Welcome. First, let me share the traditional greeting:
“Email is great! Yes it is.”
And now, you and I can get started with today’s content:
A few weeks ago, I was reading a New Yorker article. In that article, I came across an interesting idea that’s stuck with me since. I’ll share it with you in today’s email and then we can wrap up this part of our lives and move on to other things.
The article I read was about how good technology is getting at reading our minds, in a very literal sense.
You can now scan people’s brains and have a good idea of how their brains are lighting up in real time.
Combine this with a lot of data of other people’s brains and a lot of fancy software… and we are nearly at a point where somebody can know exactly what you’re thinking… even if you’re just sitting there, eyes closed, doing nothing but smirking.
Anyways, the idea that stuck with me had to do with “event boundaries.” From the article:
He had the class watch a clip from “Seinfeld” in which George, Susan (an N.B.C. executive he is courting), and Kramer are hanging out with Jerry in his apartment. The phone rings, and Jerry answers: it’s a telemarketer. Jerry hangs up, to cheers from the studio audience.
“Where was the event boundary in the clip?” Norman asked. The students yelled out in chorus, “When the phone rang!” Psychologists have long known that our minds divide experiences into segments; in this case, it was the phone call that caused the division.
In other words, neuroscientists now know something that writers have known for millennia:
Our brain loves to create scenes, snapshots, and scripts as a way of making sense of the immense complexity of the world.
This is so obvious that it might not sound like much of a breakthrough. But it has some interesting consequences. Again from the article:
Walking into a room, you might forget why you came in; this happens, researchers say, because passing through the doorway brings one mental scene to a close and opens another.
But perhaps more interesting is the basic influence idea of exaggerating what people already want and respond to.
For example, is it any wonder so many religions have strict rules for entering and leaving a place of worship?
When entering the church, dip your fingers in holy water and make the sign of the cross… do not enter or leave the sanctuary while the ark is open… leave the mosque using your left foot while reciting the dua.
And the point of this sermon is:
People want scenes… clearly marked beginnings and endings… so give it to em. Create doors, entrance rituals, dramatic event boundaries.
You will be helping your audience make sense of both you and of their world. They will thank you for it, with their attention, trust, and perhaps even money.
And that all I wanted to say. Except of course the traditional farewell:
“This email is finished! You can sign up here to get more. Yes you can.”