Weve been blessed with a very precious gift, my friends: the gift of talking. The gift of language. The gift of being able to express our feelings, emotions, ideas or plans into something called words. But, alas, as with every gift, overusing it may lead to unexpected results.
Speaking and listening in a balanced way are imperative in our world. The noise of useless words that many of us are throwing away in an attempt to get a grip on someone elses attention, creates a thick fog that makes it really difficult to actually understand each other. Ironically, the more we talk, the less were able to communicate.
Read on about these 6 benefits of speaking less and listening more and improve the way you communicate with the world.
Think Before You Speak
So obvious, yet so underused. Under the impulse of taking the stage, of speaking before the other one could make his moves, we often open our mouth without really knowing what were going to say. Sometimes we improvise and it may turn out right. But most of the time, were just shouting randomly about a topic, without any quality contribution to the conversation. The result: no one really listen to us.
Take a deep breathe before you respond, no matter how urgent the answer may look. Think for a while. Keep in mind the thought that you really have has many options, not just one. Ponder and your answer will not only be well thought out but people will be more apt to listen.
Listen Before Jumping To Conclusions
Again, the need for speed of our current world often forces us to simplify our interactions, to the point where they become useless. Based on just a few words, or a few sentences, we often create a perspective on some thing or some person, which may simply be inaccurate because we didnt take the time to actually listen.
Really listening means not only giving to the other the time to finish his speech, but also the exercise of borrowing his perspective. Listening means to actually see things from their point of view.
Limit Yourself To Whats Important
The infamous information overload created by the internet revolution is not about the quantity of the information available out there. But merely about the relevance of that information. Every time you update your Facebook timeline, or you publish a blog post, or you simply open your mouth to say something, youre adding up to this fog. Have you ever tried to contemplate if what youre going to say is really that important? Sometimes, silence really IS golden..
Too often, the reason is that were talking is simply just to hear our voices, no matter if we do this out loud, by writing emails or updating our Twitter. Imagine how silent it would be out there if we could just limit ourselves only to whats really important.
Get To Know Others Better
And that means doing things together, not only talking about things together. Getting up from the couch and do a short team jog, watching the sunset together, silently, playing a game, or having a meal. All these are actions that, apart from the main benefit of enjoying life, have also a secondary, very important outcome: they help you understand other people better.
Create A Better Reality
When you speak less, you do more. Its obvious. Your focus switches from talking to doing. While talking and expressing your feelings is important, doing is equally important. If you could refrain yourself from talking for 5 minutes a day, in a month you will have gained 30 days x 5 minutes = 150 minutes, 2 and a half hours for yourself. What would you do with this time?
Whatever you want, of course. You can go to the gym, cook for your spouse, craft something in the garage, coach someone, help a neighbor, you name it. As long as your goal is to make the world a better place, doing will always beat speaking.
Write More
Its still a form of expressing yourself, but it has a few perks. If you write, youre more accountable. Written words last more than spoken words. Also, you will clear your mind without the help of somebody else. Writing in a journal or blogging, as long as you follow the number one rule of this list, [think before you do it].
And when youre writing, something very interesting will happen: you will be forced to listen to yourself. You will be exposed to your own thoughts and emotions. You will get to know yourself better. Or, to be more precise, you will start to discover who you are.
Most people are unexceptional at following up: it sounds obvious, but it shouldnt be this way, because followup [I spell it as a single word] is key to combining smaller achievements into bigger ones. Actively following up on conversation is also a trait of people whore successful, focused, and relentless about living their dreams. Lofty yet elegant and if you excel at followup, you can be sure to incite delight wherever you go, too.
Correspondences are like smallclothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up. -Sydney Smith
Heres how I do it. Youll need to find ongoing processes that work for you, but the main ideas are easy to get into!
Dont be the first to reply [or at least, give it a little while]
This sounds counterintuitive. Say you get a work email Cc:ed to you and several other colleagues. Should you reply right away? Unless youve already thought of a sure answer and/or its time-sensitive, likely no. Let it stew and even wait for someone else to reply first you can star it in Gmail and check the thread a day or so later.
Why? First, youll be less rushed. That much is clear. Second, by letting it simmer, your mind will have more space to digest the contents. Youll be able to sleep on it, and if its really a memorable email you need to give input on, your feedback will be richer and more worthwhile than something concocted in haste. Third, you can also thank the person[s] who did reply first for chiming, and consider their ideas if they said what you had in mind, you save time, too.
A day isnt too long anyway, and plenty of time to still be responsive. Try it!
[Granted, this wont work if all your coworkers read this you may want to keep it a secret! ;] ]
Be a batch-processing, pirate-ninja hybrid
Some people say ninjas are the awesomest. Others will argue its pirates. I like to consider what would happen if you combined both their traits: the sleek stealth of a ninja paired with the skilled sailing of a pirate.
What do you get? Well, it doesnt sound as exciting as life on the high seas assassinating renegade ronin, but heres what I mean:
When you get cool links shared with you, be they viral videos or articles of interest, they can be time-suckers and distractions from making progress on what youre doing now. Sure you wanna check those links out, but not yet. Instead of jumping on them right away, I use Firefox 3s star icon on the location bar [aka awesomebar] to bookmark each page with a single click to an Unsorted Bookmarks folder. You can access it later by going to Bookmarks menu > Organize Bookmarks, as this lovely video tutorial will show you:
This is exactly what Ive been doing for several weeks, and I find myself a nice berth on the weekends to chillax and peruse through one link after another. I get deeper into the content. Some are blog posts which merit a comment from me [a type of followup]. Others are clips I want to pass around. And the rest which arent worth my time? They get deleted and forgotten. Which is fine.
