Communication teachers tell us to make things easier for the audience. Neuroscience doesn’t quite agree. At intervals, we need to shake things up, or the audience will switch off.

The convenient, simple rule turns out to harm our communications.

Won’t audiences reject us if we make our messages a little more challenging at points?

There are people who wouldn’t engage properly anyway — there’s not much we can do about that.

But for the ones who want to take in our message, they’ll be able to do se better if we balance smooth progression with the occasional more challenging spike.

What does that look like in practice? See the cases below.