The Need to State the Logic

Now clearly, it is not enough simply to group the ideas in a logical way without also stating to yourself what the logic of the relationship is. The point in grouping was not just to move from a set of nine items to separate sets of four, two, and three items. That still comes to nine. What you want to do is move above the nine, to three.

This means that instead of remembering each of the nine items, you remember only the three categories into which they fall. You are thinking one level of abstraction higher, but because the thought is at a higher level, it suggests the items below it. And, because the relationship is not a contrived one as was the case in the exercise about the lake and the sugar, it is much easier to keep in mind.

All mental processes (e.g., thinking, remembering, problem solving) apparently utilize this grouping and summarizing process, so that the information in a person's mind might be thought of as being organized into one giant conglomeration of related pyramids. If you think about communicating to that mind, you can see that the problem is one of ensuring that what you say will fit somewhere into the existing pyramids.

Now we come to the real problem. of communicating. You can "see" these groupings of items quite clearly. To communicate them means to ensure that the other person "sees" them in the same way. But, as was the case with your wife, you can only present them one by one. Surely, the most efficient way to do this would be to present the category first and then the items. That is, to order the ideas from the top down.