Related suggestion: save up video clips to watch on TV. I do this with my wife: we unsubscribed from cable and line up YouTube & friends madness to watch at dinner [and other times]. With a DVI to video cable, we connected a MacBook Pro to our TV. Not only did it save us money, it makes us less passive selectors of what we consume, and raises the quality of our entertainment. And sparks discussion and sharing followup!
By creating an intense, focused space for all this material, it places your experiences directly in-context of being receptive to both absorbing and feeding back information.
Clip it to remind yourself!
Theres no end of to-do reminder programs out there. My means are simple: I use Google Desktops To Do gadget [included with default install] which always sits on the left-hand sidebar of one of my dual monitors.
I quickly jot down short phrases when Im in a rush, then have the leisure of expanding on it later you and even drag-and-drop to recorder, and affix manual [TAGS] for visual ease. By now, youre noticing this and the previous 2 sections are about you controlling time.
In addition to bookmarks, I use Firefoxs Scrapbook add-on for saving parts of webpages to read offline and refer to later [it has a handy annotation feature which can highlight passages but I dont use that], and EverNote [the offline app, not the version 3 beta]. My point being: you dont need the most feature-filled tools, just ones you habituate to using regularly.
For time-specific, recurring stuff, youll want to set up alarms and appointments. I use Google Calendar to remind me when to pay the bill and when I might expect mail-in-rebates to arrive [so I can call if they dont] and oh yeah, its very nice that Google Desktop also has a Calendar gadget which shows me the days events. Its unintrusive, clean, and saves me daily refreshes of the Gcal webpage, which is what most people do. Dont be most people.
Im also searching for a simple, cheap, spontaneous voice recorder. Got suggestions? This may be overkill for some folks, but if youre like me and have ideas sprouting out at odd hours of the day, youll want to capture those sprouts because your creativity is worthwhile.
Respond to the best
What the heck does that mean? Simply, pay attention to remarkable, amazing comments. And thankfully Ive seen a lot of them on Lifehack. Not all comments are equal and most arent worth followup, as a casual glance of YouTube vs. Flickr can show.
But when there are:
- Eclectic questions youve never heard before [consider making a FAQ out of the ones you do get often]
- Knowledge that adds to the value of your or someone elses post and makes it that much more useful, and
- Observations which have a inimitable brand of humor
Thats what youre going to remember. Those words, connected to those people, is whats worth continuing a discussion for.
The simple reason is: those people are more likely to followup with you, teaching you applicable knowledge and making you smile. The best followup, as all healthy relationships are, is reciprocal. Give and take. If youre drained without inspiration, you wont have the attitude and enthusiasm to followup.
Dont force yourself to be social, it serves no earnest purpose and will eventually be forgotten anyway in the sea of the Internet. Time, once spent, is always depleted. If you get a lot of thank-yous for something you posted, dont be pressured to type a different thank-you to each and everyone. You could, if youre imaginative and feeling lively. But dont force it out flow.
Youll learn from experience, as I have over 10,000s of forum posts and blog comments [and having earned distinguished status like being a Lifehacker star], what followup you get in kind.
Use subscribe/keyword reminders whenever possible
Obvious but underused, in my anecdotal experiences asking people if they utilize em.
Dont be passive: seek out integrated reminder systems! Many different web services have various implementations. You may be a forum poster accustomed to vBulletins subscription system, or you may use email/RSS alerts [different ways of getting the same info] on a money-saving site like dealnews.com which is a lucid way of following up on an item youve wanted to buy for awhile, but think it should be cheaper. Give it time and youll be pinged when the price drops Price!pinx is another tool that can help you.
I also have a bookmark folder in Firefox called Waiting for Answers. Its a very special one, and I drop links to questions Ive asked on forums, blogs, etc. I detest when the trail goes cold to my curiosity, and I check this folder every few days. If longer than a couple weeks goes by without a reply, Ill post a reminder to bump things up. Stuff resolved to my satisfaction of course gets a thank-you, and the bookmark is placed in a subfolder titled ANSWERED.
Also useful for customer support tickets!
Dont say Lets do lunch sometime if you dont mean it
This is mainly about your offline life: false followup is worthless.
Dont tell a new acquaintance you want to have coffee at some indefinite point in the future if in your heart, you wont.
Some will argue this is being polite. Ill clarify that politeness means not lying to someone if you have no intention of keeping a commitment. There are many other things you can say, and the easiest of all is saying nothing at all and smiling.
Economy of words frees your energy for acting on things that matter more.
Indulge in necessary terseness
Its better to be pithy than, well, something rude which almost rhymes.
Followup is largely about [conversation] flow, and tl;dr work against being an effective communicator. Be colorful, be engaging, but dont be boring. Like music, have a sense of dynamics, dont engage in loudness wars.
Instead of monolithic, gargantuan writings, divide ideas into sections or multiple installments, as weve seen from some of my fellow Lifehack contributors. That has the benefit of attracting ongoing readers and allowing them to digest your opinion. Again, its about controlling your time.
Chop the slop! -Torley
If the above wasnt what you expected yet youve come away with some fresh recipes for followup, awesome indeed!
Featured photo credit: Luke Southern via unsplash.com