Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 8

I skipped a few days, because it was just more of the same. In fact, this is all starting to become quite routine. Which is nice.

Here is my usual day:
* I wake early, it takes a few minutes to feel alert. It's hard to hit my sleep cycle just right yet so some mornings are harder to crawl out of bed than others...
* I have an extremely productive morning, get an early workout in (on workout days)
* I get to hang with my fam for a little longer than usual
* I start to get physically tired in the early afternoon, but my mental capacity doesn't seem to fall-off
* I take an afternoon nap, and it takes a few moments to feel alert (but not as bad as the longer night sleep)
* I feel fantastic the rest of the day
* I get tired right before bedtime at night

One thing of note for Day 8. Usually during the week I can control my own schedule. But today I had an early afternoon meeting that would go right through my normal nap time. So I decided to take my nap in the late morning instead of mid-afternoon.

I usually nap from around 1:30-3pm. Or 2-3:30pm. Sometimes a little bit earlier, sometimes a little bit later - all depending on how I feel and how busy I am.

Today I took my nap at 10:45-12:15pm. I didn't have too much problem getting to sleep. But I woke frequently, wondering if it was close to time to get up (because I didn't want to be late to my meeting). I was also woken by my phone once (note to self: turn that damn thing off when you go to sleep). So the result was not a very good nap!

So between an early nap time and poor sleep, I turned into a zombie around 8pm. I usually go about 8 hours between nap and nighttime sleep - and I start to feel tired right before bed. But time, 8 hours after my nap I seriously turned into a zombie (and still had a few hours till bedtime).


Moral of the story? Couple of things:
1. Try to keep the nap time in the early afternoon if possible.
2. If not possible, don't schedule anything immediately after the nap.
3. Anytime I change the schedule or do something new, the first sleep session will be poor.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 5

Morning

I didn't get to bed until around 11:30 last night, so I didn't wake up until 4. Once again, I had a hard time sleeping. It was probably because I was trying out a new alarm and didn't trust that it was set properly. So, I kept waking up, wondering if it was time to wake up yet!

So, when the alarm finally went off at 4, it was off-time, and came from out of nowhere. It was hard to get up... In fact, I almost stayed in bed. Will power was the only thing that got me out...

But once I was out of bed everything was fine. The morning went off without a hitch. My son even woke up at 5am again. I sat in his dark room rocking him back to sleep and didn't feel the overwhelming tiredness like a couple of days ago.


Afternoon

My afternoon nap came at 12:30pm today. I find myself waking up a lot, and wondering if it's time for me to be done sleeping yet... today I woke up after a half hour and it felt like I had slept an hour and a half.

After that - no problems. Slept the rest of the way, woke up easy. Felt great the whole afternoon and evening. Good stuff!

A tale of two landing pages

You wanna know what really pisses me off? When the Broncos lose. (I was angry quite often this season...)

You wanna know what really boggles my mind? Landing pages. Sometimes knows as squeeze pages.

The objective of a squeeze page is to get somebody to give you their name and email address. That's it. Usually, you send somebody to a squeeze page from a PPC click. That person is probably looking for exactly what you have to offer. That person will probably be very happy, in the end, that they gave you their private email information.

Your job is to communicate as efficiently as possible all the great things that are in store for them if they sign up.

And, of course, there are a million ways to do this. And of course, the lifeblood of your online business is getting these people to do that. If you can get a high percentage of people to sign up (generically speaking) you pay less per conversion. If you get a low percentage of people to sign up, you end up paying Google a lot more than you should for each converson (and probably lose money on each sale, and probably go out of business, and probably become a bitter old man). So, it becomes a point of much testing and changing and tweaking to get as many people to enter their info on the squeeze page.

But here is what boggles my mind:



These two landing pages are identical, with one obvious difference. In the original squeeze page, the signup form is in the middle of the page, after some interesting content explaining all the fantastic benefits of signing up. In the new version, the signup form is placed smack dab at the top of the page underneath the headline.

