Book Summary — You‘re not listening

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. This book reminds you to listen to other people.
2. Several pieces of research were proposed to illustrate the importance of listening.
3. You may realize that you are not listening.

🎨 Impressions

While I believe that I usually listen to other people, I have to rethink again after reading this book. The author gradually persuades me to listen to others by changing my mindset. The content is quite easy to read.

🙍‍ Who Should Read It?

If everyone could read this book, I believe that this world will be more peaceful. Therefore, I recommend everyone to read this book.

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

• No one is the same as yesterday.
• Look at a problem as an invitation to have a conversation.
• Good listeners are good questioners.

📒 Summary + Notes

1. 👂 The Lost Art of Listening

• Lonely people have no one to share their thoughts and feelings with and no one to shares thoughts and feelings with them.
• Connectedness is necessarily a 2-way communication in which each partner listens and latch on to what the other said.
• It is questionable that social media reflects society at large since…

15–60% of social media accounts don’t belong to real people.

90–9–1 rule is In the online platform, 90% just observe, 9% comment, and 1% create most of the content.

Neutral posts don’t tend to go viral in media.

2. 🖇️ That Syncing Feeling: The Neuroscience of Listening

• Listening is more of a mindset than a checklist of dos and don’ts.
• Listening skills can be developed over time by interacting with all kinds of people without agenda.
• Listening helps you understand yourself as much as those speaking to you.
• Hearing is passive. Listening is active.
• Understanding is the goal of listening and it takes effort.
• When you and another person understand each other, your brain waves are in sync.
• Attachment theory: The ability to listen is shaped by how well our parents listened and connected with us as children.
• To listen well is to figure out what is on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know.

3. 🔎 Listening to Your Curiosity: What We Can Learn from Toddlers

• Listening requires curiosity.
• Everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions.
• It is uncertainty that makes us feel most alive.
• The most surprising thing is what comes out of people’s mouths.

4. 🚫 I Know What You’re Going to Say: Assumptions as Earplugs

• People in long-term relationships tend to lose their curiosity for each other.
• Closeness-communication bias: We don’t listen because we think we already know what the other person will say.
• No one is the same as yesterday, so you never actually know what is on another’s mind.
• Expecting complete understanding is the root of many troubled relationships.
• A way to maintain a friendship is an “everyday talk” by asking simple questions and listening intensively.
• Be careful of “Stereotype bias” when listening to people you aren’t closed to. Don’t quickly judge people based on their appearance and listen selectively.
• Listening helps you to discover who the person is.

5. 🏃 The Tone-Deaf Response: Why People Would Rather Talk to Their Dog

• People are more likely to feel understood if a listener responds not by nodding, parroting, or paraphrasing but by giving descriptive and evaluative information.
• Always asking “Why is this person telling me this?”
• Talking about yourself doesn’t add anything to your knowledge base.
• Active listening is a developed skill to acknowledge someone’s point of view both fact and emotion.

6. 🐢 Talking Like a Tortoise, Thinking Like a Hare: The Speech-Thought Differential

• We can think faster than someone can talk → We use the excess cognitive capacity to think about other things → We lose focus on listening.
• Listening is like meditation: you are aware of a distraction, then return to focus.
• The greatest barrier to focusing is the nagging concern about what we’re going to say.
• However, if you aren’t listening carefully, you tend to respond inappropriately.
• Your response will be better if you free up your mind to listen.

7. 🔋 Listening to Opposing Views: Why It Feels Like Being Chased by a Bear

• Most people feel unsafe when listening to opposing views. Then, they are in fight or flight mode and it is hard to listen.
• Try toning down the inner alarm and take a calm, open and curious stance.
• It will be useful to listen to find out how other people arrived at their conclusions and what you can learn from them.
• Listening for evidence that you might be wrong rather than listening to poke holes in the other person’s argument.
• To listen doesn’t mean that you agree with someone. It means that you accept the legitimacy of the other person’s point of view and you can embrace multiple truths that could lead to a large truth.

