So why is most teaching nowadays utterly ineffectual? Let's find out. So when I first started teaching at universities, I began to notice patterns in between what kind of teaching got through to my students and what didn't. And when I started making YouTube videos, specifically YouTube tutorials, I really, a lot of those noticings I started to be vindicated by the data you get on YouTube. So I want to share some of them with you. Now, a lot of teachers have, I'll just say, false ideas of what gets through to people. Or this isn't just for teachers, but communicators generally, even if you're just making a speech. You probably have some bad ideas of what communicates to people. So first thing, let's get the first thing out of the way. And this is sort of an ironic thing to do at the beginning. One thing you need to get out of your head is the hamburger myth. Now, I know most Americans are probably familiar with the hamburger myth. Maybe other people in other countries know about this as well. But in America, when you're taught to, for example, create an essay, write an essay or teach something, you're told that it should be like a hamburger. It's the weirdest metaphor ever. But the introduction should be like the first layer of bread. It should introduce the paper, but it shouldn't be too meaty. Then you get to the really meaty parts. And the meaty parts come in the middle, and that's your three main points or something like that. And then you get to your conclusion. So the excitement level of the essay should go up and then down, just like that. Now, that is a terrible idea for communicating for many reasons. And one thing you realize, especially when you have YouTube analytics, is that people's attention span does not last to the meat. You have to, if you want to actually communicate with people, you have to put all your meat up front. Not just like a zinger to catch their attention, you have to put a lot of the content right at the very beginning, realistically speaking. And I'm not saying, show all your good material and then put all your bad material at the end. I'm saying, once you show people the kind of practical things that what you're trying to communicate shows, you have their attention. You can touch on things that are more anal, more sort of specific that might be less exciting. That's fine. But one thing you'll realize very quickly is that it's important to basically tell people what you're about at the beginning and then go further on from there. Now, one thing I've talked about on my channel as a recommendation for other people, and this other people who want to start YouTube channels, but this also works for teaching, is don't do sequentialism. Don't do serieses. What I mean by that is a lot of times you'll find on YouTube things like, let's say I want to learn the Python programming language. So I look it up and there's going to be someone who has a Python learning series that's like 20 videos. Don't do that. And the reason I say that is because, I mean, look at the analytics to something like that. First off, does that actually get through to people? Episode one might have 100,000 views. So pretty popular video. Episode two is going to have, goes from 100,000 to 20,000. Way less. Episode three might have 5,000. Episode 15 is going to have 50 views. And that's just how it is. Now, you might say, OK, well, I have to teach sequentially, because sometimes knowledge taught at the beginning is relevant to things later on. But I'm just saying, no, that is not true in the way you expect it to be. So let me give you an example from my YouTube channel. This is actually usually how I do my videos that you might think should be sequential. What I do, for example, last week, I did a video on some shell scripting. Now, I didn't say this is episode 25 of something. I just put out a video. What I did at the very beginning is I showed people the kind of things that we're going to do in this video. And there are a bunch of programs that they needed to know. For example, they needed to know what D-Menu was. They needed to know what XR was. They needed to know all this kind of stuff that introductory users might not know anything about. But I did not introduce that topic sequentially. I showed them what they can do at the very beginning. I only showed them the information that is necessary for them to just forget about. This is how D-Menu works in this place here. This is how XR works in this place. If I had spent my time explaining any of those things and putting out separate videos on each of those topics, no one would have ever got to the payoff, the money shot. No one would have actually gotten that way. So you can sort of see the similarity in between, you know, when I'm talking about sequentialism, just don't, if you want to put out tutorials or if you want to have effective lectures or anything like that, they have to be self-contained. Now that doesn't mean that you have to explain every single thing over again. But you only need to, people only need to know what they need to know in that particular episode. And I think even when you're teaching and you're seeing the same students every day, the same concept applies. Just remind them at the beginning how this works before they're shown something new. And again, once you show them, once you have the meat at the beginning, they are constantly going to be, OK, well now I see why this is relevant. So now they can go and