A simple change like moving the signup form from the middle of the page to the top of the page produced much better conversions. You can see from this Google Website Optimizer screenshot that the new squeeze page (with form at top) performed a heck of a lot better.



One disclaimer here. As you can see, not a whole lot of conversions have been run through this test. BUT, I'd say at this point it doesn't matter how many more are run, the new squeeze is going to win out.

Moral of the story? Test everything.

To be fair, as is often the case these days, I got this idea from Glenn Livingston. A looooong time ago he said to me something like:

Travis, I'm very happy that you've got a nicely performing squeeze page. Now you need to test the heck out of it. Test everything. Headlines, colors, move the form around, testimonials, .....

etc, etc, etc... And, as usual, my thick skull takes longer than it should to process what a smart man says.

So - thanks again Glenn!

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 4

Morning

I really slept well last night. Went to bed at 10:30pm. When the alarm went off at 3am this morning, it wasn't difficult to get out of bed at all.

I was very productive for a few hours, which feels really good on a Saturday morning. Then at about 5:45 I went to the gym.

I was running on the treadmill when somebody walking past me said "Good morning Sonny!" I looked to my right and Sonny Lubick, the former football coach for Colorado State University was on an elliptical runner next to me. Hey - if an early morning workout is what a downright legendary man like Sonny does early on a Saturday morning then I'm proud to be doing the same!

There was some tiredness later in the morning and early afternoon. To be expected, I think when you're having a lazy Saturday and you only had 4 hours of sleep the night before!

Afternoon

I got a nap at about 1pm today. Slept in my own bed, like a rock for one and a half hours. Awoke refreshed, feeling great. The rest of the afternoon was easy - no tiredness at all.

If every day could be like today, I'm sure I could keep this schedule for a long term. I slept great. I felt great.

I am beginning to realize that the quality of sleep I get is the major factor in how I feel that day. Sleep good = feel good. Sleep bad = feel bad. It just makes sense - when you're getting less sleep than you're used to, it better be good sleep!

In the past when trying to survive on 6 hours, it would catch up to me big time on about the fourth day. And since I feel pretty darn good today, this is quite a milestone. I am looking forward to the next few days to see if I can maintain.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 3

Morning


Wow - what a terrible night of sleep! Expecting 4 1/2 hours of sleep (ie, not very much), and not yet fully trusting my alarm, I woke up after two hours of sleep, feeling like it was 4. I saw that it was only 12pm, so I went back to sleep. But I proceeded to wake up about every 1/2 hour after that.


When the alarm finally went off at 2:30am... it was a very unwelcome sound.


But I managed to drag myself out of bed anyway.


I couldn't shake the sleepiness all morning long. My sick son woke up about 5:30am and I sat in his room, rocking him back to sleep. That dark room was just too much for me! Couldn't stay awake. Once he was back down, I went upstairs and crawled back into bed for another hour and a half.


When I woke up at 7:30, I felt fine. No more sleepiness. In fact, I felt fine all the way till my afternoon nap.



Afternoon


My family was gone today, so I had the awesome luxury of napping in my own comfy bed. Fell asleep, woke up refreshed. Felt great all afternoon and evening.





Either the lack of sleep caught up with me this morning, or when I have bad sleep I'm going to follow it with a bad day.


My gut instinct tells me that this was due to bad sleep last night...


I'm not following this crazy routine to be sleepy and "adjust" for a week. I'm following it because the two sleep periods let me cut down slightly and be more productive without crashing hard. If I have a bad night of sleep, I'll probably always feel the need to make up for it with a little more quality sleep time. The hour an a half lost is way better than a whole day of being a zombie.


Tonight, when I go to bed, I'll just trust that my alarm is set and will wake me up (or not). But one thing is for sure - no longer will I wake up just to check and see how much time I have left! With this little sleep, I need to make the most of what I'm getting!


Tomorrow is Saturday. The first weekend that I will have an altered sleep schedule. This will be a real test - because my schedule is not as controlled on the weekends. Well, that's not true - it is controlled. Just, not by me - by my wife.

