The Jargon Trap
Why your expertise sounds like a wall to everyone else
I was explaining mindset to my daughter the other day, and I kept using language I’d just absorbed from a book on mindfulness and spirituality I couldn’t put down.
Eckhart Tolle’s concepts, and terminology made sense to me because I’ve been practicing mindfulness and spirituality for years now. But I raised my daughter in a traditional Christian context, which is more familiar to her than what I was sharing.
As I watched her eyes glaze over mid-sentence, I realized something:
I wasn’t being unclear. I was being inaccessible.
She didn’t check out because the idea was too complex. She checked out because I had piled unfamiliar language on top of an unfamiliar concept, and her brain couldn’t hold both at once.
So I stopped. I said things differently. No jargon. No layers. Just the core idea in language that made sense to her life.
“Oh, okay,” she said. “Now I see what you mean.”
The conversation moved forward. But the real lesson stuck with me.
This is what happens when expertise is shared using jargon.
You know your field so well that the language feels neutral to you.
But to someone outside that space, every unfamiliar term is friction. It’s asking their brain to decode the language and understand the idea at the same time.
Most people don’t have the energy for that translation work. So they stop listening.
This isn’t about dumbing anything down. It’s about recognizing that your audience is working with different context than you are.
They don’t have years of practice.
They don’t live in your framework
And the moment you assume they do, you’ve lost them.
What’s actually happening in that moment when someone’s eyes are glazed over
Cognitive load theory says your brain can only hold a limited amount of information at a time. Picture your working memory as shelf.
Every unfamiliar term takes up space on that shelf.
Every new concept takes up space.
Every layer of context takes up space.
When you pile them all on, you’ve maxed out the shelf before the actual idea ever lands.
My daughter’s brain was spending energy decoding “mindfulness”, “presence” and “ego” instead of understanding what those words actually meant in her life.
By the time she caught up to the definition, I had already moved three ideas forward. She was lost not because she’s not smart. She was lost because I overwhelmed her working memory.
The fix isn’t to repeat yourself louder or slower. The fix is to give your audience’s brain less to decode so it has space to actually think. This matters more than you realize, especially if you’re an expert. Here are 3 things subject matter experts do this constantly (yes, I’m guilty, too) :
We use terminology because it’s precise.
We layer concepts because we see how they connect.
We assume our audience has the same reference points we do.
Newsflash: they don’t and every time we forget that gap, we are building a wall between our expertise and the people who actually need it.
So how do you know if you’re falling into the jargon trap?
Pay attention to three things this week.
First, notice when you’re explaining something and the person’s face goes blank. Not confused — blank. Confusion means they’re still tracking. Blankness means they’ve given up trying to decode what you’re saying. That’s your signal that the language needs to shift, not the idea.
Second, listen to yourself. Are you using terms that only make sense inside your field? Words like “cognitive load” or “mindfulness” or “nervous system regulation”? Those words are precise to you. To someone outside your world, they’re just... words. There’s nothing wrong with precision. But precision without translation is just gatekeeping.
Third, try this: explain an idea to someone who knows nothing about your field. Your kid. Your partner. Someone at the coffee shop. If you have to backtrack and explain every other sentence, you’ve got jargon. If they nod and ask follow-up questions, you’re translating.
The thing is, you already know how to do this.
You do it at work. You do it with your kids at different ages. You code-switch without thinking about it because survival requires it.
But when you’re writing, teaching or speaking about something you care about, something you’ve spent years studying, you forget to translate.
You get caught up in how you think about it and assume everyone else thinks the same way. They don’t.
Your expertise is only as powerful as it is accessible.
I learned that by watching my daughter shift when I stopped using spiritual jargon and started using language she understood.
The idea didn’t change. The bridge did and that bridge is everything.
When you’re writing, teaching or speaking, the goal shouldn’t be to sound smart.
You want to be understood. Start there. Watch for the blank faces.
Translate without apology. Notice what happens when you do — how people lean in, how your expertise actually lands. That’s when you know you’re speaking to the person in front of you.
Let’s Discuss!
What's a term or phrase you use all the time in your work that you've watched someone completely glaze over? And what did you say instead when you caught it?