The Art of Manliness - The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in a World That Won’t Stop Talking

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.700 we live in a chatter filled world people will talk your ear off when you see them in person

00:00:16.200 and everyone is constantly sharing their thoughts online but my guests would say that all this

00:00:20.240 chatter may be hurting us more than we know and it would be better to close our pie holes

00:00:24.260 and sit on our typing fingers a lot more often than we do his name is dan lyons and he's the

00:00:29.660 author of stfu the power of keeping your mouth shut in an endlessly noisy world today on the show

00:00:35.620 dan impacts how being quiet and speaking with greater intention can improve your life

00:00:39.760 we discuss why some people tend to over talk more than others and the six types of over talkers out

00:00:45.140 there from the blurter to the most extreme case the talkaholic for whom over talking is practically an

00:00:51.400 addiction we then discuss not getting sucked into spouting off online avoiding conversational

00:00:56.440 narcissism the argument for spending less time working on your personal brand and more time

00:01:01.220 doing quality work how silence is power how the best way to deal with issues in a marriage may be by

00:01:06.780 not talking about them and more after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:11.900 slash stop talking all right dan lyons welcome to the show hey thank you for having me so you got a

00:01:34.380 new book out called stfu the power of keeping your mouth shut in a world that won't stop talking

00:01:39.620 and this is a book about over talking and the problems of it there's been a lot of research

00:01:45.100 done about the downsides of not talking enough right shyness for example and books about how to

00:01:50.680 overcome shyness but very little has been done about over talking why do you think that is what's going

00:01:56.320 on there well i think part of it is that people who are extremely shy or communicatively apprehensive

00:02:04.380 really really really struggle in life and they also can be helped you can actually work with them

00:02:11.640 and practice and help them overcome some of that shyness and there's been a lot of work in

00:02:17.120 communication research about that and oddly enough the first research that i came across on over talkers

00:02:24.980 was done by the people who had done the most on very very shy people but i think part of it is that

00:02:33.060 over talking people are mostly just seen as annoying you don't feel pity for them or not pity you

00:02:39.180 don't you don't want to help them right you don't feel bad for them i think people who are very very

00:02:44.520 shy you kind of want to help get them out of their shell yeah i think too in the united states

00:02:50.280 we're kind of we're extroverted we kind of value the people who are out there talking and so we

00:02:55.300 don't think there's as much of a problem with people who talk more as opposed to less

00:02:59.580 yeah one of the researchers who came up with this thing called the talkaholic scale which i

00:03:04.900 write about in the book it's very interesting she is extremely extremely shy like way way way out on

00:03:12.220 that end of like really does not like to talk to strangers or people she doesn't know and her husband

00:03:18.120 was the exact opposite he was like me he's a complete talkaholic but she made a point to me

00:03:25.140 about our culture and how we value and reward people who can speak well and this is something

00:03:32.760 very interesting she said think about kindergarten but when i was in kindergarten when you were two

00:03:36.860 they had show and tell so from the very start of the earliest part of your life you're rewarding

00:03:43.160 kids for getting up for being able to get up in front of other people and talk so you talk about

00:03:50.100 one of the reasons why he doesn't get researched all that often is that the problem of overtalking is

00:03:54.800 that yeah people are just annoying but you actually went deep into this there's actually been research

00:03:59.240 done by people trying to figure out what happens if you're an overtalker so kind of give us a

00:04:05.360 summary like what what does the research say what are the downsides of overtalking besides just being

00:04:09.160 annoying well sooner or later if you're someone who talks too much you're going to talk your way into

00:04:16.960 trouble now it may be that you offend someone right or you hurt someone's feelings and maybe someone

00:04:23.880 you really care about but at the other end you lose your job right or you wreck a relationship with

00:04:30.200 someone you care about and love so the consequences of that lack of impulse control

00:04:36.700 can be really extreme and if they start happening over and over again which was my case you know they start

00:04:44.140 to add up and you start to go oh this is this is really a problem this is really interfering with

00:04:49.140 my life yeah you talk about the interview don't do surveys of people at work and they'll talk about

00:04:54.980 what do you think about the overtalker and they're just like oh super annoying and i do what i can just

00:04:59.900 to avoid them as much as possible because i know if i start talking to them it's just gonna i'm

00:05:03.600 gonna be stuck for 15 20 minutes and it just it just saps my productivity yeah i do that's that

00:05:09.340 amazing study it's from i don't know a couple decades ago but i actually tracked down the guy

00:05:14.620 who did it in grad school who had no idea that this study had been cited and downloaded so many times

00:05:21.760 which tells you how much it resonates but yeah he studied people in the in the workplace you know do

00:05:27.080 you have someone in the workplace who annoys everybody by talking too much and everybody had one

00:05:32.520 right and yeah the other interesting thing is at first they're often seen as great and you like

00:05:39.380 them and that guy really can tell a story and boy they're so lively and funny and then after a while

00:05:46.480 yeah you start to want to escape them you know people will actually see you coming and turn and go

00:05:52.760 the other direction or they'll pretend their phone is ringing or oh god i have to get this this uh text

00:05:59.120 message or this email yeah and people really start to resent them to the point where here's another

00:06:04.600 interesting thing if you ask them early on is that person intelligent they'll say yeah highly intelligent

00:06:11.080 you ask them later about the same person and their estimate of that person's intelligence

00:06:16.500 has actually gone down and there's a great story in there about a guy who's a very you know

00:06:23.980 annoying overtalker who gets made a manager and put in charge of five people and he's driving them all

00:06:31.240 so nuts that they finally go to management and say look either you got to get rid of him or we're going

00:06:37.680 to quit or something and so management goes to this guy and says hey you know you're a great guy

00:06:43.300 you have this problem if you can't stop doing this you can't be a manager anymore now you would think

00:06:49.680 the guy would say okay i'll work on it this guy literally chose the demotion he said i don't want

