Silence: Because I talked so rarely, people took the time to listen to me

http://swombat.com/2011/8/13/silence

by joshuacc • 15 years ago

169 59 15 years ago

boop• 15 years ago

This is very true. I have repeatedly been called a great communicator which surprises me as I find in group conversations I tend to listen 70% of the time and talk only 30% of the time. I believe because I talk less, more weight is given to what I say. Also, because I talk less, I choose my words wisely instead of just blurting out anything that comes to mind.

swombat4• 15 years ago

Talking 1/3 of the time seems like exactly the right proportion. See this article, also by my dad:

http://wisdom.tenner.org/1/post/2011/07/the-small-wheel-list...

Ultra-condensed summary: if you want people to pay attention to what you say, spend 1/3 of the time listening with your mouth shut, 1/3 rephrasing and asking clarifying questions to make sure that you've understood, and only after that, spend 1/3 of the time actually saying things (which now have a chance of being listened to...).

AndyJPartridge2• 15 years ago

Indeed.

We have two ears, and one mouth. 70/30%

nanospider2• 15 years ago

It's actually 66.67% and 33.33%.

troymc2• 15 years ago

It seems to me that the optimal percentage of time to spend listening should depend on the number of people in the meeting.

5hoom• 15 years ago

My dad had a saying, "you have two ears & one mouth. Use them in that proportion".

keyle• 15 years ago

In french we have a saying

    "Tourne ta langue 7 fois dans ta bouche avant de parler"

it means

    "Turn your tongue 7 times in your mouth prior to talking"

A metaphor, of course. A reminder, often used by my mum, to say that I was speaking to say nothing.

Carefully crafting the flow of words is as important as the words themselves. Same apply to writing.

suking• 15 years ago

Especially if it's a tourist visiting Paris - in which case turn your tongue until they leave you alone.

sankalpk• 15 years ago

While this may be helpful for business people and politicians, I think this isn't great advice for this demographic. A huge skill lacking within this industry (and of course I'm generalizing) is that of verbal communication. Wouldn't talking more, much like writing more, help that skill?

swombat4• 15 years ago

No, not at all.

Silence, like body language, is an essential part of "verbal communication skills" - that's the point I'm making. You can no more learn "verbal communication" without learning to use silence than you can learn "driving skills" without learning to look in the rear-view mirror... (poor analogy, but you get the idea)

pohl2• 15 years ago

"Music is the space between the notes." - Claude Debussy

losvedir• 15 years ago

Wouldn't talking more, much like writing more, help that skill?

Yes and no.

I think "talking more", in the sense of finding more occasions to speak: more meetings, more conferences, etc, would be helpful.

However, I don't think using more words during each of those occasions would improve your verbal communication skills.

hv23• 15 years ago

Talking more doesn't necessarily mean you're saying more.

To use another popular adage that drives the point home: brevity is the soul of wit.

AndyJPartridge2• 15 years ago

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer. --Muhammad Ali

NathanKP• 15 years ago

In this example I imagine part of the reason why his infrequent talking was taken so seriously is because when he wasn't talking he was engaging in active, serious listening. This gave him a better grasp of what was going on, and it allowed him to make his own speech highly relevant and sensible.

I think this is a great lesson. Good speaking arises from good listening, because only good listening will give you the best sense of what everyone else is thinking and what you need to say to explain your own thoughts to them.

swombat4• 15 years ago

Absolutely. Remaining quiet and not constantly thinking "what can I say next to 'contribute'?" was one of the reasons I could actually really pay attention to what was going on and catch those key moments where I could actually say something worthwhile.

davi• 15 years ago

I think of certain quiet people I know as having high signal-to-noise. When they start to emit, I listen carefully, because my attention will be rewarded with lots of signal per unit time.

nanospider2• 15 years ago

On a per sample basis it is very difficult to distinguish between signal and noise. So your lack of definition as to what 'per unit time' means leaves me very confused.

fredoliveira• 15 years ago

I like how this thread suddenly buzzes with science. ;-) Engineers doing some engineering, I guess.

Isn't it impossible to distinguish signal and noise on a per-sample basis, though? A sample has no context, only a frequency. By itself, it can be both - no?

pepsi_can• 15 years ago

I've heard something similar that sums up this way:

       "The more you're heard, the less you're listened to"

ctdonath• 15 years ago

To the contrary, I find that those who speak from long silence are ignored out of habit by those who won't shut up.

pohl2• 15 years ago

This is a great technique, and an excellent essay describing it. I found it enjoyable to read.

I wonder, though, if the author failed to pinpoint the likely cause of this effect. Yes, I believe that there is an element to it that involves signaling alpha security in a non-verbal way, and another element to it where the sheer rarity of your speech raises its perceived value.

