Give one instruction at a time
Stacked instructions fail for anyone tired, anxious, learning the language or processing differently.
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The BeingKind editorsPublished How this is written
Why it lands
Chaining three requests into one sentence is efficient for the speaker and frequently unusable for the listener — the first is retained and the rest is noise. The people most affected include those with learning disabilities, head injuries, hearing loss and anyone in a second language, none of whom will say so. Slowing down is invisible to everyone who did not need it.
How
One instruction, then a pause, then the next. Avoid idioms, which are the first thing to fail across a language gap. Ask them to tell you what they are going to do rather than asking whether they understood.
Answer if you want. It changes which ideas are shown first.
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