00:06:55.180 to change who i am i like who i am and actually hurt his own career willingly yeah because he wanted

00:07:04.220 to overtalk yeah he didn't want to give it up and also to me it was like that's how strong for some

00:07:09.440 people it's an addiction right it's it really is and and it's hard to break an addiction and people

00:07:16.480 don't want to confront it yeah and they'll actually wreck their own lives which is also the definition

00:07:22.020 of a talkaholic a talkaholic is someone who's not just gregarious not just maybe talks a little too

00:07:27.600 much or blurts things out a talkaholic is someone who knows that the thing they're about to say will

00:07:33.860 hurt them and will say it anyway and also maybe we should be clear by talking it's not just talking

00:07:39.480 talking it could be just any type of communication be tweeting or texting or just really long tons of

00:07:45.120 emails it's the same sort of thing over communication basically is what it is yeah actually a lot of it

00:07:50.560 is online now because a lot of how we communicate is and i should say you know we're here on a podcast

00:07:55.680 and we're talking about not talking right but the idea is not to never talk but it's to to speak with

00:08:03.220 intention so to know why you're having a conversation so we're having a good conversation where we're both

00:08:10.760 going to take turns talking we're talking about something important that we find interesting and

00:08:15.760 there's actually research that shows that kind of conversation literally makes people happier and

00:08:23.180 even healthier like it makes your immune system better you respond to good conversations small talk

00:08:29.140 and chit chat on the other hand have the opposite effect but yeah if you're online tweeting a hundred

00:08:35.180 times a day that's it's it's weakening you it's not it's not helping you okay so the downsides you

00:08:42.440 annoy people people want to avoid you it could get in the way of work you might end up saying something

00:08:46.580 that could hurt your career offend somebody could damage a relationship when did you realize i mean

00:08:53.320 this book is part kind of memoir here you trying to figure out the source of your over talking when

00:08:57.580 did you learn that over talking was a problem for you was there like a moment you're like oh boy i got to

00:09:01.640 do something about this it's really funny there was there was there was one specific moment that i

00:09:08.220 remember very clearly but it had been building to it for a long time but there was a moment when i was

00:09:15.640 literally i was texting with my agent my book agent about something else and then we're kind of going back

00:09:24.780 and forth about about life and i'm complaining about something saying well this person did that

00:09:31.680 and blah blah it was their fault and then i just blurted out you know i can complain about all that but

00:09:38.820 if i had never said x this one sentence then none of the rest of this could have ever happened

00:09:45.300 right and so maybe i should need to learn how to stfu and we both had this moment of like you know

00:09:53.120 that's a that could be a pretty good book and as i thought about it i thought you know for the last

00:09:58.940 few years i've been you know getting worried before i go to a party or you know i have kids and they

00:10:05.560 were little you know you go to the kids birthday party with all the neighbors and i would be terrified

00:10:10.020 before i went like don't talk too much don't talk too much you know and i'd get there and i'd get

00:10:14.920 nervous or something and i'd i just get going and i you know i didn't let anybody else have a

00:10:21.960 chance to talk or i would say things that were you know i didn't read the room very well and they

00:10:27.480 kind of offended people and so i realized this dread had been building but it was that moment where i

00:10:33.120 just blurted it out in a text and and also in a text you know you're looking at it right in writing

00:10:38.280 and i thought yeah yeah this is really a problem that that's that's my problem right there and i had

00:10:47.600 thought of it always as kind of a good thing like i'm gregarious and i when i get in an uber i talk

00:10:53.080 to the driver and i get their whole life story and i just love talking to people i love meeting people

00:10:58.120 which is true but you know too much of a good thing and so there's yeah there's a small group

00:11:04.900 of researchers who are studying over talking and they developed this scale this you actually you have

00:11:09.700 it in the book there's a test you can take to see your talkaholic level so the people who study

00:11:14.880 is they know why people are talkaholics is it socialization is it like you're just born with a

00:11:20.880 genetic thing what's going on there yeah that's really interesting for a long time people thought

00:11:25.880 it was just nurture versus nature and the researchers who first divides that talkaholic scale couldn't

00:11:34.140 figure out the why behind it but one of their colleagues spent another 10 20 years working on it

00:11:41.140 from a biological perspective and found that it correlates with an imbalance in brainwave in the

00:11:48.460 prefrontal cortex and so if there's an imbalance between the right and left lobe it makes you either

00:11:54.680 more talkative or less talkative right side is more talkative and the degree to which you're an

00:12:00.920 over talker or an under talker corresponds to how far out the imbalance is between right and left

00:12:07.220 but there are also causes that anxiety is a big one and you know we live in a culture of anxiety

00:12:13.940 and it's actually some kinds of over talking like hyperverbal speech are correlated with adhd for

00:12:22.500 example so there are people who are really really really over talkative they start working on adhd they

00:12:29.960 maybe start taking meds and they see that that it's easier for them to control their speaking

00:12:36.580 and and then yeah then there's the there is the the nurture which we just talked about our culture

00:12:42.340 just rewards speaking and encourages look social media practically makes you over talk you know and

00:12:51.120 i don't want to beat a dead horse here because it's been covered and you probably have written and

00:12:55.560 talked about it but you know social media apps are designed by design to make you engage to get you

00:13:02.500 engaged to make you post and share and like and tweet rather than just read and to do that they

00:13:09.160 know how to do that is to provoke you and usually it's to make you angry and outraged and so they

00:13:14.880 intentionally are doing that and they're using the same techniques that casinos use with slot machines

00:13:20.420 only this is you know a kind of anger machine they want to keep you at the machine and they keep

00:13:24.580 getting you angry and that does terrible things for your health and it gets you it gets you blabbing you

00:13:30.180 know suddenly you realize you're on twitter for hours and you're you know joining in every rant

00:13:35.300 that goes on and you're dogpiling and you're doing all this stuff and they think if you step back and

00:13:39.560 think about like why am i doing how did i become this person right and it's because you've been

