Words Were Meant To Be “Seen”
The main reason your work gets ignored
The year is 150,000 B.C. Humanity has not learned how to use a language yet. Our ancestors are suffering in agony from the lack of communication. Their minds are burning with all these ideas and images that are held hostage in their heads, doomed to never being shared, to live and die with their mortal bodies.
Can you feel this pain and agony that our ancestors must have felt? This is exactly the pressure that had led to the development of our languages, both spoken and written. Words and language exist for one main purpose; to convey an “image” from one mind to another.
Yet somehow through our education, we get convinced that the more “sophisticated” and unaccessible our text is, the more eloquent and praiseworthy it is. We stop writing to share ideas and start writing to stroke our egos in the vain search for a better grade and recognition.
Unfortunately, we carry this “communication disease” with us into the adult world. Maybe you are trying to sell a product, or pitch your idea to an investor. However, the world does not seem to care at all; people ignore your product, and investors yawn at your pitch. Why?
Well, you can get everything else right; you can have the perfect voice, speak in the most excited tone, have the most amazing graphics, but if your words fail to create “images” in your listener or reader’s head, it won’t matter!
So how do you do that?
First, you have to convince yourself of this idea; “abstract thinking follows concrete thinking”. Our ability to learn as humans predates language. We spent thousands of years learning by observing others and imitating them, leveraging the power of our mirror neurons.
Our abstract thinking capabilities are very new and can only be activated after we have had a specific mental image of the thing we are trying to understand. Even Einstein, who is considered by many to be the absolute abstract thinker, had a very concrete method of thinking by using images of everyday objects like trains and clocks in building his infamous thought experiments.
“The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be voluntarily reproduced and combined.” — Albert Einstein
In a pitch deck or written format, your best bet to “show” someone something is to use an example. Walk the reader through the problem someone is having and state clearly what your solution does to elevate this pain. If you are working on something extremely complex, that you can not possibly explain concisely in words, then add a short video or animation.
Do everything you can, but please do not leave your reader with no “mental image” to remember you with! Humanity has gone through a lot to give you the ability to transfer ideas from your mind to others, please do not let this sacrifice go to waste.
Take-Home Action: Before you send your next pitch deck, ask a friend who has no experience in your field, to read through it and explain to you what they think your startup does. You will be surprised!
Originally published at http://omarhedeya.com on January 31, 2022.
