You're Not Listening

If a full day seems daunting, try staying silent during a single conversation. Don’t say anything unless asked a question. See what happens. Take it from bartenders—the other person probably won’t notice.

“If you can bear to do it for just twenty-four hours, you will learn to be a better listener,” she said. “You will learn the unimportance of your words and the importance of other people’s words.”

Research shows that being able to comfortably sit in silence is actually a sign of a secure relationship. Higher-status people also aren’t as likely to get agitated by gaps in conversation, presumably because they are more secure in their position.

In America, we say, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” while in Japan, “The silent man is the best to listen to.”

While you may think you can tune out these kinds of things, research consistently shows that you cannot. The ability to multitask is a delusion. Each input degrades your attention. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman memorably wrote, “The often used phrase ‘pay attention’ is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activi

Moreover, you lose your ability to perceive and appreciate nuance in conversation because things like tonal shifts, subtle sighs, foreign accents, and even voices made raspy by whiskey and cigarettes all but disappear when heard in double time.

Research suggests that after people listen regularly to faster-paced speech, they have great difficulty maintaining their attention when addressed by someone who is talking normally—sort of like the feeling you get when you come off an expressway and have to go through a school zone.

many centuries.” Things get even more complicated when you try to communicate with someone who grew up speaking a different language from yours. Then you get into linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that a person’s native language influences how they see or experience the world.

She says it’s like a game of catch with a lump of clay. Each person catches it and molds it with their perceptions before tossing it back. Things like education, race, gender, age, relationship with the other person, frame of mind, connotations of words, and distractions all influence how the clay is shaped. Add