I did something today that I teach people not to do.
I have a project at work in the discovery phase. Every day brings new details and more questions than answers, and I love it. It’s Sherlock Holmes work: collecting clues, watching the picture come together one piece at a time.
So when I had a chance to talk about it, I came in hot. I started right where my head was, in the middle of the case, three clues deep. I didn’t explain how I’d gotten there. I just assumed the other person cared as much as I did and knew as much as I did.
They didn’t, and why would they? They looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
Later I went back and apologized. I told them I was excited, that I’d had my head down in it all morning and hadn’t reset before I started talking.
It’s an easy mistake to make, and I make it most when I’m excited. Enthusiasm feels like it ought to be contagious. Usually it’s just confusing. The more I care about something, the further ahead of my listener I tend to start.
Writing gives you a chance to catch this. You draft, you read it back, and you notice you skipped three steps. Talking doesn’t give you that. You’re live, unfiltered, and reading the room while you go. You have to think about what the other person already knows, what they don’t, and whether they care at all, and then walk them from where they are to where you are without losing them.
It’s a simple idea. It isn’t easy. I’ve been at it for twenty years and I still blew it before lunch.
The point of communicating is to get something from my head into yours in a shape you can use. If I start in the middle, I’m just telling myself the story out loud while you watch.
