There’s an art to packaging ideas for consumption.

Today, like many other days, I had an interesting conversation with the parents of a kid who goes to the same Kita as our kid. That conversation led me down various strains of thought and some of them are most definitely worth packaging for consumption, be it for myself or for others who stumble upon it on the internet.

Like, for example, how our friend G — a parent of a toddler our age — actively wanted to avoid coming to Germany, yet ended up here because of stars aligning (job offers).

She confided in us that she had witnessed overt racism by some Germans on black people (she herself is a person of colour) several times and those incidents made her notice more signs of a superiority complex.

Now her kid goes to a Kita in Germany and she sees that it is becoming harder to come up with reasons to leave the country, despite continuing evidence of some level of racism.

How do you package an idea like this — the idea that you could be stuck in a place because of not wanting to disrupt your child’s life — for spreading?

Should you tell a story like you’re recounting it in first-person and end with a moment of personal transformation?

Or should you matter-of-factly narrate the events that occurred and draw a neat conclusion?

I think it depends on whether your goal is truly to spread ideas to an audience or to note something down for future recollection, perhaps as an anecdote for a book you intend to write.

Whatever your reason, you need to know it as you write your piece. You need to know which gift wrap and ribbon to use.

And the thing is, you might not know your reason until you’ve gone through the motion of packaging an idea and having to ask yourself, ‘why am I writing this again?’ and ‘who is it for?’ Enough revolutions of the wheel and you’ll finally understand your reason for writing. But most people, including me (I’ve published a blog regularly for almost 10 years now), don’t spin the wheel enough to know.

For me, I write for various reasons and haven’t landed on one ultimate reason. Sometimes it’s because I like the idea of being a writer. Other times it’s because I have something important I want to get down in words for sharing. Yet other times it’s because of (insert 100 other possible reasons for writing).

One thing I do know for sure, though — you have to practice the art of packaging ideas. It could be writing, podcasting, videoing, or something else. The fundamental practice is the same:

• ask what is the idea
• and ask what are you trying to do with that idea by interrogating it?

I believe everyone should practice the art of packaging, because we all gain from concise and inspiring messaging. It’s good for the practitioner’s chances of success in whichever field they’re in, and it’s good for the consumers’ minds.