“Be open, be Impatient and Be Hopeful’
Listening to Sundar Pichai addressing the passing out batch
of 2020 is magical, quintessential and evoke hope. No matter you are passing out this year or
you graduated twenty years ago, it shows you light in despairing time. Trying
to dissect the anatomy of his narrative, I faced the power of number three.
Rule of 3 is a literary device used to make language come
alive. Steve Job in his famous commencement speech at Stanford narrated three
personal stories to evoke emotions (pathos) engage authentically (ethos) with
his personal experiences and bring home the values of trust, faith and uncertainty
of life as logical conclusions (logos).
Mr Pichai too used personal experiences, powerful language and
detailed description to give a message of hope to the youth. Information
combined with emotion becomes a memory. “If you want something stuck in someone’s
head, put it in a sequence of three,” Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger said. Rule
of three is a principle that suggests that a trio of events, characters or
words is more effective, memorable and impactful than other numbers.
Three is the smallest number required to create a pattern. Combination
of pattern and brevity make content memorable. Be it an address, a story or a
project report, use of a structure that set up the scenario, build anticipation
and then help the release of tension at closure make the message impressive. Golden
Circle of Why, How and what given by Simon Sinek is a structure that helps to
narrate purpose and actions taken to give the result in a useful manner.
Rule of three is a framework, useful to enhance various
aspects of narration. Writing is a complex skill. It taxes our working memory
as the human brain is required to multitask while writing. So structures provide
assistance to brain and Magic of 3 provide a great template to help people with the structure they need. It provides the comfort zone that takes the stress out of
speaking or writing.
Same can be used in interviews to answer recruiters to give
three strengths or three top skills when asked for. In fact the most dreaded
question, ‘Tell me something about yourself’ can be answered using three
anecdotes highlighting candidature with matching skillset asked in the job
description. Understanding the audience (who), what they need to hear (what)
and stories you tell (how), not just transmit information but create a unifying
sense of connection.
I will leave you with the closing remarks of Mr Pichai’s
speech, “So take the time to find the thing that excites you more than anything
else in this world, not the thing that your parents wants you to do (1), or the thing all your friends are doing (2) or the society expects of you (3)." If you
know your calling and follow it, ‘You will prevail!’
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