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by monegator8 hours ago |
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upvoteby Brian_K_White2 hours ago|
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Mine is "What's the question?"

I basically have to ask that almost every other time someone starts a conversation.

They talked for 3 minutes and never actually articulated a problem or request but just sort of recounted some seemingly random but presumably related facts.

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upvoteby atoav7 hours ago|
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If there is a tech-person problem it is this one. I constantly have to interrupt collegues when they try to explain a thing as their explaination attempts are usually way too low level or even bordering on being self-referential. So they explain the concept by using other concepts the listener won't understand either.

In my opinion it all boils down to a lack of ability to remember how one felt before understanding a certain concept. If you did you would have an empathic understanding of how word-salady a lot of the explainations are.

The first thing you need to tell a uninitiated person is simply where to generally put it and how they already know it. If you explain DNS for example you explain it via the domains they know and how it is like a contacts list for webservers so your browser knows where to look when looking for google.com.

Whenever you explain anything you might want to ask yourself why the other side should even begin to care and how it connects to their life and existing knowledge. What problem did it originally intend to solve?

Many tech people may start in a different

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upvoteby exmadscientist6 hours ago|
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When I taught I often thought of it as explaining in a spiral: first I must go around the concept, before I can dive in to the concept. Going around gives boundary and definition to what I'm talking about, allowing people to place it in the proper spot in their mental framework and to relate it with other nearby things. It also gives some motivation for what this thing is and why they should care. Then when that is done (and it does not take long), the details can be discussed, and they're easier to communicate because people are primed to receive them.
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