The Triforce of Content Creation

Heidi-ho, excavators!

I can’t believe that it’s been a month since starting this newsletter!

We begin June with the final part of this 3-part series!

1. Defining discipline

2. The Venn diagram of self-mastery

3. The three ways to connect everything for your audience

That’s right, my friends! Today, we’ll dive into part 3…the three ways that I enjoy writing to convey my ideas and thoughts:

Analogies

Storytelling

Mixed-media

Let’s get to it!

Universal Relatability

The first one is my favorite way of conveying my ideas…and I’ve been doing this for years!

I didn’t really start practicing until in high school. It takes time and exposure to get going with this approach because it requires accumulation of experience and knowledge.

Here’s the official definition below:

The key word that sticks out the most is…resemblance.

Analogies are powerful because they can be used to communicate more effectively using this very concept!

However, that is also its limitation so caution has to be exercised when refining an analogy.

This is why they break down if you stray too far beyond the overlap that resemblance covers.

3 advantages to using analogies

1. Enables deeper understanding of abstract concepts

2. Increases relatability with the reader

3. Facilitates memory retention

I. Analogies are a powerful approach for teaching anything.

In fact, they are essential to connecting new concepts for beginners to something that is familiar…preferably something universal that everyone can relate to easily.

For example, I often use traffic systems to describe the basics in electrical engineering and circuit theory.

Cars are electrons.

Streets are electrical wires.

The point of origin for the car is the source of the electrons, and the destination is the sink or the load.

Even though the physical phenomenon isn’t actually that electrons travel like this, it’s a system that roughly approximates an electrical circuit.

II. Analogies are great for:

• getting people comfortable with foreign concepts

• pointing out something funny

• making an impact

because it also enables developing a deeper rapport with the audience.

By showing the audience that you are also knowledgeable in the mundane aspects of life that everyone goes through (like traffic and commuting) it creates a connection with them.

Analogies make you relatable to your audience in ways that few other forms of communication can.

Another example for electrical circuits is using plumbing to describe a system.

Specifically a toilet.

A voltage source is very much like a reservoir that the city uses for its water system.

The toilet is the load.

Every time you flush the toilet, the water is returned back to the system and eventually makes its way back to the reservoir.

Clean water is provided by the system to refill the toilet.

If you’ve ever played video games where this system needs to be specifically managed, then you know exactly how important this can be for survival!

Which brings us to the last point…

III. Memory Retention

Even if you can’t remember exactly how an electrical circuit works from the source to the load or whether the electrons move or not, you can definitely use traffic patterns and plumbing to describe the general concept.

Review and practice in refining the ideas and concepts gradually helps to fill in the blanks as you learn more.

In fact, the plumbing analogy is the most common one used to teach introductory courses in electrical engineering today!

There are many ways to cultivate thinking in analogies, but the most effective thing to do is to learn widely and read widely.

I’ll be developing an entire framework course to share exercises and techniques that have worked for me in this area!

While analogies are a great way to communicate, nothing beats the ultimate method that is as old as humanity…

Once Upon a Time

Storytelling is the most powerful method of communication there is.

This area alone takes a lifetime to master!

The earlier you start telling stories, the better you get at them.

There are courses upon courses and creators upon creators who devote their entire livelihood to honing the craft of storytelling.

It’s an artform that goes back to the beginning of humanity and transcends even writing.

Before writing was developed, storytelling was the only method to pass knowledge from one generation to the next.

Cave drawings were used to tell of successful hunts, harvests, and hardships.

Today, storytelling is used to entertain and educate and is one of the most powerful and lucrative industries in the world.

Every artform can be used to tell a story.

• visual arts

• live theater

• classical music

• creative writing

• interpretive dance

If writing is the foundation of all media, storytelling is the structure in which all media exists.

I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t my strong suit…

However, I’ll be writing more about how to develop your own stories as I improve as well!

This is the second course that I will develop as I continue writing here for you!

We’ve covered analogies and storytelling…

Now, let’s talk about how to keep things interesting in your journey…

And Now For Something Totally Different

Writing is immensely satisfying, but it’s not the only way to express yourself.

In fact, I rather enjoy using the other artistic methods to do so as well.

• dance

• streaming

• original artwork

• long-form video

• short-form video

• AI-generated visuals

• different writing formats

Combining different types of media complements and enhances the message.

Everyone has their favorite method to share their thoughts and opinions.

However, the internet has made much easier to be versatile in sharing ideas across multiple social media platforms.

Mastering one platform before distributing to others is the conventional wisdom…

However, this may change in the near future as the barriers to entry and content creation continue to fall.

• Instagram

• Facebook

• YouTube

• Tik Tok

• Twitter

These are the more common platforms that are currently dominating the social media landscape.

Becoming familiar with how they work as well as how the algorithm in each one functions will become more relevant over time.

For me, Twitter and YouTube are the ideal platforms to currently build on.

I’ll be writing separate courses on how I create mixed media content as my own system develops.

The Takeaway

Here’s this week’s actionable exercise for you:

Go through each of these areas:

1. Analogies

2. Storytelling

3. Mixed Media

• Write out an example of each

• Share at least one of these with someone you trust

• Reflect and write down a few more as you go throughout the week.

There’s a pattern that I’m encouraging you to start finding…

This is the second exercise in self-mastery.

Since the grand plan is to develop each of these areas into separate projects that will help you enhance your skills in them, it’d be a disservice to only include little worksheets…

We’ll dig more into each separately in the future, but the core message still holds:

A Knowledge Theorist sees connections among the unrelated…

Do you smell something burning?

GAAH!! My pastry puffs! I gotta go now!

As always, thanks for reading to the end!

Next week, I’m going to start exploring a different region of the mines…I haven’t decided where to dig yet, but I’m excited about where I’m exploring.

…my poor puffs…

Vince

P.S. I kinda front-loaded the references this time…

P.P.S. Not sure how this is going, but I sincerely hope you’re enjoying these!