John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Brilliant Communication

Idea 20: In praise of simplicity

Everything should be made as simple as possible but not more simple.

Albert Einstein, German physicist

In order to communicate effectively you first need something to impart to others that is, within your shared context, important, relevant or interesting. That is only an indicative list. In some contexts, for example, you can add instructive or entertaining.

What you have to say in a given field of knowledge – think of musicology, pure mathematics or subatomic physics – may be so complex, so couched in a special sublanguage of symbols, that only a fellow professional at your level will be able to understand what you are talking about. But even in these contexts the instinct of the born communicator – like the ...