Made to Stick — Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Summary in 15 minutes. Rumors spread on their own while urgent messages vanish. The Heaths show that the difference owes less to luck than to a handful of principles. The first three principles: find the core, grab attention, and make the idea something people can see. The last three principles: help people believe, make them care, and use stories to get them acting. You have finished reading. Now pick one message and rewrite it with the six principles.

Key ideas of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die"

Why Some Ideas Stick

Rumors spread on their own while urgent messages vanish. The Heaths show that the difference owes less to luck than to a handful of principles.

1. A Stolen Kidney and a Bag of Popcorn: Ideas you hear once and never forget
2. The Curse of Knowledge: Once you know something, you cannot unknow it

Getting Into the Mind

The first three principles: find the core, grab attention, and make the idea something people can see.

1. Simple: Find the Core: Say everything and you say nothing
2. Short Words, Deep Meaning: Proverbs, schemas and analogies
3. Unexpected: Break the Pattern: Surprise makes people look up
4. The Curiosity Gap: How to hold attention once you have it
5. Concrete: Make It Visible: Abstract ideas do not stick

Belief, Feeling and Action

The last three principles: help people believe, make them care, and use stories to get them acting.

1. Credible: Why People Believe: When you have no famous name behind you
2. Emotional: The Power of One: Numbers rarely move us. People do.
3. Self-Interest and Identity: “What’s in it for me?”
4. Stories: A flight simulator for the mind

Put It to Work

You have finished reading. Now pick one message and rewrite it with the six principles.

1. Your 7-Day Plan: One task a day. Tick it off when done.
2. One-Page Cheat Sheet: The whole book at a glance. Save it.
3. Final Word: Say It So It Stays: Good ideas do not survive on their own

From the free first chapter

You have probably heard this one. A business traveler accepts a drink from a stranger in a hotel bar. He wakes up in a bathtub full of ice, with stitches in his back and a note: call 911, your kidney has been removed.

The story is false. Yet almost everyone who hears it remembers it and passes it on. Nobody had to memorize it, and nobody paid to advertise it.

Read the first chapter free · Price: ৳250 · or every book with a membership