Sometimes you need to forget everything you know
You're deeply familiar with your messaging. But you need to anticipate how your audience will see it. Unfortunately, simply knowing a subject can change your perception of it -- in ways that can make it hard to appreciate a non-expert's perspective.
To experience this right now, play a brief audio clip from the Queen song, Another One Bites the Dust.
Now listen to the same clip backwards. Can you identify the "hidden" subversive phrase? It sounds like gibberish to most people
But wait. Once you know what to listen for (i.e., you've become an expert), you're practically unable to hear it as gibberish. That causes you to underestimate how difficult it will be for novices to decode.
There's no way to prevent this phenomenon. But it helps greatly to be aware of it. Pretend you know nothing about the subject and review your communication from that perspective. Forget everything you know.
From a Freakonomics podcast, 3/13/2014.
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