Book Review & 11 Ideas to Create Sticky Ideas: Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath | Neha's Notebook

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath

Blowing rainbow bubbles
Watching a family movie with a bag of chips in hand
A sketchbook filled with drawings of wax crayons
A box of trinkets
Camera containing printer…

The world outside is filled with ideas…oodles and oodles of ideas. Ideas stem from great imagination and from infinite possibilities waiting to be explored.

But how many of these ideas truly stick in our heads? How many of these really catch and grasp our attention?

In this book, Made To Stick, the authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath explore what makes up a sticky idea and what are the main villians of a sticky idea.

One of the main villians of a sticky idea is the Curse of Knowledge. To explain this, the authors take the example of ‘Tappers and Listeners’.

During a research, some people were divided into two groups. The task of one group was to tap with their fingers some songs, and the task of the listener group was to identify these songs from the rhythms of the tapping fingers.

According to the research, the listeners were able to guess only 3 songs out of 120. This happened because the tappers were experiencing the Curse of Knowledge. When they were tapping the songs, the tune of the song was playing in their heads, but the same tune wasn’t playing in the heads of the listeners. Tappers thought that the same tune was playing in the listeners’ heads but it wasn’t so. The Curse of Knowledge is when you know something then you stop knowing what it is to not know something we know. This produces ideas that are unsticky and that don’t grasp our attention.

To combat the Curse of Knowledge, the authors provide a checklist (SUCCES) of what makes up a sticky idea. They write that a sticky idea is:
• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Story

In this review I share 11 ideas from the book about what makes an idea stick in our heads and what to do to generate an idea that sticks, based on the SUCCES checklist. Read on.

#1 FIND THE CORE OF AN IDEA
Strip an idea down to its most critical essence. Simple messages are always core and compact

#2 ENGAGE PEOPLE’S CURIOSITY & CREATE CURIOSITY GAPS
Curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge. The thirst to fill a knowledge gap can be more powerful than the the thirst for slides and jungle gyms. Point out the gap in people’s knowledge. Knowledge gaps create interest and cause people to pay attention to our idea.

#3 CREATE MYSTERIES OR PUZZLES
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 don’t know how to get there. Tell mysteries or puzzles that are slowly solved over the course of the communication.

#4 TELL STORIES.
Stories are like flight simulators for the brain. Mental simulations help us manage emotions and trigger physical respones in our system.

#5 BE CONCRETE. ABSTRACTION IS THE LUXURY OF THE EXPERT
We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions.

What makes something concrete. If we can examine it using our five senses, it is termed as concrete. Novices crave concreteness. Concreteness helps us to understand. Trying to teach an abstract principle without a concrete foundation is like starting a house by building roof in the air.

#6 SPELL OUT THE BENEFIT OF THE BENEFIT. TRIGGER SELF-INTEREST.
People want to know “what’s in it for me?” Trigger their self-interest by promising reasonable benefits that people can imagine themselves enjoying.

#7 ADD CREDIBILITY
Use authorities (experts and celebrities) and antiauthorities (details and statistics) to add credibility to an idea.

#8 BREAK PEOPLE’S GUESSING MACHINE, THEN FIX IT
Break a pattern, create interest and surprise. Surprise happens when people’s existing schemas fail. When our guessing machines fail, surprise grabs our attention. Although, be wary of surprise without any insight.

#9 TAP INTO THE THINGS PEOPLE CARE ABOUT
A credible idea makes people believe, an emotional idea makes people care. If we want people to care about our idea, we must tap into the things they care about. Fill up people’s emotional tank. Use associations, appeal to their self-interest and appeal to their identity.

#10 USE GENERATIVE METAPHORS AND PROVERBS. BE COMPACT.
Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience. Likewise, learn to pack a lot of meaning in a little bit of compactness. Tap the existing memory terrain of the audience. Use what’s already there.

Use analogies to trigger an existing schema in people’s memory, and use it to impart new information.

#11 LEARN TO SPOT STICKY IDEAS
Learn to spot stories that have potential. Usually stories fall into the themes of challenge, connection and creativity. Put on the Core Idea Glasses to filter stories based on your perspective.

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