00:13:43.640 programmed by a machine so there there are sort of there are a range of reasons from your brainwaves

00:13:49.720 to the culture we live in i'd like to dig in a little bit more on the social media aspect because

00:13:54.740 i thought that was interesting we won't beat the dead horse too much but before we do you you also

00:13:59.060 talk about they've categorized overtalkers into six different types what are the six different

00:14:04.020 types of overtalkers out there so the first kind that i identify is called the ego talker and the

00:14:10.160 ego talker is almost always a guy and it's a certain kind of guy who but not always right but who just

00:14:16.340 thinks they're smarter than everyone else they know more than everyone else maybe they've made more

00:14:20.740 money than everybody else it's it's a thing that happens a lot to really rich silicon valley guys who

00:14:27.000 then think they know everything about everything because they made money on bitcoin say but and they

00:14:32.500 just suck up the oxygen because they sort of think they deserve it right it's sort of narcissism and

00:14:38.620 they you know the smartest guy in the room syndrome they're sort of my least sympathetic type i identify

00:14:45.160 nervous talkers or people who are just um more like situational overtalkers they don't go through life

00:14:50.380 annoying everybody but in certain situations they get nervous and they talk too much i call one

00:14:57.300 category blabbers and those are people who just go on and on and on and on and they often tell the

00:15:04.640 same story many many times like you've heard the whole story and you have to listen to it again right

00:15:10.800 then there are blurters who i think typically are very very highly intelligent people and very very

00:15:16.740 quick-witted and have a funny remark very quickly almost so fast that they don't there's not enough

00:15:25.080 time for the filter to come up and they'll often blurt out things that are really funny you know but

00:15:31.540 not to everyone i have a friend who's a blurter and i think she's hilarious like every every joke

00:15:38.000 kills me but you know not everybody is in that same camp i think there are ruminators who are people

00:15:45.460 who just think out loud like they like to they're just sort of thinking out loud and then talkaholics

00:15:50.660 who are in a different category in the sense that they're self-destructive they have a propensity for

00:15:57.040 self-destruction that is akin say to an alcoholic or any other kind of addict where there's the chance

00:16:04.140 of this really really harming yourself so you mentioned social media you have a couple chapters dedicated to

00:16:10.260 social media i think we kind of hit on why social media encourages over talking and it encourages

00:16:14.360 oversharing because that gets engagement right the outrageous stuff it encourages people to disclose

00:16:20.520 extremely personal information because people love to see that and so you see people say things or type

00:16:26.420 things you're like man probably shouldn't have said that but you know it gets them engagement yeah i mean

00:16:31.680 but like beyond the just oversharing aspect of social media like what have been the doubt like what

00:16:35.980 what has it done to us mentally physically spiritually what have you seen well in a very high level sense

00:16:44.440 i think the last 10 or 20 years we've seen the emergence of a kind of mental illness at a societal scale

00:16:54.180 that our entire culture has got a little bit crazy and it's happened in such a way that

00:17:02.380 we don't even realize how crazy it is it's not the sort of frog in the boiling water thing but just

00:17:08.440 that the way our brains have been rewired is such that it makes it very difficult for us to see

00:17:15.280 how our brains have been rewired so i had this thought experiment i thought if i can go back to 2000

00:17:23.120 and imagine myself then and the world then and then see the 2023 version of me and of the world

00:17:31.440 i think i would be kind of shocked and in some ways impressed by all the amazing things we can do

00:17:37.800 but then in other ways being really distressed by the way we've cut ourselves off from each other

00:17:43.680 in certain ways we've become meaner we've become angrier you know there was a time and it might have

00:17:51.120 been 10 15 years ago remember when people would say that oh people say things online that they

00:17:55.980 would never say to your face and now they say them to your face right that anger that began online

00:18:02.280 has you know seeped back into the real world and so you have statistics on incidents on airplanes

00:18:10.740 right people getting rowdy on an airplane getting physically violent attacking a flight attendant

00:18:16.120 those are up like 5x from a few years ago like it's it's not a subtle change and you have you know

00:18:23.560 we have this phenomenon of the videos of people going nuts and karen videos people going nuts in stores

00:18:29.440 or whatever and we have this polarization we demonize each other we're unable to have conversations

00:18:36.800 across political divides for example now i don't think you can blame all of that on social media

00:18:42.560 but it all sort of happened in lockstep with the emergence of social media yes and you also

00:18:49.800 highlight research whenever we're engaging on you know social media these apps our cortisol goes up

00:18:55.440 yeah and then depression can go up because i i think there's some studies coming out too we've

00:19:00.120 actually confirmed that social media use particularly for teenage girls oh is really terrible like they're

00:19:06.200 pretty convinced that it's made teenage girls more depressed social media has oh yeah there's a there's a

00:19:11.660 professor at nyu named jonathan hate i think that's how he pronounces it and a professor at stanford named

00:19:18.120 anna lemke oh my god the statistics the numbers are insane jonathan hates numbers on teenage girls and

00:19:26.480 i maybe it's like suicidal ideation or suicide attempts or actual suicide and the rise of say instagram

00:19:35.280 and you chart those two and it's terrifying they go like right up so he has no doubt that that's what's

00:19:42.460 happening that there is this terrible effect and i mean that's the worst end of it but if you think

00:19:50.000 then i think of the rest of us i mean it creates anxiety depression you're right cortisol so we have

00:19:55.220 this rush of cortisol in our system sort of all the time and the interesting thing about cortisol is that

00:20:01.300 you know it's the kind of thing where you know when you're a caveman and a saber-toothed tiger leapt out

00:20:06.140 at you you needed that burst to like go get going and run right but if you have a low level all the

00:20:13.660 time it's actually worse it's like this chronic level of low-grade stress that just wrecks your brain

00:20:20.860 and i think the other danger of social media and just digital communication why it encourages over

00:20:25.540 talking it's it's so easy to do right so if you feel like spouting off to somebody you can do it

