hi everyone it's vicky welcome back to my channel today we're talking about how to articulate your thoughts effectively now i think we've all had this experience where we have an idea we're really excited about in our head it makes a lot of sense but when we talk to other people they're a bit confused they don't get it and we don't know why they don't get it what's missing right or it's the other way around of maybe a professor a teacher a boss who's telling us something and we know it's important that it should make sense but somehow we don't really get it so if that ever happens in your life and you're wondering what to do there are actually four very simple questions to ask in order to help you break down your ideas into actual actionable steps that you can integrate into the way you communicate so we'll talk about that today if you're interested keep on watching now before we actually go into the four steps i need to address a very important misconception that keep most of us stuck and that is we think that only when our idea is good enough should we then communicate it should we then write it down should we then tell it other people about it but actually it's the other way around having an idea which may or may not seem clear in our head if we start to write them out we start to articulate it maybe not for other people just for ourselves we will actually have more brain capacity to make that idea clearer joan didion said i write entirely to find out what i'm thinking what i'm looking at what i see and what it means stephen king says the same thing i write to find out what i think so it's the other way around we need to write it down see it on paper and then release that mental capacity in order for us to think for us to make that point more articulate make it clearer so if you ever find that oh i just can't sort through this idea is normal it's because you're thinking too hard you need to put it down on paper see it in front of you and then break it down release those memory space from your brain so that it can actually have capacity to think through the problem on a deeper level so with that in mind how do we actually think in order to clear our thoughts and become more articulate it's not about stream of consciousness right we can't just let it go everywhere we need a structure and the structure usually has a goal at the end so the way we want to start is asking ourselves the question what do we want people to do once they've heard our idea and this is something that we usually miss right we don't actually think about the other person like what are they going to do it's more of just satisfying our need to share our ideas but the ones that really communicate with someone is that those the audience understand what it means for them what this idea how this idea can affect their lives so if you really want to articulate your ideas clearly you need to know how it impacts others and what you want people to do so in this video i hope at the end you will want to try to articulate one of your thoughts that you have not been able to communicate as clearly to other people so with that goal in mind i've thought about what's the easiest way to get someone to do something it's giving them step-by-step instructions that are not complicated that are not long so i've honed it down to just four questions you can ask yourself right it doesn't you don't need to take course or anything just four simple questions so you'll do it and i add misconceptions so that you remove what's blocking you from actually doing those things you see why they're blocking you so you're more open to trying this with the goals defined the next three steps are a lot easier and i'm referencing aristotle here in his logos pathos and ethos in rhetoric which is basically just effective speaking effective writing or just effective communication we'll start with the ethos which means speaking to the credibility and trust you build between you and your audience the question that's useful to ask here is what do i want my audience to know about me in order for them to understand in the first place why are you talking about this you can draw on your experience your expertise your values on why you are sharing this idea you're sharing this topic and it gets people to open up and i'll use steve jobs here as an example when he was introducing the iphone for the first time every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything and apple has been well first of all one's very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career apple's been very fortunate it's been able to introduce a few of these into the world in 1984 we introduced the macintosh it didn't just change apple it changed the whole computer industry in 2001 we introduced the first ipod and it didn't just it didn't just change the way we all listen to music it changed the entire music industry well today we're introducing three revolutionary products of this class the first one is a widescreen ipod with touch controls the second is a revolutionary mobile phone and the third is a breakthrough internet communications device so three things a widescreen ipod with touch controls a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device an ipod a phone and an internet communicator an ipod a phone are you getting it these are not three separate devices this is one device and we are calling it iphone today today apple is going to reinvent the phone as you see for steve jobs here he is establishing apple's credibility building that trust with his audience by saying that apple is revolutionary he repeats this again and again because he knows that that's what his audience is after notice that he's not saying apple has x years in producing great electronics or x years in producing very durable products or effective products he is focusing on the word revolutionary the idea here is you don't have to build your credibility through just boring numbers like i've been in this field for 50 years and that's why you should listen to me instead he's focusing on things that actually draw interest from his audience and for his audience right it's people who think differently so they are interested in things that are revolutionary they're not interested in the best in class they're not interested in the leader of the industry they are interested in a different perspective in things that change the world and turn it upside down so that's why steve jobs here use the word revolutionary and he continues to hone in on this idea so when you ask yourself the question of what do i want people to know about me you'll have to think about okay the goal i want people to do is an action now what can they know about me in order to be open and receptive to this idea comment down below and let me know do titles make you feel like yes i can trust them these days now the next element i want to talk about is logos speaking to logic and reason and i think this is one where most of us are very familiar with this is what school teaches us right you need the