Method Behind Magic

 

“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!’