That’s what this approach is all about. How can we find those barriers and obstacles—those parking brakes—and how can we release them?

Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, is one of the most famous researchers on how we think about persuasion and influence. He even has a more recent book called Pre-Suasion, which is about what happens before persuasion. Jonah’s premise is similar in some ways to persuasion, but in other ways, it’s very different.

It’s the same in that it’s about trying to get people to do something. It’s different in that persuasion is often more about adding something than removing something. Those tactics are useful sometimes but not always.