Explain Like I’m Five is simple: People ask questions, and people address them in simple terms, like they’re responding to a five-year-old. It’s wonderful.
If you want to teach somebody something, it’s helpful to put it in terms they’re comfortable with.
But it’s hard to take the perspective of someone who doesn’t know things that you’ve known for a long time. As you learn and layer knowledge on top of other knowledge, you take the lower-level stuff for granted.
Considering how you’d explain a thing to a five-year-old is a simple, brilliant shortcut to this kind of thinking. It doesn’t make the explaining easy, but it helps with focus. You center on what’s important and how to get it across in simple terms. You question your assumptions and your jargon.
