"Time spent doing nothing is rarely wasted" John Lenon
I recently moved to Zurich for work. Zurich is a city where people worry that it's the armageddon, if the public transportation is late by a minute, such is the precise nature of how how things runs here. You see logics and rules in very aspect of life. At the same time had the opportunity to read the book Alchemy, by Rory Sutherland. It was a dichotomy, as the book speaks about how there is a time and place for the “illogical” in complex human affairs, and how not everything is bound by the laws of physics and it may benefit us to sometimes consider the magic which is cheap, illogical, and effective. The whole point of this book is that just because something is irrational doesn't mean it's not right.
Red Bulls story is a great example of alchemy. Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian marketing director at a toothpaste manufacturer, first discovered energy drinks on a business trip in Bangkok. Suffering the effects of jetlag, locals directed him to a Krating Daeng, a Thai beverage claiming to boost performance and concentration. Back then, though caffeinated sodas were popular in Eastern Asia, the Western world hadn’t seen much of them.
So how do you make something which is smaller than coke and doesnt taste half as good into a multi billion sales wonder? Its difficult to logically make sense, but Red Bull's marketing team came up with logic defying solutions such as Guerrilla marketing (they placed empty cans in crowded public areas to create the impression that the brand was popular) and at the core, they understood that people are far less logical than they appear, and that this illogical nature of ours drives much of our decision making
An unconventional rule that nobody else uses can yield greater results than a “better” rule that everybody else uses and in an age of extreme logic it is likely that the problems that have been able to have been solved by logic already have been. So, those that remain may require illogical solutions
A story from Henry Ford: a visitor was walking through the Ford office with Mr. Ford when they passed the office of a senior executive whose feet were up on the desk. The visitor asked why Mr. Ford kept such a man on at such a high expense. Mr. Ford replied that this man had an idea several years ago which saved him $10 million dollars and as he remembered it, his feet were in that exact position.
This was a interesting book to pick up in a time where we moved to one of the most logical, rule based country in the world. Great reminder for me to focus on what works over what is logical and "makes sense." Nature favors utility and fitness over rationality and accuracy/objectivity
