Communicating

“Communication is about what is received, not what is intended. If there is a gap between what you are saying and what they are hearing, you have to find a new way to say it.”

“When researching strategies, emphasize patterns over stories. One person succeeding means nothing. 100 people succeeding is a signal.

When explaining strategies, emphasize stories over patterns. People forget numbers and charts. Everyone remembers a great story.”

When we know a lot about a topic, it can be difficult to write about it in a way that makes sense to the layperson. To improve writing, Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker suggests several strategies:

1. Use concrete nouns and refer to tangible things instead of abstractions.


2. Assume that readers know less about the topic than you do, but are still

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First identified by Randy Steve Waldman [Wal12], the term refers to something people treat as though it works, generally for social or institutional reasons, even when there’s little evidence that it works—­and sometimes despite substantial evidence that it does not.

“How to clarify a concept you can’t articulate:

1. Change mediums. Draw it. Photograph it. Sing it.

2. Change levels. Explain what is one level up (bigger picture) or one level down (finer details).

3. Change fields. What would this concept look like in different fields?”

“My friend, who sometimes shares his writing with me, once said my feedback always falls into three categories:

1. Make it shorter.

2. Make it more appealing.

3. How could it apply to more people?”

“Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Of course, you can learn a lot about something without writing about it. However, writing about something complicated and hard to pin down acts as a test to see how well you understand it. When we approach our work as a stranger, we often discover... See more