In New York, people speak fast. In the American South, they speak slowly. Both of them are a form of politeness, understood in a different way. In New York, you speak quickly because you respect the value of the other person’s time and you don’t want to take up too much of it. In the South, you speak slowly because you want to respect the person by showing how much of your own time you are prepared to give to them.

Adam Grant • Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?

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“social interaction is not very uncertain, because of the principle of reciprocity. If you say hello to someone, they’ll typically say hello back to you. If you give somebody a compliment, they’ll typically say thank you.” Many people, it seems, are not social enough for their own good. They too often seek comfort in solitude, when they would actua... See more

Derek Thompson • The Anti-Social Century

I think there are things in life that you want to telescope and compress and accelerate and streamline and make more efficient. And there are things where the value is precisely in the inefficiency, in the time spent, in the pain endured, in the effort you have to invest.

Rory Sutherland • Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?

When they have helpful input, people are often reluctant to share it. We even hesitate to tell friends they have food in their teeth. We’re confusing politeness with kindness.

Adam Grant • Hidden Potential

“to communicate effectively, we must adopt the perspective of another person both while speaking and listening.”

Charles Duhigg • Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

When done well, both giving and taking create what psychologists call affordances: features of the environment that allow you to do something. Physical affordances are things like stairs and handles and benches. Conversational affordances are things like digressions and confessions and bold claims that beg for a rejoinder. Talking to another person... See more

Nix 🕊 • good conversations have emergent properties

Would I be better saying words or letting my actions and choices illustrate that knowledge for me?

Stephen Hanselman • The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

In Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?, advertising executive Rory Sutherland challenges our knee-jerk assumption that faster is always better. He asks us to consider what might happen if we approached problem-solving and decision-making with a more open-ended, human-centered perspective.

He offers a thought experiment: what if the brief to des... See more

311 / The fallacy of faster

Interesting people are good at sharing. You can’t be interested in someone who won’t tell you anything. Being good at sharing is not the same as talking and talking and talking. It means you share your ideas, you let people play with them and you’re good at talking about them without having to talk about yourself.