00:20:32.380 right away if back before the internet or social media if you wanted to talk to a friend like you

00:20:38.160 had to call them up they might not be there or you'd have to arrange a conversation you know get together

00:20:43.400 and that there's a lot of friction there with digital communication if you want to say something

00:20:47.520 but thing to anybody you can get there in a in a second and i think oftentimes you know the things

00:20:52.900 we say that we regret the most it happens where we're feeling angry so the anger is a really hot

00:20:57.180 emotion and it makes you want to do something and if people would just like let that if there's like

00:21:01.420 just like a little buffer zone between the anger and you spouting off usually the anger just goes

00:21:06.320 away and then you're like i'm not gonna say it but with digital technology you can just i'm feeling

00:21:11.040 it i'm gonna do it right now and then you end up regretting it and um i don't know you know my whole

00:21:16.400 business is online so i get a lot of people talking back to me and you get like the trolls and people

00:21:21.600 just like say snippy things to you i usually ignore but every now and then i'll respond to an email

00:21:27.020 where it's just like someone's just really angry and just like just saying all this like crazy stuff

00:21:30.760 and i'm i just responded hey i'm sorry you're feeling this way but i'm really not understanding

00:21:34.820 like the reaction that you're having here it seems a little overblown i don't say overblown i try to be

00:21:39.000 really diplomatic and they always respond like oh man i'm really sorry i had a bad day i started

00:21:45.100 drinking and i just i sent out that missive and i really regret it and i imagine if that guy had

00:21:52.660 just like had a bit of buffer if you had to just write me a letter he would have been like well

00:21:57.280 it's not worth it it's dumb i'm just gonna move on with my life but that's amazing that the way you

00:22:02.620 handle it works because i wouldn't have thought of that but when you tell me it makes absolute sense

00:22:08.760 but like is it because when you don't respond with anger in other words you if you had gone back at

00:22:14.180 him like blah blah blah right that just escalates it's gonna escalate it's gonna escalate but somehow

00:22:19.120 like you're taking that energy that he's pushing toward you and what like absorbing it yeah whenever

00:22:25.880 people blow off you know say something i'm just like they probably had a bad day there's something

00:22:29.400 going on and so i'm not going to respond to that it's like i mean i don't want to be patronized but

00:22:34.720 it's like kids like if you have a kid who's having a meltdown yeah you know you can't take

00:22:38.740 it personally they're just they're hungry they're tired adults we're still like we're still kind of

00:22:43.980 kids we get hungry we get tired we get stressed out we do and say stupid things but i think if you

00:22:48.600 slow things that's the problem with internet like it's too fast if you can just slow things down a

00:22:53.360 little bit i think it would solve a lot of the problems so the thing where you say i'm you write

00:22:58.760 that angry email then you go uh you know i'm gonna wait i'm gonna wait till tomorrow if i still feel

00:23:04.400 this way right i'll send it but not not right now i can't tell you how many times in the last year

00:23:10.040 i've done it with text messages where i start to write something and then i look at it the whole

00:23:15.800 thing and go zip and i hit you know delete and go backwards through all the letters just gobbling

00:23:20.580 them all up like nope i'm not gonna do that and same with email and i have developed better

00:23:26.520 discipline about it and i and you're right i think i've saved myself trouble because i sometimes say

00:23:32.260 to myself okay i could you know someone zings you like the guy did to you and you're probably

00:23:36.640 really good at it right like you know like dude this is what i do for a living like i can zing you

00:23:41.220 back way better right it's like dealing with a heckler but you know if you do then then he's coming

00:23:47.340 back with more so like does that help you now you've had now you're gonna have to listen to two of his

00:23:50.780 emails right yeah i sometimes think of it as i'm saving myself you know all the anxiety of the minute i hit

00:23:57.660 send i'm sitting there waiting for the angry thing to come back right right and that's true to extend

00:24:02.440 to all communication right the more you send out the more you get back and it turns into this like

00:24:07.780 you know vicious time suck cycle okay so you give advice on quieting yourself on social media you know

00:24:14.340 reducing how much you talk there so you know get rid of twitter just view instagram in the the browser

00:24:19.680 instead of the app text less i mean there's all sorts of tactics that i think are good ones to reduce

00:24:25.180 how much you spend on social media and not only will it help you reduce your over talking online

00:24:30.680 but you say that over talking online carries over to over talking offline so curbing your online

00:24:38.160 chatter can maybe help you break that habit of always having to give your two cents offline too

00:24:43.600 we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:24:46.560 and now back to the show so you have a chapter on interrupting over talking where you interrupt people

00:24:57.580 a lot did you have that issue of interrupting oh yeah yeah and often wasn't even aware of it

00:25:06.160 but yeah i had that problem and i tend now to try to go into a conversation

00:25:11.980 or you know like this or a work conversation

00:25:15.820 and prepare myself before it just you know take a minute or just to kind of take some deep breaths

00:25:25.280 but also think okay don't interrupt i also put little stickers uh little yellow pads above my desk

00:25:31.480 to say things like quiet listen wrap it up but you know some interruptions are not not at all bad

00:25:38.840 it's just that you get a little excited like you're talking you know we have like a mind meld

00:25:43.380 and you're saying something and i'm like oh yeah yeah yeah you know and i jump in and i really just

00:25:47.480 want to sort of agree with you those are the hardest ones for me to avoid whether it's you know

00:25:52.940 genuine enthusiasm rather than you know rudeness but yeah i just try to be proactively aware

00:26:01.580 of that and also try to catch myself if i do start to interrupt because here's the other one

00:26:06.160 you're talking to someone and they take a breath but they're not finished speaking and you leap in

00:26:11.540 and then they start to talk you know you know the thing where you're both talking at the same time

00:26:14.700 and then you both go oh no no you go oh no no you go so i try to you know catch those and really sit

