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My lens seems to be strengthening. Everything is the same. Sort of like what Leonardo said 500 years ago, “everything is connected with everything else.”
From my lens - The Shakaib Lens - everything is a story. And everything is a sale. Every story attempts to sell something. Every sale tells a story.
And the thing that makes humans human is the ability to think. Now, that doesn’t mean thinking is the culmination of intelligence. But it does make us human. As far as we know.
Anyway, so I picked up a few more books to read lately.
The Use of Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono. It had been gathering dust in my bookshelf for almost twenty years (time flies!) So it’s about time we pickup the old friend again and refresh our memory of what he teaches.
Breakthrough Advertising by Gene Schwartz. Absolutely overdue. And absolutely enlightening.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Long overdue. And an absolute shame that I have picked it up so late. Better late than never though.
So, lateral thinking is all about figuring out a system for generating ideas consistently and reliably. The premise is somewhat like what Einstein said, “Logic would take from point A to point B; imagination will take you everywhere.” So, de Bono is not too big a fan of logic when it comes to generating new ideas.
Schwartz also emphasizes that your success or failure as an advertiser or copywriter depends on your ability or inability to generate new, “breakthrough” ideas. His path seems to be very different from de Bono’s, though. Schwartz is all about analysis.
Campbell is Campbell. We’ll talk about him some other time.
Now, all the above analysis and observation is based on the couple of chapters that i have read so far. So my understanding will most likely evolve as is read further.
And yes, I’m reading Russell Brunson’s Dotcom Secrets too. Another one that was long overdue. Great refresher on funnels and stories. And how to make them make money.
…
Read, my friend, read. The second largest religion of the world began with the word, “Read!”
It opens your mind. It makes you what you cannot be if you don’t read.
Till the next time,
Shakaib Feroz.
P.S. My writing methodology is influences on a great part by Mark Levy’s Accidental Genius, which also happens to be a book about generating ideas. Happy times.
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