Unexpected things surprise us unexpectedly

 

Ding-dong! Your doorbell rings. “That must be my pizza delivery!” You grab your wallet and run excitedly to the door. A tall, attractive blonde is standing there smiling. She opens the hot bag, your mouth watering in anticipation. Suddenly, you stare wide-eyed at the end of a revolver. The girl smiles. “Give me your wallet.” She speaks calmly. And why not, she’s the one holding the gun. For a moment you can’t move. The shock of having your delivery turn hostile is still seeping into your brain. Slowly you extend her your wallet.

This event is far out of the every day. It is unexpected. Because most delivery drivers don’t go around robbing their customers, you would most likely be shocked if this were to happen to you. You would likely be surprised, shocked, maybe a bit scared. These are all feelings caused by the unexpectedness of the situation.

Just like this incident causes you to be surprised and alert, good writing causes us to be surprised and attentive. Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, encourage the use of unexpectedness in our writing to help make our message “sticky”.

“Stickiness” is a concept they use as their main theme in Made to Stick. It is the essence of getting our message to reside in people’s thought. It is how we get our reader’s attention and then keep that attention, while hopefully getting them to remember it after they’ve read it. I’ll admit, doing all that is not an easy task, but with the useful ideas in their book, Chip and Dan give us the necessary tools.

The Curse of Knowledge

Bob dials his phone with an index finger. Sue still owns a VCR. Bert listens to audio cassettes because he doesn’t “get” those new CD players. Have you ever faced the task of teaching someone like these people how to use the Internet? If you have, you’ve probably encountered the Curse of Knowledge.

The Curse of Knowledge is a concept defined by authors of Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath. “Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it.” Said the brothers. “Our knowledge has ‘cursed’ us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.”

In other words, when I attempt to teach someone like Bob how to use the Internet, I need to remember what it was like for me to learn it, back before I knew what it was.

For people like us, in today’s technological existence, being adept with the Internet is a must. We feel as if we were born with this ability and can’t recall life before electricity. So how do we enlighten someone from the Dark Ages?

We start by forgetting what we know. This is what the Heath brothers teach us in Made to Stick. In this book, the brothers teach us how to transform our ideas in order to beat the Curse of Knowledge and communicate in an understandable way.

Now when you sit down to teach Bob how to use the Internet, you just might have to start by telling him what a mouse is – in the sense of the clicky thing that accompanies most computers nowadays.