00:26:22.140 back and say no no no really you were saying something interesting you know i'd like to hear more

00:26:29.220 of it but yeah i think it's just being aware yeah and on the chapter on interruption it reminded me

00:26:35.440 we wrote an article really long time ago about this idea of conversational narcissism have you heard of

00:26:40.400 this no this is really interesting so there's a sociologist charles derber he wrote this book

00:26:45.980 called the pursuit of attention and he found that despite good intentions and often without being aware

00:26:51.100 of it most people struggle with conversational narcissism and it's basically when you're in a

00:26:55.260 conversation there's will be someone who will subtly shift the conversation to them so there's

00:27:02.120 this thing called a shift response so it's like this dan says hey i'm thinking about buying a new car

00:27:06.480 a shift response would be like i would say oh yeah i'm thinking about buying a new car too

00:27:11.980 and then you're like really and then i'm like yeah i just just drove a mustang yesterday and it was

00:27:17.560 awesome so you started off i if i wasn't a narcissist a conversational narcissist i would have been like oh

00:27:23.200 dan what kind of car are you looking at but i just immediately i turned it to myself yeah i didn't

00:27:28.460 know those terms but i i was just talking about this yesterday to someone i mean the example i was

00:27:32.540 using with someone says and i do this i a lot you know i hope less than i used to but you say oh you

00:27:41.120 know we we're just planning a vacation where we're going to go to italy and you know the good response

00:27:47.520 would be oh hey brett like where are you going and when are you going and oh we're gonna say have you

00:27:52.060 been there before and blah blah but yeah the one i do is like oh we went to italy once we went here

00:27:57.000 and we did that like oh my god like how awful is that yeah yeah so yes it's kind of a subtle

00:28:04.480 interruption right i didn't interrupt you i didn't like say hold the horses i'm going to talk about

00:28:08.180 but it was like subtly like okay i'm going to take control of this conversation now but do you think

00:28:12.600 people are doing it out of a bad reason like is gerber's argument that this is like obviously it's a

00:28:17.900 problem because it's it's not nice but is it is it um motivated by a bad thing or just motivated by

00:28:25.120 carelessness i think it's carelessness and he's basically saying that people are just starved for

00:28:30.720 attention like people want attention but they're looking for it in an unhealthy way yeah i think

00:28:35.980 this argument he's making i think it's going along with a lot of social media like people just they

00:28:39.420 want to be noticed um and they might not be getting that you know because they don't like a lot of us

00:28:44.420 that we don't belong to i think the statistics say a third of people are living alone now in

00:28:49.100 america adults that is like we don't go to church anymore like we don't belong to the rotary club

00:28:54.820 and so we i think a lot of us crave like we just want someone to notice us like hey i i matter and i

00:29:00.420 think maybe we do that in our conversations like oh here's someone here's a chance for me to get

00:29:03.820 attention i think this is again i'm just this is me just doing my freudian uh like theorizing but i

00:29:09.580 think people like that's a way for them to get some attention that they might need

00:29:12.060 yeah no i i agree and you know that's an idea that someone else picked up her name is sherry turkle

00:29:20.980 at mit and she wrote a book called alone together and was putting some of this on social media saying

00:29:29.340 that yeah we're together online but we're sort of cut off from each other in personal life and i think

00:29:36.440 there's some research that shows you know using a lot of social media actually interferes with your

00:29:42.420 in-person relationships but i hadn't thought of that what you just said about church and the rotary

00:29:50.240 club and yeah that must have been a real kind of social glue right you went out on tuesday night

00:29:57.020 because you had your rotary club meeting right yeah yeah and we don't do that you don't do that

00:30:02.340 okay so be aware of interruption don't do it try not to do it you also have a chapter about you know

00:30:08.820 shutting your mouth at work which goes against most of the career advice you see out there because most

00:30:15.900 of the career advice you see out there is about building your personal brand yeah by constantly

00:30:20.400 creating content and sharing your thoughts on social media and i i always read that stuff and i'm like

00:30:26.580 does that actually do anything does like you posting a linkedin thing is that going to help

00:30:31.340 you move ahead in your career like what is what did you find is it doing anything yeah you know i

00:30:37.340 sometimes worry that i seem too much like a curmudgeon and that there is some value in building your

00:30:43.660 brand or establishing yourself as an expert in a field right someone that has something to say but

00:30:51.280 i do think that yeah we we spend too much time doing that and we've been sold this idea of

00:30:57.660 yeah building the brand of you and and i think you know what if the brand of me is just that i'm

00:31:03.840 really good at what i do and i'm quietly competent and i get my stuff in on time and i i get stuff done

00:31:09.760 you know can that be the brand of me and i think like for example i had a guy tell me that he

00:31:16.220 measures people's value by how much how many twitter followers they have and i thought well

00:31:20.460 that's you know because you can gin that number up you can go out and buy followers or you can

00:31:25.160 you can get a lot of twitter followers just by posting a lot a lot a lot a lot and you'll build

00:31:29.520 your number count but does that does it make you does it make you really more important more

00:31:34.440 intelligent more insightful i don't know but the other thing is like it's a real tight wire

00:31:40.860 there's a journalist at the wall street journal who said once that you know journalists are almost

00:31:45.980 all on twitter less so now but and he would never get on and people he'd say because you're always 140

00:31:52.460 characters away from losing your job like i'm just not going there i do my job i write for the wall

00:31:57.620 street journal that's where my work goes and i don't need it to go anywhere else but yeah i think

00:32:04.520 people are afraid that if they're not on social media they become invisible and they don't they don't

00:32:09.180 exist or they don't have value but i don't think it's true no and i think it's interesting

00:32:14.500 i think i read an article about this a couple of years ago so back in the early 2000s and then like

00:32:20.540 social media got bigger when publishers or when editors are trying to figure out which authors or

00:32:27.120 manuscripts to accept they started looking at your social media following they wanted to make sure you

00:32:32.620 had a strong social media following is like the idea is well they got a big so they already have an

