October 29, 2025 • 26 mins
Communcations expert Charles Duhigg shares tips for making conversations more productive
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good Morning, This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I'm delighted to welcome Charles Duhig back to Before Breakfast.
(00:29):
Charles is the author of several best selling books, including
the Power of Habit and Super Communicators, which is newly
out in paperbacks.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So Charles, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yeah, really excited to have you back.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So, if we have any new listeners who've joined us
in the last year or so, maybe you could tell
everybody just a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Absolutely, I'm an author. I wrote the book The Power
of Habit, and also my most recent book is Super Communicators,
and I'm a writer at the New Yorker magazine previously
with The New York Times. I write about business and
investigations and tech for the most part.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
In AI, Absolutely, so, I know you have written about
a ton of different topics, but I thought, in our
time here today we could focus a little bit on
your most recent book with communication and in particular how
better communication can save us time, because that was a
big thing for people who listen to this show. So first,
(01:25):
what tends to go wrong with communication that winds up
being a major time suck?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's a great question because oftentimes, when we're
in a conversation and we want to actually communicate with
the other person and miscommunication is happening, which means they
can't understand us, we can't understand them. The consequences are
pretty dire, right. They can go off and spend days
working on a project without understanding that you actually asked
for something different, or there can be these hurt feelings.
(01:52):
So for this miscommunication and what's often happening there is
that people are having different kinds of conversations without realizing it. Right,
what neuroscience tells us is that almost all discussions fall
into one of three buckets. There are these practical conversations
where we're talking about plans and making choices together and
solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell
(02:16):
you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to
solve my feelings. I want you to empathize, I want
you to relate to me. And then finally, there's social conversations,
which is about how you and I relate to each
other in society and the identities that are important to us.
And all three of these different kinds of conversations are important,
and frankly, all three of them might happen during a
long discussion or a big discussion. But what researchers have
(02:38):
found is if we aren't having the same kind of
conversation at the same moment, I cannot hear what you
are trying to tell me, and you cannot fully hear me,
and in fact will feel disconnected from each other. So
if I'm telling you how like, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
No, it's just gonna say that's interesting, because you know,
when we're talking about how bad communication saves us time,
I was going to say it would even just be
the back and forth, like having you know, ten different
messages go back and forth of trying to figure something out.
But you're saying it's it's not even so much that
is that people are having a different conversation.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Well, and oftentimes that back and forth. In fact, one
of the things that we know about productive conversations is
that they tend to involve a lot of what's known
as ping ponging, Right, Like I'll say something and then
you kind of pick up on it, and you might
interrupt me, and then I'll interrupt you, and like that
means that we're both involved in the conversation. We're really
hearing each other. It's not that the goal is to
make conversations as brief as possible, because if you think
(03:30):
about it, if the goal of a conversation is simply
to import impart information, then it shouldn't really be a conversation.
I should just tell you, Laura, the weather today is this,
and so therefore you should wear a raincoat. But I
think what's important is that when we are in a conversation,
we're actually trying to learn from each other. We're trying
to share our own perspective, and to do that, we
(03:51):
have to be able to hear the other person. And
that means we have to get a ligned on what
kind of conversation we're having.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So, what are some best practices then for make making
sure that we are having an effective conversation?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Absolutely so, the first and most important thing is to
ask more questions. One of the things that we know
about consistent supercommunicators, and we're all super communicators at one
time or another, but consistent supercommunicators people who can connect
with almost anyone, is that they tend to ask ten
to twenty times as many questions as the average person.
And some of those questions don't even register as questions.
Are things like oh, oh, what'd you think about that?
(04:23):
Or what'd you say next? Or what do you think
about this? They're invitations to a conversation. But some of
the questions are what are known as deep questions. And
a deep question is something that asks about our values
or beliefs, or our experiences. And that can sound a
little intimidating, but it's as simple as if you meet
someone who's a doctor, for instance, instead of asking them, oh,
what hospital do you work at, you can ask them, oh,
(04:45):
what made you decide to go to medical school? Right?
