Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

Understanding the unconscious obstacle to a new behaviour and then removing it, or else creating a new context for a decision, will generally work much more effectively.

Never forget this: the nature of our attention affects the nature of our experience.

The potency and meaningfulness of communication is in direct proportion to the costliness of its creation – the amount of pain, effort, talent (or failing that, expensive celebrities or pricey TV airtime) consumed in its creation and distribution. This may be inefficient – but it’s what makes it work.

Bits deliver information, but costliness carries meaning.

the problem is that when ‘the rules are the same for everyone’ the same boring bastards win every time.

We notice and attach significance and meaning to those things that deviate from narrow, economic common sense, precisely because they deviate from it.

Create a name, and you’ve created a norm.

If you want to change people’s behaviour, listening to their rational explanation for their behaviour may be misleading, because it isn’t ‘the real why’.

We assume that the progress must appear as neat in the moment as it can be made to seem in retrospect, and we want ideas to be as straightforward in their formulation as in their analysis

it’s easy to achieve massive improvements in perception at a fraction of the cost of equivalent improvements in reality.