Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like music?

The Hidden Magic of Good Music

It’s a silly question because everyone likes some form of music and sometimes when someone asks you, “What’s your favorite kind of music?” sometimes that’s really hard to answer. I recently went down yet another rabbit hole which I want to share with you. I wanted to know why certain songs and certain sounds made you feel genuine feelings. When I was writing the sword and the sunflower, I stumbled on a number of different pieces of music and one of them became the theme song for the heroine. So it came down to this question.

What makes a song likable?

What makes a good song a good song? What makes a song stick in your head?

And as it turns out, it’s predictability.

No, it can’t be that. That’s boring. No, not boring. Predictable.

Why Predictability Drives Great Storytelling

Let’s switch gears to storytelling. What makes a good story a good story? Is it the subject matter? And I’m going to talk specifically about fiction here. Is it the subject matter? Is it the way it’s told? Is it uh-oh?

It’s predictability.

And again, you’re going to say, “No, I don’t want to read a predictable fiction story. Do I?” And there’s a part of your brain that’s going, “Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on.

Let’s switch back to the music.

If something is too predictable, then it’s boring. We get the pattern and we’re done. We are pattern matching creatures. We sense patterns and things and we typically act on them. Sometimes we have other programs running in our brain that cause us to ignore a pattern and sometimes we get burned for ignoring that pattern. If you’re jumping rope or running, riding a skateboard, boxing, and countless other physical activities, there’s all a pattern that’s occurring. a pattern you are recognizing. And the more you can recognize this pattern, the more you can act on it and feel comfortable with it.

The Balance Between Pattern and Chaos

But obviously running for 10 or 20 minutes left, right, left, right, left, right, can’t possibly be the same as listening to music, right? But it is. When you listen to a song and you can predict what’s about to happen next, it gives you a certain level of comfort of security. you say, “Yeah, that’s how the beat is going in this song.”

But then when it does something slightly different that still makes sense, that gives us excitement. If it just did the same beat over and over again, droning on and on for 5 minutes, yes, it would be very boring. But when it takes some liberties, when it gets a little creative, and still maintains the pattern, that’s when it’s fun.

Too much predictability and it’s boring. Too much chaos and it’s simply chaos. You think it’s not worth your time. Well, this is just a bunch of random stuff. I don’t want to listen to this. This story goes all over the map. The characters do not respond the way that characters should respond. The author was crazy. The story is way too predictable. I knew exactly what’s go what was going to happen from the very beginning. It was I was just plotting through and just going through the motions. Those are the extremes that keep us from enjoying those forms of media.

Breaking the Pattern: Muscle and Diet Confusion

And even exercise is that way. You get fatigued with it. In fact, there’s a concept called muscle confusion that sort of counteracts what happens when you do the same thing over and over again. If you just run in a circle over and over again, your body goes, “Oh, wait. I’m getting this. I know what to do. This is easier now. I’m not getting anything out of it.” So, you have to break it up. So you have to have muscle confusion in the 4-hour body. Tim Ferrris talks about a sort of diet confusion in which you confuse your metabolism by not eating exactly the same things. Once a week you eat something crazy. You eat all the stuff that you were craving and it messes your system up to the point where your system goes, “Wait, I’m not going to adapt to this anymore. I’m not going to suddenly reduce my metabolism because I know what you’re going to eat.”

The Anticipation of the “Drop”

But I know, I know you’re still thinking about the music, right? You’re still thinking, “No, I don’t like songs because they’re predictable.” But this is what makes them catchy because your brain says, “Yeah, it does that stuff I want. It does that stuff in the order that kind of makes sense in a really cool way.” I mean, we’re not just talking about a repeatable pattern of one, two. It could be 1 2 7 9 1 2 7 9 and here comes that nine. How many songs have you told someone, “Hey, no, no, no, listen. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Here’s where the drop happens. Wait, wait, wait. Here’s the chorus. Oh my god, I love that. Just, just wait for it. And someone doesn’t quite get the song because you went through the song a few times and your brain went, “Oh yeah, this is happening in that order. I know it’s going to happen now and this is cool.” And they’re not waiting. They they listen to a few notes of it. They go, “It’s just not for me.” And then maybe later they come to you and they go, “Yeah, it’s kind of a cool song.”

It’s the same thing with a story. In fact, an epic, a big giant book requires even more attention than a song that’s 3 minutes long where you start to read it and you say, “Okay, I’m getting what’s going on here. This is a slow burn. This is a book that moves in a certain direction and I have to pay attention to it.” or this is kind of a fast book and it’s going to be humorous, but there’s still going to be good points made. Jokes and parables typically take you down a journey and then there’s a sharp left turn at the end. Oh, it was this person the whole time. Now that makes sense now that I’ve read the whole story. Oh, I get it. Haha. That’s what makes it funny that it’s predictably a crazy 90° turn.

You need more convincing.

Structure and Predictability in Non-Fiction and Presentations

Non-fiction is the same way.

How many times have you gone to a presentation, someone does it for your networking group or for school or what have you, even your business, and you’re watching and you’re thinking, where is this going? I is this an important fact or is are we just building to the important fact? I can’t tell the difference between the major facts I should be writing down and just some anecdote that’s related to it. Are we are we half done? Like wait, what what really are we learning here? So, if you can’t predict what’s happening, and again, I know every time I use the word predict, you’re like, well, that means I already know it. No, you’re recognizing the pattern in place.

Do you want to talk about how that works in relationships too or are we covering enough bases here? Okay, fine. So, back to presentations.

If you can understand the segments of a presentation, okay, here’s a major fact and facts underneath it, which leads us to the next fact that we’re building up to, and the facts underneath it, which then builds us to the next one, and so forth. And then we finally have an outcome at the end. I’m all ears. This is interesting.

And I will tell you when I write my non-fictions, I follow that as well. I don’t say, “No, no, no, no. Listen, guys. Guys, sit down. Listen, listen, listen.” And then babble on and on. Don’t I know what you’re thinking. No, I really don’t babble on and on. And I’m really not babbling here. I’m following the same procedure here. But again, in my non-fiction, I follow the pattern, the predictable pattern of I’m going to introduce to you some concepts, and I’ll I’ll touch on them a little bit in case you’re not up to speed. And then I’m going to introduce my concepts. And then I’m going to build on to the next ones and next ones. And then I’m going to say, well, what do you do with that? And that should sound remarkably like this podcast in which I do exactly the same thing. I introduce something to you. we talk about it and then I say,”Well, how does that affect you in the real world?”

Leveraging Pattern Matching in Real Life

So, we’re actually getting to the part where we say, “How does this affect you in the real world? And what can you do about it?” Well, the first thing you need to do is recognize the fact that pattern matching and pattern recognition are not bad things. It’s what our brains are designed to do. So if you’re going to fight that, you’re going to have a lot of friction and stress in your life. If you accept it and use it and use it for good and enjoyment and productivity, it can be a really awesome thing.

It can help you and say, “Hey, you kn...