That second question, that second question is actually an invitation
for someone to tell me something about themselves that's real,
and that's how we tend to get aligned. That's the
best practice for getting aligned with the other person, making
sure we're having the same kind of conversation at the
same moment.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, well, I'm curious about.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I mean, you know, that's one thing for if we're
having a face to face person, you know, in person conversation,
but so many of these conversations take place like back
and forth over email. Are there way is to make
sure that we are communicating more effectively in that medium.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, there's a couple of things that we know about
email in particular. The first is that asking questions on
email is actually even more powerful. Right, So if you
just have two people saying this is what I think,
this is what I think, that's not really going to
work out. But if somebody says, look, I'm just wondering, like,
like you said that this was really important to you,
Can you just give me a little bit of background
on why it's important to you. That's as easy to
do in an email as it is at face to face.
(05:41):
But we do know that some of the things about
email that are true are that, first of all, it
tends to be there's a set of rules around email
that we've all internalized, but sometimes we forget to remind
ourselves of We know, for instance, that sarcasm does not
work an email. Right when I'm speaking to you, can
hear the sarcasm in my voice. When I'm type something,
you don't know if I'm being serious or sarcastic. We
(06:02):
also know that politeness pays huge dividends when we're conversing online.
The simply saying please and thank you oftentimes, and studies
show this can bring down the temperature of a conversation significantly.
But equally, the thing about email is that it's asynchronous, right.
That's really one of the huge benefits of it is
that it's immediate and when I hit send, you get
(06:24):
it right away. But also I can hit send tonight
and you don't have to look at it until tomorrow morning.
And so I think recognizing that an asynchronous kind of
communication sometimes means you need to explain something a little
bit more. Oh, last night, you know, I went home
with my wife and we had this conversation. Really, communication
is about trying to over communicate, or at least thinking
(06:46):
about how we're communicating. And it's not hard, it doesn't
take much time. But the people who are the best
communicators are the ones who just spend half a percent
more thinking about what they're saying.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
And what about in meetings, for instance, I wonder if
this sort of norms around communication that can make meetings
more effective and hopefully, you know, not drag on as
long as many tend to do.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, there's actually a lot of research into how to
communicate in meetings, and the goal of all this communication
in a meeting is to create what's known as psychological safety.
Psychological safety is the most important characteristic in bringing a
team together, allowing them to feel like a cohesive unit
as opposed to just individuals operating next to each other.
And there's two things that researchers have found particularly helped
(07:30):
create psychological safety. The first is what's known as equality
in conversational turntaking. If you have dominated the conversation, you've
spoken way more than anyone else. That's not a great sign.
On the other hand, if you've spoken way less than
everyone else, that might mean that you're not being invited
or feel comfortable enough to voice your opinion. And so
(07:50):
for a leader of a meeting like that, what's really
important is to draw people out. Hey, Susie, you know
you mentioned this thing last meeting, and I haven't heard
much from you. Tell me what you think about this.
That's the first thing in quality and conversational turn ticking
The second important tactic is what's known as ostentatious listening.
And it's particularly important that leaders do this that when
I listen, I make it obvious to you that I'm listening. Hey, Jim,
(08:14):
that's a really good point you brought up. Let me
repeat it back just to make sure I understand it,
or you know, Frank, I remember earlier this meeting you
said this, and I'm wondering how it connects to this
new idea. What happens when a leader engages in ostentatious
listening is that other people start to echo him, or
mirror him, or copy him or her, almost unconsciously, and
(08:36):
so as a result, what you get is a room
where people are talking up in roughly equal measure. And
that doesn't mean the same number of minutes or the
same number of words, but roughly everyone has a chance
to participate, and that we are all showing that we
are listening to each other, which means we are actually
listening to each other.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
That's going to work, wonders Yeah, Well, I love the
phrase ostentatious listening. I'm going to have to start using
that one. That's great to going above and beyond with
the listening. Well, We're going to take a quick ad
break and then we'll be back talking with more about
ways that better communication can save us time. So I'm
(09:13):
here talking with Charles Doujig about ways we can communicate better.
We've been talking about communication and email communication in meetings.
I want to throw out one of the sort of
most difficult ways to communicate, the group text that you know,
I think many people have had the experience of things
sort of going off the rails, or even a simple
(09:35):
thing of trying to get everyone together for lunch. You
know that many people are involved, it goes many directions.
