The most important skill nobody taught you..

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Yogesh Parmar

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Dec 31, 2018

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The worst advice I ever received first came to me as a vulnerable, easily impressionable 15 year old, enthusiastically looking for external validation. I had just written my first serious piece of non-fiction. It has since been repeated ad nauseam. It has come from the most well-meaning friends and in the most unsolicited of places.

Chances are you have been at the receiving end too. Or maybe you are the one who is doling it out. At any rate, a million unsuspecting children and adults get some version of this shtick from folks they look up to, every passing second.

I consider this the worst advice ever, because without meaning to, it set out to sabotage the most important set of life skills: thinking, speaking and writing.

It is a miracle that I did not succumb to it given my preposterous predilection to be shamed all too easily, all too often. I am grateful every living day that I have lived to tell this tale.

The advice was this: use simple words. Most people who give this advice have no blessed idea as to what they are on about.

The advice should have been this instead: Use better words.

Please note that this is not about making a case for long, redundant or indulgent words but for better, rich and precise words. The hundreds of thousands of words that easily fit elegantly in our everyday usage and would have a disproportionate impact in our communication, if only we could get ourselves to care about language.

For example: famished is better than ‘very hungry’; bingeing is better than ‘eating fast’. Famished and bingeing tell a story. The alternatives don’t.

Simplification in language may get us speed but it’s end result in often a loss of both depth and impact. No two words mean the same thing, ever. On the rare occasion they do, the context of their usage is different.

By themselves, speaking and writing are acts of reduction. Compressing reality to fit the form and templates we understand. Given how vast and infinite truth is, to not use the best words available to describe it is to deny ourselves the one chance to get even its broad contours right.

When people with a masters degree or a full 12–18 years of English medium education — including the time in life where the mind is the most porous and learnability is at an all time high — behind them say that a piece of writing reads like English literature, I wonder what went wrong.

I am not speaking about those of us who had to with bad schools or absent teachers. I am talking about those who had a perfectly reasonable education.

Frustration is different from disappointment. Disgust is not the same as anger. Being articulate is twice removed from being verbose. It is not merely semantics. It is the whole point of communication.

People who whine about a superior vocabulary on display are the same people who wail about the ambani wedding; simultaneously plotting or aspiring the next vulgar display of what their wealth will allow even while they can’t help bringing the world down with righteous indignation.

More seriously, here is the thing:

Every new word you learn and internalize expands your understanding of the universe. You appreciation for complexity goes up a notch. The door of nuance, that most wondrous of pleasures, opens up. I dare say, self awareness improves too. The idea of a wider vocabulary is not to impress but to broaden your own worldview.

The only reason a word may sound jarring is because it may not fluidly express the idea that you want to with economy and precision. The way to fix that is not to use a generic, tone — deaf turn of phrase, which is bereft of refinement but to use a more appropriate, precise word.

And yes, it is nearly impossible to arrive at this place of speaking and writing in finished prose without undertaking that journey where you will blow hot and cold. Of trying to communicate differently and coming unstuck. It is a part of the learning curve. It takes upwards of five years to build a reasonable proficiency in a language.

The one thing that unites us is a universal aspiration to think, speak and write better and yet it co exists with the fact that we are never shy of shooting the messenger the moment a word or a turn of phrase is used that is difficult for us to comprehend.

If you don’t know the meaning of a word, look it up. The loss is yours and yours only. Instead of trying to shame someone to come down to your level of comprehension, consider raising your game to the next level.

Half of the world’s problems are fundamentally communication problems, where we think one thing, mean another and end up saying something else. To name a sensation or an emotion correctly is to know it as distinct from everything else. If we cannot differentiate between words that convey fundamentally different things even if they share overlapping attributes, how do we intend to distinguish between emotions or even know what we are feeling..?

Emotions are just a form of energy, forever seeking expression. It’s also true that we can’t change what we don’t notice. The surest way of taming an emotion is to name it. Noticing and naming emotions gives us the chance to take a step back and make choices about what to do with them. It predates action. If we are unlikely to talk about something, taking action tends to become twice as difficult.

Language may not limit what we feel but may well limit how we communicate what we feel. One of the challenges with the English language for instance, is that traditionally, we have had only one word to express all forms of affection — love.

Pyaar, ishq and mohabbat, in a different language, convey a many splendored narrative. Recent coining of words such as petrichor — which is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil — has given us a shared understanding and appreciation of a phenomena that we otherwise would have had continued to experience but not necessarily be able to express. There is research that suggests language determines even cognition.

