The Sinatra Test: Stand Out From The Crowd by Making YOUR Personality Stick

In Made to Stick, brothers Chip and Dan Heath explain why most ideas don't survive and define the factors required to really make an idea impressionable, memorable and ultimately: stick. One of these factors is 'Credibility', which introduces a simple, but interesting, concept known as the Sinatra Test:

‘In Frank Sinatra’s classic “New York, New York,” he sings about starting a new life in New York City, and the chorus declares, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” An example passes the Sinatra Test when one example alone is enough to establish credibility in a given domain. For instance, if you've got the security contract for Fort Knox, you’re in the running for any security contract (even if you have no other clients). If you catered a White House function, you can compete for any catering contract. It’s the Sinatra Test: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere’ (Made To Stick, pp. 151)

Now of course the difficult part of this is getting that one client, job, or investor that will allow you to take advantage of the Sinatra Test in the first place. And this is an experimental travel blog so what am I getting at? Well, whilst travelling you will hopefully find yourself in unique and virgin situations every day. Share this knowledge and life experience with your readers, create funny anecdotes to tell your friends on a night out, suck others into your reality and open their minds to unknown places and ideas. Don't just make your ideas stick, make yourself stick.

I don't watch television, I don't play computer games, and my wardrobe is a limited selection of questionable garments. Instead I put my savings and time towards two things: life experience and books. Whilst the media plunder brain cells from the mainstream society through news feeds and advertisements, I'm constantly growing as a person; out there doing the things that most people only ever experience through the box in their living room. The fact that some people choose not to read baffles me. In the immortal words of Mark Twain: "A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read." People have made an effort to extract and write down their pearls of wisdom gained from decades spent in a chosen profession or field  so that others can learn from their experience in a tiny fraction of the time. Take advantage of these gifts to enhance both your life and others around it. Combining this ever-constant flow of knowledge through text with tales of excitement and adventure, and sharing them passionately with others will truly make you stick.

Palahniuk's Laughter

"The first way in which a new generation takes control of society is through the culture; the arts, films, books, music. Through all entertainment. People who feel safe and secure in the existing society are frightened by ideas that threaten their power. People who hold the power in society want nice complacent forms of entertainment, films that comfort people and support the status quo" - Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club)

Never Miss a Train Again

Ever leapt down a set stairs to an empty platform only to find all that is left of the subway car is a cloud of smoke? Ever sprinted down the High Street to catch a connection at Central Station that, unknowingly to you, left 2 minutes ago? I know I have. Timing like this could easily double the length of your commute and always leaves you in a foul, grumpy, mood.....until now.

So what is the secret to never missing a train again? No it’s not setting the alarm 10 minutes earlier; it’s not a physical trait that you can adopt at all. In order to never miss a train again all you have to do is change your mindset, a piece of advice given to Nassim Nicholas Taleb by a French compatriot and then shared with the world in his book The Black Swan:

Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics in behaviour, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. 

I've paid homage to this book in a prior blog post, but there's just so much golden information contained between its pages. This statement truly encompasses the psyche ‘living in the moment’ and not letting external factors influence behaviour. So what you didn't get that train! There’s usually another one on its way. People are constantly in a rush to get from A to B, scared that if they stop their goal will keep on moving. In rushing however, people fail to observe what other opportunities may lay outside their tunnel vision, dangling in the blind spot of the blinkers.

Life is about enjoying the journey, not about who can reach the end-point first. Next time it’s touch-and-go whether you’ll make the train, put the brakes on. You never know what doors this may open for you, and at the very least, the frustration and grumpiness will completely vanish from you commute.

The Black Swan of Aesop's Fables

In The Black Swan, statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb breaks down the impact of the highly improbable to explain the random events that underlie our lives, from best-selling novels to natural disasters. His stoicism offers some fantastic lessons, in particular when using one of Aesop’s famous fables to stress the importance of being in control of your life:

“A famished fox, seeing some bunches of grapes hanging from a vine which had grown in a tree, wanted to take some, but could not reach them. So he went away saying to himself: ‘Those are unripe’. Similarly, certain people, not being able to run their affairs well because of their inefficiency, blame the circumstances.” (The Complete Fables by Aesop, pp. 27)

This fable gave rise to the common English phrase ‘sour grapes’, now understood as one making a false pre-tense to form a rationalisation. Taleb assigns this as a defence mechanism however, and argues the case that rejecting the grapes in the first instance, without even attempting to reach them, is the aggressive form of thinking that will serve one best. As he puts it: “It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself” (Taleb, pp. 297).

One is only exposed to the improbable if they first let it control them. Put the odds in your favour by fighting off the resistance and you will become that efficient person who need never place the blame on external circumstances ever again.

Down and Out in Paris and London

It’s hard to believe that the acclaimed George Orwell was once a tramp, but before Eric Blair adopted that pre-eminent pen name he was ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’. His debut novel vividly recounts his time spent living among the destitute, going days on end without a meal, pawning all his clothes just to cover rent, and working seventeen hour days in the sweaty, dirt ridden kitchens of fancy French restaurants. Through this experience however, Orwell provides us with some astonishing insights into what was once a societal taboo, whilst consecutively both finding his voice as a writer and developing his mind into one of the 21^st century’s greatest thinkers:

 “In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except ‘Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it’? Money has become the grand test of virtue.....A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.”

This excerpt is as true today as when it was published in 1933. People have fallen into the mind-set of ‘work to consume’, failing to take a step back to think about whether they are actually dedicating their time to something of real value. Wealth has become the primary means of determining an individual’s success in life, happiness and virtue being hidden by the figures on one’s bank balance. Orwell didn't go through these torturous years as a struggling writer in the hope of becoming rich. If that was the case I have no doubt he would have failed. Orwell did it because he has a passion burning inside of him that wouldn't die out; something that unfortunately most people alive today have no comprehension of.