You want everyone to be heard, but sort of making
a decision with five people is often very difficult. I
wonder if there are ways we can communicate effectively in
those situations.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well let me ask you, so, when's the
last time you were in a group text that you
thought went well.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Well, I've had a few. I've had a few.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
You know. Usually it's if you've gotten together recently and
you're all sort of chatting about.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Something that just happened.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You know, you're rehashing what happened, sharing the inside jokes
of what came out of that, and laughing on it
as sort of a way to send everyone off into
the world.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah, and I think what's happening there is that because
you are you've been together recently, there's kind of an
almost meta conversation happening in that group text. Right, remember
when we were all together and Jane said this one thing,
like I'm going to make a joke about that. That'll
harken back to it. What we know is that one
of the best things you can do for communication is
(10:34):
engaging what's known as meta communication, which is very simple
and time efficient. It's a matter of saying, hey, look,
my goal in this conversation. I want to have a
meeting with you to sit down, and my goal is X.
That's a meta conversation. I've told you what my goal
is for this conversation, and I might ask you what's your goal,
like what do you hope to get out of this discussion.
Oftentimes in group chats, we don't engage in meta conversation. Right,
(10:58):
So somebody says, hey, you know, I'm wondering if you
should go see that movie on Friday night, And you
don't know, are they proposing this, are they asking it?
If you guys really want to go? Are they suggesting
that we actually make a plan, and so as a result,
one person says like, oh, yeah, that sounds good, and
another person says, yeah, I can be there at six
(11:19):
fifty five in the evening and I'll meet you guys
exactly in front of the theater. So what's happening there
is that people are having different kinds of conversations. Right,
someone's making a general comment, someone's making a specific comment.
The other thing that happens in a group text, and
this is true group emails, is that nobody feels the
obligation to respond because it's a group that was sent
the message was sent to, So for the sender, it
feels very very lonely that they send, you know, twenty
(11:42):
of their best friends, Hey, does anyone want to go
to the movies? No one person responds. I think that
they all their friends hate them. But it's actually because
when you're in a group, you don't feel any obligation
to respond. You assume that it's up to the group.
So the things that we can do that can make
them better is just to be very explicit about why
we are texting. Hey, guys, I want to see if
you'd like to go see the movie on Tuesday. If so,
(12:03):
then can you meet at the movie theater at six
fifty five. Please respond to me either privately or or
over the group. Okay, that's great, Right. Everyone knows exactly
what they're supposed to do, they know why you're having
this conversation, and they can easily opt out and say, hey,
I'm not interested. But that's what often happens in group
text is that the meta conversation gets very muddled.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, so what I'm.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Hearing you say here is that conversations in general need
an intention, right. I mean, we run our mouths all
the time, we have no idea why we are doing so.
But pausing to think about why I am having this conversation,
either by email, by group text, by in person with
another person can go a long way.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Well, and it's actually a little bit tiger than that,
which is that every conversation you have already has an intention. Right.
You are opening your mouth for a reason. Now you
might not be aware of what that reason is, and
that reason might be I want to make my friend laugh,
or I want to find out how my spouse's day went,
or I want them to understand that I'm angry. There
is an intention behind every time we open our mouth.
(13:05):
There's two questions. Number one, do we know what our
intention is? Have we taken just half a second to say,
like why am I having this conversation? And number two,
are we trying to communicate clearly what that intention is
to the other person and ask them what their intention is?
If we do, the conversation is going to get much better? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Absolutely, Well, I wonder if there's sort of a I mean,
when we talk about that one with a group text,
you kind of wanted to get to a decision.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I mean, I've had a lot.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Of experiences some people kind of go back and forth,
and I don't know if it's that they're trying to
seek consensus. They don't want to put something out there,
but if you're trying to schedule something or get together.
I've had some people who are also like, Okay, yes
we want to do lunch. Let's do either you know
this restaurant, this restaurant or this restaurant on Tuesday. Name
your thing, right, There's some people who go very quickly
(13:53):
to making it happen.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I wonder what we have going on there? Is it
good to do?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I mean, it does reduce back and forth if somebody
takes I mean it depends on what the like.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Let me ask you, when somebody said, which which kind
of conversation do you prefer? Do you prefer one where
someone says, hey, we should all have lunch and then
you know, like a week and a half later people
have chimed in and a month later you get together,
which is totally fine. Or do you prefer something where
someone says, we should have lunch. Here's three dates for
you to choose from at twelve o'clock and we're going
to do it next week. Which one do you prefer?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I love the second one because because it puts you
in an easy place that you can say yes or
no right with one more step and if it works
for you, great, If it doesn't, it doesn't, but you
don't have to continually come back to it and see
what's going on and follow up and all that. It's
it's that we've gone from intention to reality and like
one small step.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
And that doesn't mean that the first kind of conversation
is the bad kind of is a bad conversation. Right.
