A four-week live workshop series
Starts Monday, October 26 · 4 live sessions · 2 hours each · Live on Zoom
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Jordan Peterson
A lot of your work depends on other people understanding your ideas.
Your boss has to understand an idea before approving it. A client has to understand it before paying for it, and your team has to understand it before they can do anything with it. When you can’t explain an idea clearly, you can’t build a plan around it, get people behind it or sell it, no matter how good it is.
When you can, it’s what lets you negotiate with a client, make the case for someone on your team who deserves a promotion, explain to your boss what’s actually happening on the ground, or describe where you want to take a project in a way people want to follow. It also helps you think. Once you can say exactly what a problem is, it’s a lot easier to solve.
Who your ideas have to reach
Your boss
Explain what’s actually happening on the ground.
Your team
Make the case for someone who deserves it.
Clients
Negotiate, and sell what you do.
Yourself
Think a problem through.
That’s why I think articulation is one of the most useful skills you can learn. In this 4-week workshop series, we’ll take real ideas from your own work and practice turning them into proposals, pitches, presentations, posts and diagrams that other people can understand and act on.
The series covers four skills, one each week:
Week 1
How to think clearly
Work out what you actually think about something before you explain it, so you can say your point in one sentence.
Break an idea into its parts and explain why it’s true, and where it stops being true.
Answer a hard question in a meeting or on a call with what you actually think, instead of what you think people want to hear.
Week 2
How to write clearly
Explain an idea in plain words, with a good example, in one sentence, in two minutes or on one page.
Spot the steps you’re skipping. When you know something well, a lot of it feels too obvious to say, but those are often the parts other people need.
Week 3
How to visualize your ideas
Start with a rough sketch of boxes and arrows to check whether you understand how an idea works.
Work out what people need to see to understand your idea, and find the best way to show it.
Make a visual people understand on its own, without you there to explain it.
Week 4
How to sell your ideas
Turn an idea into a proposal, a pitch, a presentation or a post that people can act on and pass along without you.
Find out why an explanation isn’t working and fix that part, instead of rewriting the whole thing.
The word comes from the Latin for a small joint. Your arm can bend, reach and pick things up because it has joints. An idea works the same way. While it’s one vague lump in your head, you can’t do much with it. Once you’ve broken it into parts and worked out how they connect, you can explain it, defend it and build on it.
So when I say articulation, I mean taking an idea that makes sense in your head and turning it into something other people can understand, believe, act on and explain to someone else, even when you’re not around.
I think an idea you haven’t articulated isn’t finished yet. It feels finished in your head because you’ve lived with it for a while and you know how everything connects. But until you explain it to someone who doesn’t know what you know, a lot of it is still a feeling, a few conclusions and some examples you remember.
The problem is that your own explanations almost always sound clear to you. There’s an experiment that shows why. In 1990, a Stanford grad student named Elizabeth Newton asked one group of people to pick a well-known song, like “Happy Birthday,” and tap its rhythm on a table. Another group listened and tried to guess the song. Before they started, the tappers thought the listeners would get about half of them right. Out of 120 songs, the listeners got 3.
The tappers could hear the melody in their heads while they tapped, so the song felt obvious to them. The listeners just heard someone knocking on a table. The same thing happens when you explain an idea you know well. You fill in the missing steps in your head without noticing, but the people listening only get what you actually say. When a step is missing, they guess, or they stop following.
What it takes to articulate an idea
The way I see it, articulating an idea takes four skills. Thinking comes first and selling comes last. Writing and drawing happen together, because the words and the picture check each other.
I
Think clearly. Every idea starts as a hunch. You notice a problem that keeps coming back, a better way to do something, or something other people seem to be missing. What you notice depends on what you care about and how you see your work, which is why two people can look at the same situation and see completely different problems. Thinking clearly means turning that hunch into a point of view you can say in one sentence, and working out what the idea is made of: its parts, how they connect, why it’s true and where it stops being true.
II
Write clearly. Next you find the words for it: plain language, a good example and maybe an analogy. The words should say what you actually believe rather than what sounds smart, because people can tell the difference. You also look for the steps you’re skipping, because when you know something well, a lot of it feels too obvious to say.
III
Visualize your ideas. At the same time, you draw it. A rough sketch with boxes and arrows shows you quickly whether you understand how the idea works, but that’s only the start. To show the idea to other people, you have to decide what they need to see and find the best way to show it. A good visual lets people see the idea instead of taking your word for it, and it makes sense even when you’re not there to explain it. The words and the picture also check each other. If they don’t say the same thing, the idea isn’t clear yet.
IV
Sell your ideas. Finally, you turn the idea into something people can act on without you: a proposal, a presentation, a post or a sales conversation. You know it worked when someone can understand it, use it and explain it to someone else without you in the room.
The four skills also tell you where the problem is when an explanation isn’t working:
Think clearly
If you can only describe the idea by complaining about what’s broken, or your explanation runs long and wanders, you haven’t thought it through yet.
Write clearly
If you need twenty minutes and a lot of jargon to explain it, work on the words.
Visualize your ideas
If you can’t draw it, there’s a part of it you don’t understand yet.
Sell your ideas
If it only works when you’re there to explain it, you don’t have something people can act on yet.
