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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Sized Brilliance Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and I wanna talk to you about the art of conversation. I was speaking with a friend of mine who lives overseas recently, and she mentioned that she's on the hunt for some new friends, and recently she had a conversation with some Gen Zs.
Now my friend is Gen X, but it's not really about that. It's about the art of conversation. She mentioned that it was very difficult to talk to these Gen Z strangers and not for what you might think. It wasn't because they gave the famous Gen Z stare.
That wasn't it at all. It was the fact that they kept constantly interrupting her to where she couldn't get a single sentence out or a story out without them breaking in. Has that ever happened to you? It has rarely happened to me, but on a trip I took [00:01:00] to New York last year, I was at dinner with about four or five different people, and two out of the five people did that constantly.
Another client of mine mentioned that also happens to her frequently, and what do you do about that? So let's get into it. Has that happened to you? If so, comment, I would really love to know, is this something that pops up in your life? And who is doing it? Is it Gen X?
Is it boomers? Is it Gen Z? Is it millennials? Who is interrupting others? Now since my friend mentioned Gen Z, I wanna talk about attention spans. Millennials, gen x, boomers, we're pre-internet, a lot of us, so we are used to having longer attention spans or getting our dopamine fix through long form content.
But for younger millennials, gen Alpha, gen Z, they came up with the internet. And since the internet was [00:02:00] created, we've seen attention spans drop down to now about five seconds, somewhere between five and seven seconds. It depends on your research that you look at, but if you go back to the 1950s, our attention span was up to around 30 seconds.
It was a lot longer and the internet was created to hijack that dopamine system. Just like all of these apps are just like your smartphones are. And personally, I think smartphones have made it even a bit worse. We get used to getting quick dopamine bursts a nd if you are neurodivergent, your brain is wired differently to be a dopamine seeker.
So some of the quick bursts feel better to you. But when you do these short form dopamine activities, which is scrolling on social media, watching reels or videos that are only 30 seconds to three [00:03:00] minutes, you're burning through your dopamine supply quickly. How many times have we all done it where we're just gonna get on social media real quick and half an hour to an hour has passed and it's because the feed is constantly giving us a new video, a new piece of information.
So we're liking, we're scrolling, and we just keep feeding that dopamine pathway. Not only that, I had an episode, I think maybe about five or 10 episodes ago where I talked about moms have noticed that their kids have a lot of behavioral issues when they try to take their iPad away or turn their TV off, and the kids were reacting in anger or behavioral issues.
And the researchers have noticed they're displaying signs of dopamine withdrawal in these behavioral actions that they did. So this group of moms got together and they started showing kids cartoons [00:04:00] from the eighties or nineties, and they noticed their kids' behavior got better versus when they showed 'em current day cartoons, which the colors are brighter, there's fast action, and even the cartoons, your television programming is designed for that dopamine hack.
And the moms were so thrilled that their kids got better just by watching old programming pre-internet that did not have some of these dopamine fixations. I say this because when it comes to the art of conversation, is someone constantly interrupting you because their attention span is so short that they can't hold a thought, that they can't listen to you and simultaneously think about a reply.
Is that true? Is it that they're not that into you? Is it the fact? Because some people when they have poor [00:05:00] social skills, poor EQ, if you will, they don't really care about what you're saying. They're only listening so that they can jump in with what they're saying. Sadly, that is true. So is it a short attention span?
Is it a genuine lack of interest in what you are saying? Is it poor social skills in general because of low EQ? And my poor friend, she got so disgruntled because she would tell a story, and the example she used was, _"oh, I'm getting really into painting." _The other person immediately interrupted _"Painting! I love painting, I do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."_
So she didn't even get to finish her thought before the person had hijacked the conversation, taken it on a completely different realm that was about themselves. Do a self-audit. Is this something that you do? Do you constantly interrupt people that you are speaking with? If so, then I'm going to give [00:06:00] you a little tip that the people you interrupt, we don't like that.
It is not a good give and take scenario. If that is you and you are an interrupter, really start thinking about why you do that. Is it short attention span? Is it that you're so excited that you accidentally hijack the conversation? Or do you do it on purpose? Think about that.
Really think. If you are the one being interrupted, what do you do to call attention to that? And here is a brilliant tip that one of my clients taught me a long time ago, and I use it now ever since, is I was saying some sort of point. It was some sort of teaching point and she had something that she wanted to say, but because she's very high in EQ and she is a person that gets interrupted a lot, what she did was raise her hand.
