Posts By: Frank Sopper

Representing the view of those who aren’t neurostimulated by text, Pierre Bayard, professor of literature at the University of Paris and author of a dozen books himself, has made the case persuasively for meaning separated from text in his cheekily-titled book, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.  Bayard presents all the ways we…

Even when everyone uses a common spoken and written language, as humans, we have another rich mode of discourse. Several years ago, I sat on a jury in Los Angeles. There was testimony to be given in several languages including English.  Many of us on the jury were conversant to fluent in more than one…

There a guy who has a double-high associative and observer. People with this profile take in multiple non-verbal cues and convert them to decisions at as close to light speed as our meat-based processing system allows. When he’s in a meeting, he’s watching the demeanor of the person presenting — searching for cues as to…

To get a busy person’s attention, write so your email takes less than two minutes to read and process. You can learn the techniques journalists have refined over a century: headline, lead, nut, inverted pyramid. Headline: pithy hint to what’s meaningful and actionable in this story. You call this the Subject line. Learn to write…

When we begin with open-ended questions, those with first preference for associative processing find it easy to start riffing on how the question relates to everything else we’re thinking about, ever thought about, and ever expect to think about. And we easily remember ever single related incident from our own experience and the experience of…