Stop making every conversation about yourself • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#101

Post by rendaw » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:35 AM UTC

rayxi271828 wrote: post #29

Interesting. I had to make a conscious effort to go the other way around, i.e.: to talk more about me. I grew up reading too many books aimed at the extroverts among us ("There's a reason we have 1 mouth and 2 ears!"; "Silence is golden!"). It's hard to underestimate missed opportunities because a shy introvert (me back then) took and (mis)applied advice meant for extroverts who were already unable to stop talking ab…

I think this happens a lot with other advice too. Diet/health advice like the constant barrage of "eat less fat" and "eat less salt", dating advice like "don't focus on looks", etc.

I get it, in one way... there are people out there who are unable to listen to the end of a sentence that starts with any qualification at all, and barely listen anyways so it needs to be repeated, forcefully. But this is optimizing for them at the expense of the people who do listen and end up internalizing the message too well.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#102

Post by mettamage » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:38 AM UTC

bobmaxup wrote: post #86

dvcolgan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I relate very much to this. I have autism and in-person social interactions have been challenging at times to understand. So, I became a student of the human social experience and read a bunch of books about how to speak human, which I think indeed sometimes were more for extroverts. I have been learning how to gracefully interrupt, how to start conversations, how to have an opinion that is different from the others…

How do you measure success with something so subjective?

There are some baseline metrics that are obvious right?

For example, if you have 0 conversations in a given week on average, then having 1 or 2 neutral conversations per week already feels like something better. Why? The goal is now to make those conversations feel slightly positive.

You don't need to prove your success to anyone else, so scientific rigorousness isn't needed. What's needed is your own evaluation of how things are going based on metrics you find important. The metric I gave is just an example, there are many metrics one could choose from. It really depends on the outcome you want.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#103

Post by twelvechairs » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:38 AM UTC

fnordpiglet wrote: post #61

rockbruno wrote: post #22

There is a balance to this. If you always only listen to others and never speak about yourself, you fail to build connections with them (because they know nothing about you). I had the opposite problem, I made every conversation about them and had to learn to change that in order to be able to make friends.

I’ve found that people generally really enjoy talking about themselves but only if you’re truly interested and are drawing connections between yourself and them and their experiences and interests. If you’re merely pumping them for information or listening to their stories about themselves it’s not a connection building experience, it’s just setting them up to self reflect verbally to you. The key for me is people li…

The way people approach conversation is strongly culturally ingrained.

The way it was explained to me by a Brit is that he had to stop looking for "normal conversation" because Californians just "take turns talking about themselves".

There's advantages and disadvantages both ways but most people are strongly biased to whatever approach they grew up with.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#104

Post by da39a3ee » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:39 AM UTC

> This post is actually just me talking about me

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#105

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:40 AM UTC

beardyw wrote: post #28

It's like the old story of an actor: ".. anyway that's enough talk about me. What did YOU think about my performance."

Like when an SNL host tries to make their monologue all about themself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVUrOgxhf0

Sometime even a seasoned professional can't get it right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMFclAw6rnY

And then they have to improvise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtnBumt82_Y

Finally they may notice another actor on stage, find themselves listening, and make the beast with two backs, but only to further their own career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRkZYdWCe7w

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#106

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:42 AM UTC

JesseMReeves wrote: post #94

rockbruno wrote: post #22

There is a balance to this. If you always only listen to others and never speak about yourself, you fail to build connections with them (because they know nothing about you). I had the opposite problem, I made every conversation about them and had to learn to change that in order to be able to make friends.

A lot of people out there do not listen to learn or share viewpoints or out of genuine interest for the other being, but to get information that they can later use against you. People with real interests (nerds) should be particularly careful when talking to most people because nerds don’t understand such intent, which is why I try to not share my interests or similar personal information when I don’t sense certain p…

[deleted]

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#107

Post by owenversteeg » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:42 AM UTC

I always hate these kind of conversation advice/social advice blog post things because the reality is that you can be an excellent conversationalist and make friends with everyone with all different conversational styles. I have friends that talk about themselves 75% of the conversation but nobody gives a shit because they’re interesting/funny/unusual/whatever and people like to be entertained. Similarly I have friends that typically talk very little about themselves - few short sentences and back to you - and that works too! You can be the kind of person who uses someone’s name all the time or literally never uses it and BOTH of those work just fine.

You know what doesn’t work though? Weird advice about making it about them, or mentioning their name X times, or other specific rules. You can spot someone who just read How To Make Friends or whatever else a mile away - why? Because they seem to be nervously following some invisible rule and it ends up making them seem like a kid from the school paper conducting their first interview. You know what DOES work every time? Having a relaxed, natural conversation! “Have a few beers and relax and just talk normally” is better advice than any blog post or self help book out there.

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#108

Post by circlefavshape » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:45 AM UTC

scrapheap wrote: post #23

I'm more than happy to hear people talking about themselves - I just wish people would remember that they've already told me a story before. The third time you hear about someone's school days when they did X, Y and Z can get a bit boring :D

If you have a lot of stories and talk to a lot of people then this gets very difficult very fast

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#109

Post by artembugara » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:46 AM UTC

The title of this post is also great advice to many tech/dev people who start doing sales.

Don't try to fit your solution to everyone.

Listen to what is actually a problem and solve it. You don't have to talk about this cool app you've built. It's not about you or your product, it's about someone's problem

Re: Stop making every conversation about yourself

#110

Post by JR1427 » Wed, Nov 08, 2023, 10:47 AM UTC

uxp100 wrote: post #11

JR1427 wrote: post #8

Click on article. Discover I have to sign in to read. No thanks.

Are you sure, or is just the typical substack popover with the continue reading button? (It isn’t really worth going back for, very short with basically no content)

Thanks for the followup.

I guess my reaction is partly just that if a site wants to immediately spam me and try and grab some details, then I don't want to be there.

On a related note, I'm usually a fan of the EU, but the mandatory cookie policy popup must be the worst piece of legislation in the history of the world. Very annoying, and absolutely doesn't solve the problem.