00:32:36.800 audience right these are customers so they we're going to pick authors and then again there was an

00:32:41.080 article i think it was maybe a year or two ago um came out and basically that it's not true people

00:32:45.720 have a huge ginormous social media following but it doesn't translate to sales yeah i didn't know that

00:32:51.080 study but that makes absolute sense but they do still look for that you know if you're selling a book

00:32:55.620 they'll if you have i don't know a million instagram followers that actually does

00:33:02.080 still you know get their attention and people i think still do sell books based on their social

00:33:08.900 media follow and conversely if you're like me and you're selling a book and you say well you know

00:33:14.620 i don't really have a small number of followers everywhere but yeah i think it makes them think

00:33:21.820 well you're less you're less of a sure bet right but yeah i don't think put it this way i had a blog

00:33:27.900 in the 2000s called the fake steve jobs blog and i had one and a half million monthly readers

00:33:34.780 and i i sold a book and i think partly they were like well this guy's look at all those readers but

00:33:41.460 i was like yeah there are people who will read stuff for free on a blog right they're not people

00:33:45.840 are going to go buy a book even you know and i would use the blog go buy my book you know but

00:33:51.360 yeah it didn't convert no so yeah a lot of people like companies or even entrepreneurs they spend a lot

00:33:56.760 of time on that social media stuff when they maybe they should be spending more time just being

00:34:02.580 confident like the actual thing that they're they're selling right well like you have a huge

00:34:08.400 audience right but you built it up over time i'd imagine but you probably you probably didn't build

00:34:15.180 it up by just selling the hell out of it on twitter you built it up by creating good content like the

00:34:21.800 content the product is what sells itself right i don't think you can flog your way into success

00:34:30.320 you know through hype no i mean maybe in the short term in the long run maybe not and we have so i

00:34:36.520 guess again i don't want people to think we're both curmudgeons we're like oh social yeah we we use

00:34:42.100 social media like i've artemans has a twitter account we've got a facebook page we have an instagram

00:34:46.260 account we have a linkedin account but i'm not particularly active there we just use it to

00:34:51.420 broadcast our content instagram like we post once a week that's it facebook you're gonna get two posts

00:34:57.560 a day and then twitter i just automate that i just i use buffer and i just like throw in you know links

00:35:03.620 for the month and it just spits it out like here's this article here's only read the thing that's it like

00:35:09.800 i there was a time where i was like i'm gonna i'm gonna be really interactive and it was exhausting

00:35:14.140 and i didn't see much i didn't see much from it is that right oh yeah yeah like there was like a

00:35:20.920 period every now and then i'm like oh i'm gonna be really active and i'm gonna and you just you

00:35:24.700 spin it's like it's it really is it takes a lot of time it's tiring and then it's at the end you're

00:35:29.300 like well that didn't really move the needle much i'm gonna go spend some more time getting ready for a

00:35:33.480 great podcast or writing a great article yeah so i was gonna say what did move the needle yeah just

00:35:38.080 like putting just good content spending time on the content yeah and some of it i guess i think

00:35:43.500 is persistence too like you can't write an article on your blog and then six weeks later you write

00:35:49.140 another one there's no cadence right there's no that but i feel that way with movies you'll see

00:35:54.060 movies that they advertise really really heavily but if the movie comes out and the movie itself

00:35:59.580 doesn't deliver you know no amount of ads are really gonna you know move the needle and then like

00:36:06.100 the way i discover shows i don't know if you do this i you know i binge watch shows and it's usually i

00:36:10.960 have to hear it i don't know a bunch of times from different people like white lotus was one i

00:36:16.560 kept sort of hearing it sort of hearing finally i i better take a i'm gonna take a look at this

00:36:20.500 because so many people i've heard say it was good but it it took me a while but it was word of mouth

00:36:26.440 it wasn't i saw a bunch of ads for that show you know what i mean i heard from people who had watched

00:36:32.600 the show and liked it yeah no yeah word of mouth is definitely the most powerful and then the other

00:36:39.440 way shutting up can help you move forward in your career so the idea is instead of spending so much

00:36:44.020 time like we're not saying don't do it like maybe do the linkedin thing every now and then but spend

00:36:48.960 more time just being really competent at what you do that quiet competence but another way shutting up

00:36:53.980 can get you ahead in your work is it can help in negotiations i think it makes everyone

00:36:58.140 uncomfortable you know salary negotiation so what you'd end up doing is you start talking talking

00:37:03.120 talking and then you basically agree to a not great package and if you just shut up like the other

00:37:12.500 party is going to start getting nervous and they're going to start talking and talking and talking and

00:37:15.680 then you're going to walk away with something pretty good yeah yeah and that's i interviewed a bunch

00:37:23.240 of people who do negotiation and talked about it and that's i think it's pretty well known for car

00:37:29.040 salesmen have done this forever you know they hand you the deal and then they stop and just say nothing

00:37:35.480 and they just you're sitting there and you kind of go and you don't really want to you're nervous so

00:37:40.700 if you can use it back on them it usually kind of blows their mind but it's it's part of a larger

00:37:46.520 point though which this kind of struck me which is that like silence is power and you can use silence

00:37:55.640 as a weapon and really smart people or powerful people often do this they say less than they need

00:38:01.600 to and they hold back instead of speaking more so yeah in negotiation it's a really really powerful

00:38:07.940 tool for like salaries or or closing a deal yeah and sometimes it's extreme silence you can go on for

00:38:14.380 minutes and most of us just to find that unbearable yeah that's a there's been a lot of studies about

00:38:19.820 that people who are in positions of power speak less well that's what struck me in the very beginning

00:38:26.540 of this whole journey was i i was thinking about over talking am i talking too much and then i thought oh

00:38:34.220 we live in this noisy age and everybody's seeking attention then i thought well wait a minute but look at

00:38:38.780 like really really powerful people for the most part you know they're not out selling too hard like

