negative option

an essential tool for getting people to actually piss or get off the pot, i first learned about the magic of negative option when i worked for a cable company what feels like a million years ago. its like this – you send a note to people saying “we are going to move you into a more expensive package. if you don’t want this to happen, tell us before we do it in 30 days”. most people, being lazy, either ignore or forget this, and they get pushed up into the higher package automatically. sneaky and underhanded for doing something about charging people for money but brilliant for getting people to actually get off their asses and DO stuff. its an essential tool for any project or people manager “if i don’t hear from you before X, i will go ahead and do Y”. if you give people enough time to respond, they usually do, since they usually don’t want the other option to go ahead. so it works almost every time. a good tool to use in your life.