Simple Man

So, the purpose of this blog is to both create a discipline of writing and cultivate the skill of communication. It’s also a tool to help connect different thoughts and experiences into a simple message. One of the things I’ve said before is that I genuinely enjoy making complicated things simple and looking for connections and patterns in seemingly unrelated things.

Earlier this week, I conversed with a dear friend, preparing a sermon on the trap of comparison for several hundred teenagers. We discussed the art and science of communicating with teenagers and the difficulty of connecting a message for life change. In 2023, the amount of data our brains, especially teenagers’ brains, the process is utterly fascinating. According to research by Bohn & Short in 2012 (four years before TikTok), the average person processes as much as 74 gigs of data through their brain daily. The researchers compared the data to 16 movies a day and stated that the daily use “appears” to increase by about 5% yearly because of technological advancement. If their research is correct, we’re easily over 100 gigs a day now (thanks, youtube shorts :-))

The visual processing of an increasingly digital world consumes tremendous metabolic activity. As much as 20 percent of the calories you burn daily go to thinking and processing (Chadwick, 2020). If we think of our brain as an engine and calories as fuel, and the processing of information, including digital, as combustion, it makes sense that there is a limit to what we can learn or retain given the demand of brain function.

While much could be written about nutrition or focus, that’s not what I have been thinking about. I’ve been thinking about the increasing power of simplicity in an increasingly complex world. Years ago, I was blown away by learning about the brilliance of Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist. I know nothing about theoretical physics, but his teaching and learning method involve reducing the most complex topics to where you could teach it to a 10-year-old. I have worked through his methodology on many issues and am impressed at the process. This blog is a byproduct of my Feynman approach.

So, this week, I was reading 16 Invaluable Laws of Communication by John Maxwell. Maxwell told stories of watching Nixon and Kennedy debate as a teenager and explained his connection to Kennedy because he was a kid and could understand what Kennedy was communicating and felt like he was being spoken to. Maxwell describes the change in communication he’s witnessed over the last fifty years and points to the power of simple communication yet deep, complex understanding. He speaks of Ronald Regan’s quotes that he recalls as clearly now as when they were said 40 years ago. The power of complex thought and simple communication seems more critical now than ever. The 74 gigabytes of information daily would have been the lifetime equivalent of the most educated people only 500 years ago.

I got to experience this a few days ago. I sat through a run-through for Sunday morning’s sermon by our teaching Pastor. He did many things Maxwell taught and brought tremendous simplicity to a complex rebuke the Apostle Paul delivered to a church. It’s been a few days, I didn’t take notes, and I have processed a lot of gigs of mental data, and I can recite his three points and action steps as clearly as when I was walking out of the building. 

French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal appears to be the first of many credited with an apology for making writing too long because he didn’t have time to shorten it. Leaders, our people are processing more data in a day than the most brilliant humans did in a lifetime only several generations ago. If we want to see success in change, we owe it to our people to have a complex understanding that we can communicate simply.