do their own thing. They can learn something else in things without. So one other point, ironically that I'm doing sort of, I guess, later into this video, is rambling. Rambling is actually important or really something wider than rambling. I guess dialogue. And I don't mean dialogue like literally talking to your students or engaging. You can do that. I think it's extremely corny and never works out. Actually, I don't recommend doing that at all. Never mind. But when I mean by dialogue, I mean the fact that one thing about humans, when we're learning something, we do not ingest outlines, hierarchically structured outlines. You don't just put knowledge in our heads informationally as if you're learning things piece by piece. Same problem of sequentialism. But why this is important is, let's say, I'm doing a lecture and I've shown someone why something is important. And I've only shown them enough information to make it relevant. What I can do after that, and sometimes what you should do, is just ramble, just say random stuff. Now, why do I say that? I say that because just as a metaphor, or not a metaphor as a historical example, one of the first ways that people started writing when they began writing is writing in dialogues, writing conversations between people. Because this is really how people process information. They don't think linearly. They think in terms of, OK, so you said this, maybe there's about potential response to that. What are the consequences of this? If you say everything linearly and you put everything in a pseudo rationalistic mold, what ends up happening is that people get bored. They tune out in the same way as if you don't have the media at the beginning. They don't really care. So what's better to do is ramble. Rambling is a good thing, not at the beginning of a lecture or a video, but it's something good to do at the end. And I say that because what that does, I mean, if you're someone who genuinely knows about the topic you're talking about, sometimes if you just get put in front of a bunch of people, you just saying things that even don't seem perfectly relevant, that can communicate what's going on in your head in a way much better than if you try to rationally word it or order it in some stupid way. Now that might sound like a really weird thing. And I only say this for people who actually know the subject. I think I'm the kind of person when I teach a class, usually I'll have mental talking points of what I want to talk about. And I can usually just go in there and teach it on whatever. I remember the examples, that kind of stuff. So I mean, if you're teaching something for whatever reason that you don't really know about, that might be something that's hard for you to do. But once you're really familiar with the topic, sometimes a student, it can be very, most of the professors that students remember are those professors who, once they get their point through, they have opened up a more open dialogue, sometimes just with themselves, where they talk about related topics. They don't follow some rational line, but that is the place where a lot of people will really see the ramifications of what you're talking about. And notice, it's not that I specifically plan my videos like this, but that's often how it works out. I'll do a video, I'll show something, how to do this particular thing on Linux or some kind of computer stuff. And as I go further into the video, in mind you, I know for a fact that there are many people who are tuning off the video. Okay, that just always happens. In the same way that if you're in a classroom, there are always people who are leaving. So at the very end, where you have that kind of person who's just interested in learning more, sometimes the best thing that you can possibly do is just talk about something tangential. Talk about something that isn't as hard hitting. It might not be as exciting, but it's one of those things that shows where your mindset is and how, what you're talking about relates to other topics. So in my videos often, I'll talk about the main topic and then, oh, there's this one time I did this with this program and I got this. Here's a little script that does that. It's nothing hard hitting. It just gives people ideas for the kind of things they need to talk about. So anyway, that's about it. I think there's more to say about it, but you can probably figure it out. Again, the mentality here is just abstain. I mean, the theme of it all is abstain from trying to rationally order everything you do. People get in this mindset where teaching is some totally different way of talking to people. Like, you're not supposed to talk to them like they're humans. You're supposed to talk to them as if they're like robots in which you are inputting information and you just want to, you have to hierarchically order it and that has to do all this stuff. No, speak to them. Put out, I don't want to say exciting things up front, but the relevant things up front and gradually move down the excitement level, get to the point where you're rambling on it and that is the place to basically optimize all the stuff you want to do. So anyway, that's about it. So I'm going to see you guys next. Hopefully that's you. So I know not all you guys are teachers or have YouTube channels, but hopefully that's been useful for some of you guys or even just for communicating for people. That's about it and I will see you guys next time.