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The Monday Morning Memo

Information Like Bullets

June 4, 2012

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1.
Today’s reader is riddled with information hitting us from every side.

2. Traditional and online media assault our senses to the point of sensory shutdown.
3. Consequently, today’s reader is strongly attracted to numbered lists.
4. A numbered list promises a starting point, a conclusion, and milestones along the way.
5. A numbered list contains the fewest possible words.
6. A numbered list feels memorable, portable and doable.
7. A reader who would have glanced at your headline and then moved on will often give your message a second look when they see a numbered list.

Information organized into paragraphs feels casual and intimate. But that same information in a numbered list feels authoritative and useful.

8. Information in paragraphs feels casual and intimate.
9. Information in a numbered list feels authoritative and useful.

SUMMARY: When you need to present a big idea, develop a numbered list. Your information will be easier to follow, appear more credible and trigger a clearly measurable response.

Trust me on this. I’ve been experimenting with numbered lists for more than 25 years.

A few weeks ago I presented Pendulum to a few hundred executives from big corporations. A few hours before taking the stage, I chose 4 slides that contained information in paragraph form and altered them to unveil that same information as a numbered list. In each of the 4 instances a numbered list appeared, hundreds of iPhones were lifted to capture a snapshot of it. Most of the audience didn’t even bother to read it first. These men and women reached for their cameras the moment they saw the information was sequential.

Numbered lists feel authoritative and useful.

Have you learned anything you can use?

Come to Wizard Academy.
We’ve only just gotten started.

Roy H. Williams 

The image at the top of the page is The Listener by James Christensen, the artist I consider to be the Norman Rockwell of our generation. 

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Random Quote:

“I have fond memories of Oklahoma and I cherish all the valuable lessons I learned there. For real.

  1. Never deal with an idiot. Escape while you can. Keep an eye on them until they become a tiny speck disappearing in your rear-view mirror.
  2. Fall in love with an actual person. Do not fall in love with falling in love.
  3. Commitment does not flow from passion. Passion flows from commitment.
  4. Patience will make you wealthy much more quickly than luck.
  5. Business is nothing more than a search for purpose and adventure, and failures are footlights along the dark pathway to success.
  6. Everyone has a superpower. When you have figured out their superpower, that’s when you know a person.
  7. Never lose sight of your closest friends and always be there for them.
  8. Every conflict is an auction. The winner will be the one who is willing to pay a higher price than anyone else.
  9. There is a time for incremental escalation and there is a time for overwhelming force. Take no action until you know what time it is.
  10. What you are currently thinking and feeling is a product of where you have turned your attention. Be careful where you turn your attention.
  11. Learn to speak in color and to write poetically.
  12. Poetry is any communication that changes what you think, and how you feel, in a brief, tight economy of words.

Those are some of the things I learned as an Okie, and now I have shared them with you. That makes you a little bit Okie, too.”

- Roy H. Williams, Monday Morning Memo for August 2, 2024

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