Frame your sentences positively
Say what you do, not what you don’t. Trying to follow this guideline has taught me a lot over the years. Instead of saying or writing,
“This isn’t a program that [XYZ]”
I try to turn the sentence around and frame it positively:
“This is a program that [ABC].”
Having to articulate what I do want to happen, or what the product/service/approach does (instead of doesn’t) do, helps me discover more specific, accurate language. It requires me to focus, which results in more value per word.
Framing the positive also helps me help my reader (whomever she may be) picture the service or product more clearly. That’s because our brains have to step up a level to process a negative. When you hear the instruction, “Don’t forget to lock the door,” your brain first processes, “Forget to lock the door” and THEN negates it.
“Forget to lock the door” → “Forget to lock the door”
That’s right. Our brain is first processing the OPPOSITE instruction to what we want. George Lakoff points out the insidious power of this brain function in his book on political strategizing and messaging, Don’t Think of an Elephant.
So if, in an ad or a brochure, I write,
“Watkinson isn’t like any other school,”
The reader’s brain first processes,
“Watkinson is like any other school.”
Not what I want the reader to think — even briefly! Sure, then the brain then crosses it out... but let’s avoid flashing that neural link in the first place.
Reach both deep and wide.
Right-brain and left-brain thinking are different... but not in the way you think.
Pop medicine would have you believe that the right brain is “creative” and the left brain is “logical.” My blowhard know-it-all (his words) friend Rolf Pechukas, an innovative researcher on the vagus nerve and the brain, says it’s much more accurate to describe the brain hemispheres this way: the left hemisphere is deep and the right hemisphere is wide. “The left brain focuses on one specific, detailed, singular thing at a time,” he says; “the right hemisphere is about the overview, the gestalt, the grand sense of things.”
To call someone a right-brained or a left-brained thinker is more than just an oversimplification, he continues; it’s a misunderstanding. “Think of each brain function as a slider,” he says. “Visually, you might be specific, detailed, and singular — left-hemisphere-dominant — so that you’re the kind of person who notices and picks lint off a sweater. At the same time you could be right-hemisphere-dominant in how you hear sound, so that, when you listen to a piece of music, you hear the whole sense or the feeling or the emotion, rather than focusing on individual lyrics or instruments. We’re each a grab bag of different hemispheric dominances.”
What are the repercussions of this? Well, if it’s your job to communicate — whether you’re a journalist, a designer, a parent, or the head of an organization — then it’s valuable to remember that your audience almost certainly doesn’t process information in quite the same way you do. Are you talking to someone who thinks about one thing at a time, and can’t seem to move on to another topic until this first topic is finished? Or are you talking to someone who thinks about everything at once, jumping from one thing to another? Just as important, which one are you? As you might imagine, being able to intentionally mirror the focus and style of your audience can have a dramatic difference on how much of your message gets in.
This is obviously the briefest touch on an enormous topic with repercussions for every area of society. But even simply being aware, in a small way, that these hemispheric differences exist can start changing the way you interact and communicate with others. Start noticing and see what happens.