That means it may be hard to find a 90 minute block of time to fit a nap in. I don't know if this schedule will be possible having traditional sleep on the weekends and biphasic sleep during the week.

So, I'll do my best to maintain the biphasic schedule and find some nap time in the afternoon like usual.

Books on my desk now

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 2

Morning

I awoke this morning at about 3am, after 4.5 hours of sleep, and felt pretty good. It was easy to get out of bed so I must have timed the sleep cycle right and hit the sweet spot.

Shortly after waking I felt fantastic. I love the morning - it is so productive to be hard at it when everybody else is still sleeping.

I started to get a little tired after a couple of hours but it was nothing overwhelming, just back-of-the-eyes kind of tiredness.

At around 5am I took off for the gym. I ran 3.5 miles on the treadmill, hit the showers, and headed home. --> Same adrenaline high as usual after the workout, despite the lack of sleep the last two days and the early morning workout. When I left the gym, and for a couple of hours afterward I felt pretty great.

Tiredness from about 10am-12pm. Not too bad, I can just tell I didn't sleep long last night. Looking forward to that nap!


Afternoon

My nap today came about 3pm - 4:45pm.

I got the office cot set up - pad, pillow, blanket, I'm not making the same mistake as yesterday! Believe it or not, I also got some ear plugs to completely block out household noise.

I set the alarm for 15 minutes past my 90 minute nap length to give a little time to fall asleep. Apparently I didn't need it because I woke up naturally at about 4:25. But... since I had 20 minutes left, I didn't know whether to get up or go back to sleep. Usually when I have any kind of "get up/sleep" battle in my head when I'm tired - the "sleep" option wins. So, I fell back asleep and was awoken by my vibrating alarm at 4:45 feeling quite groggy and out of it. I even considered for a brief moment going back to sleep for another cycle... (glad I didn't)

So, it took me a few minutes to get going, get the cot put away and get back online.

But now, about an hour later, I feel fantastic. Very alert and focused. I think if I can force myself to get used to jumping out of bed instead of lingering that this is going to work out very well for me.

INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion

INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion Notes

This book was recommended to me by my mentor and friend Glenn Livingston. It has truly changed the way that I view marketing and the world in general. I consider it one of the most important books I have ever read.

Since I first read INFLUENCE, it has been committed to memory through pure brute force. These days it seems to take a lot more for me to really understand a subject thoroughly - and this stuff is so important that I really sacrificed:

1. I read the book
2. I read the book again and highlighted all the important sounding snippets
3. I copied each of the highlighted sections, in my own handwriting, onto 3x5 cards
4. I wrote and gave a speech on the principles to a classroom of Colorado State University business students
5. I copied my 3x5 cards here, for your reading pleasure (actually, mostly, my learning opportunity)

Here are the notes (from my 3x5 cards) that I took from INFLUENCE: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, spanning several long posts.

(I actually posted the last chapters first, so as to appear on this blog in the proper order.)

Intro

• Those who don't know how to get people to say yes soon fall away; those who do, stay and flourish.
• Although there are thousands of different tactics that compliance practitioners employ to produce yes, the majority fall into 6 basic categories:
• Consistency
• Reciprocation
• Social Proof
• Authority
• Liking
• Scarcity
• The ever-accelerating pace and information crush of modern life will make this particular form of unthinking compliance more and more prevalent in the future.

