Lenny Rachitsky: prediction

Transcript context

…Yeah. I really leaned into this with the spontaneous speaking work that I've been doing as of late, but it applies to anybody speaking. This is a notion that comes from the world of improvisation and when people hear improv, they often think of standup comedy, having to be funny. And that's not what improv is all about. Improv is all about being present, being collaborative, being open, and it's a wonderful tool just to help you get present oriented. Think of it as like meditation in action, but also it teaches lots of valuable skills for communication. When we communicate, especially spontaneously, we want to do it really well. We want to answer the question with the best answer, we want to give the right feedback, we want to be the most interesting in small talk and that puts a lot of pressure on ourselves. And you can think of it this way, it's really taxing our cognitive bandwidth. Your brain in many ways is like a CPU, a computer. It's not a perfect analogy, but it works. And if I am constantly judging and evaluating everything I am saying against some standard of perfection, whatever that is, it means I have a limited amount of bandwidth to focus on what I'm actually saying and connecting to my audience. If you have a laptop or a phone that has lots of windows and apps open, each one of those is performing less well because of the other ones being open. So I often say strive for connection over perfection by daring to be dull. Just get the task done, just answer the question, just give the feedback, just be engaged in the small talk. And by doing that you dial down the volume of self-evaluation, freeing up resources that can be used to really help you succeed. So dare to be dull is all about giving yourself permission to just be present and do what's needed. And when you do that you find that you actually do quite a good job at it. The last point I think is really important, you talk about this in your book. Is when you start with, "Okay, I'm just going to say something, it'll be fine. " Without that pressure, you end up saying something better and more interesting and more insightful because you're less nervous about it. That's exactly right. We are often our biggest impediments to good communication because of the anxiety we bring to the party.…

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