I want to put you in a category

When I meet you or your company or your product or your restaurant or your website, I desperately need to put it into an existing category, because the mental cost of inventing a new category for every new thing I see is too high.

I am not alone in this need. In fact, that's the way humans survive the onslaught of newness we experience daily.

Of course, you can refuse to be categorized. You can insist that it's unfair that people judge you like this, that the categories available to you are too constricting and that your organization and your offering are too unique to be categorized.

If you make this choice, the odds are you will be categorized anyway. But since you didn't participate, you will be miscategorized, which is far worse than being categorized.

So choose.

What is this thing? What are you like? Are you friend or foe, flake or leader, good deal or ripoff, easy or hard, important or not? Are you destined for the trusted category or the other one?

Make it easy to categorize you and you're likely to end up in the category you are hoping for.