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Transcript

It’s Complicated · Humanity Working

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we're going to be totally meta by discussing the complex topic of explaining complex topics.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost the reverse of what we talked about last week about being brief, right, Paul?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm gonna say no.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, all right.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the Richard Feynman thing?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think in part, yes.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: So uh for people who don't know, um, and if you don't, you're missing out.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, Richard Feynman was a famous physicist who won the Nobel Prize um for quantum electrodynamics, I think, from memory.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you studied math or physics in college, which is which I did, which is why I know that, uh you might have read his lectures on physics.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but anyway, his field was really, really complicated.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he believed it, if you couldn't explain something in simple terms to other people, then it probably meant that you didn't really, really understand it yourself.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, his approach was later codified.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't really him doing it, but it was later codified into something called the Feynman technique, uh, which folks can look up, and we can put a link to uh to something that explains it really well in the in the show notes.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: But basically, it's kind of an iterative method um that involves figuring out how to explain it to others and then using that to realize the gaps in your knowledge and kind of repeating.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we actually use the Feynman technique as part of how we develop our learn to experiences at Billium Minds.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: We're using, we're we're consciously using that technique to help us uh iteratively simplify the concepts that we're talking about.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Iterative refinement and thinking through it uh to get that refinement, right?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So so seeing how it's received and noticing.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about uh people tuning out and being able to physically see people tune out, you know.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder how quickly that'll start to be built into things.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're putting things in cars where they realize where your eyes are, you're not paying attention.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Similarly, you know, looking at how people tune out, recognizing it, and then changing it is a really interesting concept as well.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and the the the key thing that uh that's relevant here is that clarity of message um is something that can be really protective against uh people tuning out.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yet most of us don't index on that.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: We don't focus on uh on that enough.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in a sense, we're some of us are almost uh afraid to make the language too simple.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: It like makes it seem like our complex topic is is is being dumbed down.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's not complex anymore.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So besides Feynman, what other uh things to consider?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there are a few.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I actually wrote a newsletter about this recently that's on humanity uhworking.net.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you listen to this on Substack, you'll you'll see it right there.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um or you can just visit humanityworking.net.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I break it down into four laws.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh the sort of return to physics here.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the first is that attention is trending to zero, something we briefly mentioned last week.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you have to really pay recognize that um you've got to recognize that whenever you're explaining anything.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other three laws kind of follow from that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: The next law um is about ensuring that you keep breaking down your topic until you're at a single atomic unit, right?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: That can be explained in its own right.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't do that.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: They kind of jumble a whole bunch of different topics together under a broad umbrella.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um the following one is making sure that you're using as few words to explain it as is practically and pragmatically possible.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um ironically, I just broke the fourth law by saying the word pragmatically, because the fourth law is about making sure that you're using as simple uh words as you can as possible.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: So more monosyllabic words, fewer multi, uh fewer multisyllabic words.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can do all of those things and you can do it related to your topic, you almost certainly understand your topic really well, and you will almost certainly be understood.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting if you layered that on top of, you know, like trying to get to a thing like the five Y's technique, trying to break down that kind of stuff.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: All those breakdowns are really helpful to explain complex things.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they all kind of go together.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So why do you think more people don't do this?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is actually a very, very interesting question.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that we've uh worked, had to work with on our uh with our own stuff as we've as we've striven to make it more simple.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and or more easy to understand, I should say, not more, uh, not more simple.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and what's really interesting is that there's sort of like some psychological factors that are in this.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, uh we worked with somebody um two years back who who loved long words, right?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely loved them, right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Loved learning them, literally sort of picked up dictionaries and studied things and so on, and loved them and loved to use them because that was fun.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was like, you know, the words were kind of like a play pen.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem was that as he's using all of these long words, that's actually diminishing how well, uh, how well he's being understood.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but in that case, he part of why he loved it was because it kind of made him feel smarter and made him sound smarter and all that kind of stuff.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: But do you really want to be the person who's like, oh yeah, that guy, the one who uses all kinds of words that I don't understand, and like every time I talk to him, I don't understand what he said.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure he's really smart, but I don't get him, right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's no and so that's part of it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're using like these really florid explanations because we don't know the What does florid mean?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Catch yourself, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes we're using these explanations that are that are really kind of like surrounding the topic, I guess would be a way that I would explain it.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because we don't know the topic well enough to be able to do that, uh, that distillation method.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: We think we do, but we don't.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and one thing we do know is that if you explain something in a complicated way, this is where it gets really interesting.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you explain something in a complicated way, you're less likely to get feedback on it, including negative feedback.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine you've written like a document and it's got all these long words in it, and it's got all of this, you know, sort of, you know, interesting uh stuff, x extra exposition that you think is really gonna help things, and you throw this out there with peer for peer review, and five of your colleagues send something back.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: What you're likely to get is looks great, love it, don't have any feedback.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: You distill that down to really, really simple stuff that means exactly the same thing, throw that out there, you're gonna get a whole ton of feedback, some positive and also the negative stuff.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Will it improve what you've done?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, will it improve what you've done?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: But the first one feels better because you're not getting the negative feedback.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: The second one doesn't feel so good because you are getting the negative feedback.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so people, that's that's one of the big reasons behind it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: We are complicated creatures, man.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like so I was thinking about this.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So two things.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: One is having a Kindle and like using Kindle to read, you have that capability to like hover on a word and give me the definition, which automatically is so much faster because you, if you do that to because you want to know what the word means, now you've educated yourself and now you can start using that word in context, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like it's an exercise in educating and expanding your own vocabulary that feels good, but it's funny that it's a skill that maybe wielding is hurting you in the end.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like you become a ninja and then you cannot use your skills as a ninja in public anymore.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep them to yourself, you know?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the in the uh article I say save your long words for Scrabble.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Really useful there.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Crossword puzzles and Scrabble.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's you're yeah, crazy.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um so all right.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to get better at this uh and learn from this.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: How do how do you do it?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a lot of stuff we've talked about in the Brevity episode does apply here.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Buy that book, Smart Brevity.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about it a few times.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Buy it, read it, internalize it.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's ironic that they did it as a book.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um learn and practice the Feynman technique.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's 10,000 pages, which is really strange.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Learn and practice the Feynman technique.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: But my favorite thing to do um is to spend time talking about something you're an expert in and then forcing yourself to explain it simply using the Feynman technique, but using the other techniques we're talking about.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: How do how are you gonna explain this to a six-year-old?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: How are you gonna explain it to your grandmother when they get it?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So actually do it, and when they get it, you really understand it.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a fun episode.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is a good one.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: We did it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thanks, Paul.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 9:42
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• 9:45
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• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.