Weapons

• We too, have our pre-programmed tapes.
• A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
• The word "because" triggered an automatic compliance response from Langer's subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reasons to comply.
• There are many situations in which human behavior does not work in a mechanical, tape-activated way, what is astonishing is how often it does.
• A standard principle - stereotype, a guide to their buying:
• Expensive = Good
• Price alone had become a trigger feature for quality; and a dramatic increase in price alone had led to a dramatic increase in sales among the quality-hungry buyers. Click, whirr.
• They were playing a shortcut version of betting the odds. Instead of stacking all the odds in their favor, they were counting on just one - the one they knew to be usually associated with the quality of any item. The high price.
• Automatic, stereo-typed behavior is prevalent in much of human action.
• We must often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb to classify things according to a few key features and then to respond mindlessly when one or another of these trigger features is present.
• Mailed out coupons - that because of a printing error - offered no savings to recipients produced just as much customer response as did error-free coupons that offered substantial savings.
• Our automatic behavior patterns: They make us terribly vulnerable to anyone who knows how they work.
• Once more Harry would reply "Fort-two dollars." At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, "He says twenty-two dollars." Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the shop with this "expensive = good" bargain.
• With proper execution, the exploiters need hardly strain a muscle to get their way. In this sense, the approach is not unlike that of the Japanese martial-art form called Jujitsu.
• An enormous additional benefit - the ability to manipulate without the appearance of manipulation. Even the victims themselves tend to see their compliance as determined by the action of natural forces rather than by the designs of the person who profits from the compliance.
• The contrast principle: if the second item is fairly different than the first, we will tend to see it as more different than it actually is.
• Contrast: The great advantage of this principle is not only that is works but also that it is virtually undetectable. Those who employ it can cash in on its influence without any appearance of having structured the situation in their favor.
• Contrast: A man might balk at the idea of spending $95 for a sweater, but if he has just bought a $495 suit, a $95 sweater does not seem excessive.
• Contrast: Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly.
• Contrast: It is possible to make the price of the same item seem higher o lower, depending on the price of the previously presented item.
• Contrast: "The house I got them spotted for looks really great after they've first looked at a couple of dumps."
• Contrast: Automobile dealers use the contrast principle by waiting until the price for a new car has been negotiated before suggesting one option after another that might be added to the deal.

