Information is hard to retain, even harder to get other people to retain. Whatever gimmicks you can employ to make the information stick, I’m all for it!

Tell stories. Crack jokes. Rhymes, jingles, and of course direct practice all help information lodge itself in the brain. The Animaniacs (an amazing cartoon from my childhood) had all sorts of amazing songs that turned lists of facts into goofy tunes and as a result I can still name all the countries (well, all the ones that existed then, anyway).

If you’re a teacher of any kind, be silly. Silliness is stickiness!

There is always someone who wants what you do. You surround yourself with people who might not, but the world is a billion times larger than your circle of friends. It costs so little to explore a bit – why not?

You aren’t trying to balance all the things in your life, as if they were working against each other and your job is to keep the peace. At least, you shouldn’t be.

Every aspect of your life is part of a planetary system, with you as the star they orbit around. Their gravity affects the other spheres in the same way that Earth’s gravity affects Mars’ orbit. Your career orbits you, and individual jobs orbit your career like moons to a planet.

Your family is a gas giant, with individual members becoming major moons. Your bad habits and vices collect like an asteroid belt, putting craters in the surface of the nearby planets. Some orbits are elliptical; they will at times be closer to or farther from you.

But ever, you are the center.

Their movement is part of an important system, and that system’s energy is all connected. The moon controls the tides on Earth, and so it is with the harmony (or lack thereof) between the aspects of your life.

Use the orbits, use the harmony. Do things in their season, and respect their gravity.

There is rarely harm in asking for information from honest people. If you’re worried about a negative reaction, that’s usually your gut telling you that the people you’re dealing with don’t have your best interests in mind.

As an example, imagine you’re buying a car and you ask to look under the hood. What kind of salesperson would react poorly to such a request? Only someone who didn’t want you to see what a mess the engine was! Anyone selling a reasonable vehicle would be happy to abide by an equally reasonable request.

Curiosity doesn’t just gain you information. It gains you insight. How people respond to curiosity in others tells you a lot about them!

As obvious as it might seem, it’s important to differentiate cause and effect. Aspects of a system emerge from the properties of the elements of that system, not the other way around.

If you have a chunk of ice, it’s because the temperature of the individual molecules of water within that chunk is low enough for the whole mass to become solid. But if you want the individual molecules of a bucket of water to get colder, you can’t accomplish that by trying to hold the water into a solid shape. In other words, you can’t generate the cause by trying to artificially generate the effect.

Shared incentives are vital. All people have different wants and needs, different desires and goals. The key to a well-functioning team isn’t complementary skills or superior organization. Those things are important, but not the most vital ingredient. The essential element is a shared incentive to succeed.

As a leader of any kind of group, that’s your number one priority. Find the thing that everyone wants. If you have to create it, so be it. But there must be a reason for the band to assemble, or you’re sunk before you’ve begun.

Mark your heroes by their sweat. Heroism, in all its true forms, is work.

When you’re on the more “in demand” side of a transaction, the natural thing to do is put up filters. If you’re posting a job, the entire process is one big filter – designed to get you to the person you want in the role. If you’re a young adult woman posting on a dating site, you’re trying to filter down to the person you find most desirable. If you’re a Dungeon Master who wants to fill a table with geeks for some D&D, you want to filter down to the 3-5 or so that will contribute the best vibes to the campaign.

In all of these cases, people consistently make two major mistakes. More accurately, it’s one major mistake with two distinct sides.

The first (side of the) mistake is this: You can’t get what you want out of life through filtering alone. I can take a pool of job applicants and filter out all but the best one, sure. But the best candidate from that pool might still be a terrible fit, if I didn’t get the right people into the pool to begin with! If your dating strategy is “I will reject all losers,” that’s good – but how are you making sure people other than losers are trying to date you in the first place? You need to hang a little bait out there, is what I’m saying. Your side of the transaction needs to be an example the other party wants to compete for.

The other side of this mistake is all the unintentional filtering we do. If you post a public job ad with a huge list of requirements and qualifications, then in addition to who you want to filter out, you’re also filtering out people who have those qualifications but don’t want to work for unrealistically demanding bosses. If you loudly and publicly shame “losers” who try to date you, then you’re also filtering out people who simply find that attitude distasteful.

(By the way, none of this is a direct criticism of anyone’s choice in criteria for any personal or professional relationship they choose to engage in. Everyone is different, and you do you! I’m just saying to be aware of how you do it because unintended consequences may be working against the very goal you’ve set, whatever it is.)

In sales & marketing, we have this term, “top of the funnel.” That’s the term for everyone who initially engages with your sales & marketing process – so all the people who first engage with a company’s social media might be that company’s “top of the funnel.” Some people won’t make it further and some will, such as clicking on a link within a post, then visiting multiple pages on a website, then buying a product; in this way the “funnel” narrows. At every step, you’re trying to filter even customers; you want to qualify them as being the right customer for you, as being interested, and so on.

But every sales & marketing professional knows a fundamental truth: You want the top of the funnel to be wide open. You’re not trying to gatekeep who can see your initial advertising! Ultimately, you want a large, welcoming pool if you’re seeking a specific individual and don’t know where they are yet.

So throw open your initial gates. Lower the barrier to entry a little, meet some new people, have those initial conversations. They don’t have to go farther than that, but there are some real diamonds in the rough out there. You never know who’s getting caught in the filter that you would wish hadn’t.

When I give advice, one thing will always be true: The advice that I’m giving is meant for the person who asked for it. If you ask me what you should eat for dinner, I won’t tell you what I think people should eat for dinner. I’ll consider what I know about you, what I know about the kind of day you’ve had, and I’ll ask you questions to further clarify. In the end, whatever suggestion I make will be for you, and you alone.

I mention this because I’ve noticed that other people… don’t always do this.

If I ask a friend what movie I should watch, often I’ll get an answer like “A lot of people are talking about [insert current popular movie here].” Or in a discussion with other parents about child-rearing, someone might respond to my question about a specific scenario with, “Too many parents don’t discipline their children enough.”

Part of the information I use to evaluate courses of action is how popular a particular course of action is. Often so I can run (or advise to run) the other way! If the answer to “What’s the best route to get to the beach?” is “Take Main Street,” then Main Street is likely very crowded and jammed on sunny summer days. So even if that’s the “best route,” it might not be the best route for me, specifically, today.

I’m not interested in getting “general advice,” nor in giving it. When I’m talking to you, I’m talking to you.