What if you could make sure that every conversation you take part in is a meaningful one?
Having a good conversation with someone can sometimes feel more challenging than it should, whether they're a close friend, a colleague or a stranger, but it turns out one simple technique could change that completely.
Author Charles Duhigg has made a career out of the idea of communication and how we can get better at it, and he told Business Insider that there are small things you can do to massively upgrade your conversational experience.
The quickest one is to simply take a few seconds before a conversation to think of three points that you'd like to cover - whether these are direct questions that you want to ask, or topics that you'd like to touch on.
This can help you to actually have these in mind when catching up, rather than just skating past and sticking to easier areas without actually going deep at any point.
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If you want more concrete, less emotional reasons to try the technique, meanwhile, Duhigg also says that it can help you to appear (and indeed feel) more assertive and confident in conversation, if that's something you'd like to emulate.
Duhigg's book, "Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection" goes into a little more detail on this front, and offers up prompts that can help you think of topics.
These include asking yourself, "What is one thing you hope to say?" or "What is one question you will ask?", helpful ways to frame what you'd like from a conversation.
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One pitfall that this approach can throw up if you're not paying attention, though, is the risk that you just plough on with your pre-made questions or topics without actually properly listening to the responses and engaging with them.
It's important, according to Duhigg, that you adjust to the conversation that's taking place - if it feels meaningful and interesting, there might not be any need to just stick in a new thought that you had banked.
This emphasis on listening is a key part of becoming what Duhigg calls a "Supercommunicator", which is really just a label for someone who's able to find shared ground with people from a variety of backgrounds and situations, to communicate clearly and equally with them rather than talking at cross purposes.
It's an interesting topic, and one that Duhigg has also written about in The Wall Street Journal.