And when she did that, I immediately stopped [00:07:00] talking and I thought it was great because when we raise your hand, look at what we're trained from school. When you raise your hand, you have something to say. So it's a visual cue that lets the other person go, _"oh, I've got something to say about that."_
I was able to stop my sentence at a natural stopping point and let her chime in. And I have used that ever since and it's brilliant because yeah, you get to signal, I've got something to say. I will wait my turn and let a natural pause in the conversation happen and then jump in with whatever I'm excited about.
So use that tip. But also, I'm a Taurus and I am not afraid to correct bad behavior. Sometimes I have had to call out someone that is constantly interrupting and go, "_excuse me, I want to get this thought out. I will get to you in a minute."_ Or some version of [00:08:00] that. _" Excuse me, will you please let me finish and then I'll be happy to hear what you have to say."_
Because some people, if that is their go-to and they're constant interrupters, it's fine to them. It could be fine to them because no one has pointed out that can be inappropriate or bad behavior in some situations. They've normalized it. So it's not a bad thing to bring it to their attention that in speaking with you, it's not accepted.
It's not okay, and if you are a constant interrupter, leave some flow in t he conversation, leave some natural pauses and start listening for those pauses. And that is a good time to jump in with your excitement, with your point or raise your hand. Conversations go both ways and our conversations in general have declined and the quality of our conversations have declined for a lot of different reasons.[00:09:00]
Social media. Short attention spans. Not caring, not knowing, not being taught. Sometimes it's not that you don't care, that you just haven't been taught how to have a good conversation. You haven't been taught to hold a thought in your head and jump in and contribute instead of take over. And you know what?
These are skills that can be learned with the right training, but you wanna be aware and do a self-audit. C all out inappropriate behavior, set a boundary. I am so excited to hear what you have to say, but please let me finish a sentence and then jump in. I will pause. Sometimes you have to set that down and correct it.
Raise your hand. It's a great visual cue on both sides because sharing, we all wanna share things. We all wanna connect. We don't wanna turn people off when we're trying to connect because we have poor skills and short attention spans. I thought this episode might be helpful to take into your next [00:10:00] conversation and you get to decide if them interrupting you is not a big deal because there's some people out there that just love to talk.
And I will say extroverts tend to interrupt more than an introvert would. Sometimes you see that with neurodivergence, and I have also seen that with those who are having a bipolar manic episode, that is a hallmark that they will interrupt quite often. So there are definitely reasons why that happens, but we can all learn better skills and how to communicate with the people that we're trying to communicate with. It is a give and flow and everybody's got their own version, their own playbook of what's appropriate when it comes to conversation. It's really important to let people know what your playbook is. And if your playbook is interruptions are rude, let the other person know and [00:11:00] hopefully they will respect that.
If your playbook is interruptions are okay. Let the other person know so that you can have a dialogue about that, or you get to accept it or you correct it. You have a lot of options, but being self-aware and communicating well will carry you in so many different situations in life. Not only with understanding yourself, but it helps you have better relationships with others.
And we need that. We need relationships with others. So don't self isolate because you think you're a poor communicator. I would recommend anybody work on your attention span and go back to long form dopamine. Sadly, I read a recent statistic that said only 16% of people in the US read for pleasure anymore.
There are a lot of different reasons for that, but reading blogs. Reading long form content, reading books helps you hold a longer attention span. [00:12:00] So if you're listening right now and you know that short attention span is a problem that you might be addicted to the internet, have a cyber addiction addicted to reaching for your phone a lot.
You can train your brain to go for long form dopamine interactions and not the short term quickies. Face-to-face conversations with people give you that long form Dopamine. Taking a walk in nature without your phone gives you long form dopamine. Start looking for opportunities where you can experience your dopamine in a slow, low form, and this will help retrain your brain so that you're not constantly overwhelmed, distracted, or maybe interrupting others. Alright, I hope this was helpful, and if you wanna learn more about brain training, t alk to me at aprildarley.com. You can schedule a consultation where we will talk about there are different ways to train your brain so that you [00:13:00] feel less scattered, less overwhelmed, and you develop better communication skills with yourself and others.
So schedule your free consultation at aprildarley.com and I will see you next week. Goodbye.
