August 27, 2023

By Afzal

Repetition wields the strongest influence over the human mind.

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact. ―Daniel Kahneman

The quote above from Daniel Kahneman sheds light on how powerful repetition can be. But rather than talking about making lies seem true by repetition, I would like to talk about how a craftsman or an artist needs repetition to succeed or make an impact.

Repetition plays a huge role in developing a distinctive style or pattern, so if you are a craftsman or an artist, you need to keep repeating elements, constraints, or principles in your craft or in your art to develop a distinctive style.

This vague visualization above might give you an idea of what I mean by repeating elements, constraints, or principles in your craft/art. The ease of recognizing a pattern or style by the human mind depends on how familiar the mind is with that pattern or style. You can also notice this repetition practice by many huge brands, they repeat colors, fonts, and elements to be as familiar as possible to the human mind. Maybe this can also be the reason why people who have been in the game for a long time are more influential than the ones who haven’t been for too long. If you are in the game, be in the game, keep going, keep repeating.

Thank you!

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