BBC journalist Ros Atkins’ official title is news analysis editor, but he is more colloquially known as the broadcaster’s “master explainer”. The host of the viral videos “Ros Atkins on … “, Atkins’ knack for breaking down often complex issues has earned him a global following. In his new book The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence, Atkins shares how to identify the elements you need to explain things and the steps to take to deliver the information with clarity. In this edited extract, Atkins suggests techniques for retaining the details you need at your fingertips.
A few years back, I was sitting in the living room of the elder of my two sisters. We both had young kids and there were toys and other child-related paraphernalia all over the place. We sat among all of this having a cup of tea and trying to catch up. One toy caught my eye. It had four buttons: red, blue, green and yellow. I recognised it straightaway. It was the memory game Simon. If you’ve not had the pleasure, when you start, one of the buttons flashes, you press it. Then the same button flashes, followed by another. You then have to press both in the correct order. The machine then flashes three times, again you repeat the order. On it goes. That’s it. That’s the game. The challenge is to see how many consecutive flashes you can remember.
During that visit to my sister I became very taken with this. At first I found it hard. Maybe getting to 10 flashes and then stalling. Then I noticed that as my brain grappled with the task it was beginning to automatically group the flashes. I’d remember “green yellow yellow green” as a block and then “red blue yellow yellow green” as a block. I couldn’t always quite work out the reasons why my brain would favour ending a block at a certain point, but I didn’t worry about that too much. The blocks were making it far easier to remember the entire sequence. So long as I remembered that a block existed, I never forgot the colours within it.
At this point, I’m not sure I was contributing quite as much to the conversation as I might have been. I put the toy down and turned my attention back to my sister and the kids. But it had got me thinking.
After I left, I looked up “Simon” in the app store of my phone and, sure enough, there it was. One download later and my efforts to set a new record continued. The better I got, the more I noticed something else was happening. I was already thinking of the blocks as single entities rather than as a run of five colours (or however many were in it). Now I was starting to remember blocks of blocks. I was also creating associations with each individual block (“double green” “yellow sandwich” or whatever silly name came to mind) and then I was remembering them all together as a single entity – “double green”, “yellow sandwich” and “run of blue” would become the “First Block”. So long as I remembered there was a First Block, the order of individual blocks within that came quite easily and the colours within each one always came. I was intrigued to know what was going on here. I was able to bank a lot of the hardest memory tasks so I could concentrate on remembering the newest colours as the machine served them up.
Taming the info
Not long after I rediscovered Simon, I was asked to go and cover the Greek debt crisis in 2015. The trip posed quite a challenge. This was a sprawling, complicated and rapidly shifting story. It was also the lead story for much of the 10 days or so that I was there. That meant going on air a lot. As I mentioned earlier, there’s too much going on to find out what you’re going to be asked in all the different live reports.
It was also the first time I’d done this kind of reporting and presenting on a big story for TV. I’d done it many times for radio, but radio has one big advantage – you don’t need to look at the listener as you explain the story. If you feel the need, you can have a computer or a piece of paper in front of you with all the information and themes you would like to share. On TV, there’s no such option. It’s fine to look down occasionally if you want to check a fact or a quote, but most of the time you need to be looking “down the barrel”, as we say. In other words, the vast majority of what you say will be off the top of your head. As I wrestled with the latest policy shifts of the European Central Bank this was not without its challenges.
Doing my best to escape the unremitting Athens sun, I started experimenting with ways of not just taming all the information I needed to reference, but also being able to recall it at very short notice. I thought about how my brain was helping me play Simon. Despite [sports performance expert] Professor Mark Williams using the phrase “chunk” in Matthew Syed’s book [Bounce, about sporting success and performance], it wasn’t something I was familiar with. But what I was doing when playing Simon was, it turned out, chunking. I was clustering information into one chunk and then remembering that chunk as one entity rather than all of the elements within it. I started to try similar tactics with what I wanted to say about the situation in Greece. To my excitement it worked. It made navigating those 10 days or so in Athens much easier.
For me, when memorising goes well, it’s almost as if I can see the information as shapes.
On getting home, I immediately wanted to know more about how memory techniques could help me. I especially wanted to explore how better to access different chunks at different times and how to take decisions about ordering them. Because there is a difference between playing Simon and what I needed to do in Athens. With Simon, the order stays the same; with dynamic explanation it doesn’t. My situation wasn’t only about linear memory; it was also about what I call access and rapid ordering. To explain yourself with clarity in dynamic scenarios, you need to be able to access chunks of pre-prepared information very easily and then order them according to what you’ve been asked.
As I’ve realised in the years since, this is something that is helpful well beyond standing in front of a TV camera in the midday sun. Being able to access and organise interconnected information by memory is invaluable. I use this in a lot of day-to-day exchanges, such as work meetings or a conversation with my kids’ teachers or briefing a tradesperson, as well as for public speaking, Q&As, more formal meetings or making a pitch. You’ll be able to think of situations in your life where you need to have information organised and ready to go – but can’t have it written down in front of you.
