I constantly struggle because my brain has made connections that are not obvious to others, and when I try to guide them through my thinking I confuse them with details or by skipping explanations that seem obvious to me but completely surprising to anyone else.
About half the time I jump to the conclusion then hit a brick wall because I've assumed things about common ground, background knowledge and thought processes.
Then the other half of the time I decide I need to explain properly and it's like the scene in The Big Bang Theory where Penny asks Sheldon to "teach her some physics" and he begins "It's a warm summer evening in ancient Greece..."
@mariyadelano@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd All I can tell you is that, whenever I write anything, I finish writing it and then edit it to flip the order to make the conclusion the introduction. This works just about every time. Harder to do in conversation, of course.
@mariyadelano@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd I often go with: "you busy? do you want the whole story of just the executive summary?"
If they answer "whole story", it's a pleasure to let them have it. And possibly a lesson learned for them. 😂
If they just want the cliff notes, I pretty much go with the advice given in the old 70s book "the one minute manager", which basically says people want the conclusion and easy-tu-understand stories with no nuances.
@mariyadelano@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd My friends used to use a system where I had to tap the side of my nose when I jumped topics. If they thought I had jumped topics then they would do the nose tap and I could confirm or explain further. 🤪
But I have also heard a flatmate tell another flatmate to "just smile and nod when she talks". 🤷
@mariyadelano@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd you could keep summarising in half the text, until you get one sentence. That would be the center of your idea. Then you can start putting the rest of pieces back in, in decreasing importance.
I think it's key to communicate your core idea most clearly, even if it means a butchered simplification. People learn as you fix the broken pieces of the explanation.
@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd I’ve also been told that my explanation style leans too far into being bottom-up (I start from details and then zoom out).
And that confuses me because well - I’m walking people through the details that helped me piece together the high-level conclusions!
I always feel like I should let people figure it out themselves, but then they get confused and frustrated and ask why I’m dumping irrelevant details on them.. 🥲🥲
@mariyadelano@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
It strikes me that you are expecting people to think. Most people don't like doing that. They much prefer to have a conclusion, followed by what ever proofs are required to satisfy that conclusion.
@pathfinder@mariyadelano@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd this, exactly, I start with the conclusion, a comment to "bear with me here" and THEN go back to the beginning with the low level stuff. Now that they have context (my conclusion), it makes more sense to them.
@mariyadelano@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd It's hard. I process bottom-up as well but I know that many people don't usually. So I try to see it from their perspective and start with what I think they know or can refer to. While walking them through "the process", I ask them questions to see if I need to explain anything.
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