Changing a verb-based description (e.g., “drinks coffee”) to a noun (e.g., “is a coffee drinker”) made it seem like that person’s attitudes or preferences were more dispositional, and thus stronger and more stable. Part of someone’s identity, rather than just an attitude they happen to hold.

Consequently, whether to use pronouns or not depends on how we want to assign credit or blame, and how subjective or objective we want what is being said to seem.

Instead of describing ourselves in nouns or adjectives – ‘I am a liberal’, ‘I am a conservative’ – we would use verbs to say what we mean: ‘I want a smaller pay gap between the top and the bottom’ or ‘I want small government’.

1. Go first if you’re the incumbent, last if you’re the challenger.

…

1. Granular numbers are more credible than coarse numbers.

As I mentioned before, competing against other people, whether in daily life or in my field of work, is just not the sort of lifestyle I’m after. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own values to live by, and the same holds true with me. These differences give rise to disagreements, and the combination of these disagreements can give rise to even greater misunderstandings.