Stephen Monrad

Over the weekend, I began rereading the book “Made to Stick – Why some ideas survive and others die” written by Chip Heath & Dan Heath.I reread it because I think I need to rethink how I am approaching the process of writing material for my blog and website.

Early in the book, they talk about an interesting study that shows why writing about complex topics is difficult. In the study, one person (the tapper) was asked to tap out the rhythm of a commonly known song like Happy Birthday. Another person (the listener) was asked to guess what song was being tapped. The listeners rarely guessed correctly. The interesting thing about the study is that the tapper was asked to predict how likely it was that the listener would be able to guess the song correctly. They wildly over-estimated how successful the listeners would be.

The problem is that the tapper knows the name of the song and can hear it mentally while tapping. It seems obvious to the tapper what song is being tapped. The tapper can become exasperated by the inability of the listener to guess the name. The tapper finds it difficult to imagine what it is like to listen to the tapping without knowing what the song is already.

The problem with my writing so far is that I am not managing to make myself understood. I think my ideas are brilliant. I believe I am describing them accurately, but the result is turning out to be about as effective as a bunch of tapping. I need to write things that make sense to and engage  readers who don’t have the whole story already.

Made to Stick has 6 suggestions I can use to strengthen my writing. They are presented in chapters with the following one-word titles:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Story

One word doesn’t do justice to their suggestions of course. I will write more about specifically what I think I need to do in posts over the next few days.