The need for speed

I’m standing there watching the process unfold in the lab.

Little data points popping up rapidly on the screen. Proof that the test is running as expected. I look at my colleague who has spent decades developing the systems and processes to single-handedly run more tests at a time than I ever thought possible.

He retires at the end of the month.

We’ve got a few weeks to start learning what he intuitively knows.

If you’ve ever been put in a position where you are next in line to do something that someone else will leave in your care, then you know just-in-time learning requires more than rote memorization. Teaching yourself on the spot and explaining something in your own words is an invaluable skill.

This is where analogies shine as educational vehicles.

The tethering tactic

We touched on this before, but this is one of the most effective ways to kickstart someone’s education. Everything is connected on some level, and the processes are more similar than you first realize. Some of the most amazing scientific discoveries turn out to be intuitively obvious, but until the underlying ideas are proven to be repeatable, they’re hard to grasp.

“This is like…” method

Connecting the unknown to the known is the conduit that goes a long way towards illuminating something completely foreign or unfamiliar to the uninitiated. Take for instance one of my favorite connections to use when teaching about passive electrical components.

You’ve probably heard of resistors, inductors, and capacitors. Billions of these compose the device you’re using to read this issue. They’re like dams, circular straws, and water towers, respectively. It’s an oversimplified analogy as electrons don’t actually “flow” to any significant extent, but the energy transferred certainly does.

See how the tethering approach works?

Resistors are things that impede the flow of current similar to how dams impede the flow of water. When you suck up water into a circular straw, there’s a lot more water that can be stored in them than a regular one. Inductors use magnetism to store current in a similar structure. Water towers store large amounts of water to be released when it’s needed for distribution. Capacitors do the same with electrical energy.

I took three concrete things that everyone has seen and connected their processes to the functions of three things that most people aren’t aware of.

This is just one process in one of the categories that everyone is familiar with…

Three powerful processes everyone can relate to

1. Natural processes: biology, physics, chemistry

2. Machines and mechanical systems

3. Human behavior and human nature

The electrical components that I presented can be described using any number of other examples in many categories. The more I know about the person that I’m introducing these concepts to, the easier it is to communicate it to them in a way that they can easily understand. I used machines or mechanical systems for these components just now, but here are examples in the other two categories:

Natural processes

• Resistors are like the throat. They prevent food from going down the wrong tube by closing up if there’s too much of it coming.

• Capacitors are like lungs that take in and release air or the stomach to take in and release food.

• Inductors are like the intestines for storing unprocessed food.

Human behavior

• Resistors are like the response you get when someone tries to get you to do something you don’t want to do.

• Capacitors are like your willingness to put up with a situation for a certain period of time before you are “fed up” with it.

• Inductors are like the tension you build up when you’re making a choice among all the options you’re looking at on a menu. You accumulate more and more possible candidates in your head until you cave in and get your usual…

How about one more example that you may or may not be familiar with but see everywhere these days?

Blockchain is the underlying technology behind cryptocurrency. The concept itself is rather straightforward in that it’s like a shared public notebook or a visitor’s log. Once you put your notes or your name down, though, it’s permanent. There’s no changing what you wrote down, and everyone else can see it and verify when and what was entered. Your handwriting is familiar only to you so while they can all see the entry, they won’t know that it’s you that wrote it.

Practice makes permanent

It takes time to get into the habit of thinking laterally across all the things that you know, but it’s a powerful way to break down the silos in your thinking.

You’d be surprised how much you can truly grasp once you start opening yourself up to the possibilities of learning new things using familiar concepts. Education isn’t something that stops once you leave school.

It only stops when you choose not to take in new information. The more you learn, the faster you can learn if you use analogies to expand the horizon of your mind.

Try it yourself:

Pick one topic you know and create three analogies, one from each process above.

Pick one topic you want to learn more about and tether at least one of these to them.

Not only is this a great way to accelerate your edification, it’s also a powerful way to persuade others of your opinions and ideas. We’ll discuss that in the next issue.