communication is work

some years ago, i was working with martin white on a project and, to anybody who knows him, it's no secret to that marty was way smarter than me. still is. but this one time marty was working on a task which was a relatively straightforward optimization problem—to him at least. to me, it was greek. both figuratively and literally. mathematics borrows a lot of symbols from the greek alphabet. and i mentioned this much to marty, something to the effect of, "dude, what you're doing is so far beyond me".

marty's response was exactly the type of response you'd expect from him: "no, that's garbage. you absolutely can do this" and then he took the time to show me on the whiteboard, step by step, the math behind what he was doing programmatically on his laptop.

it took a little while. i huffed and puffed and nearly walked away a few times from the whiteboard about to give up—but marty was there, encouraging me, patiently, while i worked through the problem.

and sure enough, i got it. and all those greek letters made sense, and the magic behind it all became evident. even to the point that afterwards i remarked on how simple it really all was once i understood it. "yeah, i know. i've been trying to tell everyone this."

communication is tricky because it involves two people trying to work through the same problem from different directions: one trying to give while the other tries to receive. marty never 'dumbed down' what he was explaining to me because he believed that i could "absolutely do this", and he was right. but he did explain things, sometimes multiple times over. he built the knowledge as we went along. he checked in. he gave me confidence. yet it never would have worked if i hadn't been willing to damage my ego in the process. if i hadn't been willing to put in the effort it took to receive the information marty was trying to pass along to me.

communication is work. we have to remember that.

and when one side of that partnership isn't putting in the work, we also have to be smart enough (and bold enough) to walk away and find someone more willing to put in the effort we expect from the other end.