Name the target relations first

Before hunting for any analogy, write down the specific relationships in the new material you need explained. Fixing that list first stops you from starting with a source that feels familiar and then bending the new domain to fit it.

Before hunting for any analogy, write down the specific relationships in the new material you need explained. Fixing that list first stops you from starting with a source that feels familiar and then bending the new domain to fit it.

Example

Three weeks into immunology, you list what you actually need before mentioning security operations at all: how the body detects an intruder, how it escalates the response, and how it remembers a threat years later. Those three relations become the checklist any borrowed source must serve.