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1-Page Summary of The Pyramid Principle

Overview

Most people don’t have a clear idea of what they’re going to write when they start writing. They just write whatever comes into their head and hope it makes sense later on. This results in jumbled thoughts that are hard for the reader to understand.

The mind prefers order over disorder. For example, ancient Greeks saw animal shapes in the stars rather than seeing them as mere random dots. Similarly, it has been shown that when reading a document, people automatically attempt to organize information into a certain form—a pyramid shape where conclusions are supported by justifications and arguments. It is easiest for a reader to digest information if it comes presorted into logical pyramid shape. Consider the following statements: “The seats were cold. I almost got into a fight. Italy didn’t play well. That really was an awful football match.” This “story” is poorly structured because the main statement is withheld until the very end of this passage.

A pyramid structure is a way to organize your thinking. Start with the summary and then explain it in more detail. For example, you could start by saying, “That really was an awful football match: The seats were cold; I almost got into a fight; Italy did not play well.”

Big Idea #1: Build your pyramid: group similar ideas together and then summarize each group with one statement.

When constructing a pyramid, start from the bottom and work your way up. First, make all of your points in an organized fashion. Then put them together to form one general statement that summarizes each point you’re making. Each summary statement is like a tip on top of a miniature pyramid.

Repeat the process of condensing each point into a single sentence. Eventually, you will have one sentence that summarizes all of your points. In this case, it would be: Our sales are growing.

You might then group the summary statements of “Our fixed costs are going down” and “Our variable costs are going down,” which would summarize that the company’s profits are improving.

Grouping and summarizing is simple, but it has to follow the basic rules.

The author suggests that when you’re writing an essay, your ideas should be arranged in a pyramid structure. This means that more detailed ideas are grouped together and summarized with one statement. The summary is the most important part of the essay because it’s what readers will remember after reading your work.

Big Idea #2: Justifying statements: use deduction to derive conclusions from chains of premises.

When you’re writing a pyramid structure, it’s important to start with an interesting statement. Then, any statements that follow should raise questions in the reader’s mind. If the next statement answers those questions, then you can summarize your previous statements as well as place them into context when summarizing your entire pyramid structure.

When suggesting action to your reader, consider leading with the recommendation instead of the reasoning behind it. After all, that’s what really matters.

The first example, “We should hire any applicant who knows how to read. Applicant A knows how to read. Hence, we should hire applicant A.”, is not as interesting as the second one: “We should hire applicant A because we need someone who can read and he can.”

Deductive reasoning is very straight-forward and easy to follow. However, it may not be the best way to make a complex argument because you need many layers of support for your premises.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to prove a point in an essay. If you try to explain the main idea of your paper by using logic, then your first premise will have several levels of justifications below it. This makes it difficult for readers to follow your train of thought because they have to read through all those points before they can get back up to the second premise where the argument starts over again.