Monthly Archives: June 2015

Chip Heath & Dan Heath

By labeling a tripwire, you can make it easier to recognize, just as it’s easier to spot the word “haberdashery” when you’ve just learned it. Pilots, for example, are taught to pay careful attention to what are called “leemers”: the vague feeling that something isn’t right, even if it’s not clear why. Having a label for those feelings legitimizes them and makes pilots less likely to dismiss them. The flash of recognition—Oh, this is a leemer—causes a quick shift from autopilot to manual control, from unconscious to conscious behavior.

That quick switch is what we need so often in life—a reminder that our current trajectory need not be permanent. Tripwires provide a sudden recognition that precedes our actions:
I have a choice.

Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, New York, 2013, pp. 236-237

Richard Branson

[M]y most essential possession is a standard-sized school notebook, which can be bought at any stationery shop on any high street across the country. I carry this everywhere and write down all the comments that are made to me by Virgin staff and anyone else I meet. I make notes of all telephone conversations and all meetings, and I draft out letters and lists of telephone calls to make.

Over the years I have worked my way through a bookcase of them, and the discipline of writing everything down ensures that I have to listen to people carefully.

Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity: The Autobiography, London, 1998, pp. 407-408