But consider this, which I suspect may be the dominating force at play: if you follow the author's algorithm and only speak if you feel as though saying nothing will have greater cost in the future to put things back on the rails, what are you doing if not filtering out the lower-quality, lower-urgency, and lower-importance thoughts that you might otherwise utter. I believe that the effect of this is that if you only utter the crème de la crème of your thoughts, then people end up suspecting that you're more brilliant than you actually are. At the very least, people will come to learn that if you have something to say, it will likely be well worth their attention.

It's simply a matter of keeping your lower-quality thoughts as the part of an iceberg submerged below the surface.

noonespecial• 15 years ago

I use an alternate of this as well. In almost never use profanity, particularly as an intensifier. When I do, it's full-quieting, guaranteed to rivet the attention of those who know me. Perfect for those rare times when I absolutely must be heard.

troymc2• 15 years ago

This reminded me of a quote, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." It's attributed to Abraham Lincoln (e.g. in the Yale Book of Quotations).

It's a humorous twist on a Bible verse: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: [and] he that shutteth his lips [is esteemed] a man of understanding." (King James Bible, Proverbs 17:28)

sjs• 15 years ago

Thanks for posting the source. That's one of my favourite sayings and one I would do well to remember more often.

tingletech• 15 years ago

an economy of words

aorshan• 15 years ago

I absolutely agree with this. I find that time and time again, when I refrain from talking as much as possible, people tend to listen more and more when I speak.

I have also found that silence can be very useful in an educational situation. When I tutor kids in math and they are having trouble working through a problem, the tend to look at me after 5 seconds of effort and expect me to help them. I just stare at them until they go back and look at the problem again. 75% of the time they figure it out. I'll admit, I got the idea from Plikt (the tutor of Valentine's children in Speaker for the Dead)

onan_barbarian4• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, the poster chose to break his dignified silence by posting a epic paean of fatuous self-praise on-line, interspersed with some quotations from his fathers 'blog on wisdom'. Really.

It would be interesting to hear the other sides of the story:

"Yeah, when he finally spoke, we were all surprised he could still talk, it was sort of weird. But I guess he was our manager so we had to listen to him".

"When he went silent in the middle of the negotiation I wondered what the hell he was doing; is this some sort of new trick?"

Dispensing this kind of wisdom seems to be yet another popular form of 'premature victory lap' on HN, where fairly wet-behind-the-ears types with no major runs on the board can puff themselves up by handing out the Keys to Their Success.

dmix• 15 years ago

Years of exposure to self-improvement makes one cyclical.

onan_barbarian4• 15 years ago

I'm not cyclical - or cynical (?) - about the experiences of those who have done something impressive or who have something interesting to say...

Years of attempting actual self-improvement do make one weary of hearing people praising themselves for doing stuff that isn't very profound or impressive. Sad to say, the experience of actually improving yourself by doing something difficult involves regular meetings with the realization that you aren't as smart as you thought you were, or as organized, or as persuasive, etc.

Constant struggling against your own carelessness, partial understanding of your field and the limits of your intelligence doesn't usually lead to this kind of half-smart undergraduate self-congratulation. Those who aren't struggling are either going to be rampaging, obvious successes, or are comfortable and smug exactly because they're not doing anything all that hard.

The original guy was resolving some problems in a team of devs at Accenture, not putting a man on the moon or sequencing the human genome for the first time or building Facebook or whatever.

Mz5• 15 years ago

posting a epic paean

I didn't think it was all that long. I often post things longer than that, in email form or on blogs/websites I own (and probably even here as comments). Seems like an ugly thing to say and not at all accurate.

phaker2• 15 years ago

The word "epic" can be used to describe tone, not only length.

todayiamme• 15 years ago

What would you have said about PG's writing before he had started YC, and was still working on ViaWeb? Imagine PG writing back then with the same level of introspective insight, would you have shot him down too?

I think that if you look beyond the messenger, you will see a message worth reading, irrespective of who has delivered it.

onan_barbarian4• 15 years ago

You're assuming the pg's awesomeness in everything he writes is a given. Like any smart, opinionated person who writes on a wide variety of topics, pg ranges between insights that make me think "damn, I wish I had thought of that" to "what is this I don't even". It turns out that pg isn't a Philosopher King on every topic.

In any case the point is moot. The original post in question isn't that profound (introspective insight is in rather short supply) and most of the evidence mustered in support of it comes from experiences where the guy is just telling us how awesome something that he did was. It could well be that he should have handled the situation by reading both disputants the riot act and breaking up the meeting; we have no evidence beyond his say-so. Maybe this clever-clever "I am the Silent One" stuff just wasted vast amounts of everyone's time...

