Getting better at explaining complex ideas
In one sentence, can you explain why George Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army? (Painting by John Trumbull)
My brother-in-law’s spirited young dog had been fascinated by the yarn in my lap. Despite the dye, perhaps he could smell something of the sheep, or maybe he just liked the way it moved when I knit. He kept trying to eat it, and we had a couple of close calls.
At one point, we lost track of him. It turned out he had opened the plastic bin in the other room where I keep my yarn and was now tearing around the house with the yarn in his mouth, victorious at last. Hilariously, he had grabbed the same color I was using.
We managed to salvage that skein, which had not been wound yet. To accomplish this, it took the work of four people, all of us stretching lengths of yarn around the room, over chairs and around table legs, painstakingly working out the tangles over the course of about 20 minutes in a kind of weird cooperative game. Hey, it was the day after Thanksgiving and we had nothing else to attend to — we treated it like a fun puzzle.
Once the yarn is in a ball or cake, you can see that it is just one continuous thread. But when it’s all tangled up, it seems much more complicated. You have to undo knots, unwind kinks, and gently reverse chaos.
If you suspect that this is yarn story is about to become a big metaphor, you are correct. I believe that the tangled ball of yarn can help us to visualize what’s happening when we are trying to explain something that seems complex. We start talking, but we realize that we don’t know exactly where we’re headed. To compensate for that, we might retrace where we’ve been, sharing background information, and recapping the wrong turns we took. We might focus heavily on the part we know and understand well, stepping around the tangle of stuff we’re not as comfortable with. If we can’t find just the right word for something, we substitute a paragraph approximating its meaning. We might get completely stuck, unable to express our idea in words.
Like winding a tangled mass of yarn into a ball, to explain something clearly takes time, patience, and repetition. It’s something we can practice. Every time we do, we’ll straighten more of the thread. We’ll see where the gaps our in our thinking or understanding and address them. Our confidence in the material we’re explaining will increase, which means that we’ll be able to express the ideas in fewer and better-chosen words.
Eventually, we’ll get to the point where we can explain a complex concept simply and elegantly in just a few words — just one thread to follow from beginning to end.
We get there through writing and speaking, at first utterly lost and confused by the tangle of thoughts, ideas and impressions, eventually finding our way to clear, legible prose by working through the mess again and again, for as long as it takes. At that point, we not only grasp what we are trying to say, we are more likely to be understood by a reader, listener, or conversation partner.
I wouldn’t say I’ve gotten much better at untangling yarn since I began knitting — I have better strategies to keep it from getting tangled in the first place. However, when it comes to understanding and explaining challenging concepts, we will indeed see that process get faster with consistent effort. With practice, we can organize ideas and identify through-lines and foundational principles more quickly and easily. Successive attempts to find the right word or phrase become more streamlined, and we might even be able to come up with them extemporaneously. We’ve all marveled at speakers who can do this, and we can follow their example.
Whether you’re trying to explain what you do for a living, how a combustion engine works, or why you don’t like raisins, you can learn to express yourself with confidence and flair. I hope I’ve adequately explained how you might build this skill; if not, I’ll keep trying.