Structuring your thinking in three easy steps

October 5, 2010

Sometimes I’m asked to write or speak about something with very little preparation. In these situations, I need a tool that can help me:

Organize my thoughts quickly
Prioritize the wheat before the chaff
Maintain a coherent train of thought

I find a very useful structure for archiving this to be what I call “three-by-three”: Three main points with three subpoints each.

Forcing myself to keep to a structure will make my thoughts flow more quickly. Coming up with three ideas isn’t hard, so I quickly get something down on paper. Limiting myself to three points forces me to cut out less important ideas, and when I can’t think of a third point at any one level, I can leave it blank, knowing that I will revisit it later
Using a simple cookie cutter approach allows me to spend more time with the important preparations for the talk, or the important work with the article: iterating over the points I want to make. Nothing improves a talk faster than practice. Nothing improves an article faster than reading it out loud. Deliver early and deliver often.
Finally, using a simple structure like three-by-thee allows me to clearly get my point across. If I’m writing an article, I can use bullet points or headlines for the points. If I give a talk, I can count down “the number of things I want to talk about” on my fingers. And with only three things to remember, the audience has an easier time following what I’m saying.

Of course, any form can be limiting, especially when you’ve worked with the material for a while. So I have some variations of the three-by-three structure that I often use:

Three-plus-three-by-three-plus-three: The middle part of an argument needs to be the most substantial one, so I can fractally subdivide this further into three-by-three arguments.
Three-times-three-plus-one: It’s often good to end on something different, a counterpoint of some sort. I often add a “zinger” to the end of a three-by-three talk
Let it go: As I iterate over something that started out as a simple three-by-three structure, I often find that it no longer no longer lets me express what I want. Then, as with any rule that get in the way, I break it.

I use the three-by-three structure in my workshops on how to present, as an assignment for the workshop attendants. This greatly reduces the time before they can start practicing their talks and get to that really great, quick presentation.

Comments:

[Ram Yoga] - Oct 5, 2010

Great that you posted this. This technique is so simple, yet so powerful.

Thomas K Nilsson - Oct 5, 2010

Nice tip, will try it myself. :) Did you cook the technique up by yourself or did you find it somewhere else?

Johannes Brodwall - Oct 5, 2010

Thanks for the comment. It’s probably something I read somewhere, but I’ve forgotten it. Ram and I rediscovered or invented the technique when we designed the course in presentation.

Johannes Brodwall - Oct 5, 2010

Thank you. I would like to see your take on it as well. What would you emphasize about the structure?