Further beyond mind mapped pyramids
August 16th, 2005
Great comment from Cliff Atkinson on Beyond mind mapped bullet pyramids :
By stating the conclusion first, you also lighten the cognitive load on an audience, because they don’t have to struggle with holding many fragments of information in short-term memory before you explain what they all mean.
argues for the “conclusion first” approach for similar reasons.
A reader, no matter how intelligent, has only a limited amount of mental energy. Some of it will be used recognising and interpreting words, some seeing the relationship between ideas, and whatever is left comprehending their significance.
You can economise his need to spend time on the first two activities by presenting the ideas so that they can be comprehended with the least possible mental effort. To sequence ideas instead so that the mind has to go backward and forward to make connections is simply bad manners, and most readers react by refusing to do so.
Minto also makes the argument for the sake of clarity. Readers and listeners may misinterpret your message if you don’t make your point first:
The reader (or listener) will assume that ideas which appear together logically belong together. If you do not tell him in advance what the relationship is, but simply give the ideas one at a time, he will automatically look for similarities by which he can group the points being expressed…
Alas, people rarely put the same interpretation on groupings as you do…
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