Yesterday I told my friend “I think in bullet points”. Initially it was a joke, but the more I dwell on it, the truer it rings because:
- Short bullets are easy for people to read
- Bullets’ spoken parallel (two to three short sentences) is similarly easy to understand
- To write (or speak) in bullets forces me to first synthesize information
- Synthesizing information helps me focus on what’s important
To me, bullets represent the epitome of structured thinking or taking all data on a subject and putting it into an easy framework for others to understand.
My favorite example of structured thinking is the basic paragraph structure I learned as a second grader. For each paragraph, we were expected to have three things
- A topic sentence introducing the main point
- Three “body sentences”with supporting details
- A conclusion tying everything together
This framework is inherently simple, and that’s part of its beauty. It’s easy for even a seven year old to understand a framework like this and it’s been taught for years and because it teaches children how to better convey their thoughts.
However, to use structured thinking like this, you first must condense, synthesize, and focus on what information matters and what does not.
This is definitely not easy in a world with 64 zettabytes of data and growing. Yet this difficulty is what makes structured thinking so important. When you’re constantly focusing on what matters, you are constantly triaging information. This results in two core benefits
- By narrowing down to only what is critical you supercharge your learning using physicist Richard Feynman’s technique
- You become an amazing communicator as you provide the maximum info in the shortest amount of time
So the next time you’re talking to your friend about a complex topic, don’t overwhelm her with everything you know. Instead take a moment to think about the topic and share the two to three core points that really matter.