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Five things—cue, reaction, evaluation, ability, and timing—are preconditions for executing the action:

Cue: Something needs to cue them to think about it. The possibility of going running needs to somehow cross their mind. Maybe a push notification, an SMS invite from a friend, or an ad on TV.

Reaction: Once cued, the mind will automatically react to the idea, intuitively and emotionally. What do your users think about running? For some, it’s great; for others it’s new and strange. Others still might be embarrassed about being out of shape.

Evaluation. With conscious awareness, the mind will do a quick cost-benefit analysis. How hard will it be to do, what’s the value for them, what else could they do with their time, etc.? For some people, running is a net negative (maybe it aggravates a knee condition) and for others, it’s great.

Ability. The person must actually be able to act and know it. The person must know logistically what to do, and have the resources and self-confidence to do it. Some users may not have running shoes, for others it’s raining outside: they can’t run even though they wanted to.

Timing. The person needs to have a reason to act now, rather than doing something else that’s more urgent. Maybe the user wants to run, but is busy watching TV and procrastinates.

By reducing the number of options in your form fields from 6 to 3, you can increase your conversion rate, on average, by 66%.

Focus on monthly engagement, not total engagement and highly engaged users, not monthly active users.

The difference? Engaged users will care enough to come back and use our service a reasonable amount of time after they signed up. Therefore giving you an accurate look at who is interest in your product for the long term.

Conclusion: People don't like feeling duped, and we don't like feeling cheap. So we gravitate toward middle prices because they seem "fair," in context.

Research proves this: In the early 1980s, Joel Huber and Christopher Puto at Duke University offered their students four varieties of beer (super-bargain, bargain, premium, and super-premium)—in three separate experiments.

- In the first experiment, they offered just two varieties: a bargain beer (at $1.80) or a slightly better premium beer (at $2.60). Two-thirds of their students went for the premium.

- In the second experiment, they added an inferior, super-discount beer at $1.60. Nobody selected this cheapo option. But the bargain beer, now the middle of three choices, saw its share rise from 33 percent to 47 percent.

- Finally, the researchers took away the super-bargain and added a super-premium option at $3.40. Suddenly, it was the premium beer that was the middle of three options, and guess what? Its popularity share rose from 66 percent to 90 percent.

Tom Jackson was a PM on Gmail during his time at Google, and on News Feed at Facebook — and now is  CEO of his own, newly-launched Android startup, Cover.

Always know the current status and context: You should always know where key people in the company stand on what’s important and why. You should also know what’s going on with the competition.

Jump from small details to big picture: “You should be able to articulate the highest level strategy behind a product but also be ready to explain why a particular UI element is placed the way it is.”

Have moxie but don’t self-promote: Compliments should always go to the team. Credit should be handed out freely and generously. Success belongs to the team but failures belong to you.

Be a master of influence, not authority: Obviously, you have no authority over the founders or cross-functional stakeholders you’re presenting to — you also probably don’t have authority over the engineers you work with. You have to be a good communicator and make things easy for people. “Fill in the whitespace everywhere for everyone,” Jackson says. “QA a new feature, write the first blog post, make mock-ups your designers might think are amateur but will give them inspiration. Do the boring stuff that makes a difference and moves things forward.”

Get decisions made: You may not be the decider at the table, but it’s your responsibility to make sure a decision gets made. Half of this is getting the right information in front of them. The other half is getting the right people behind them.

Did you know that color accounts for 85% of the reason why you purchased a specific product? Or that full-colored ads in magazines are recognized 26% more than black and white ads?

The psychological elements go even deeper when you look at the specific meanings of colors. For example, if you use the color blue on your products, it will give your customers a calming effect…while black, on the other hand, gives your customers a sense of exclusivity.

Rethinking the design of the boarding pass. By Peter Smart.

Fits in your passport

A simple grid makes info easy to read and quick to act on.

Details about weather and time difference

The latest findings from the real neuroscience of creativity suggest that the right brain/left brain distinction is not the right one when it comes to understanding how creativity is implemented in the brain.* Creativity does not involve a single brain region or single side of the brain.

Great presentation that discusses how to profitably acquire customers as a startup.

Key takeaways:

Most important: LTV>CAC

Understand purchase process and how many channels it will be necessary to market through

This is how to properly communicate with folks. 

It will reduce your need to obsessively check your phone and refresh your email. You're not that important after all.

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