Our brains remember some things better. Explaining that way makes it stick.

Here are the eight things, most important first, that help you:

Structure explanations memorably:

  1. Face. You remember faces before facts. So cast characters: “Imagine you’re a courier carrying a packet.” Prefer archetypes to real names — less baggage, more imagination.
  2. Place. You’re reading down a list now — and the top feels more important. That’s spatial wiring. Turn any concept into a map. Use higher, deeper, nearer, inside, …
  3. Tale. You read #1 and #2 first because they came first. Your brain built a cause from that sequence. Time creates cause for free. “Because” makes anything believable.
  4. Scale. “Two feet tall” lands instantly. “60 cm” forces you to convert. Your brain doesn’t measure — it compares. Give it reference objects, not just numbers.

Deliver explanations memorably:

  1. Touch. Face. Place. Tale. Scale. Each is a thing you can “grasp” or “hold” in your head. We learn literally by grasping. Make abstractions touchable.
  2. Feel. Everyone ignores you because you forget these eight. Did that sting? That’s loss framing. Fear, surprise, and reward are memorable.
  3. Chunk. There are 8 items here - already past our ~4 chunk working memory limit. We’ve chunked them into two logical sets of four.
  4. Beat. Face, Place, Tale, Scale. Touch, Feel, Chunk, Beat. Two groups of four. Say them aloud — the rhythm is already doing the remembering for you.

PS: The Claude conversation that lead to this post is my favorite prompting example.

  1. The first prompt asked the question “Our brains are wired to understand some things well…”
    • … and for multiple options “Create a comprehensive list…”
    • … fact-checked “… based on research evidence”
    • … with expert framing: “But I’m a novice - what would an expert check that beginners would miss? Think about that, ask, and answer those too.”
  2. The second prompt uses LLM review. “I asked Gemini to review your work. What does proven science agree with and disagree with on Gemini’s response?”
    • … with expert framing: “focusing on patterns that an expert in this field recognize that beginners would miss”
  3. The remaining prompts asksfor a rewrite: “Here’s my shorter version. Rewrite it with the same succinctness”, but with meta-cognition:
    • “but applying the same 8 principles of cognitive anchoring to this text itself!”
    • “rename them to rhyme better”
    • “Re-apply the principles and suggest an improved version.

I also converted this into a SKILL.md