Here’s a personal defect on the scale of Derek Zoolander’s “I can’t turn left”:
I am particularly bad at coming up with “hot takes.”
The way I’ve gotten through life in spite of this defect has been to skip the news and consume things nobody else is consuming, because then even the most lukewarm take still tingles.
That’s how I’m currently making my way through a 574-page behemoth titled Principles of Psychology, from the year 1890, by a man named William James.
It’s slow going. I imagine it will take me till the end of this year to finish at the pace I’m reading.
But it’s been worth it already. On page 39 I came across the following idea, which James call “summation of stimuli.” Even though it’s extremely lukewarm on the surface, it still made me tingle. Says James:
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The law is this, that a stimulus which would be inadequate by itself to excite a nerve-centre to effective discharge may, by acting with one or more other stimuli (equally ineffectual by themselves alone) bring the discharge about.
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No? That doesn’t make it clear? I told you the book is slow going. James goes on to explain in slightly clearer language:
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The natural way to consider this is as a summation of tensions which at last overcome a resistance. The first of them produce a latent excitement or a heightened irritability; the last is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
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Maybe that doesn’t help either. James fortunately gives a concrete example:
Take a dog (19th century scientists loved doing experiments with dogs).
Apply a weak electrical current to a nerve in the dog’s leg.
The current is too weak to set the dog’s leg to twitching.
But repeat the same weak current enough time, at a close enough interval, and somehow, even though none of the currents was enough to set the dog’s leg a-twitching, a-twitching is what you get.
“Ok,” you might say, “thank you for that lukewarm take on dog leg twitching. I gotta g-”
Wait! There’s more.
Because this isn’t just about dogs getting stimulated and starting to twitch. This is the basic neurology that underlies… pretty much everything, or at least a lot of human psychology and mental life.
I mean, I don’t have proof for what I’m about to say, because I’m only 15% through James’s psychology book.
But my guess is that this “summation of stimuli” is why one of the most fundamental techniques of persuasion, repetition, actually works.
If I say “I’m the best,” that doesn’t make it so.
But if i say “I’m the best,” every day, for years and years, and you’re forced to listen to me, then somehow, even though each individual claim is as hollow as every other one, the summation of them all turns into something with substance.
Maybe I start to genuinely believe I’m the best. Maybe you start to believe it too. And if we both believe it, then it does make it so.
Now let me make this practical to you:
In my Daily Email House community, a discussion sprang up today (ok, I sprang it up) about whether email marketing is dying.
I sprang that discussion up because I’ve seen “RIP Email Marketing” a surprising number of times in the past week alone.
The conclusion among House members was that email marketing is doing fine, but in any case, it was never about email marketing, not really, but about having a great relationship with your audience.
And the first step, and the most fundamental step, of building a great relationship with your audience is… summation of stimuli.
Showing up regularly, ideally every day, and ideally in different formats. Such as daily emails… and a community.
Speaking of, if you’d like to have your say in the conversation about email marketing and whether it’s dying or not, my Daily Email House is now accepting new members. If you’d like to spring up and join us: