[HN Gopher] Repeat Yourself, a Lot
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Repeat Yourself, a Lot
Author : kiyanwang
Score : 129 points
Date : 2021-10-31 17:43 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tomtunguz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tomtunguz.com)
| [deleted]
| ncmncm wrote:
| Repetition is needed more for cementing falsehoods than truths.
| Thus, we encounter falsehoods repeated overwhelmingly more often
| than truths. Falsehoods get more backing, so win remarkably
| often.
|
| Corollary is that much of what you have been told, and have come
| to believe implicitly, is false. It is your inborn responsibility
| as a human to discover which are falsehoods, and root out
| behaviors based on them. The project has barely begun.
| mro_name wrote:
| humans are herd-creatures after all. They take repetition for
| relevance.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| Repeat Yourself, a Lot
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Even low-level management is a lot better at repeating themselves
| than I am. They make sure everybody knows something changes even
| if they have to go explain it ten times. They say it in every
| meeting so that when developers are designing things, we say
| "$MANAGER is going to want us to do X". I tend to just write my
| canonical version of something and say it once, expecting people
| to take notes to remember like I would do.
| redisman wrote:
| I ignore any ideas management has if they only mention it once.
| Twice or more and I might start considering that they're serious
| JazzXP wrote:
| At a previous job I did this too. Ignore for a week, if it
| comes up again, then somebody actually cares about it and it's
| not an off the cuff comment.
|
| Current job, no so much, it's really dependent on the culture
| of the workplace.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I've worked with a lot of execs or managers who seem surprised
| that after they say something, one time, in a meeting, it didn't
| register with the team.
|
| People some time don't pay attention. Or they do, but they
| forget. They have habits in their actions and way of thinking.
|
| So I agree. You have to repeat yourself.
| 08-15 wrote:
| It might be because managers talk all the time while saying
| nothing. So nobody really listens anymore. It was certainly
| true in most meetings I experienced.
| gjkood wrote:
| "Tell 'Em What You're Going To Tell 'Em; Next, Tell 'Em; Next,
| Tell 'Em What You Told 'Em" - attributed to lots of people all
| the way back to Aristotle. [1]
|
| I know this is not the same thing as the linked article but I
| just love this fundamental guidance to public speaking.
|
| 1. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/08/15/tell-em/
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Maybe off topic, but I take a lot of online courses
| (Pluralsight being the majority) and I find that this standard
| approach of "intro", "content", "summary" doesn't add much for
| me.
|
| It might just be a personal thing but it's never felt useful
| and just serves to lower the signal to noise ratio. I always
| skip the intro and summary sections. I find the same with blog
| posts that religiously follow this structure.
|
| Just tell me the _actual_ information!
|
| It could be a very subjective thing. I have a short attention
| span and will generally crank up the speed of these video
| courses too. I just want to quickly and efficiently extract the
| raw value without the fluff.
|
| I don't find it helps comprehension and retention. (For me, the
| only thing that does is immediately putting into practice what
| you learn).
| throwawaygh wrote:
| The "intro / content / summary" structure is primarily useful
| in situations where:
|
| 1. The content is extensive, or
|
| 2. The information is being presented in real time without
| the opportunity for review.
|
| Courses often use this structure because the _primary_
| audience are the students in the classroom, which fits
| criterion 2.
|
| Written content roughly the length of a book chapter often
| follows this structure because they fit criterion 1. There's
| enough content that the intro and summary contribute non-
| trivial insights.
|
| Short blog posts on trivial ideas use this format because of
| either SEO or cargo culting, I assume.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Yes, very good insights.
|
| Online learning content seems to unnecessarily and blindly
| follow this structure even when a lot of the time neither 1
| or 2 apply. Perhaps because face-to-face courses would
| traditionally do the same.
|
| The ability to rewind, slow down, rewatch etc. for online
| content removes a lot of the need for extensive intros and
| summaries. But there are certain scenarios where it's still
| a valid structure.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
|
| classic
| shoto_io wrote:
| Could you elaborate why that's relevant?
| eska wrote:
| I suppose due to paragraphs like this:
|
| > When selling a company, a product, or an idea to customers,
| employees, investors, candidates, repeating a consistent
| message several times embosses the message upon the
| individual's memory. It establishes clarity: Redpoint is a
| leading venture capital firm.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| From the wikipedia article:
|
| > In a 2015 study, researchers discovered that familiarity
| can overpower rationality and that repetitively hearing that
| a certain fact is wrong can affect the hearer's beliefs.[4]
| Researchers attributed the illusory truth effect's impact on
| participants who knew the correct answer to begin with, but
| were persuaded to believe otherwise through the repetition of
| a falsehood, to "processing fluency".
