Someday I will have a conversation with
another human being, it will go something like this.
ME : <says a full and complete
sentence, perhaps two, specifying an idea>
THEM : <replies only once I am
finished. Communicates clearly enough that I know when they are
finished>
This will repeat, back and forth.
There will be no stumbles, interruptions, talkings-over. Neither of
us will push the other in regards to anything, neither of us will
feel either rushed or lagging in the conversation.
I talk with customers all day on the
phone. Today, it took a person 2 minutes and 30 seconds by the clock
on my phone (which counts the seconds I am on each call) to tell me
“I lost my username and password to log in.”
One hundred and fifty seconds to
transmit information that can be encapsulated in 9 words. And it
could have been reduced to “I can't log in”, which is 4 words. 4
words worth of communication that took 150 seconds to say. The
average person, in conversation, speaks roughly 100 words per minute
(some faster, a few slower). That means this person took about 250
words to say 4. That is not efficient.
Which is still better than the people
that, when I'm trying to tell them how their temporary password is
spelled, interrupt me to ask how their temporary password is spelled.
I can usually predict these, though, because they've interrupted me
or talked over the top of me several times already before we get to
spelling the temporary password.
Half of conversation is listening. The
other half is speaking. The final half is thinking about what you're
going to say, and the fourth half (maybe the fourth 35%) is balancing
all of this with your conversational partner.
Which means that conversation really
does require a lot more attention than we tend to pay it.
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