Quotes from Chip Heath

You've got a good idea, how do you make it stick?

Knowledge is rarely enough to spark change; it takes emotion to bring knowledge to a boil.

The Curse of Knowledge: when we are given knowledge, it is impossible to imagine what it's like to LACK that knowledge.

Success emerges from the quality of the decisions we make and the quantity of luck we receive. We can't control luck. But we can control the way we make choices.

One of my favorite bloggers who can articulate his ideas clearly is Avinash Kaushik. The only problem? His ideas are so awesome his posts are a mile long, but I promise they are worth the time.

When you say three things, you say nothing.

Trying to fight inertia and indifference with analytical arguments is like tossing a fire extinguisher to someone who's drowning. The solution doesn't match the problem.

What did you guys fail at this week?" "If we had nothing to tell him, he'd be disappointed," Blakely said.

When you're at the beginning, don't obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look different once you get there.

one way to motivate a switch is to shrink the change, which makes people feel "big" relative to the challenge.

People are tempted to tell you everything, with perfect accuracy, right up front, when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more, then a little more.

When people know the desired destination, they're free to improvise, as needed, in arriving there.

Why are habits so important? They are, in essence, behavioral autopilot. They allow lots of good behaviors to happen without the Rider taking charge. Remember that the Rider's self-control is exhaustible, so it's a huge plus if some positive things can happen "free" on autopilot.

The researchers have found, in essence, that our advice to others tends to hinge on the single most important factor, while our own thinking flits among many variables. When we think of our friends, we see the forest. When we think of ourselves, we get stuck in the trees.§

This is the great trap of life: One day rolls into the next, and a year goes by, and we still haven't had that conversation we always meant to have. Still haven't created that peak moment for our students. Still haven't seen the northern lights. We walk a flatland that could have been a mountain range. It's not easy to snap out of this tendency. It took a terminal illness for Gene O'Kelly to do it.

Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving.

Solutions-focused therapists believe that there are exceptions to every problem and that those exceptions, once identified, can be carefully analyzed, like the game film of a sporting event. Let's replay that scene, where things were working for you. What was happening? How did you behave? Were you smiling? Did you make eye contact? And that analysis can point directly toward a solution that is, by definition, workable. After all, it worked before.

To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask?

work to make the core message itself more interesting.

If the Rider isn't sure exactly what direction to go, he tends to lead the Elephant in circles. And as we'll see, that tendency explains the third and final surprise about change: What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.

How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences?

Because identities are central to the way people make decisions, any change effort that violates someone's identity is likely doomed to failure. (That's why it's so clumsy when people instinctively reach for "incentives" to change other people's behavior.) So the question is this: How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences?

make a switch, you need to script the critical moves

Mystery is created not from an unexpected moment but from an unexpected journey. We know where we're headed—we want to solve the mystery—but we're not sure how we'll get there.