HARD THINGS, PART 3: Explaining Something You Understand Intuitively
The Art of Applied Visual Thinking
The official newsletter of
Applied Visual Thinking SUPERHEROES.
Vol. 7 No. 16 August 7, 2026
Superhero Truth:
You don't have a problem with the content.
You're disconnected from your own process.
WE CAN DO HARD THINGS, PART 3:
Explaining Something You
Understand Intuitively
Last time, we tackled deciding with incomplete information — not enough facts, and no amount of waiting fixes that. This time it's almost the opposite problem: you know the thing cold. You just can't get it out of your head and into someone else's.
Last week, I had an opportunity to introduce two teens to our local public bus system. I used to commute by bus, so using the system is second nature to me. One of the teens needed to learn to navigate the system on his own. The other was visiting from out of town.
I was shocked at how much a newcomer needed to know. Before we boarded the bus, I had to confirm which door we could enter and current payment options. During the ride, we needed to keep track of where we were, at which stop we needed to get off, and which stop came just before. There were multiple options for tracking that information, some easier than others. We got so absorbed in comparing navigation apps, I almost forgot to tell them we had to push the button to request our stop, a step that is not necessary on the subway.
The expertise trap can derail any training or knowledge transfer opportunity. Read on to find out how to bridge this gap using visuals.
Name the Hard Thing
There's a strange trap that shows up with expertise: the more deeply you understand something, the worse you can sometimes get at explaining it. Not because you know less — because you know too automatically. The steps that used to be conscious and effortful became invisible to you somewhere along the way, and now when someone asks "how do you do that?" you genuinely struggle to answer, because your brain skipped past the part they need.
This is a specific, common kind of hard: you're not confused about the content. You're disconnected from your own process. And it shows up everywhere — a manager who can't explain how she prioritizes, a teacher who can't break down a skill that's become second nature, a parent who can't explain why a decision felt obviously right.
Why Words Alone Fail
Words fail here in a particular way: when you try to explain intuition verbally, you tend to either oversimplify ("just trust your gut") or overcomplicate — suddenly inventing a 12-step process that wasn't actually how you thought at all, because you're reverse-engineering language for something that never happened in language. Neither version is honest, and both leave the other person more confused than before.
The Simple Visual Fix
The visual superhero fix is to externalize the path, not the conclusion. Most intuitive expertise isn't actually instant — it's compressed. Somewhere in your history, you made this decision slowly, step by step, and over time the steps fused into a single fast judgment. Drawing it back out as a simple flow — even three or four boxes with arrows — forces you to find the seams in something that currently feels seamless.
A useful trick: instead of asking yourself "how do I do this?" — which invites the automatic, compressed answer — ask "what would go wrong if someone skipped this step?" Errors are often easier to locate than the steps themselves, and each error you can name points backward to a step you weren't consciously naming. Sketch the failure points first; the process map often assembles itself around them.
This matters beyond teaching. Anytime you need someone else to trust a judgment you can't fully justify out loud — a hiring decision, a creative choice, a "this doesn't feel right" —
a simple visual of your reasoning path gives them something to evaluate that "trust me" never can. It doesn't just help them understand you. It often helps you understand you, since most people have never actually looked at their own intuition from the outside.
Try This at Home
- Pick one thing you're good at that you'd struggle to explain — a professional judgment, a creative instinct, a parenting call.
- Instead of explaining it directly, draw 3–4 boxes representing what you imagine the steps might be, even roughly, even in the wrong order or quantity.
- Ask yourself: what would go wrong if someone skipped each box?
- Use the errors to refine the boxes — drop, consolidate, reorder, or add as needed.
- See if the "obvious" thing turns out to have more steps hiding inside it than you expected.
You don't have to find the words. You just have to find the boxes.
Working on a skill or process that's bigger than four boxes? Try AVT for Project Management.
Coming up in Part 4: Next time, we'll dive into how visuals can help when burnout and change make everything —
even the easy stuff — feel hard.
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