8. 🌐 Focusing on What’s Important: Listening in the Age of Big Data

• The trend now is using quicker approaches that depend more on technology than listening to actual people.
• Listening to focus is more effective than social listening tool since you can listen to actual responses rather than viewing only numbers.
• Asking-question tip is to avoid using “Why?” and ask “ Tell me about …” instead.
• A quantitative approach can give you a broad view while a qualitative approach can provide finer detail.

9. 💥 Improvisational Listening: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Work

• A successful team listens to one another and creates a psychological atmosphere.
• Improvisational comedy is an effective method for improving employees’ listening skills since listening is essential to being funny.

10. ❣️ Conversational Sensitivity: What Terry Gross, LBJ, and Con Men Have in Common

• Listening is like catching a lump of clay, molding it with their perception, and tossing it back
• Conversational sensitivity is a superior ability to listen and detect what’s going on in the conversation.
• Conversational sensitivity is a practiced skill that depends on exposure to a wide range of opinions, attitude, beliefs, and emotions.
• When people feel known and appreciated, they are more willing to share.
• Knowing yourself and your vulnerabilities and having self-awareness are important aspects of being a good listener.

11. 📥 Listening to Yourself: The Voluble Inner Voice

• We all have voices in our heads and talk to ourselves constantly.
• When we talk to ourselves, we engage the same part of our brains as when we talk to another person.
• The tone and quality of our inner dialogues are determined by listening to other people in both actual people and media.
• The more people you listen to, the more sides of an issue you can argue in your head, and the more solution you get.

12. ➕ Supporting, Not Shifting, the Conversation

• In conversation, there are 2 kinds of response: shift and support.
• Shift response directs away attention from the speaker and toward the respondent.
• Support response encourages elaboration from the speaker for greater understanding.
• Good listeners have the support response.
• To provide support response: ask open-end questions or fill-in-the-blank questions, avoid asking incidental details that don’t reflect emotion, and beware of asking questions that contain hidden assumptions.
• The sound that conveys negative feelings is perceived as louder than neutral or positive in tone, so good interactions must have positive ones more than 5 times negative ones.
• When people tell you problems, you don’t need to fix them since they usually just want a sounding board.
• Look at a problem as an invitation to have a conversation, not as something to be fixed or get upset about. The solution is often already within people.
• Good listeners are good questioners.

13. 🌊 Hammers, Anvils, and Stirrups: Turning Sound Waves into Brain Waves

• Listening to as many sources as possible to keep your brain as agile as possible.
• The right ear is better at processing information while the left ear is better at the recognition of emotions.
• When people tilt their heads, the higher ears are the ear they use more at that time.
• Hearing loss can cause you a poor listener.
• In conversation, 20% of your comprehension comes from lip-reading and 55% from nonverbal.

14. 📱 Addicted to Distraction

• Addicting to mobile phones is caused by a fear of missing out.
• Attention span dropped from 12 in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2020.
• The amount of time people devote to listening to others has gone down by half.
• Humans can’t be multitasking since the budget of attention is limited.
• Try to use mealtime as an opportunity to talk.

15. 🔇 What Words Conceal and Silences Reveal

• Willingness to listen to others makes them feel less guarded and have higher trust.
• Silence may feel uncomfortable in some cultures but it can yield a great conversation.
• Being able to comfortably sit in silence is a sign of a secure relationship.
• Silence is a pocket of possibility.

16. 👼 The Morality of Listening: Why Gossip Is Good for You

• Gossip allows us to judge who is trustworthy.
• Positive gossip made people try to behave similarly, and negative gossip made people feel better about themselves.
• Listening is like a transaction. The value of information relates to its availability and triviality.
• As both partners prove their trustworthiness, they can engage in more significant transactions like more sensitive information.

17. ✋ When to Stop Listening

• While you can learn something from everyone, that doesn’t mean you have to listen to everyone.
• Careful listening is draining that you can’t do it continuously.
• Part of being a good listener is knowing your limits and setting boundaries.
• Humans have expectations in conversation when violated, which makes us less inclined to listen. The problem is that we tend to give up too soon.
• Better to listen to how people feel rather than try to convince them to feel differently.
• Listening is fully under your control. You decide who deserves your attention.