1. Turn on stove and add a pan under medium heat.

2: Add 3 eggs to a bowl and stir.

3: Dice mushrooms and tomatoes and add to the bowl.

4: Stir then pour egg mixture into pan.

5: Cook for 60-120 seconds then flip.

6: After another 60-120 seconds fold one side over the other.

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ― Albert Einstein

One simple approach is to pull out all 'nouns' in the recipe and define them. It also can help to pull out descriptive terms around our nouns (eg. medium heat, "flip").

Since most of us know the definitions of these things I'll point out some of the potential hurdles in the definition process, things we'll need to fix later as we get more information. Since we don't know what we don't know, simply defining the terms is not enough; we need to dig further to better understand how the terms relate.

Breaking down and taking apart... AnalyticalThinking

CATEGORIES - Defining the categories and sub categories of our terms will provide us with "meta" data around our topic. It will help us clarify how different things relate or don't relate. It will give us some new terms that we can explore further and expand our knowledge base.

Now that we've defined categories, there's a lot we can learn about the categories themselves! So, let's define the categories and explore them further.

Obvious (to us) there are sub-categories as well, and sub categories of sub categories. The depth we should define categories has some limited benefits, but can provide us more data to work with.

Research The Categories

CONTEXT - Mind map time! Or "conceptual system map" if you want to be specific. Basically we want to do our best to define the relationships between our terms. It can be very helpful to do this in a visual medium...

Putting back together. SyntheticThinking

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” ― Albert Einstein

Robert Greene advises in his book Mastery: "

We've defined what the elements in our recipe are, but what about why they're included, why are they prepared in the way they are? We can assume that each one is added for a reason (why), understanding why is crucial to mastering the subject. There are hundreds of implications we can explore, and at the beginning it may be difficult to know which too prioritize.

Let's just take one example; the mushroom. Some questions we can consider in the omelet context, and the implications of these questions...

Each one of these 'implications' can be explored as their own research topics.

Again, this may seem super simplistic (it is) but change the subject to Facebook advertising, or fixing a jet engine and you'll see how this is useful. The whole idea, again, is to build our knowledge foundation for the next phase and to show that something as simple as one recipe can give us an incredible amount of data & knowledge if we know what we're doing.

Since our recipe didn't specify what we use or how to dice our mushroom and tomato we'll need to do some research.

A quick check with google "what to use to dice a tomato" will give us a lot of information, but in short we're introduced to the all powerful KNIFE. Which knife? Well, another search might lead us to an article such as "The Best Knife for Cutting Veggies – Hint: It’s Not Just One"

The point is that we now have now defined a new datapoint for our map...

The same applies to "flipping", we can guess it's done with a cooking tool - so we fill in the gap by searching for "tool to flip an egg in a pan". Boom, a spatula.

ToAdd

The "OPPTY" Method as described in

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” ― Albert Einstein

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” ― Albert Einstein

The omelette recipe is like the blueprint for the house.

You have to prepare your cooking ingredients just like you would your building materials.

Using the right tools for the right job is important when building a house or cooking an omelet.

As mentioned:

But it is helpful to have a clear understanding of the basics of these tools before we get to creating. Don't worry, in the next section we'll be looking at a practical way to do all this learning and creating... it may sound daunting now, but trust me - it's one of the most fulfilling parts of life when you know what you're doing.

There are thousands of books on writing story, I've read many while exploring the concepts while researching my book on copywriting. While the bulk of literature on story is about story structure, there is plenty that explores how story is fundamental to what makes us human. We think, share, and love in narrative. A fact never stands on its own, we always slot it into our story or the story of those round us.

The best stories engage while teaching, and as we've discussed, are an effective way to distill information both internally and for others. However, for our purposes, stories don't need to be complex, dramatic, or other traditional story drivers... were not writing a novel, our goal is to transfer lots of information quickly while helping us to better internalize the information. We're working WITH our natural inclination to create story to help us remember.

"Your goal in every communication is to influence your target audience (change their current attitudes, belief, knowledge, and behavior). Information alone rarely changes any of these. Research confirms that well-designed stories are the most effective vehicle for exerting influence." - Kendall Haven, author of Story Proof and Story Smart

We can use story to influence others, but also influence ourselves.

More supporting evidence of the value of Storytelling as a learning and teaching mechanism

“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.” ― Albert Einstein

The quote above is a story that demonstrates a simple point, following won't lead you to somewhere new. It's short, to the point, memorable, and shows that the length of a story doesn't matter as much as having a complete thought to convey.

Back to our omelet example... how can we transform our knowledge and experience into a story?

You've gone on your journey of learning everything you need to know about creating a perfect omelet. Now you're looking to internalize that information. Truth is, you already have many times over, you just haven't pulled those stories out of your mind and presented them.

Teaching Story 1: The time you put the eggs in the bowl with their shells because the recipe didn't tell you to crack them.

Teaching Story 2: Your first attempt at cooking when you forgot to oil the pan and the egg stuck.

