Talking Fast and Justifying Less
Thoughts on staying present in conversations and life
“I’ll just observe my words as they come out of my mouth, not before. I’ll just talk fast.”
They say “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” But you could also say “fast is fast,” which would be faster to say. I’ve been trying to say things fast, in order to be more smooth. Catch my drift?
… In all seriousness, I tend to talk slower than most, and I have been trying to talk faster, and I do think that doing so could increase my ease in conversations and allow me to listen better. I’ll explain my thinking and tell the story of a successful fast-talking experiment.
To wait has weight
As mentioned I tend to talk slower than most, and I reckon that sometimes I’m slow to decide and to act. But let’s focus on talking.
What does slow talking get me? Slow talking gets me space to think. This sounds good on the surface, but sometimes it’s a trap…
An overthinking scenario
Let’s say you ask how I’m doing, and I’m aware of some challenge I faced this week. I formulate a response, but I don’t speak it - there’s a mental process that’s deciding whether the response is appropriate. How does that process evaluate? It needs to guess at your judgements towards me upon receiving my words. Perhaps, in this case, the result is uncertain. So I consider more options…
(Thoughts) But wait. How much do I value honesty vs. balance in the conversation? If I speak honestly, then we might just end up talking about my things, because I’m good at coming up with analyses. If you’re a question asker, I’ll just keep giving answers. And we can’t let that happen. What leads the conversation in a good direction?
At this point in the convo I offer some platitudes, but we’re off the deep end now, because now I’m in thinking mode™ and am in various ways self-conscious, and am not paying great attention to you, my interlocutor. Each question I receive pulls me further into rumination, as I carefully reconstruct and interrogate my intricate, fragile models of the world and my actions within it…
What an inconvenient dynamic! How do we prevent this!
There might be many ways to relax one’s mental grip and/or become a more engaged listener, but for me, what I ended up trying was to just talk fast, and I’m happy to say that I had a great time doing so.
A successful fast-talking experiment
I was at the Sauna with Olly when I thought, “you know what? I’m gonna talk to Olly without thinking. I’ll just observe my words as they come out of my mouth, not before. I’ll just talk fast.”
It was a wonderful experience! First of all, my approach basically worked - I was able to talk much faster. When I didn’t give myself time to think, my thoughts quieted down in a very pleasant way, and I could pay attention to what my friend was saying.
Under normal circumstances I would ask questions and think “is this a reasonable question?” and end up being self-conscious, but this time around, I was freed to focus on my conversation partner. I could feel a slight impulse to evaluate my questions before speaking, but could override that impulse, smoothing over the intrusive bump and returning to my present experience - the experience of what he was saying, and what I was saying too.
Also, as a recipient of questions I found myself to be defended against the pitfalls of overthinking. If asked a hard question, I could say “man, I don’t know, that’s a hard question,” and then later could say “I guess [xyz],” but in a way that makes it clear that I don’t fully endorse what I’m saying. That I don’t fully endorse anything I might say, as I’m not capable of coming up with definitive answers and proofs of their correctness. That I’m just talking. That it’s playful. That I can just say what’s on my mind instead of sitting there and recomputing my entire world-model every minute.
As time went on, I gained a sense of self-confidence, in my ability to have good conversations and in my ability to act well in the world. I felt that just as I could speak with little hesitation, so too could I act on the world with little hesitation, and feel good doing it.
Towards a broader practice of talking (and acting) fast
I’d like to keep practicing my ability to talk fast, especially in low-stakes informal conversations. I see this as part of a greater endeavor to reduce the burden of thinking and justifying that steers my attention away from the present moment.
Besides the benefits mentioned above, talking fast has the obvious benefits of getting more information across quickly, and it’s more collaborative too - it suggests, “we can figure this out together, and I trust you to understand my process along the way.”
Something similar could be said about acting fast in the world… That the world might reward you for acting upon it from a place of uncertainty; it might appreciate getting to figure things out together. I think that’s (metaphorically) true, but I’m not sure how I would approach a practice of acting fast. Whereas a practice of talking fast is easy to pursue.
Note: Surely there are times when slow, thoughtful conversation is better, and some people would benefit from working on that end of the spectrum (remember to consider reversing all advice).
I’d be curious to hear from my readers - do you tend to think before you speak, or not? Did anything here resonate with you? I am always happy to receive comments, or phone calls - in the latter case, expect me to talk fast.
til next time,
Daniel