Chunking is the mental trick of taking separate pieces of information and grouping them into a larger, more memorable whole. Our brains can only hold a few individual items in short-term memory at once. To work around this natural limit, we instinctively bind things together. A “chunk” might be a word, a phrase, or a familiar pattern that our mind can process as a single item instead of many.
Role in Simplification: Chunking simplifies by making large amounts of information easier to hold in your head. The magic is that your brain treats a well-made chunk as one thing, not as a collection of many things. Instead of trying to remember seven separate letters—L, E, T, T, U, C, E—you remember one chunk: the word LETTUCE. This simple act drastically reduces the mental effort required to learn and recall information. It turns an overwhelming sequence of data into a few manageable units.
Key Aspects: In the 1950s, the cognitive psychologist George Miller famously suggested that our short-term memory can hold about seven items, plus or minus two. Chunking is the technique we use to make the most of that limited space. You do it every time you remember a phone number not as ten random digits, but as three distinct groups. The acronym ROYGBIV (or VIBGYOR) is a single chunk that unlocks seven colors of the rainbow. The secret, however, is that the chunks must be meaningful. A random grouping of items offers little benefit. The simplification comes from the logic or pattern that unites the pieces. What is meaningful, furthermore, depends on the person. To a novice chess player, the board is a collection of thirty-two pieces. To a grandmaster, it is a few meaningful chunks—“a weak pawn structure,” “an impending attack.” Good simplification, then, requires creating chunks that are not just small, but also meaningful to your specific audience.
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