One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.
The IKEA Effect of Communication
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IKEA knows something most presenters don’t: And it’s not just flatpacks. Ideas stick better when we’ve worked for them. 💡 ONE IDEA WELLThe IKEA Effect describes how people place higher value on things they’ve built themselves, even when the finished product is flawed. That cheap bookshelf? In communication, the same rule applies: When your audience has to make meaning, they don’t resent the effort. They own the insight. But we often fall into the trap of over-explaining or over-simplifying - trying to make things frictionless. That’s not always kind. Or effective. Sometimes the best thing you can do is create space:
You’re not making it harder. You’re making it stick. 📚 See: Norton, M.I., Mochon, D. and Ariely, D., 2012. The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), pp.453-460. 🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGEOver-explaining feels safe. You get to prove you know the material. But the most memorable talks? They leave room for: 🧠 A thought to land Let your audience build part of the meaning. They’ll remember it longer and feel smarter for it. Because what we help build, we’re wired to value. 🧪 TRY THISBefore your next presentation, take one idea you usually explain… and don’t. Instead:
Let your audience do the final step. It’ll feel riskier. 🧭 ASK YOURSELF THISWhere could I hold back just enough to let the audience do the final step themselves? |
TEACHING ISN’T A SCRIPT. NEITHER IS THIS.
One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.
I once saw a brilliant doctor explain febrile convulsions to a parent. He started with: “It’s about hypothalamic thermoregulation.” Accurate? Yes.Useful? Not even close. The parent nodded politely.But nothing landed. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL The more you know, the harder it is to explain. This is The Curse of Knowledge—a bias where we forget what it’s like not to know something. We assume shared language. Shared logic. Shared leaps. But when we present from that place, we leave people behind. We skip...
“I’ll just talk through this slide…” Harmless phrase, right? Except it usually means: 👉 I haven’t crafted a message - just collected some slides. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL This is one of the most common traps for early presenters: Thinking the slide is the presentation. But here’s the truth: Slides support your message. They shouldn’t be your message. If your audience can get everything they need from the slide, they don’t need you. And if they can’t make sense of the slide without you, they’re...
My first talk in English class was about bats. I was 14.I brought in a desiccated pipistrelle to show everyone.Instead of an acetate, I held up a wallpaper scroll I'd drawn with outlines of bat species. Another student read a piece on VW Combi vans. No images. No props. Just words. I had figured out you could do it the same way it had always been done.Or you could do something different.More memorable. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL We often treat presentations like assignments.Say the thing. Prove you know...