00:38:47.340 i was i was a huge fan of steve jobs and i admired him in many ways you know in person at work he was a

00:38:55.380 shouter kind of a screamer he's a very passionate guy but the way he managed himself in public was that

00:39:02.640 he was super reclusive very secretive when he spoke it was because he knew why he was speaking

00:39:09.400 usually had something to sell and he chose every word really carefully but and i was a journalist

00:39:15.720 and he was one of the gets you always wanted to get like if you could get steve jobs on the cover of

00:39:20.160 your magazine first of all you knew you're going to sell a lot of magazines and you wanted him to talk

00:39:25.340 to you because he never talked to anyone you know and the more he said no the more you wanted to get

00:39:31.220 him as a guest and i can tell you having been a you know a business journalist you'd be surprised at

00:39:37.480 the kind of ceos who are big ceos who have pr people out you know trying to get their boss on

00:39:44.580 the cover of forbes or fortune and jobs was the complete opposite but but other people tim cook the

00:39:50.860 ceo of apple anna wintour barack obama you look around you go wow these are people who always really

00:39:57.040 held back and that's their power so another way that shutting up can make our lives better can help

00:40:04.820 our our relationships our marriage but that goes counter to a lot of like the common advice i mean

00:40:10.940 when couples have a problem the common advice is well you just need to talk more and often that talking

00:40:16.380 is facilitated by a therapist but you share an experience from your own marriage where you and

00:40:21.800 your wife decided to talk less and it actually saved your marriage what went on there yeah this

00:40:28.860 still amazes me even though it happened to me and it's you know we had separated and it wasn't just

00:40:37.560 because i was such an annoying talker but you know whatever various things and but not because one of us

00:40:44.940 wanted to marry someone else right it was just we just had trouble dealing with each other and we had

00:40:50.800 gone to a lot of you know talk therapy say and one after another after another until we got to the

00:40:58.080 final one who was just said you know what my advice to you is is break up like forget about it and so we

00:41:04.780 did and but i don't think either of us really really wanted to get divorced you know and this was just

00:41:13.040 also when i started writing this book and researching the book and looking at silence and looking at all

00:41:18.980 these different things and i started reaching out to my wife and saying you know um can we go walk

00:41:25.940 the dog we have dog likes to go out in the woods and swim and we would go and i would just prepare

00:41:35.540 myself and just not talk or talk a little bit mostly ask questions and really sit you know we're talking

00:41:43.040 about how silence is uncomfortable but just sit in silence and i ended up calling this non-talk therapy

00:41:49.620 that it somehow allowed us to come back together in a way where we didn't relitigate the old fights or

00:41:58.260 the old differences we didn't we didn't go back at all to any of that and we just kind of spent time

00:42:07.300 together and i thought of it as sort of non-talk therapy and it worked for us in a way that all

00:42:13.700 that talk therapy hadn't worked and we ended up getting back together and it's gone really well and i

00:42:20.920 think a huge amount of it maybe the most important thing is my ability to hold back and to not respond

00:42:35.420 quickly with something you know mean but just just to allow silence to exist in the relationship

00:42:41.660 i think it's i've come to believe that it's enormously powerful in an interpersonal relationship

00:42:48.780 well you highlight research so it's like nearly half of married couples go to couples counseling

00:42:53.940 but it's like 25 of couples who go to therapy end up worse than they were before there's actually a

00:42:59.680 psychologist william doherty he wrote an article how therapy can be hazardous for your marital health

00:43:04.820 and i think the point he's making like one of the problems with couples counseling is that

00:43:09.820 it can reinforce stuff that's going outside the marriage inside the marriage like in the therapy

00:43:17.340 session so basically it's just couples are just conventing about each other inside the therapy

00:43:21.720 session and it's that's not helpful yeah yeah i i i think that's true you go in and you know you're

00:43:31.140 okay it's like your wednesday night you go to your you know your meeting you drive over together

00:43:36.220 and you go in and you walk out like ah hating each other you get in the car and now you're all mad

00:43:41.740 i mean that happened that happened a lot at doherty's point is that yeah people often end up worse

00:43:48.300 after couples therapy and yeah partly it's because you know you go in and you just reopen all this stuff

00:43:54.740 and you know maybe maybe you don't need to doherty's point is that a lot of therapists who do couples

00:44:01.120 therapy are not trained specifically to do couples therapy and then couples therapy is a unique thing

00:44:07.660 and it's very different and it's really hard and so people you will hang out a shingle to do it

00:44:13.920 and they're not really qualified to do i think his analogy was like you know uh you have a broken leg

00:44:20.040 and you go to a brain surgeon or something you know or something like that but there's another

00:44:25.260 idea this one really intrigued me so ruth bader ginsburg had this great line that she said her

00:44:33.320 mother-in-law told her this on her wedding day and she had lived by this rule her entire life which is

00:44:40.960 it to have a happy marriage sometimes it helps to be a little deaf and i was like wow that's that's

00:44:48.900 amazing right because you can sort of unpack that so to speak and what does she really mean and he's

00:44:53.480 like oh she even says in her biography so you know what unkind word is said just leave it alone just

00:44:59.620 like you said that guy had a bad day okay just don't fire back just be deaf to that and then it occurred

00:45:07.040 to me that you know we have this idea and it may be true but that you have to learn how to fight if

00:45:13.520 you're a couple you need to learn how to have a fight and rbgs seem to be saying no you need to

00:45:19.060 just avoid having fights like sidestep that fight get around it and i suppose if someone's really awful

00:45:25.760 all the time you end up having to break up but i just thought that was such like an amazing little

00:45:33.000 piece of wisdom and and my wife and i have both really really tried to do that and it's it's it's

00:45:40.420 again been amazingly helpful yeah and i think the advice that couples often get is you got to work

00:45:47.500 on your communication style like you got to instead of making you statements you got to make i statements

