I am sitting at work and wanting to be able to demonstrate an idea that is rattling around in my head. The logic in my brain drives me to aggregate data and let the data tell the story. I create all different views of the data, and my idea does have empirical information behind it. I am working up slides and just putting tables of data there does not energize me like the idea in my head. I debate whether I should ask a GPT could it show what I want it to show but realize it will not understand what I am talking about. I now start to question myself, am I going about this the right way?
There is a famous quote attributed to Stalin, one death is a tragedy, one million deaths are a statistic. Just throwing statistics on a PowerPoint does not have the impact I would like. The impact of say a great movie, the one when you leave the theatre you and you can recount great scenes. More recently, it is a meme that you share over and over and make people crack up. What makes a difference between jamming facts and the movie or the meme?

Over the week there is a document released from Mr. Beast about how he runs his company, it is a fantastic read. He wrote about different statistics he looks at. I decided to look at my blog statistics. The posts that have the most views, the most engagement are ones that personal stories. Stories that make you say ‘I have done that’ or ‘I can relate’ have more of an impact than just regurgitating a thought. The last two posts are stories, first I explained that I had an ADHD breakdown and the most recent one learning a lesson from taking my dog for a poop got people to talk to me about them. If I just posted, people with ADHD need tools, or any failure is mostly a chain of events instead of a single point to blame.
The question I now asked was why is a story more impactful and memorable than just statistics? Why are a few lines meme more interesting than deep details? I started thinking is this why the bible is a list of stories? Is this why Aesop fables were so popular? Is this the reason that when Apple advertising they show people doing something with their hardware instead of just listing the specifications?
According to research, stories are remembered twenty-two times more than facts alone. I am not sure how you measure that, nor do I know if it is a proven fact, but the use of stories is embedded within humanity. Greek and Roman Mythology were used to teach lessons, it would be faster to just state the lesson but not as memorable. We still read Mythology, and study it and one of the top five reasons is to learn life lessons through entertainment. By just instructing students on what you want them to learn it would be faster, but it may not stick.
Bruce Lee before he passed away was working on a movie the Game of Death. Bruce wanted the movie to be a lesson about life, the inability to adapt would end in destruction. The ability to learn lessons allows you to ascend. Bruce, like others before and after chose to use story telling as a way of teaching a lesson. It was mostly lost as he died before the movie was completed, and what was release was more exploitation than his script. The Image below is a drawing by him describing the ascent.

So here I am writing this week’s post, and my desire to get better every day and to document my journey. It is the stories of my life that teach me, and mostly the failures where I need to learn a lesson, many times learn a lesson more than once. The stories are more memorable, lead to great laughs with friends and make us think. It is more reason to have experiences and have delightful stories to tell so you can pass on wisdom to others. And no, I never finished that presentation, I scrapped the idea until I could produce a relevant story. It has taught me that I need a story to get my point across, and I will work on that this week.
This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain; I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. The fundraising site had to be restarted and NYP Hospital made changes to their donation sites. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free. You are welcome to comment, but note it is moderated and all spam will be removed.
This Blog is a labor of love and was originally going to be a book. With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path. I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content. I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip. I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog. AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information. Images without notes are created using an AI tool that allows me to reuse them.