Each one needs a different fix, so knowing which one you’re dealing with saves you a lot of rewriting.
AI can turn an idea into a post, a slide or a one-pager in a few minutes, so the hard part now is everything that comes before that: knowing what you think and why. AI can’t do that part for you, because it doesn’t know what you think. It writes something close to the average of everything it has read. It works best when you bring your own take first and use AI to question it and help you develop it.
This matters for another reason too. Every time you write a prompt, you’re explaining an idea to something that has none of your context. So if you can explain an idea clearly to a person, you’ll also get much better results from AI.
In each session, you’ll learn where AI helps with that skill and where it gets in the way.
Every time you work through an idea, you find out things you’ll need again: what you believe, how you see your work and the big idea behind all of it. If you don’t write them down, you have to work them out again next time, and AI has to guess.
So over the four weeks, we’ll write them down in what I call your personal tree of knowledge. It’s a set of documents organized like a tree:
The roots are what you believe and how you see your work.
The trunk is your biggest idea, the one all your work comes from.
The branches are the topics you apply it to.
The leaves are everything you make: posts, presentations and pitches.
All your ideas grow from the same roots and trunk. Once you write those down, every new idea starts from there instead of from zero. You can also give the whole tree to AI, so what it writes starts from what you think.
Each session covers one skill. Every week you’ll practice on real situations from your own work, like an initiative you want approved, something you sell, a change you need to explain or a post you’ve been meaning to write.
01
Monday, October 26
How to think clearly. We’ll start with a simple habit: before you answer a question, stop and ask yourself what you actually think about it. Then we’ll work out what your idea is made of: what causes what, why it’s true and where it stops being true. You’ll practice turning a frustration or a hunch into a point of view you can say in one sentence, and you’ll learn to use AI as an interviewer and as a skeptic that looks for holes in your thinking. You’ll also write down the roots and trunk of your tree: what you believe, how you see your work and your biggest idea.
02
Monday, November 2
How to write clearly. We’ll find plain words for your idea, a good example and a useful analogy, and look for the steps you’re skipping because they feel obvious to you. You’ll practice explaining the same idea in one sentence, in two minutes and on one page. You’ll also learn to use AI to give you options for words and examples while the idea stays yours. You’ll add the words and examples you find to your tree, so you can use them again.
03
Monday, November 9
How to visualize your ideas. We’ll start with rough boxes and arrows, because they show you pretty fast whether you understand how something works. Then we’ll turn the sketch into something other people can understand: you’ll learn how to decide what people need to see, find the best way to show it, and make it clear enough that it works without you explaining it. You’ll also practice checking that your words and your picture say the same thing, and you’ll learn where AI can help you find a way to show an idea. You’ll add your visuals to the tree too.
04
Monday, November 16
How to sell your ideas. We’ll turn your idea into something people can act on: a one-page proposal, a slide or short presentation, a post or a sales explanation. You’ll build one for your own situation and test whether it works without you in the room. AI helps here with drafts, and as a first reader before you show it to a real person. You’ll use your tree, on your own and with AI, to make the finished piece.
I’m doing these live because the hardest part is seeing what you’re leaving out, and that’s a lot easier when someone else is asking you questions.
It doesn’t matter what you do for a living. If your work depends on other people understanding your ideas and doing something with them, this is for you. That includes people pushing for a project inside a company, managers and team leads, founders, consultants, coaches, salespeople, writers and creators. We’ll focus on the idea itself and how you explain it, rather than public speaking or design tools, because once the idea is clear, presenting it gets a lot easier.
My name is Josué Valles. Over 150,000 people follow me online because of my insights on personal branding, articulation, and making ideas simple.
I’ve been working online for about 12 years. I started posting on LinkedIn in 2022 and grew to 100,000 followers in about a year. These days I run Subject House, where my team builds personal brands for founders whose businesses run on what they know. A lot of that work is helping them put ideas they’ve had for years into words and pictures other people can understand.
Workshops and recordings
for all four sessions
All four live sessions on Zoom, 2 hours each
Recordings of every session
Doesn’t include the worksheets or Claude Skills.
for all four sessions
All four live sessions on Zoom, 2 hours each
Recordings of every session
Worksheets to write your tree of knowledge, one per session
Claude Skills that use your tree of knowledge, one per session
Dates
Mondays, October 26 and November 2, 9 and 16
Time
10:00 a.m. Mexico City time, for 2 hours.
Los Angeles
9 a.m. on October 26, then 8 a.m.
New York
12 p.m. on October 26, then 11 a.m.
São Paulo
1 p.m.
London
4 p.m.
Madrid
5 p.m.
Format
Live on Zoom
Do I need design skills?
No. We’ll start with rough sketches, and you can make clean versions in whatever tool you already use. Most of what makes a visual work happens before you open any tool: deciding what to show, how to show it and what to leave out. That’s the part we’ll focus on.
Do I need to use AI?
No. Everything in the series works without it. The AI parts are there for people who already use it or want to start.
Do I need to be a good writer?
No. Most of the work happens before you write anything, when you’re figuring out what you think and why.
What if I miss a session?
I’ll record every session, and both tickets include the recordings, so you can catch up on anything you miss.
Starts Monday, October 26 · 4 live sessions · 2 hours each · Live on Zoom
Get your ticket