New ask Hacker News story: How can I be concise when explaining complex subjects?
How can I be concise when explaining complex subjects?
2 by 100011_100001 | 10 comments on Hacker News.
When I communicate verbally or in an email, I try to explain things in depth. Generally, if there are a lot of caveats my pattern is: * Explain the problem * Explain the solution * Cover caveats, exceptions * Re-explain the solution in case they forgot * Answer any questions * Re-explain the solution to solidify what I explained including their questions to make sure they got it This leads to me being very wordy, and I can easily reply to a simple question by talking for 10 minutes. I find my behavior problematic, especially since I'm an SME for a bunch of different things, this leads to having to explain a lot of things daily. I don't just do this for technical questions, I do it pretty much for everything. My significant other, which is a lot more socially adept than me, thinks that I have an inherent assumption that other people won't get it, so I repeat myself. At times this comes across as condescending, I think. However, when I try to explain things less, it becomes obvious that a lot of times they will make wrong assumptions, which leads to me having to explain the same thing in 2-3 occasions. Part of me thinks I miss-calibrate people's competencies so I go too deep or not deep enough. Regardless, the primary problem is explaining too much or repetitively. Does anyone have a good heuristic, book, thoughts I can use? PS. I on purpose wrote this in the way I would normally explain something verbally to stress the point of what I'm struggling with. Consider the meta of my post :)
2 by 100011_100001 | 10 comments on Hacker News.
When I communicate verbally or in an email, I try to explain things in depth. Generally, if there are a lot of caveats my pattern is: * Explain the problem * Explain the solution * Cover caveats, exceptions * Re-explain the solution in case they forgot * Answer any questions * Re-explain the solution to solidify what I explained including their questions to make sure they got it This leads to me being very wordy, and I can easily reply to a simple question by talking for 10 minutes. I find my behavior problematic, especially since I'm an SME for a bunch of different things, this leads to having to explain a lot of things daily. I don't just do this for technical questions, I do it pretty much for everything. My significant other, which is a lot more socially adept than me, thinks that I have an inherent assumption that other people won't get it, so I repeat myself. At times this comes across as condescending, I think. However, when I try to explain things less, it becomes obvious that a lot of times they will make wrong assumptions, which leads to me having to explain the same thing in 2-3 occasions. Part of me thinks I miss-calibrate people's competencies so I go too deep or not deep enough. Regardless, the primary problem is explaining too much or repetitively. Does anyone have a good heuristic, book, thoughts I can use? PS. I on purpose wrote this in the way I would normally explain something verbally to stress the point of what I'm struggling with. Consider the meta of my post :)
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