|
| > The illusory truth effect plays a significant role in such
| fields as election campaigns, advertising, news media, and
| political propaganda.
|
| From the article:
|
| > When selling a company, a product, or an idea to customers,
| employees, investors, candidates, repeating a consistent
| message several times embosses the message upon the
| individual's memory. It establishes clarity: Redpoint is a
| leading venture capital firm.
|
| It's not that hard, seriously. This is a staple of propaganda
| repackaged into low quality blogspam.
|
| Let's take `Redpoint is a leading venture capital firm.`.
| What does that even mean? Leading what? In what? It's a
| pointless meaningless phrase. But if you hear it often enough
| it becomes 'truth' in whatever the context you're in at that
| point.
|
| Basically one of the major ways in which we manufacture,
| package and sell bullshit.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Thanks for elaborating.
|
| I agree with your overall premise. Then again it seems like
| that this is one way people can become successful. There is
| value in knowing.
|
| PS: What if the method is applied to something, which has
| some real substance? And not on something pointless like
| the phrase you cited.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > PS: What if the method is applied to something, which
| has some real substance? And not on something pointless
| like the phrase you cited.
|
| The word 'propaganda' has a negative connotation. But
| there is 'good' propaganda, or propaganda which is done
| for a good or valuable cause. A recent example would be
| pro-vaccine propaganda.
| kqr wrote:
| This was one of the major practical lessons I got out of
| _Thinking, Fast and Slow_. Before reading that book I would try
| to get people to change by powerful logcal argument. I would get
| frustrated when people didn 't immediately realise the potential
| I was explaining.
|
| Having read that book, I've realised people need to hear
| something many times before their system 1 will even consider
| thinking of it as true. So these days, I have much more patience
| and I deliberately employ repetition strategies -- sometimes with
| powerful logical arguments, but sometimes without, too. It's
| about as effective either way, in my experience.
|
| Saying "we need to also consider a solution that doesn't use
| Oracle" in different contexts and with different reasons attached
| over a few weeks time somehow mysteriously gets people to think
| that maybe we should at least _consider_ a solution that doesn 't
| use Oracle.
| fragmede wrote:
| _Mysteriously_? People talk to each other and it gets around
| that hey, we 'd better not use Oracle, kqr really hates them.
| Depending on your status in an org, that's enough to move
| mountains, or get you ejected (professionally and quietly).
| Oracle's an easy one to hate because programmers have issues
| about money, but other opinions require more _depth_ before
| things can actually change. Eg hey let 's switch programming
| languages!
| [deleted]
| thatsamonad wrote:
| A somewhat related approach that I've found incredibly useful in
| my career is repeating what -others- have told you back to them,
| a lot.
|
| It's honestly amazing to me how much mileage I've gotten out of
| simply saying, "I heard you say X about Y. Does that sound right
| to you?" a couple of times during discussions just to make sure
| that everyone is clear that we're all discussing the same thing.
|
| It seems like "common sense" to clarify your understanding of
| someone else's communication but I haven't run into very many
| people who actually take the time to do it.
| yurlungur wrote:
| Also it's not that rare that the other party forgets what their
| original stance on something is and in turn argue against you
| on that issue. Reminding them that hey this was your idea too
| can help you resolve that debate if it's unnecessary.
| whatshisface wrote:
| How could you possibly distinguish that from your own
| misunderstanding of their position?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| By repeating it early (soon after being said) and often.
| afarrell wrote:
| This is a part of a type of inquiry called Clean Language
| Questions and it is indeed useful.
| SilasX wrote:
| Similarly, if you missed a part of what someone said, repeat
| back everything you did hear as part of the question. It
| confirms you were listening and avoids an excessively long or
| rephrased answered.
|
| For example, "We reviewed <garbled> and found the events hadn't
| been logged." -> "You reviewed what and found the events hadn't
| been logged?"
| SamPatt wrote:
| 100% agree.
|
| This is not only useful for improving communication but for
| making other parties satisfied they are being heard.
|
| I do this too and it gives people an opportunity to clarify
| their views, which everyone appreciates, and often leads to
| them explaining broader motivations which helps develop trust.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Repeating what others said back to them is called "mirroring"
| and is an effective technique for not only confirming your
| understanding but also showing others that you are actively
| listening.
|
| I recommend reading " Never Split the Difference: Negotiating
| As If Your Life Depended On It" by Chris Voss if you are
| interested in conversation tactics.
