Off-topic: if your wife gives up after a few seconds of an explanation, you might want to break it down to a level that she actually understands. Identifying t

Off-topic: if your wife gives up after a few seconds of an explanation, you might want to break it down to a level that she actually understands. Identifying the appropriate level might be harder than actually formulating it on this level. Keep in mind that this is not just an end in itself as this problem might occur in other situations, e.g. with colleagues, bosses or a customer not understanding what you are going on about. The reason why this is actually important is that the amount of things we can achieve completely on our own are very limited and that for anything bigger, we need to interact and cooperate with others. The speaker is the one who wants to transmit the message. Therefore it is the speaker's task to make sure the message is clear enough and of an appropriate form (or even interesting enough!) for the receiver.