Chunking laterally
You can significantly enhance your cognitive abilities and communication skills by developing your abilities to utilise chunking more effectively.
If you prefer plain speaking, another way to say it is that being able to chunk better will help you to think better and communicate better.
So far we've looked at chunking down to fine detail and chunking up to the big picture. You will benefit from being able to chunk up and down skilfully and you will benefit even more from being able to chunk laterally or sideways.
How do we chunk sideways? Simple - first chunk up one level, then chunk down some place else.
For example if we take the word Painting and chunk up one level we could chunk up to Art. If we then ask ourselves 'What are other examples of art?' we could chunk down to sculpture, music, dance or any number of art forms.
By using this process of chunking up then back down we've effectively chunked sideways - in this particular context we chunked from up from painting to art, and then sideways and down again to sculpture, music, dance etc.
When we chunk sideways we begin by chunking up by one hierarchical level and end by chunking back down to the same hierarchical level we started from. Thus the chunk(s) we end with are on the same level as the chunk we started with.
Communication tends to flow better and be more useful when all of the people involved are using similar sized chunks from the same hierarchical level. This is also one of the reasons why the person controlling the level of abstraction also controls the communication.
A particularly good use of lateral chunking is in negotiation and although it wasn't stated overtly at the time we've already looked at an example of this in the purpose frame.
When you become skilled at chunking up, down and sideways one of the things you will notice is an exponential increase in your communication skills. Another thing that you'll notice is your increasing ability to think circles around the people you communicate with.
For the time being I'm going to leave the concept of chunking here as a single building block without further explaining it's nature or it's uses.
As we move forward through the topic areas of Hypnotic Language, Precise Communication and beyond I invite you, gentle reader, to engage in the inductive learning process of discovering the uses of chunking inherent therein for yourself.
I make this choice because sometimes we learn more and learn better when we discover the AHA! moments for ourselves.
Read on!