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

It is better to shut up and give the impression that you are stupid than to talk and remove all doubts of it

dools• 15 years ago

Takes one to know one

zacharycohn• 15 years ago

I disagree completely. In swombat's example with the two employees, he let them resolve most of the dispute, and then stepped in when necessary. If he had done a majority of the talking, I'm sure there would have been many things left unsaid and it would have led to a less satisfactory result.

swombat4• 15 years ago

I'm truly sorry that you got nothing of value from this article. Far from being a sudden, empty insight, this is an idea I've been thinking about for years, and in fact I've told that story many times to many people (and it generally gets across what I consider to be a powerful idea).

I've also used the technique many times myself. I've run 3 businesses, and it's an exceptionally powerful tool in negotiation. Not, of course, applied bluntly like an imbecile (like the "boss" mentioned in one of the other comments), but subtly, at the right moment, without emphasising it. Letting the other person think, talk, and say what you need them to say rather than trying to goad them into it is an essential business skill. You probably use it without even thinking about it.

So, really sorry that you personally found nothing of value here (many other people did, from the looks of it) but I don't think the personal attacks were called for and they're out of place on a normally respectful forum like HN.

It is sad that your pointless name-calling now dominates what was a healthy discussion. I wonder how many people didn't post interesting comments and anecdotes because they saw your territorial markings at the top of the conversation. You should be ashamed of yourself.

onan_barbarian4• 15 years ago

I don't doubt you've been thinking about this idea for years, and have told this story to many people. It was abundantly clear from the post that from your subjective point of view, you regard this technique as having prime importance; there's no need to reiterate.

All this being said, my remarks stand. Your post reads like an uninterrupted barrage of self-praise. This idea is neither new, nor thought-provoking, and is justified entirely by your own assertion that you're a Really Effective Guy.

Your solipsism continues, with you convinced that a wonderful exploration of your big idea was just around the corner until that Onan guy came and fucked it all up, with his awful, mysteriously-at-the-top-of-the-discussion-for-some-reason, posting. Your major anecdote in support of this comes from a situation where you were the boss and the evidence of how well it went is entirely from you. Aside from us all trotting out our own tales of how wonderfully we too resolved various situations in similar and equally subjective fashion and praising you for your insight, I'm not quite sure what you're looking for here.

jtheory• 15 years ago

Why is this comment, and the discussion about it, taking up the entire first third of the whole discussion page? (And now I'm adding to it, though only in hopes of reducing recurrence.)

If you don't think the OP is interesting/insightful and/or you have nothing interesting/insightful personally that you can add to it, just don't vote it up. If you're capable of it and have the time, come post a more intelligent treatment of the topic in the discussion. But to take the time to type out even a half-dozen lines of cutting sarcasm -- haha, he quoted his father, how embarrassing! -- well, what does that give me, one of the mass of readers who come here for sustenance?

The original post was short enough to read, and covered a basic idea that could have served as a foundation for more meaty discussion. E.g., how it's different if you're being quiet but you aren't the "boss" in the discussion, how much body language matters, etc.. At the very least, well-told stories of how being quiet can backfire.

Maybe that's in here, somewhere; but now I've used up my HN break trying to sift through the complaints about complaints, and complaining about them.

Mz5• 15 years ago

Something of a twist: I used to post a lot on some topics/lists and people tried to shout me down. Arguing with them wasn't effective in swaying opinion. I began looking for other outlets for my need to "talk" and saying less on certain topics and reserving more of what I did say for blogs/websites. I say a lot less on those topics these days. But people are beginning to listen to me and not count me so much a fruitcake. When I tried endlessly to explain, thinking they just didn't understand, it hurt my credibility and convinced people it was about ego and attention-mongering. I still feel there is a great deal of information which needs to be conveyed on those topics, but I continue to work at finding ways for my communication to be effective and not just so much churn. Since I'm a huge blabbermouth, this just does not come naturally to me at all.

domhofmann• 15 years ago

This is anecdotal, but I've heard Steve Jobs is notorious for doing this.

jseliger• 15 years ago

I'm a grad student in English Lit, which means I teach freshmen comp to undergrads, which in turn means they want to fight about grades at the end of each semester. One former student, who'd read this essay before I posted it (http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-professors%E2...) asked how often students actually win grade fights, and I relied, "Never, with me."

I preface grade fights by saying, "I won't change your grade" and then talk about the paper to the extent necessary. The right way to get better grades is to do better work next time. Being on this side of the desk has definitely made me more skeptical of the students who said, "So and so was a hard grader / mean / hated me," mostly because those things might be somewhat true but can almost always be overcome by greater effort, at least at the undergrad level.

