The Explain-It-Three-Ways Prompt for Learning Anything Hard

In my first year of teaching, I explained density to a class of thirteen-year-olds four times in one lesson. Each time I used the same words, a little louder. Each time the same seven kids looked at me like I was speaking in Morse code.

A colleague watched from the back of the room and gave me the best teaching advice I ever got: "If they didn't get it the first time, the explanation was the problem, not the volume." The next day I explained density with a brick, with a bag of feathers and with a story about why ships float. Different kids lit up at different moments.

That's the whole idea behind today's prompt. People don't understand hard things from one explanation. They understand them from the overlap of several.

The prompt

I want to understand: [concept].

My background: [what you already know, honestly — e.g. "I took
high-school chemistry 20 years ago and remember nothing"].

Explain it three different ways:

1. THE ANALOGY — compare it to something from everyday life.
   Then tell me exactly where the analogy breaks down.
2. THE MECHANISM — explain step by step what actually happens,
   using no jargon you haven't defined first.
3. THE EXAMPLE — walk through one concrete, specific case
   with real-ish numbers.

Then give me one question to test whether I really understand it,
and wait for my answer before telling me if I'm right.

Why three ways work

Each explanation catches a different kind of learner, but that's only half the story. The real power is that the three explanations check each other.

An analogy on its own is dangerous. It feels like understanding but often smuggles in wrong ideas. That's why the prompt asks the model to say where the analogy breaks — that single sentence is often the most educational line in the whole response.

The mechanism grounds the analogy in what's actually happening. The example forces both into a specific case where vague understanding falls apart. If you can follow all three and they agree in your head, you've probably got it.

A worked example: compound interest

I tried it with a topic plenty of adults quietly don't understand: compound interest. Background: "I know interest exists. I glaze over when banks explain it."

The analogy was a snowball rolling downhill, picking up more snow the bigger it gets. Then came the break: "Real snowballs eventually hit a tree. Compound interest doesn't stop on its own — but debt compounds in exactly the same way, which is the part people forget."

The mechanism explained interest being calculated on the balance, which includes previous interest, with each period's growth building on the last.

The example walked through $1,000 at 5% a year: $1,050 after one year, $1,102.50 after two, roughly $1,629 after ten. Then the same 5% on a $1,000 credit card balance left unpaid.

Then the test question: "If you double the time, does the money double?" I guessed yes. Wrong — and finding out why taught me more than the previous three paragraphs.

Making it work harder

Be brutally honest about your background. "I know a bit about this" is useless. "I can follow a spreadsheet but freeze at equations" is gold. The model will pitch the mechanism at the right level.

Ask for the analogy from your world. Add: "Use an analogy from cooking" — or gardening, football, music, whatever you actually know. Analogies from your own life stick.

Don't skip the test question. It's the part most people skip and the part that matters most. Explaining something back is how you find the gap between feeling like you understand and actually understanding.

Go around twice. If the test question exposes a gap, reply: "I got that wrong. Explain just the part I misunderstood, three ways again."

Where it doesn't work

For topics where precision matters — medication doses, legal deadlines, anything with your money on the line — use the prompt to understand the idea, then verify the specifics with a trustworthy source. A good explanation is not the same as a correct fact, and models can be fluent and wrong at the same time.

Today's homework

Pick the thing you've nodded along to in meetings for years without really understanding. Inflation. Vaccines. How a mortgage works. What "the cloud" actually is. Run the prompt. Answer the test question honestly.

Then explain it to someone else at dinner. If they get it, so do you.