INFLUENCE: The Principle of Reciprocation

"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini

Reciprocation

• One of the most potent weapons of influence around us - the rule for reciprocation. The rule says we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.
• By virtue of the reciprocity rule, then, we are obligated to the future repayment of favors, gifts, invitations, and the like.
• It is so widespread that after intensive study, sociologists can report that there is no human society that does not subscribe to the rule.
• Because there is general distate for those who take and make no effort to give in return, we will often go to great lengths to avoid being considered one of their number.
• Joe brought people a Code without asking, then asked them to buy raffle tickets. Without question, Joe was more successful selling his raffle tickets to the subjects who had received his earlier favor. Apparently feeling that they owed him something, these subjects bought twice as many tickets as the subjects who had not been given the prior favor.
• The rule possesses awesome strength, often producing a "yes" response to a request that, except for an existing feeling indebtedness, would have surely been refused.
• There was a significant tendency for subjects to buy raffle tiects form Joe the more they liked him. But this alone is hardly a startling finding. Most of us would have guessed that people are more willing to do a vavor for someone they like.
• For those who owed him a favor, it made no difference whether they liked him or not; they felt a sense of obligation ot repay him, and they did. The subjects in that condition who indicated that they disliked Joe bought just as many of his tickets as did those who indicated that they liked him. The rule for reciprocity was so strong that it simply overwhelmed the influence of a factor - liking for the requestor - that normally affects the decision to comply.
• But now, before a donation is requested the target person is geven a "gift". The unsuspecting passerby who suddenly finds a flower pressed into his hands or pinned to his jacket is under no circumstances allowed to give it back, even if he asserts he does not want it. "No, it is a gift to you" says the solicitor, refusing to accept it. Only after the Krishna member has thus brought the force of reciprocation rule to bear on the situation is the target asked to provide a contribution.
• The reciprocity rule that empowers their tactic is too strong - and socially beneficial - for us to want to violate it.
• The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule. In true jujitsu fashion, the promoter who gives free samples can release the natural indebting force inherent in a gift while innocently appearing to have only the intention to inform.
• Amway manual - "Leave the BUG with the customer 24, 48, or 72 hours, at no cost or obligation to her. Just tell her you would like her to try the products... That's an offer no one can refuse." --> Of course, by now you and I know that the customer who has accepted and used the BUG products has been trapped into facing the influence of reciprocity.
• The power of the reciprocity rule is such that by first doing us a favor, strange, disliked, or unwelcome, others can enhance the chance that we will comply with one of their requests.
• Another person can trigger a feeling of indebtedness by doing us an uninvited favor. Recall that the rule only states that we should provide to others the kind of actions they have provided us; it does not require us to have asked for what we have received in order to feel obligated to repay.
• "There is an obligation to give, an obligation to receive, and an obligation to repay." Although the obligation to repay constitutes the essence of the reciprocity rule, it is the obligation to receive that makes the rule so easy to exploit. The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others.
• The extent to which even an unwanted favor, once received, can product indebtedness is aptly illustrated in the soliciting technique of the Hare Krishna Society.
• The nature of the reciprocity rule is such that a gift so unwanted that it was jettisoned at the first opportunity had none the less been effective and exploitable.
• There is a strong cultural pressure to reciprocate a gift, even an unwanted one; but there is no such pressure to purchase an unwanted commercial product.
• Paradoxically, the rule developed to promote equal exchanges between partners, yet it can be used to bring about decidedly unequal results. A small initial favor can produce a sense of obligation to agree to a substantially larger return favor.
• Small first favors often stimulate larger return favors. Most of us find it highly disagreeable to be in a state of obligation. It weighs heavily on us and demands to be removed. We are trained from childhood to chafe, emotionally, under the saddle of obligation. For this reason alone, then, we may be willing to agree to perform a larger favor than we received, merely to relieve ourselves of the psychological burden of debt.
• For the most part, there is a genuine dis-taste for individuals who fail to conform to the dictates of the reciprocity rule. Moocher and welsher are unsavory labels to be scrupulously shunned. So undesirable are they that we will sometimes agree to an unequal exchange in order to dodge them.
• If, instead of paying for them herself a woman allows a man to buy her drinks,she is immediately judged (by both men and women) as more sexually available to him.
• Rejection-then-retreat - "Well," he said, "If you don't want to buy any tickets, how about buying some big chocolate bars? They're only a dollar each."
• Rejection-then-retreat - One consequence of the rule is an obligation to repay favors we have received. another consequence of the rule, however, is an obligation to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us.
• Rejection-then-retreat - I changed from non-compliant to compliant when he changed from a larger to a smaller request, even though I was not really interested in either of the things he offered.
• With the rule in effect, we can feel safe making the first sacrifice to our partner, who is obligated to offer a return sacrifice.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Because the rule for reciprocation governs the compromise process, it is possible to use an initial concession as part of a highly effective compliance technique. The technique is a simple one that we can call the rejection-then-retreat technique.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Provided you have structured your requests skillfully, I should view your second request as a concession to me and should feel inclined to respond with a concession of my own, the only one I would have immediately open to me - compliance with your second request.
• Rejection-then-retreat - The second request does not have to be small, it only has to be smaller than the initial one.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Labor negotiators, for instance, often use the tactic of beginning with the extreme demands that they do not actually expect to win but from which they can retreat in a series of seeming concessions designed to draw real concessions from the opposing side.
• Rejection-then-retreat - It would appear then, that the larger the initial request, the more effective the procedure, since there would be more room available for illusory concessions. This is true only up to a point, however.
• Rejection-then-retreat - If the first set of demands is so extreme as to be seen as unreasonable, the tactic backfires. In such cases, the party who has made the extreme first request is not seen to be bargaining in good faith.
• Rejection-then-retreat - The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of reciprocal concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.
• The percentage of successful door-to-door sales increases impressively when the sales operator is able to mention the name of a familiar person who "recommended" the visit.
• Rejection-then-retreat - I was trained to take advantage of the opportunity to secure referrals offered by a customer's purchase refusal: "Well, if its your feeling that a fine set of encyclopedias is not right for you at this time, perhaps you could help me by giving the names of some others who might wish to take advantage of our companies great offer. What would be the names of these people you know?" Many individuals who would not otherwise subject their friends to a high-pressure sales presentation do agree to supply referrals when the request is presented as a concession from a purchase request they have just refused.
  