00:45:52.320 but i don't know how helpful that is you know what you're saying about you know talking less

00:45:57.260 in your marriage reminded me of research from dr john gottman right he's like that famous

00:46:02.860 marriage researcher and he's found that couples can be you know really bad at communication

00:46:08.540 and really bad at conflict resolution but they can still have happy marriages and he's found that

00:46:14.380 really the key is just to have more positive interactions than negative interactions i think

00:46:20.780 the ratio is like you know five positive interactions to one negative interaction and what this does i mean

00:46:26.080 you can start think when you take this idea you start thinking of your relationship as a bank account

00:46:30.680 right as long as you put a lot of positive deposits in there you know just by enjoying each other

00:46:36.520 having fun having good conversations when you're not fighting or arguing then when you do argue

00:46:42.720 which is like it's like making a withdrawal from the account it's not a big deal because you have

00:46:49.180 that surplus in the account you know that buffer so the important thing isn't how you talk when you

00:46:53.780 argue but what you're doing the rest of the time so if you have that you know flush relationship bank

00:47:00.080 account when you do argue there's no stakes right it's not fraught it's not like you know what does

00:47:05.860 this mean for a relationship you know the arguments can just dissolve quickly and you can just avoid

00:47:11.680 arguments uh in the first place because most are just about the dumbest stuff i mean like the the

00:47:17.220 dumbest stuff and it's really a lot of it's just not even worth talking about yeah you know what we've

00:47:23.140 become good at is we veer we step right close to the line where maybe someone's about to you know

00:47:29.920 and we've become very good at kind of going oh by the way when is that thing is that tuesday

00:47:35.540 oh yeah oh gosh you know i need to take the car like we just we just change the subject or we'll even

00:47:42.260 sometimes get up and be like oh you know what i gotta go do something i'm gonna go to the other

00:47:46.600 room like we'll just walk away from it like you got close to that line and i think we both we never

00:47:51.840 say it we just both realize and to walk away because i also think and i you know you might

00:47:59.520 feel this way too like you said most of the stuff you fight over it's like rubbish who cares like

00:48:05.520 really really who cares like i'll tell you one thing that drives me crazy my wife leads to leave

00:48:10.480 all sorts of stuff out in the kitchen counter like the mixer and all it's like and i like everything

00:48:14.980 clean and empty and i find that one probably is like who cares you know who cares right am i gonna

00:48:23.480 have a fight about this yeah so all this we're gonna focus on talking less but you're also encouraging

00:48:29.400 people to listen more what sort of research back tips that you came across writing this book can help

00:48:34.620 people be better listeners well there's a lot of exercises you can do there's a an organization

00:48:40.420 called the international listening association which is amazing and the the head of that organization

00:48:47.120 and i have become quite good friends but you know sort of exercises you can do you go have a

00:48:52.640 conversation with someone and you let them talk for five minutes you don't speak and then you do the

00:48:58.800 same and then afterwards you talk about you what you remembered from the other person's conversation

00:49:04.960 yet listening just turns out to be like this amazing superpower in every aspect of your life with

00:49:10.580 your kids and at work and yet it's really really hard to do incredibly hard to be a good listener

00:49:16.700 so i took like online courses i found exercises you know interviewed experts but yeah in the book i have

00:49:23.920 a list of exercises that i gathered up from various sources like here's something you can do to work on your

00:49:31.060 listening skills yeah and as you said it's cognitively taxing so if you feel like man that's

00:49:38.140 i'm i that was that whooped me you're doing it right listening isn't easy yeah that's a great line from

00:49:44.560 tom peters who's this famous business guru yeah he says if you get to the end of a 30 minute

00:49:50.580 conversation and you're not exhausted then you didn't listen enough but then i think well how do you

00:49:54.720 have five of those in a day right but but but yeah it's really hard but that was one thing for me like

00:50:02.660 if i could stop just talking for the sake of talking it opens up in this space in your life where you can

00:50:09.980 listen and what i've found is when people are listened to they really they really open up they

00:50:19.240 really dazzle you know they become really fascinating and interesting so that was the ultimate

00:50:24.400 thing for me in this book was it not that like what can i get out of talking less like oh i can get a

00:50:29.320 better deal on my car if i'm silent what you realize is oh man i can make my wife's life really better i

00:50:36.440 can make my daughter's life really better and then that's the biggest gift you can give to the world

00:50:42.600 right yeah no for sure i think so people want to feel noticed people want to feel like they're

00:50:48.040 important you know there's there's a story about this is one i just love this anecdote

00:50:53.720 but winston churchill's mother jenny jerome had she described the experience of having dinner with

00:51:00.020 two different big shot british politicians and one was william gladstone and the other was benjamin

00:51:05.120 disraeli and the great quote was when i left dinner with gladstone i left thinking he was the cleverest

00:51:10.900 man in england when i left dinner with disraeli i left feeling like i was the cleverest woman

00:51:15.840 you know and you think oh would it be great if like if you could make everybody you talk to feel

00:51:21.340 that way you know wow that would be what a what a powerful gift that would be it all starts off with

00:51:28.940 just shutting up that's the first step yeah that's where it all starts right it all starts yeah well dan

00:51:35.880 this has been a great conversation uh where can people go to learn more about the book and your work

00:51:39.280 oh well my website is danlyons.io and yeah there's information there that's probably the best place to

00:51:48.280 go fantastic well dan lyons thanks for time it's been a pleasure hey it was great meeting you thank

00:51:52.800 you so much my guest there is dan lyons he's the author of the book stfu the power of keeping your

00:51:58.200 mouth shut in an endlessly noisy world it's available on amazon.com bookstores everywhere you can find more

00:52:03.200 information about his work at his website danlyons.io also check out our show notes at

00:52:07.540 aom.is stop talking where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:52:12.380 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:52:23.840 artofmanlyons.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles

00:52:27.660 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of and if you'd like to

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00:53:02.420 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in a World That Won’t Stop Talking

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