If you can do this, it can give you a significant edge. It allows you to be fluent and precise with a range of detailed information – despite being in a dynamic environment.
For me, when memorising goes well, it’s almost as if I can see the information as shapes. It becomes like an array of kids’ building blocks that can be picked up and arranged in whatever order is required. I still need to decide what I want to make with them but the blocks themselves are there and they’re ready to use. In the years since Athens, I’ve worked hard to hone how I do this. This is where I’ve got to.
Chunking techniques
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to using memory to help you communicate. Just as with explanation more broadly, which technique you choose will need to match the situation you’re facing. But for me, chunking is at the heart of all the ways that I use memory techniques.
At its simplest, chunking involves identifying a collection of information, learning its order and then labelling it as a single thing in your mind. The next level of chunking is to order the chunks themselves and then remember that as a single entity. This is essentially what I was doing without realising it when I was playing Simon.
Level one: single strands from memory This level and the next are for the quickest of meetings or conversations where you just need to make sure you get certain things across.
We need to start testing how well the strands roll off your tongue without the help of your notes. Sometimes, turning the notes over can be the equivalent of a child moving from a balance bike to a pedal bike – they often ride first time. You may find you can deliver each strand just as easily without the notes without any extra effort.
The overall number of facts, points, pieces of context and questions that you want to include will vary. Whatever the case may be you don’t want more than four or five elements per chunk. You’ll struggle to remember them if you go for more.
Let’s imagine your strands look like this:
A good starting point is not to talk them through as you would to someone. Instead, just recite the elements like a list. Take each in turn and see if you can punch out the information that you’ve learnt. If you can, do the same but this time linking them together in normal speech.
Level two: two strands from memory This time, pick two strands that complement each other, check your notes if you need to, then put them to one side and talk through one strand and into the other. If it goes well, see if you can do it in the reverse order. This second part is really important. We’re not just learning to repeat each individual strand – we’re also learning how they fit together.
Keep selecting pairs. Be quite exacting in your standards. If you feel yourself waffling as you work through the information, go at it again. You’ll notice that the extraneous words you were adding start to disappear. The efficiency with which you move through the information will improve. What at first felt awkward can feel comfortable and clear.
When you feel ready, write the names of the strands on to pieces of paper and select two at random from the pile. Just as before, see if you can run through one and transition to the other.
Level three: multiple strands from memory
This is for lengthier meetings, interviews and conversations of all kinds.
If you have fewer than five strands (or chunks if you prefer to call them that), decide on an order and try talking it through from start to finish.
Don’t fixate on the order. You may have no choice but to discuss this another way around.
Next, talk through the five strands again, each time picking a different starting point. See how well you can work your way back on to your preferred order from wherever you start.
All being well, you’ll start connecting the strands together with real confidence. We want everything you’re doing – talking through the strands, moving between them, switching the order of them – to feel familiar.
This approach can also be used if you have far more than five chunks.
This is what I use in much of my reporting. It works in any dynamic scenario where you’re going to need to access a decent amount of complex and varied information. This could be a job or university interview, a board meeting, a vital staff meeting, a Q&A at a conference or a meeting with a major client.
For me, when memorising goes well, it’s almost as if I can see the information as shapes.
Divide & conquer
In these situations, the amount of information you’re handling is sizeable so there are a couple of extra considerations. First, you’ll have more chunks – maybe between 10 and 20. Stay disciplined on not overloading each chunk. You won’t remember all the elements if you do. Better to split a strand and create two separate chunks that have their own labels.
Second, think about how all these chunks cluster together in answer to different questions. On one subject, you may want to use two or three, on another perhaps three or four others. If you want to practise, write out some of the questions that you’re expecting. Pick them out at random and see how the ordering of the chunks that you’ve planned feels as you say them out loud.
You can’t be rigid about this ordering because every question may require a different start, middle and end to your answer. But having familiar ordering patterns is very useful. When you see a certain question, you’ll think, “Ah great, I’ll do this followed by this followed by this.”
In those situations, by the time you go to speak, your work is already done.
As I’m writing this, I can think of European Union summits in Brussels where I’d done so many of these drills that as a question was coming my way, it was as if I was placing the chunks on a conveyor belt. When it came for me to answer, I could see both what I was about to say and what was coming next, and chunk by chunk my answer would play out naturally. This part of the process is hard, though. As you experiment with different practice questions, you’ll be working out new orders, too. If it doesn’t come out as you hope, that’s completely normal – it rarely does first time. But bit by bit you’ll settle on orders that work and that you can deliver.
The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence, by Ros Atkins (Hachette, $27.99), is on sale now.