• Rejection-then-retreat - The tendency of a man to spend more money on a sweater following his purchase than before: After being exposed to the price of the large item, the price of the less expensive one appears smaller by comparison. In the same way, the larger-then-smaller request procedure makes use of the contrast principle by making the smaller request look even smaller by comparison with the larger one.
  
• If I want you to lend me $5 I can make it seem like a smaller request by first asking you to lend me $10. by first requesting $10 and then retreating to $5 I will have simultaneously engaged the force of the reciprocity rule and the contrast principle. Not only will my $5 request be viewed as a concession to be reciprocated, it will also look to you like a smaller request than if I had just asked for it straightaway.
• In combination, the influences of reciprocity and perceptual contrast can present a fearsomely powerful force. Embodied in the rejection-then-retreat sequence, their conjoined energies are capable of genuinely astonishing effects.
• The prospect is invariably shown the deluxe model first. If the customer buys, there is frosting on the stores cake. If the customer declines, the salesperson effectively counter-offers with a more reasonably prices model.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Nearly all the students who were about to give a pint of blood as a result of the rejection-then-retreat technique agreed to donate again later (84%) while less than 1/2 of the other students who appeared at the blood center did so (43%). Even for future favors, the rejection-then-retreat strategy proved superior.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Strangely enough, then it seems that the rejection-then-retreat tactic spurs people not only to agree to a desired request but actually to carry out the request and, finally, to volunteer to perform further requests.
• Rejection-then-retreat - As long as it is not viewed to be a transparent trick, the concession will likely stimulate a return concession.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Positive by-products of the act of concession: feelings of greater responsibility for, and satisfaction with, the arrangement. It is this set of sweet side effects that enables the technique to move it's victims to fulfill their agreements and to engage in further such agreements.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Responsibility: Those subjects facing the opponent who used the retreating strategy felt most responsible for the final deal. These subjects reported that they had successfully influenced the opponent to take less money for himself.
• Rejection-then-retreat - The requesters concession within the technique not only causes targets to say yes more often, it also causes them to feel more responsible for having "dictated" the final agreement. A person who feels responsible for the terms of a contract will be more likely to live up to that contract.
• Rejection-then-retreat - Satisfaction: Even though, on the average, they gave the most money to the opponent who used the concessions strategy, the subjects who were the targets of this strategy were the most satisfied with the final arrangement. It appears that an agreement that has been forged through the concessions of ones opponent is quite satisfying.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 1

Morning

My first day of biphasic sleep. I didn't really pick this time to start a biphasic sleep schedule. It picked me.

My newborn son was awake last night at about 1am. I woke with him and could not find a way to get back to sleep. So, I just stayed up. It was actually nice to have a quiet house all morning and free time to just catch up on reading and do whatever I wanted without feeling the need to be productive.

I went out and bought a rudimentary cot to put into my home office. I hope to be able to use it for my afternoon naps, as my office is a lot more quiet than the rest of the house during the daytime. If I were to make a dash to the bedroom upstairs in the middle of the day my older son would be quite upset that I didn't stay and play with him - basically, no sleep that way.

Afternoon

My afternoon nap started at 11:20 am today. I set the alarm for 100 minutes of nap time - 90 minute sleep interval, plus 10 to fall asleep. It was not a fantastic nap...

I was up every 30 minutes and woken by sounds of the house a couple other times. I was uncomfortable and overly tired and way too aware of my limited rest time. My wife actually came in the office while I was sleeping and put a blanket over me and a pillow under my head!

I'm going to make it a point tomorrow to make myself very comfortable before laying down. I want to be warm, relaxed, and sleep restfully for 90 minutes. I think that being able to get good rest in the afternoon on a consistent basis is going to be the key to making this schedule work...

Given those difficulties, I don't feel too bad right now. Tired, but functional. I have had a total of 4 hours of (broken) sleep today. I couldn't do it more than one day... am definitely looking forward to going to sleep tonight!