If you look across different languages, you start to see different words with that capture meanings that English doesn’t, e.g. have you ever thought of a great retort or comeback after an event has happened and wish it had come to you earlier? Happens to me all the time.

The French have a word for it, L’esprit de l’escalier. Another delightful phrase is ‘folie a deux’, which is often used to humorously describe the condition in which two closely associated people who are mentally ill share the same delusional beliefs.

Speaking and writing skills are likely to emerge as some of the most critical professional skills in the age of AI and machine learning. Even if that prognosis doesn’t come to fruition, speaking and writing will continue to be two skills that you require most for you to begin to have a social life. Forget social life, speaking and writing are the two skills you need for your own sanity, to understand what is going on within.

The joy of speaking and writing with aplomb is entirely intrinsic. A well constructed sentence in an article or a decently articulated idea while speaking is its own gold medal. It communicates to our audience how intimately well versed and fluent we are with a subject.

Truth is I struggle with new words all the time. The most recent examples include learning to use words like epistemology or hetero-normative in the appropriate context.

These are not fancy words. They are precise words. To the best of my knowledge, they cannot be replaced by a simpler word without a massive loss in translation. You will need to use 7–10 other words to explain what is going on with them and even when you do so, there will still be spillages galore between the cup and the lip.

Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior and redirect our thinking.

The most famous example of this comes from a study conducted by the American psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus. A short scene of a car accident was shown to all the people participating in a study. Different groups of people were asked the same questions in different ways. When participants were asked to estimate ‘the speed of the cars when they *hit* each other’, the average answer was 34.0 miles per hour. When another set of participants were asked to ‘estimate the speed of the cars when they *smashed* into each other, the average answer was 40.5 miles.

Given that all other variables in the experiment were climate controlled and standardised, the difference in the estimate is directly attributable to recasting the question by the usage of the word ‘smashing’. While people recorded and stored their memories in broadly the same way, the way we retrieve them can change dramatically depending on how the question is asked.

Think about it. What would we be without language? Our entire understanding of the universe is predicated on attributing meaning to sounds that emanate by combining letters of the alphabet in ever different ways. It makes total sense to dot our i’s and cross our t’s.

Language is also a conveyor belt. The words we use, the things we name are the primary transmitter of our culture, history and heritage. Every thing we know today has been passed on to us and will in turn be passed on to those who come after us through words.

