You know, I was thinking about orangutans.
Stay with me.
There’s this idea in software development called rubber duck debugging. You put a rubber duck on your desk, and when your code is broken and you can’t figure out why, you explain the problem to the duck. Line by line. Out loud. And somewhere in the middle of explaining it to an object that has no idea what you’re talking about, you figure it out yourself.
The duck doesn’t solve anything. You solve it. The duck just forces you to slow down and say the thing out loud.
I heard a version of this years ago that I like better. A guy told me he imagines explaining his business problems to an orangutan eating a banana. Not a colleague. Not a mentor. An orangutan. Sitting there. Peeling a banana. Making zero eye contact. Absolutely uninterested in your quarterly projections.
The beauty of the orangutan is that you can’t use jargon. You can’t say “synergize the vertical” or “optimize the funnel” because the orangutan doesn’t care. He’s eating a banana. So you have to say what you actually mean, in the simplest possible terms. And the second you do that, the answer usually shows up.
I use a version of this every time I build a Heritage Films project. I’ve got 10 hours of interview footage, and I have to turn it into a 90-minute story. When I get stuck, I ask myself: if I had to explain this person’s life to someone who knows nothing about them, what would I say first?
That’s the orangutan test. What would you say if you couldn’t hide behind complexity?
Try it. Pick your biggest problem. Explain it to the orangutan. He doesn’t care. That’s the point.
Heritage Films produces personal documentary films across the United States.