Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

I'm stealing that comment from Stephen Covey apparently, but I wanted to discuss it in regard to technical training or writing of any kind. When you are writing a book or an article or giving a presentation, try to stay focused on the concept you are trying to convey.

For example, if I wanted to teach you about addition, I might start with an example like this:

1 + 1 = 2

Simple, easy to understand, to the point.

Often with technical materials I run across something like this.

1 + 1 + (3 * 2) + ((1 * 2) / 2) = 9

"Above is a simple example of addition. Notice I can add two numbers like 1 and 1. But if I include multiplication and division, that is where you can see the real power of addition!"

Multiplication and division are really cool concepts. But if I am trying to teach addition, they are just distractions. And, if my audience does not understand multiplication or division, I have just lost them.

Feature completeness does not equal clarity. Keep the main thing the main thing. Stick to the addition.

Our love affair with lists

What is it about humans and our affinity for lists?

Most of us learn sequentially (concrete-sequentially if I use the Gregorc nomenclature to be exact) so here's why I believe we humans like lists (in the form of a list of course):

Growing up I listened to Casey Kasem's Top 40, prior to that was Dick Clark's countdown. My first recollection of a list was all the things I my parents had for me to do before I could go outside and play.

If I search in the dictionary for the word list, I'm confronted with another list of the possible definitions for list (kind of self referential don't you think?).

Here's some others lists:

• Fortune 500
• FBI Ten Most Wanted
  
• ESPN Top Ten.
• David Letterman has his Top Ten.
  
• Keith Olbermann has his Countdown.
• Ellen Degeneres has her Life List
• 1000 Places to See Before I Die
  

Which reminds me I have to end this and finish some things on my "Honey Do" list my wife posted on the refrigerator...

Top 10 reason why humans like lists:

1. Linear
2. Eye Catching
3. Digestible
   
4. Succinct
   
5. Organizational ('todo' list)
   
6. Convincing (list of offenses in court)
   
7. Comprehensive (this list isn't)
8. Practical
9. Transferable (work list)
10. Trackable (shopping list)

Love of Learning

The English Archaeologist, John Lubbock once wrote:

If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow.

I first stumbled onto this quote whilst studying for an Education degree at Colorado State University. This was after I had received my Physics degree from the same institution. I never forgot the quote, but couldn't remember the author. Thank god for Google!

Anyway, back to the point of this blog entry... the love of learning. It seemed to me then as it does now that we spend so much time cramming facts and figures down our gullets that we don't take the time to really appreciate, nor do we really learn to love learning. Sure, we study for twelve plus years as children, then hopefully off to university for more, but along the way do we ever love learning? Or, instead, are we merely caught up in the maelstrom and maladies of the fact cramming masses? Do we take time to really learn how to learn? to think? to reason? How do our educators encourage us to love learning?

One more John Lubbock quote that reminds me of studying in Colorado and the lyrics to a John Denver song:

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.