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Yogesh Parmar. Follow. Dec 31, 2018. · The worst advice I ever received first came to me as a vulnerable, easily impressionable 15 year old, enthusiastically looking for external validation. I had just written my first serious piece of non-fiction. It has since been repeated ad nauseam. It has come from the most well-meaning friends and in the most unsolicited of places. Chances are you have been at the receiving end too. Or maybe you are the one who is doling it out. At any rate, a million unsuspecting children and adults get some version of this shtick from folks they look up to, every passing second. I consider this the worst advice ever, because without meaning to, it set out to sabotage the most important set of life skills: thinking, speaking and writing. It is a miracle that I did not succumb to it given my preposterous predilection to be shamed all too easily, all too often. I am grateful every living day that I have lived to tell this tale. The advice was this: use simple words. Most people who give this advice have no blessed idea as to what they are on about. The advice should have been this instead: Use better words. Please note that this is not about making a case for long, redundant or indulgent words but for better, rich and precise words. The hundreds of thousands of words that easily fit elegantly in our everyday usage and would have a disproportionate impact in our communication, if only we could get ourselves to care about language. For example: famished is better than ‘very hungry’; bingeing is better than ‘eating fast’. Famished and bingeing tell a story. The alternatives don’t. Simplification in language may get us speed but it’s end result in often a loss of both depth and impact. No two words mean the same thing, ever. On the rare occasion they do, the context of their usage is different. By themselves, speaking and writing are acts of reduction. Compressing reality to fit the form and templates we understand. Given how vast and infinite truth is, to not use the best words available to describe it is to deny ourselves the one chance to get even its broad contours right. When people with a masters degree or a full 12–18 years of English medium education — including the time in life where the mind is the most porous and learnability is at an all time high — behind them say that a piece of writing reads like English literature, I wonder what went wrong. I am not speaking about those of us who had to with bad schools or absent teachers. I am talking about those who had a perfectly reasonable education. Frustration is different from disappointment. Disgust is not the same as anger. Being articulate is twice removed from being verbose. It is not merely semantics. It is the whole point of communication. People who whine about a superior vocabulary on display are the same people who wail about the ambani wedding; simultaneously plotting or aspiring the next vulgar display of what their wealth will allow even while they can’t help bringing the world down with righteous indignation. More seriously, here is the thing: Every new word you learn and internalize expands your understanding of the universe. You appreciation for complexity goes up a notch. The door of nuance, that most wondrous of pleasures, opens up. I dare say, self awareness improves too. The idea of a wider vocabulary is not to impress but to broaden your own worldview. The only reason a word may sound jarring is because it may not fluidly express the idea that you want to with economy and precision. The way to fix that is not to use a generic, tone — deaf turn of phrase, which is bereft of refinement but to use a more appropriate, precise word. And yes, it is nearly impossible to arrive at this place of speaking and writing in finished prose without undertaking that journey where you will blow hot and cold. Of trying to communicate differently and coming unstuck. It is a part of the learning curve. It takes upwards of five years to build a reasonable proficiency in a language. The one thing that unites us is a universal aspiration to think, speak and write better and yet it co exists with the fact that we are never shy of shooting the messenger the moment a word or a turn of phrase is used that is difficult for us to comprehend. If you don’t know the meaning of a word, look it up. The loss is yours and yours only. Instead of trying to shame someone to come down to your level of comprehension, consider raising your game to the next level. Half of the world’s problems are fundamentally communication problems, where we think one thing, mean another and end up saying something else. To name a sensation or an emotion correctly is to know it as distinct from everything else. If we cannot differentiate between words that convey fundamentally different things even if they share overlapping attributes, how do we intend to distinguish between emotions or even know what we are feeling..? Emotions are just a form of energy, forever seeking expression. It’s also true that we can’t change what we don’t notice. The surest way of taming an emotion is to name it. Noticing and naming emotions gives us the chance to take a step back and make choices about what to do with them. It predates action. If we are unlikely to talk about something, taking action tends to become twice as difficult. Language may not limit what we feel but may well limit how we communicate what we feel. One of the challenges with the English language for instance, is that traditionally, we have had only one word to express all forms of affection — love. Pyaar, ishq and mohabbat, in a different language, convey a many splendored narrative. Recent coining of words such as petrichor — which is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil — has given us a shared understanding and appreciation of a phenomena that we otherwise would have had continued to experience but not necessarily be able to express. There is research that suggests language determines even cognition. If you look across different languages, you start to see different words with that capture meanings that English doesn’t, e.g. have you ever thought of a great retort or comeback after an event has happened and wish it had come to you earlier? Happens to me all the time. The French have a word for it, L’esprit de l’escalier. Another delightful phrase is ‘folie a deux’, which is often used to humorously describe the condition in which two closely associated people who are mentally ill share the same delusional beliefs. Speaking and writing skills are likely to emerge as some of the most critical professional skills in the age of AI and machine learning. Even if that prognosis doesn’t come to fruition, speaking and writing will continue to be two skills that you require most for you to begin to have a social life. Forget social life, speaking and writing are the two skills you need for your own sanity, to understand what is going on within. The joy of speaking and writing with aplomb is entirely intrinsic. A well constructed sentence in an article or a decently articulated idea while speaking is its own gold medal. It communicates to our audience how intimately well versed and fluent we are with a subject. Truth is I struggle with new words all the time. The most recent examples include learning to use words like epistemology or hetero-normative in the appropriate context. These are not fancy words. They are precise words. To the best of my knowledge, they cannot be replaced by a simpler word without a massive loss in translation. You will need to use 7–10 other words to explain what is going on with them and even when you do so, there will still be spillages galore between the cup and the lip. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior and redirect our thinking. The most famous example of this comes from a study conducted by the American psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus. A short scene of a car accident was shown to all the people participating in a study. Different groups of people were asked the same questions in different ways. When participants were asked to estimate ‘the speed of the cars when they *hit* each other’, the average answer was 34.0 miles per hour. When another set of participants were asked to ‘estimate the speed of the cars when they *smashed* into each other, the average answer was 40.5 miles. Given that all other variables in the experiment were climate controlled and standardised, the difference in the estimate is directly attributable to recasting the question by the usage of the word ‘smashing’. While people recorded and stored their memories in broadly the same way, the way we retrieve them can change dramatically depending on how the question is asked. Think about it. What would we be without language? Our entire understanding of the universe is predicated on attributing meaning to sounds that emanate by combining letters of the alphabet in ever different ways. It makes total sense to dot our i’s and cross our t’s. Language is also a conveyor belt. The words we use, the things we name are the primary transmitter of our culture, history and heritage. Every thing we know today has been passed on to us and will in turn be passed on to those who come after us through words.