This is my 8th project in the Competent Communication track delivered at Infosys Toastmasters, Chennai on the 7th of November, 2012.
For the next 7 minutes and for the rest of your life, I request you all to “Just KISS”. Now I can see most of the eyes throwing a suspicious look. Just leave your wild imaginations right there. I meant KISS as in “Keep It Simple, Sweetheart”. Well, ‘Sweetheart’ is because I didn’t want to use ‘Silly’ like in Tata Docomo Ad.
Good evening fellow and future Toastmasters,
In the late 1950s, the Americans and Russians were in a race to conquer the space. The Russians launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik into space. The Americans tried to catch up and set the space race by putting a man on the moon. That was when both confronted this interesting problem of ballpoint pens not working in space due to the lack of gravity. To combat it, NASA scientists spent a decade and millions of dollars developing a space pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 degree Celsius. But any guesses on what was the solution the Russians came up with? They used a pencil! All that the Russians followed was this principle “Just KISS”.
Remember when we were young, how easy our life was! And the older we got, the more complicated things became! I’m sure that most of you here would agree with this. But the real truth is that life is still simple and it will always be. The only difference lies in our perception of things. As Oscar Wilde says, “Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing”.
I would like to share a small story which shows how a kid tackled a seemingly complicated problem for adults in a simpler manner. Once a father was reading a magazine and his little daughter kept distracting him every now and then. To keep her engaged, he tore a page into several pieces on which the world map was printed. He then told her to go to her room and put them together to make the map again. He was so confident that she would take the entire day to get it done. But to his surprise, the little girl came back in a while with a perfect map. When he asked her how she could do it so quickly, she said, “Oh Dad! There is a man’s face on the other side of the paper. I made the face perfect to get the map right.” And she ran outside to play leaving the father bowled over. All that the little girl did was, she just looked at the other side.
When we were young, we approached things with simple eyes and a sharp mind. But as we grow older, our eyes and mind begin to get distracted and we tend to complicate things. So lesson number 1, next time when you come across a challenge or a puzzling situation, look at the other side and “Just KISS”.
Let me share an example of what happens when your language gets complicated. “Jack and Jill proceeded towards the apex of a natural geologic protuberance, the purpose of their expedition being the procurement of a sample of fluid hydride of oxygen in a large vessel. Jack precipitously descended, sustaining severe damage to the upper cranial portion of his anatomical structure; Subsequently, Jill performed self-rotational translation, orientated in the same direction taken by Jack.” I’m sure some of you are perplexed and your heads are filled with thoughts like “Oh my God! What’s this girl blabbering!” Well, what I said was nothing but this beautiful nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill went up the hill” which we learnt in our kindergarten. This is what happens when people try to show off their vocabulary by using bombastic language. Do you think it is going to make any sense to any person? KISS is associated with Toastmasters as well. Remember the guidelines for the 4th project in your CC manual? “Use simple words!” Simple words have more power and can connect better with the audience. So lesson numbers 2, next time when you speak or prepare your script for the next project, use less complicated words and “Just KISS”.
Now that I’ve talked a lot about KISS, let me give you all a small puzzle to solve. Look at the diagram carefully. Now I’m going to ask you 4 questions about this square. Divide the white area in square A into two equal pieces.
Easy isn’t it? Here is the answer.
Now your second question is “Divide the white area in square B into three equal pieces”. It isn’t that hard right? So here goes the answer.
Divide the white area in square C into four equal pieces. Here you go, the answer is,
Quite difficult right?
Now it’s time to brace yourself for the last question. Divide the white area in square D into seven equal pieces. World record is 7 seconds. Any ideas? Or are you still puzzled? Here’s the answer.
Was it really that tough? If you didn’t get the answer, it was just that your mind was conditioned to seek a complex solution. And for those who got that right, then the dosage of KISS for the last 7 minutes has begun to work its magic.
Most of the time, our mind gets conditioned by the circumstances that we cannot see the obvious. When we go to a specialist doctor with a simple headache, diagnosis starts from migraine, upwards. We assume that things are so complicated and we get entrapped in the ghost of its thoughts. We carry on the same syndrome to our relationships and make them complicated. So a one stop solution to all our problems would be, “Just… KISS”!
Memoirs of Monisha 