FAKE RONJAN!!New Year's Resolution: Be a Better Listener
Coming into 2017 my New Year's Resolution was to be a better listener. It's both an audacious and a vague goal and I can't say I was particularly successful in a macro sense, but there was one tactical application that worked well for me.
For the year I tried to completely eliminate interrupting others when they were speaking, including starting a new thought while someone else was winding theirs down. Meaning no talking while someone else is, so I can fully absorb what they're saying.
It's really incredible how few true lulls there are in many conversations when you are waiting for one to chime in. It's a cultural conversational cadence that favors the zealous and loud and the talker over the thinker. But it also allows you time to synthesize a conversation and forces you to make your contributions count: volumity won't save you!
It's really hard to commit to this and I definitely slipped from time to time, but I'm glad I tried it and I will continue doing so going forward in perpetuity.
#happynewyear #2018resolutionisprobablyweightrelated