| bartvk wrote:
| I found that book by Chris Voss only interesting because of
| his stories as a hostage negotiator. But I wasn't able to put
| any of his advice into practice, not anything whatsoever. Am
| I overlooking something?
| bulbosaur123 wrote:
| "Am I overlooking something?" Oh, how clever. Using the
| "no" oriented questions already. I see what you are doing.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Things just got _meta_.
| contingencies wrote:
| _All possible successor states of any state._ - Leslie
| Lamport, via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
| splitstud wrote:
| In the context of a project, it also gives the 'mirrored' a
| chance to reconsider.
| kqr wrote:
| Mirroring is different from what your parent comment talks
| about. Mirroring is simply about repeating, verbatim, the
| last part of what someone said. So as a response to your
| comment it might be something like "Conversation tactics."
|
| Your parent comment seems to be talking more about
| summarising someone else's point in your own words, which is
| a deeper reflection on what someone means, and an even
| stronger signal that you're actively listening. (That summary
| is what gets you a "that's right" in the terminology of Voss.
| Mirroring is used to get your counterparty to expand on what
| they're saying, not just go "that's right.")
| scns wrote:
| Robert Bolton dedicates three chapters to this technique in
| People Skills (1979), highly recommended.
| mattzito wrote:
| As someone who believes in this approach, this article doesn't
| give the right advice or level of detail about how you do this
| right as part of a management team. You can't just repeat "year
| of the hound" over and over again and expect the team to rally
| around it. You have to build a narrative, a story, get everyone
| to understand it, and then continue to bring people's work back
| to align against that.
|
| So you start by identifying a problem or goal (or a few), and
| write it down, and walk everyone through why that's important.
| Then you talk to everyone about what they're working on - does
| that work ladder up to that problem or goal? How? Then on a
| regular basis, you talk about how the team is progressing against
| those problems/goals. Send out emails celebrating wins and
| specifically explain why they are important to those goals. Then
| if you hit a goal, you have a party, and you genuinely thank
| everyone involved in hitting that goal, and recognize them (even
| if it's everyone).
|
| And by the same token, if people want to get distracted, you
| bring it back to those core goals - "hey, it sounds great that
| we've got this cool opportunity to expand into eastern europe if
| we internationalize the product, but how does that get us closer
| to our goal of getting 50% of our current enterprise customers
| fully rolled out with all critical feature requests addressed?"
|
| You have to be able to tell a story, build a narrative, take
| criticism and debate, organically bring people's work back to the
| story, and so on. It's not EASY, but it's incredibly powerful
| when done well (and I am not saying I am great at this, I've seen
| people who do it beautifully, but I do it better than many people
| I have worked for).
| harshreality wrote:
| Many teachers (of various things, not just academics) say the
| same thing.
|
| It makes a lot of sense. Almost everyone here will know about
| spaced repetition and SuperMemo, but even improperly spaced
| repetition (rapid repetition during a speech or lesson) is almost
| certainly better than no repetition.
|
| Are there any studies that badly spaced repetition can be neutral
| or negatively affect recall?
| kqr wrote:
| No. More repetition is always better. Proper spacing comes in
| only when you want to maximise retention with a fixed amount of
| repetition. (Source: Hoffman, Ward, Feltovich, et al. 2013.
| Recommended read if you're into that sort of stuff!)
| acidbaseextract wrote:
| > Hoffman, Ward, Feltovich, et al. 2013
|
| For those who wondered: _Accelerated Expertise: Training for
| High Proficiency in a Complex World_
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17399473-accelerated-
| exp...
| dgarrett wrote:
| > (Source: Hoffman, Ward, Feltovich, et al. 2013. Recommended
| read if you're into that sort of stuff!)
|
| I'm very curious. How did you come across this book? It seems
| very niche.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I get what supposed to be happening
|
| but, please don't keep repeating yourself in meetings it's
| annoying
| drewcoo wrote:
| If it's annoying, it's working.
|
| To make it less annoying, signal that you have the message by
| voicing the same memes. Once it's obvious that enough people
| get it, those people can start repeating something else
| instead.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| i understand that, but once certain pepele are talking there
| is no way they're being interrupted
|
| also, some people just keeping repeating stuff in slightly
| different ways
|
| I suspect sometimes this is not planned but they're thinking
| out loud
| alexashka wrote:
| You know what's better than fortune cookie advice? Providing the
| context for when that advice is applicable.
|
| These types of blogs (and fortune cookie thinkers in general)
| routinely do 'you have to have laser focus', followed by 'don't
| put all of your eggs in one basket' without any hint of irony or
| self awareness.
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