Matt Abrahams

Often in educating, you're layering, you're scaffolding, and that leads to a linear approach.

That said, the more spurious approach, the approach that has lots of different avenues, can be much more engaging and can also be successful.

And it really doesn't have to be either or.

I think you can have a high-level linear view that you're taking your audience on that journey, but at different points, you can branch off and share some interesting information.

You know, I see being a good speaker as like being a good tour guide.

And I actually was a tour guide at one point in my life.

A good tour guide does a really nice job of setting expectations of where you're going.

Most people won't go on a tour if they don't know where they're going.

If I showed up and said, I'm your tour guide, let's go.

You might say, I don't know where we're going.

But if I say, hey, we're going to do this and this and we're not going to do that, then you can relax and feel comfortable and come with me.

And I let you know at each point where we're moving to the next place.

But along the way, we can meander, we can wander, we can go check out some things and come back.

So as long as people have directionality and everything fits as a larger narrative, I think you can play with either of these.

But when it comes to strict education, I think we've got good evidence that a linear approach that scaffolds is really what's most helpful.

I think adopting that mindset that, hey, taking you through my material, I'm like a tour guide.

How would a tour guide explain this?

They would introduce at the beginning, set expectations.

They'd make sure that you understand why we're moving from one place to the next.

And when you're done, they really want you to take something away of value.