facts and figures you need the statistics you need to put in the examples you need to walk people through the process in order for people to understand what you're saying but there's actually more than meets the eye with logos the question you actually want to ask here is what do i want people to know not that what do i know and just regurgitate everything you know that's why most of the time things are really boring and we find it hard to concentrate because it's just like a dribble of all the facts and we don't know how everything connects together right so it's what do i want people to know in order for them to take that action again right it's always connecting back to that goal and i'll show you how steve jobs does it in a moment but first i also want to introduce the third element which is pathos and the way to think about pathos which is speaking to emotion is that it is actually linked to logos and the question to ask is how do i want people to feel and this is usually what is missing in the way that we articulate that people do not understand they might understand the facts and the figures but they don't know how they're supposed to feel about it they haven't seen the connection between these numbers these facts and what does that mean to me how does that make me feel this actually comes from the instinctive way we process information it's the information error now there's so much information so our brain needs to be able to sort things into useful and not useful and for our brain what is useful is does this help me survive and thrive right and what are those those are feelings of i want to live and i want to live comfortably and happily so that is why most of the time when we just focus on okay i am a established scholar and these are the things i found people don't understand those things because they don't know actually how how does that actually make sense in my world what is that supposed to make me feel is it going to help me survive is it going to help me thrive what is the connection here so with that in mind let's check out steve jobs again let me talk about a category of things the most advanced phones are called smartphones so they say and uh they typically combine a phone plus some email capability plus they say it's the internet sort of the baby internet into one device and they all have these plastic little keyboards on them and the problem is that they're not so smart and they're not so easy to use so if you kind of make a you know business school 101 graph with a smart access and the easy to use access phones regular cell phones are kind of right there they're not so smart and they're you know not so easy to use but smartphones are definitely a little smarter but they actually are harder to use they're really complicated just for the basic stuff people have a hard time figuring out how to use them well we don't want to do either one of these things what we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been and super easy to use this is what iphone is okay so we're gonna reinvent the phone now software on mobile phones is like it's like baby software it's not so powerful and today we're going to show you a software breakthrough software that's at least five years ahead of what's on any other phone now how do we do this well we start with a strong foundation iphone runs os 10. now why would we want to run such a sophisticated operating system on a mobile device well because it's got everything we need it's got multitasking it's got the best networking it already knows how to power manage we've been doing this on mobile computers for years it's got awesome security and the right apps it's got everything from coco and the graphics and it's got core animation built in and it's got the audio and video that os 10 is famous for it's got all the stuff we want and it's built right in to iphone and that has let us create desktop class applications and networking notice how he doesn't mention every single thing that is great about the iphone compared to all of the other competitors out there because there are many right but he picks and chooses the one that's going to make an impact and is going to emotionally connect with you he summarizes all of those things together with just it's smart and is easy to use how does that make you feel it feels like it's not intimidating right it doesn't look like a blackberry with all those little buttons that it just looks very complicated it's easy to use it's smart and it leaps frog everything that's on the market and you're using something that's five years ahead of all of the other things that exist out there and guess what you like to think differently you like the feeling of i'm using something that is so futuristic so cool with touch screen no no weird keypads right how does that make you feel you feel different in a good way you feel special i'm in on this new tech world right and that is how he gets you to buy the product which is the goal of his whole presentation listing a few things that's going to demonstrate the point connecting it with the emotional aspect of how easy it is how cool is how streamline is how is going to make me feel so special and ahead of the game five years ahead of the game it's a similar approach as he used when he was introducing the ipod right it's not that it has five gigs of memory what does that mean right it means that you'll have a thousand songs in your pocket now that is powerful right i can feel it having all the sounds i love more songs i could ever dream of just in my pocket not in a funny cd walkman thing if you know people know those things back in the days so that's how you combine logos and pathos they have to be connected you have to make it make sense together in order to drive towards the goal of for him buying the iphone buying the ipod with those four questions in mind i want to end with another misconception that hold people back and it's this idea of i need to be smart i need to have a big vocabulary i need to have a lot of practice and public speaking in order to articulate my thoughts properly and that is not true george orwell said it himself language is an instrument to express thoughts not to conceal or to prevent thoughts so this idea of using big wars sounding fancy they actually conceal your thoughts they are actually not directing the attention to the idea instead his rules of writing is to be simple to be concise make the words as short as possible and just use examples that are engaging that translates into something that people understand so ask yourself the four questions what do i want people to do what do i want people to know about me what do i want people to know about the topic and what do i want people to feel then put your thoughts through these by writing them down seeing the connections and you will be able to articulate your thoughts clearly and effectively so if you found this helpful please give this video a thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already and i'll see you in the next video bye