How to Explain a Topic to a Child

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Today at a Glance:

Frameworks are compasses—they provide clarity by creating structure through which to evaluate situations, deploy shortcuts, and execute sound decisions.

When used appropriately, they can meaningfully improve the quality of your decision-making (and reduce stress along the way).

The Framework Handbook below provides 20 useful frameworks and tips on when to put them to use.

The Framework Handbook

Every single day, you are faced with thousands of questions, challenges, and decisions.

These decisions can range from small and simple (what color shirt to wear) to large and complex (whether to quit your job). While an individual decision may not feel overwhelming, when taken in total, our lives can begin to feel like we are navigating a small boat on the open ocean—during a hurricane.

Fortunately, there are frameworks that can help us navigate these treacherous waters—our compasses, if you will.

Frameworks provide clarity by creating structure through which to evaluate situations, deploy shortcuts, and execute sound decisions. When used appropriately, they can meaningfully improve the quality of your decision-making (and reduce stress along the way).

Here are 20 useful frameworks & when to use them:

The Feynman Technique

The Feynman Technique—developed by famed American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman—is a proven method for learning anything.

Here’s how it works:

Identify a topic: What is the topic you want to learn more about? Identify the topic and write down everything you know about it. Read and research the topic and write down all of your new learnings (and the sources of each). This first step sets the stage for what is to come.

Try to explain it to a 5-year-old: Attempt to explain the topic to a child. Once again, write down everything you know about your topic, but this time, pretend you are explaining it to a child. Use simple language and terms. Focus on brevity.

Study to fill in knowledge gaps: Reflect on your performance in Step 2. How well were you able to explain the topic to a child? Where did you get frustrated? Where did you resort to jargon or get stuck? These are the gaps in your understanding. Read and study to fill them.

Organize, convey, and review: Organize your elegant, simple language into a compelling story or narrative. Convey it to others. Test-and-learn. Iterate and refine your story or narrative accordingly. Review (and respect) your new, deeper understanding of the topic.

True genius is the ability to simplify, not complicate. Simple is beautiful.

Use It When: You need to learn anything new.

Directional Arrow of Progress

"Study the undeniable arrows of progress." — Josh Wolfe

The future is extremely difficult to predict—but there are clues. Look at the trend line of progress and where it's pointing—directionally, not precisely. Invest (or build) accordingly.

Famed investor Josh Wolfe—one of the smartest, kindest people I have ever met—developed this framework to accurately predict where the future of technology is heading. If it’s good enough for Josh, it’s good enough for all of us.

Use It When: You are deciding what to invest or build on a longer time horizon.

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix

President Dwight Eisenhower was an American military officer and 34th President of the United States. He was known for his prolific productivity.

His secret? He always differentiated between the urgent and the important.

An "urgent" task is one that requires immediate, focused attention to complete. An "important" task is one that promotes or furthers your long-term values, goals, or principles. Remember: Tasks can be both urgent and important.

Place all of your tasks on a 2x2 matrix of urgency and importance:

Important & Urgent

Important & Not Urgent

Not Important & Urgent

Not Important & Not Urgent

Prioritize, delegate, or delete accordingly.

Use It When: You are prioritizing your to-do list.

The Regret Minimization Framework

A framework developed by Jeff Bezos as part of his decision to leave a lucrative hedge fund job at D.E. Shaw to pursue founding Amazon.

The goal is to minimize the number of regrets in life.

When faced with a difficult decision:

Project yourself into the future

Look back on the decision

Ask "Will I regret not doing this?"

Take action accordingly

Use It When: You are making your next big, bold decision.

The Kat Cole Pygmalion Effect

Kat Cole is a prolific operator and trusted advisor of some of the world’s highest performing entrepreneurs.

She has noticed time and again that high expectations lead to high performance (and vice versa)—a phenomenon called the Pygmalion Effect. If you consistently see people as their highest potential, they will achieve more.

When you're occasionally let down, consider it a tax you pay for all the benefit from those you believed in.

Use It When: You are managing a new team.

The Taleb "Look the Part" Framework

“Say you had the choice between two surgeons of similar rank in the same department in some hospital. The first is highly refined in appearance…The second one looks like a butcher…Now if I had to pick, I would overcome my suckerproneness and take the butcher any minute…Why? Simply the one who doesn’t look the part, conditional of having made a (sort of) successful career in his profession, had to have much to overcome in terms of perception.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If forced to choose between two options of seemingly equal merit, choose the one that doesn’t look the part.

The one who doesn’t look the part has had to overcome much more to achieve its status than the one who fit in perfectly.

Use It When: You are deciding who to select (for your team, surgery, or anything else).

Decentralized Friend Groups

There are two types of friend groups:

Centralized Friend Groups: one cluster of friends with shared backgrounds and beliefs.

Decentralized Friend Groups: small clusters of friends unconnected to each other.

When in doubt, opt for decentralized friend groups. It will ...