words

Erik Tyler | October 15, 2015 | 4 Comments

Words Can Be Sentences

Today’s COMMUNICATION Post – by Erik Tyler

Grammatically speaking, a sentence may consist of a single word:

Stop.

Duck!

Sing!

I separated those into separate lines to avoid the mental image that would come of combining them. Each of these sentences contains a verb, which we see, and an “invisible” (understood) subject — the audience to whom we are talking.

You’re fascinated, I’m sure. But that isn’t what I mean to talk about here. (And aren’t you glad?)

Now consider the following:

liar

pervert

lazy

ignorant

problem

selfish

These words are also sentences. They are not grammatical sentences, but rather sentences handed down in the courtrooms of the heart. They are issued by a judge to a party presumed guilty, scarlet letters with which we intentionally — or unintentionally — brand people. Sometimes for life.

Erik Tyler | August 13, 2015 | 4 Comments

How to Remember Things PART 4: Order – Erik Tyler

This is the final installment (for now) in our “How to Remember Things” series. If you’ve been keeping up along the way, I trust I have presented a compelling case for how valuable memory is to communication.

And if you’re just joining us, welcome! You may want to take the time to review the first three posts in the series, since they provide important foundational principles regarding how to remember things using the right (in both senses of the word) side of your brain, rather than the left. Here are the fast links to those earlier posts, for your convenience:

Part 1: How to Remember Tricky Spelling

Part 2: How to Remember Names and Faces

Part 3: How to Remember Facts and Vocabulary

Today, we’re going to learn how to remember information that must remain in a particular sequence in order to be valuable. In school, this took the form of remembering the presidents or the steps to solving long division problems. As adults, this becomes useful when you need a strategy for how to remember any new process at work. Leaders will also find it useful as a way to keep meeting or presentation points flowing without having to constantly refer to your notes (or lose your place in them).

Erik Tyler | August 6, 2015 | 8 Comments

How to Remember Things PART 3: Words and Facts – Erik Tyler

Everyone would like to have a stellar memory. In PART 1 of this series, I offered strategies on how to improve memory, focusing for that post on how to remember spelling of similar or unusual words. In PART 2 last week, we dove into how to improve memory for names and faces, building on the same foundational strategies from PART 1. If you haven’t yet read those posts, I believe that doing so now may be the best 10 or 15 minutes you invest today, since they will offer a framework for today’s tips.

In this post, I want to visually show you how to improve memory for words and facts. But before we do, I want to remind us all why memory is important to communication. Thursdays here are, after all, “Communication” days.

In my very first official post here, we explored exactly what communication is – a form of mind reading. Written and spoken words exist to allow us a means of transferring images and sensory information between minds. That is, I experience or think something that is clear to me; and language allows me to convey my experience to you.

An effective communicator must continually be adding tools in order to make sure that our message is sculpted like the David, and not merely passed off like a hunk of clay. In addition, those same tools allow us to be able to receive the mental masterpieces being put on display by other fine-tuned minds, through being able to fully envision what we see and hear. The tools we must continually be adding are new vocabulary, phrases, figurative expressions and world knowledge of facts among many others. The thing is, not everyone remembers things easily, so adding to your arsenal is slow going, a chore at best. [Read more…] about How to Remember Things PART 3: Words and Facts – Erik Tyler