Teaching Story 3: When you realized that there must be a special tool dice the tomatoes and mushroom and found out you needed a dicing knife.

(Reminder, our omelet analogy assumes we know next to nothing about cooking)

Indeed the story of your learning journey is demonstrative. Your big wins, your mistakes, all are useful in crafting stories to help you internalize lessons learned. All you need to do is translate those lessons into story.

Let's take Story 1 for example, how could you translate that to a story that could be useful for teaching someone else to learn from your mistakes? (again, let's assume they know nothing about cooking at all.)

This short story doesn't just teach that you need to remove the egg shell, it’s bigger point is that many recipe's won't make every step perfectly clear. That you'll need to spend some time learning about the different ingredients unique features before you begin if you want to avoid common mistakes.

So, a good teaching story shares your experience (or an experience of someone else) and the lessons you took away from that story in an engaging way. It contains facts, but the story isn't about the facts - it's about how those facts affected the story.

Data is the information that an egg can be cracked.

Knowledge is knowing an egg should be cracked and emptied before cooking.

Understanding is understanding how the egg effects the taste of a plate.

Wisdom is deducing that there are often missing steps in a recipe to watch out for.

Wait, what's a metaphor again?

A metaphor is a figure of speech containing an implied comparison.

[Thing 1] is [thing 2]. This is the most basic way to structure a metaphor. It works as a tool to transfer information by applying the attributes of [thing 1] to [thing 2]. Our perception of those attributes 'teach' us what we need to know about the thing being described.

Metaphors also...

More examples and details on metaphors as a part of speech - Click Here.

Some useful things to remember about metaphors...

Why are metaphors a useful learning and teaching tool?

It's all about making the unfamiliar, more familiar. Turning the abstract into tangible.

In the context of internalizing information it's not that we need to go through the exercise of creating metaphors for every abstract we come across... it's, again, a measuring stick for our understanding.

The important question is: Can we come up with a metaphor (or more likely an analogy, which we'll discuss next) quickly to explain an abstract concept from our research? If not, more research likely needs to be done.

See also: metaphors as a learning tool

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

An analogy is a lot like a metaphor, but is structured differently. It doesn't directly compare two things (War is Hell), but indirectly (War is like hell). Small distinction I know, but the grammar nazi's would have my head if I didn't make the difference known.

To me an analogy is one of the most powerful teaching & learning tools, you'll notice in this course I use them regularly... I'm always searching for them internally and externally. I'm always listening for them to pop into my mind, jotting them down as they do.

They're powerful for many of the same reasons as metaphors, but with the added benefit of often 'asking for an explanation', where a metaphor's aim is to make a point without explanation.

For Example: When I say "[creating equity deals is a lot like setting up a lemonade stand](When Life Gives You Lemons... The ABC Client Method)" it opens the door for elaboration while also giving the reader a familiar concept (lemonade stand) to compare to an abstract one (equity deals).

The elaboration of the analogy is where the power of analogies live, it's the prompt to create a series of comparisons your audience can easily understand.

Beyond this analogies can also effectively communicate broad or complex concepts, also giving our writings and speech a bit more flair, and ideally more memorable...

For example, which statement is more impactful?

Yes, in learning anything we can do to make things more memorable is helpful.

Famous copywriter Nick Asbury was challenged to create an online teaching tool that explains technologies using analogies instead of straight definitions. "Not because analogies do the whole job, but because they provide an entry point and a memorable hook that IT people can use in presentations and reports."

Again, we can see the benefit to simplifying complex concepts with analogies.

How and when to create an analogy?

Sometimes a simple explanation is enough to get a point across, not everything needs to be explained with an analogy. I tend to try and select the highest level concepts within my research to morph into analogies. And sometimes a simple "is like..." sentence can help expand upon a topic you think your reader might need more context.

Simple: "Researching is like mining for gold, it's a lot of work but has rich rewards."

Analogies explaining processes. Expanding upon more complex analogies.

In my copywriting book I compare the writing process to "creating a golden ring", then working backwards through the steps in research to build upon the analogy.

Again, we can see how the initial analogy (writing is like creating a golden ring) begs for an explanation and as I give one the whole process becomes a lot clearer.

It’s also packed with lots of other bits of interpretable meaning. Eg. The reading and note taking part of the research process is a lot of work and can be difficult; similar to digging through the earth and extracting gold.

But, where did the analogy come from? Well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. I'm sure I've watched enough Discovery channel over the years to understand the basics of mining for metal, and it seemed to just 'show up' in my mind. This happens, you've experienced it.. often it will find you when you least expect it.

All I can add is "be curious" about other subjects, sometimes you'll run into processes or stories that can serve as a solid basis for an analogy. Think of things that interest you, people, movies, relationships, values, many different things can serve as a basis for an analogy... but they likely won't show themselves if you don't fully understand the subject you're studying. Can't think of an analogy for a topic? Chances are you need to research it more!

Some attributes of a good analogy.