Also, grade fights can sometimes be won through silence, as James Fallows describes: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/03/-quot-... . His post is titled, "When you're done talking, stop," which might be slightly better advice than "rarely talk." Since learning the silence trick, grade fights have plummeted in length, since now I've learned to just sit there and give one sentence answers once the substance of an issue has been covered.

angstrom• 15 years ago

Obviously not a legal prof. :)

TheAmazingIdiot• 15 years ago

Really, what can you expect from an English grad student?

... Well, other than being a teacher?

mcantor• 15 years ago

"We have two ears and one mouth for a reason."

I think one of the big reasons this is effective is because when you're not talking, you're listening, and this lets you figure out which stuff actually matters.

6ren• 15 years ago

I used a silence technique when tutoring (class size about 20): if you want students to answer a question, give them space. 10 seconds of silence is quite uncomfortable - 30 seconds is extraordinary, unbearable. Don't elaborate, or coach; just ask the question, then total silence.

Nature deplores a vacuum, and silence will draw someone out. Counter-intuitively, it also gives permission for people to speak who otherwise would be too shy.

Mz5• 15 years ago

Counter-intuitively, it also gives permission for people to speak who otherwise would be too shy.

I'm wondering if that has to do with internal "speed"/timing issues. My ex was a slow talking, quiet sort (and shy/introverted) and I tend to talk a lot and talk fast. A big issue in our marriage was when we argued and I felt like I took really huge pauses to try to get him to speak but he still wouldn't speak so I would resume talking to fill the silence. His take on it was that I never ever shut up and there was no way to get a word in edgewise. I imagine if we had overcome this issue, the marriage would have gone a great deal more smoothly. I had to actively teach our younger son, who is more like his father in this regard, to simply "interrupt" me and his fast-talking older brother. Otherwise, he feels like we don't "let" him talk. There is a big disconnect in the internal timing here -- he seems to not be able to judge how/when to jump in the way his brother and I do. So when he simply "interrupts" us, I defend it if his brother gets irritated or something.

jamesbkel• 15 years ago

Definitely can relate to this situation (of your ex). It definitely can be a case of difficulty "judg[ing] how/when to jump in", I certainly am below-average on that measure.

However, a separate but related trait is that I often find myself internally running through several iterations of what I want to say, only to realize that by the time I've winnowed it down to the relevant info and am ready to speak, the conversation has moved on.

polyfractal• 15 years ago

Have to be careful with this technique too - most classes tend to have the "overenthusiastic answerer" who will always answer the question given a chance. As a Teacher/TA/Tutor you have to learn to ignore these people (or privately ask them to answer less frequently).

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

The following is not necessarily commentary on the poster's method of handling meetings:

I had a manager who would do the say-something-then-sit-in-silence thing. It was absolutely horrible. Basically, you had to be a sociopath in order to not feel perpetually uncomfortable around her. Every 'normal' person working for her was absolutely miserable. I'm sure she thought she was being very clever.

petervandijck• 15 years ago

I would post a comment, but...

DasIch• 15 years ago

The problem with this "silence" is that you are not actually silent, you never are. If you can't back up silence with non-verbal communication skills you will end up being that weird shy guy who never says anything and you really don't want to be weird shy guy.

There is also a huge difference between silence in a group setting, which just means letting others speak compared to silence in a 1-on-1 conversation in which you are forcing someone else to make a move.

Whereas the first is relatively simple to pull off, it also just affects the signal to noise ratio and might give others the impression that you are more intelligent than you actually are. Once that intelligence is put to the test this becomes anything but simple.

The second one can be a lot more difficult. Most people are not accustomed to silence, they prefer noise, they live in noise and they hide in noise. If you are not comfortable or confident enough in how you use silence it will backfire and you end up in a situation that is just awkward.

analyst74• 15 years ago

My father also drilled the same idea in me when I grew up. But as of late I started to notice things that do not quite follow this golden rule.

Take following examples:

1, when in a group of friends engaging in casual conversation, staying quiet tend to get you ignored. You will be labeled as "that quiet person" unless you are already a respected member of the group.

2, in business meetings, the most important persons on the table will never get ignored. And it's best for them to NOT dominate the meeting so the other attendees can express their views.

3, The ability of commanding a conversation is highly valued in society, and such skill cannot be gained by being quiet all the time. In fact, even conveying your message across the table takes skills that can only be learned after much practice.

tobylane• 15 years ago

It only works if the people who are listening to you don't need to be corrected a lot. Some people in my class who are somewhere between chav and decent IT student have a lot of theories that can instantly be proven wrong. Otherwise yes, I've found this to work really well.

Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu• 15 years ago

Is this Western ego-mass trying to adopt and assimilate emerging Asian economies by embracing its cultural distinctiveness?

Silence: Because I talked so rarely, people took the time to listen to me

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