via What to Do About an Overtalker – The New York Times
Overtalker Alert
This is a waning sin of my youth, when I thought everyone shared my interests in obscure topics, political opinions, and often, gulp, my life experiences. As I grow older I more often question my ability putting words together into complex sentences, which has often led to mixed benefits and unexpected consequences, such as bored listeners. I realized early in life that my gift for syntax, could also be extended to writing, and that led to more benign consequences. People are often stressed by having to listen to too much verbal stimuli, no matter the content is. It is never too late to improve. More recently I have been paying much more attention to talking less, when talking, make pauses of more than 7 seconds long to watch for response, observing people’s non-verbal cues that signal you to stop talking, and writing more. I think that the” talk less” approach is the most practical one for me. Brevity is a virtue.
