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Communication · a life skill

Deliberate Context Setting

you hear the tune; they hear knocks

When you write a message, the whole backstory plays in your head: the meeting, the earlier thread, what “it” means. Your reader gets only the words. Deliberate context setting is the habit of reading your own message as someone who heard none of the tune, and putting back what they can't hear.

  • Moderate
  • High impact
  • Learn it: 2-4 weeks
  • One reread before you send
one rhythm, two people
What the tapper hears, and what the listener hears Above, the tapper hears a melody: notes on a staff joined by a line. Below, the listener hears the same rhythm as plain identical knocks. Under them, a message as the writer reads it and as the reader receives it, with its shorthand reduced to empty boxes. What the tapper hears What the listener hears Same rhythm. Only one of them can hear the tune. You read “As discussed, the QBR deck goes to JT next week.” They read “ , the deck goes to .”

After Elizabeth Newton's tapping study, Stanford, 1990.

The habit

Try it now.

  1. Assume they hear knocks

    Before you send, picture someone smart who missed every conversation behind this one. Write for them.

  2. Name it, don't point at it

    “It's moved” means nothing without the earlier talk. “The dentist appointment has moved” works for anyone.

  3. Spell out shorthand once

    Initials, project nicknames and “the usual” are tunes only your side knows. Write the full name the first time.

  4. Say what changed since they last heard

    “As discussed” assumes they were there and remember. One sentence of “where we got to” costs less than a reply asking.

  5. Test it on someone who wasn't there

    For anything that matters, ask a person outside the thread what they think it says. Fix what they get wrong.

    Name it, spell it out, say what changed, then test.

Example: “As discussed, it's slipped” becomes “The kitchen fitting we agreed on Monday has slipped from the 4th to the 11th.”

The tap test

What will they hear?

Paste a message you're about to send. The tap test marks the places that only make sense if you were there: initials, “it” with nothing before it, “as discussed”, vague dates, and a missing ask. Then hear it the way they will.

Start from an example

  • Initials: QBR, JT, SOW. Spell them out once.
  • Pointing: a first “it”, “this” or “they” with nothing before it.
  • Backstory: “as discussed”, “the usual”, “like last time”.
  • Loose time: “next week”, “soon”, “end of day”. Which day?
  • No ask: nothing says what you want them to do.

0places they can't follow

As you wrote it

Questions they can't ask you

    Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere; the checks run on this page. They're simple patterns, so treat them as prompts, not a grade.

    The study behind it

    They expected half. Listeners got 3 of 120.

    For her 1990 doctoral work at Stanford, Elizabeth Newton paired people up. One person, the tapper, picked a well-known song such as “Happy Birthday to You” and tapped its rhythm on a table. The other, the listener, tried to name it.

    Before the guesses, tappers predicted their listener would name about half the songs. Across 120 songs, listeners named 3, about 2.5%.

    The tappers weren't being careless. They could hear the melody in their heads as they tapped, and they couldn't switch it off to hear what the listener heard: a string of knocks. Every message you write has a tune like that, and the only fix is to put some of it into the words.

    120 squares, one per song. 60 are hatched for the songs tappers expected to be named. 3 are solid for the songs listeners actually named. 60 the tappers expected 3 the listeners named
    One square per song tapped. “Expected” is the tappers' prediction of about half. Elizabeth Newton, doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1990, as reported by Chip and Dan Heath in Made to Stick.

    The idea

    Why it works.

    Once you know something, it's very hard to imagine not knowing it. Psychologists call it the curse of knowledge. You can't unhear your own tune, so “try to be clearer” doesn't help much: your message already sounds clear to you.

    What does help is a mechanical check. Look for the words that point backwards (it, this, as discussed, the usual) and the ones only insiders can decode (initials, nicknames, “next week”). Each one is a knock. Replace enough of them with the actual thing and the tune comes through.

    When it goes wrong

    Habits that help.

    • Write dates, not distances. “Thursday the 12th” survives being read on Friday; “tomorrow” doesn't.
    • Forwarding isn't context. A thread with “see below” makes them dig for the tune. Add two lines on top.
    • Watch long threads. The longer a thread runs, the more shorthand it builds up, and the harder it is for anyone joining.
    • Don't overcorrect. A close teammate on a live project needs less. Write for the reader you have, not for a stranger.

    Go deeper

    Keep going.

    Keep this going in the app.

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