What to do when making an impact hinges on our ability to make large numbers tangible …
Some things are easier said than done. But I’m here to help. Ask me anything about the art of communicating and I will answer it in one of the upcoming episodes. Head over to https://michaelgerharz.com/qa
Transcripts
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Each year, more than 8 million children die due to poverty.
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That's a huge number.
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But how large is it, really?
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The human mind has no easy way to see that number.
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For our brain, it doesn't make much difference whether it's 8
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million or, let's say, 80,000.
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Both is basically a lot.
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Things change when we translate the numbers into dimensions we can
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relate to from our everyday life.
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8 million per year means that every four seconds a child dies due to poverty.
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Basically, during the time it takes you to listen to this sentence,
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a child has died due to poverty.
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Four seconds is an easy to grasp value.
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Four seconds is easy to experience.
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It has a clear meaning in our everyday life and therefore it
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makes the abstract specific.
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It's still the same information, but it's much more tangible.
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Even more so when you amplify it and support it with,
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say a finger snap, like so.
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Every time I snap, a child dies due to poverty.
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It's hard to see 8 million children.
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But it's easy to imagine one, which is precisely what most of us
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do when we hear that finger snap.
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With each finger snap we see a child.
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Translating difficult numbers into values that make sense in our everyday life also
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makes it a lot easier for our audiences to understand what the numbers mean.
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It makes it a lot easier to relate to the info we're trying to convey.
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And that allows us to make a bigger impact with what we have to say.
