I don’t have good tips for mind-reading in particular, but if you have a decent sense of how much the typical person already understands, these sub-skills I picked up in college should be able to help you, almost certainly not an exhaustive list:
Baby Steps—it’s tempting to try to shoot straight for the thing you care about explaining. But if you try to describe it directly, even using very simple terms, you will be moving too fast even if the other person technically knows enough to eventually unpack what you’re saying. If you do this your sentences will rot before they can be digested. Instead, spend at least a full sentence or two on each individual step from common knowledge toward your destination.
Stopping—this one is really hard, but after you’ve made each point, actually pause for a few seconds and look at the other person’s facial expression and body language. Very few people are trained to explicitly ask with words, “can you unpack that a little?”, but they will often say it with their face. This also gives them the chance to ask specific questions, or to process what you just said before you move onto the next thing. You can also ask explicitly whether you’re being clear; wait for an answer before moving on.
One step forward, two steps back—be ready at any point to move back more than one step if it becomes evident that something hasn’t been understood. If you really weren’t understood the first time, then it’s as if you didn’t say it. If you find a different way to say it, it won’t sound like you’re repeating yourself; it will just sound like you’re being clear.
Laconicism—if there is a detail that is not important, omit it. It doesn’t matter if this means you’re saying something that isn’t strictly in every detail literally categorically true. (I still have trouble with this one.) All that matters is you move the other person as far as you can toward a true belief. Don’t volunteer unimportant details unless they ask. (If they ask, then (a) telling the truth is the right thing to do, and (b) that means they understand the basics well enough to ask the question, which probably means they can handle the complicating detail.) There will always be aspects to a topic that interest you, and may well be important, that you should omit from a beginner’s account.
Incidentally, I find Leonard Susskind is brilliant at all of these things. So, for a good example, his lectures on physics are well worth watching. Heck, they’re worth watching even if you don’t care about explaining things to people.
I don’t have good tips for mind-reading in particular, but if you have a decent sense of how much the typical person already understands, these sub-skills I picked up in college should be able to help you, almost certainly not an exhaustive list:
Baby Steps—it’s tempting to try to shoot straight for the thing you care about explaining. But if you try to describe it directly, even using very simple terms, you will be moving too fast even if the other person technically knows enough to eventually unpack what you’re saying. If you do this your sentences will rot before they can be digested. Instead, spend at least a full sentence or two on each individual step from common knowledge toward your destination.
Stopping—this one is really hard, but after you’ve made each point, actually pause for a few seconds and look at the other person’s facial expression and body language. Very few people are trained to explicitly ask with words, “can you unpack that a little?”, but they will often say it with their face. This also gives them the chance to ask specific questions, or to process what you just said before you move onto the next thing. You can also ask explicitly whether you’re being clear; wait for an answer before moving on.
One step forward, two steps back—be ready at any point to move back more than one step if it becomes evident that something hasn’t been understood. If you really weren’t understood the first time, then it’s as if you didn’t say it. If you find a different way to say it, it won’t sound like you’re repeating yourself; it will just sound like you’re being clear.
Laconicism—if there is a detail that is not important, omit it. It doesn’t matter if this means you’re saying something that isn’t strictly in every detail literally categorically true. (I still have trouble with this one.) All that matters is you move the other person as far as you can toward a true belief. Don’t volunteer unimportant details unless they ask. (If they ask, then (a) telling the truth is the right thing to do, and (b) that means they understand the basics well enough to ask the question, which probably means they can handle the complicating detail.) There will always be aspects to a topic that interest you, and may well be important, that you should omit from a beginner’s account.
Incidentally, I find Leonard Susskind is brilliant at all of these things. So, for a good example, his lectures on physics are well worth watching. Heck, they’re worth watching even if you don’t care about explaining things to people.