===

Slydini deposits the vanished paper balls into the hat when he reaches inside the hat to fetch invisible magic dust. This mock action prevents the audience from assigning an additional, key intent to the move: to unload the paper balls inside the hat, to later reveal them at the trick’s finale.

Just as our visual system strains to see the vase and the two faces at once, we struggle to conceive of a motion that has a dual motivation: to put and to fetch. Even when it should be apparent to every member of the audience, and to every YouTube viewer, that Slydini’s action of fetching magical powder inside the hat must be a ruse.

In other words, even when the ostensible purpose is preposterous, we still can’t consider an alternative explanation.

That’s how bad our brains are at multitasking.

===

Our brains are sticky. This creates some strange phenomena.

Give me a warm cup of coffee to hold. Then show me a stranger’s face. I’ll evaluate the stranger as looking friendly.

Point my attention to the 20 minutes I know I have. Then make me a promise of a financial miracle in my life. I’ll evaluate your promise as concrete and real.

Don’t believe that it works?

You can see Slydini’s trick on YouTube. Link’s below.

​​You now know how the trick is done. But watch it yourself — it takes all of 4 minutes — and witness just how bad you are at multitasking:

 

How to fake exciting discovery stories

by

Tony Robbins once shared a stage with a knight’s suit of armor.

At one point during his talk, Tony got close to the knight. Terrible static appeared on his mic. When he walked away, the static stopped.

The next time Tony got close to the knight, terrible static shot up again. He stepped away. The static stopped.

The third time it was about to happen, people in the audience started shouting. “Don’t get close to the knight!”

It turned out later than an ambulance in the neighborhood was somehow messing with Tony’s sound equipment. Once the ambulance left, the sound problems disappeared. It wasn’t the knight at all.

The human brain needs causation like a hot dog needs mustard. “Terrible sound! What’s behind it? It must be the knight!”

This works really well much of the time.

Sometimes it goes wrong, like in the Tony Robbins story above.

And in rare cases of clever persuasion… it can be used to lead people by the nose. For example:

During a webinar last year, Parris Lampropoulos analyzed a sales letter. It was written by his most successful copy cub.

The lead starts off with a true story of a 104-year-old scientist who won the Nobel Prize for her discoveries related to brain stuff.

The gist was this old lady saying, “I feel sharper now than when I was 20!”

The sales letter goes on to talk about the woman’s discoveries… and how the supplement for sale ties into her amazing research.

Now rewind.

Did you catch that?

It’s the same trick as with the knight above, at least for my hypergullible brain.

Because when I read this sales letter, my brain concluded, “Oh, she feels sharper because of her brain stuff discoveries. And this supplement is a way for me to tap into that, and get back what little I had when I was 20.”

But the sales letter doesn’t say that anywhere. The quaint old lady could have been feeling great because of her genetics… or because of her daily regimen of drinking beet juice. We just don’t know.

What we do know is that, when you’re writing copy, it’s best to have a genuine breakthrough coupled with an exciting discovery story.

But if you don’t have that… you can cheat. Just roll your breakthrough onto the stage… and then bring out an exciting story that’s not really about this discovery. Put them next to each other. Your prospect’s brain will do the rest.

Now rewind.

Did you catch that?

This whole article was a way of eliminating people who aren’t interested in persuasion or copywriting. Since you made it to the bottom, maybe this stuff interests you. In that case, you might like to sign up for my email newsletter.