I love coming up with primal shouts for concepts and ideas. It's easy too.

When you are thinking about a THING—a concept, an idea, a person, a piece of art, a place in time—just answer the following prompt:

What would it shout?

It doesn’t matter what (or who) you are thinking about. If you attempt to speak for the THING that has your attention, you will have unlocked a secret weapon in sensemaking that adds fun and deepens understanding.

In this case, it’s okay to think of people as “conceptual” objects.

I'll treat myself as one. For anyone who knows the person Nick Milo as that joyful note-making guy, they might say my primal shout is "Everything is a map!"

They wouldn't be that far off!

This is particularly satisfying for concepts. Here are a few of my favorite primal shouts:

• "Stronger from stressors" - Antifragility
• "Effortless effort, timeless time" - Flow
• "I am, inevitable" - Cause and Effect
• "If it has a name, it can be known" - Concept Handle
• "I am a pattern identified and given a name" - Concept

When you try to figure out a primal shout, you are personifying the "thing" that has your attention. This is not only a shortcut to deep understanding, it's a game you can play anytime, even with the kids.

For the epic medieval fantasy world of Game of Thrones, here are some primal shouts that cut straight to the bone:

• "Winter is Coming" - House Stark
• "Hear Me Roar" - House Lannister
• "Fire and Blood" - House Targaryen
• "Ours is the Fury" - House Baratheon

While George R.R. Martin sharpened the intensified the concept of "house words", there was a historical precedent set from medieval European families. Here are a few of these mottos (translated to English):

• "Make haste slowly" - House of Medici
• "God and my right" - House of Tudor
• "From sea to sea" - House of Bourbon

After you try this a few times, you might be captivated by its effectiveness. To learn why the primal shout is so powerful, we must detour to the land of science fiction.

In the novels for the Ender's Game series, a "speaker" is a person who speaks for the dead. Speakers don't gloss over the painful details of a person's life. They tell the whole truth; but they do it with deep compassion.

The most important skill of "Speakers for the Dead" is empathy. Speakers need a remarkable ability to understand and empathize with others, even those who are very different from themselves.

Empathy is what allows speakers to see the world from the perspective of the deceased, and to communicate their experiences and emotions to others in a way that is both accurate and compassionate.

Through exercising empathy, speakers are able to see beyond the surface level of events and understand the deeper motivations and causes behind them.

You don't fully know a thing, until you try to speak for it.

The primal shout is how we can exercise our empathy for anything—whether it's organic, inorganic, or simply made of the invisible ether of ideas. As we try to speak for the THING that has our attention, we can't help but get to know it better.

Turning from science fiction to science, it's worth considering the landmark 1980's TV series "Cosmos".

Through the lens of the "speaker", it's hard to read the title for the final episode of the TV series "Cosmos"—titled "Who Speaks for Earth"—hosted by Carl Sagan, and not infer who does the speaking for Earth. If there was any doubt, the show's subtitle sheds additional light: "A Personal Voyage." It's Carl who speaks for Earth.

But a deeper reading suggests that by speaking for Earth, Sagan is allowing the rest of us the chance to deeply empathize with Earth, which in turn, allows us to speak for it too!

Who will you speak for? And what will they say? Or shout?