There's sometimes when we're just making jokes with our friends
where we don't want to be really efficient. We don't
want to be practical. The whole goal of it is
just to make each other laugh and to have something
to go spend, you know, five minutes on in the
middle of the work day. But I think what that's
important there is to understand and recognize what you want
(15:02):
out of a conversation. If your goal is to go
from hey, let's have lunch to a plan on when
we're going to meet up in you know, twelve hours,
then you should be very explicit and say here's three
dates and tell me which one works for you, or
tell me that you don't you can't join us. But
if your goal is just to kind of like reconnect
with people and you don't really want to have a plan,
(15:23):
and if you have lunch, it's okay, But the point
is that you ask to have lunch, then that's all
right as well. What's important is knowing in your own
head what you're looking for, and what studies tell us
is that if you just take literally two seconds and
say why am I having this conversation, you'll know immediately
why you're having that conversation. It doesn't take much time
(15:45):
to figure out what your intent is. What does take
time is not knowing your intent and then moving around
like a blind person in the dark.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I think the idea of what I mentioning having lunch
but not really wanting to have lunch is a whole
different set of social cues I have not really entirely
figured out. But that's a subject for an entirely different matter.
We're going to take a quick ad break and then
I will be back with more from Charles Doing.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I am back talking with Charles Doing who's the author
of the book Super Communicator, switched out last year and
is out nearly in paperback, so please go check that out.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So, Charles, I'm curious about you.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Do you have any sort of norms around like email
for yourself, like ways that you deal with email more effectively,
any routines.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
That help you. Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, absolutely. So when I send emails, I tend to
use many more bullet points, right, And the reason why
is because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying
to visually suggest to the person what my goal is. Right.
So I say like, hey, look, I wanted to talk
about this new apartment that we're buying. There's three things
that I'd like to address. A view number one number two,
number three, And what I'm saying explicitly is here are
(16:58):
the three questions that I'm asking, right, I'm not just
sending you an email and hoping that you pill out
the questions that are important to me. I'm going to
make it explicit. The other thing is we have this
saying in journalism, which is I didn't have enough time
to write short, right, And I think this gets it
something kind of important, which is everyone who's written knows
this feeling that when you're rushed and in a hurry,
(17:21):
oftentimes you write longer more than when you're not in
a hurry, and you have the time and the luxury
to figure out what you want to say and to
write short. And the same thing is true of sending
emails or any other kind of communication. Oftentimes we use
an email to figure out what we mean to say
through the process of writing the email, and that's helpful
(17:42):
because then we know what we want to get across,
we know what we want to ask, we know what
our intent is. But if we've used an email to
help us figure out what we want to say, it's
worthwhile to reread that email and take out the fluff,
because inevitably the path of figuring out what I want
to say involves a lot of side avenues that aren't
that useful to me and or useful to the other person.
(18:05):
So I think one of the things with written communications
is that if we self edit, even just the lightest
kind of self edit, that we know that that actually
makes the communication much richer and actually more efficient for
everyone involved.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
All right, so we're going to use bullet points, we're
going to edit ourselves.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Right, But if you were figuring out what you were
trying to say, you're going to go back, take all
that out, put in what you're actually going to say.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Then I'm curious about subject lines.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Because I think this is this is just I mean,
it's only a few words, and yet in and of itself,
that can be whether the email gets opened, it can
be you know, how quickly it gets responded to. And
yet most of us are not you know, professional email marketers,
like we have no idea how to title an email
to get somebody to open it.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Well, I think that we should think of a subject
line as marketing. Right. Sometimes we use the subject line
as like, here's the here's the summary of what I'm
about to email you. That's not what a SA subject
line should be A subject line should be a little
bit of marketing. Hey, here's a funny joke for you. Okay,
Now if I yeah, there's one weird trick and so
and so. I think the thing is that you know, obviously,
(19:13):
we know what's interesting to us, we know what's likely
to cause us to open an email, and if we
just think about that for the other person that we're
sending an email to, I think it'll work. So when
I send emails out to people I don't know, I
often say from Charles Dohig, the author of Supercommunicators in
the Power of Habit, because I think for some percentage
of people they are familiar with my work and so
(19:34):
they think, oh, I got an email from Charles doing.
But for other people, I might say, you know, uh,
from the New Yorker, a quick question for you for
an article I'm writing, right, And for a certain type
of person, they're thinking, oh, if they have a quick
question for me, I might appear in this article. And
that's something that I enjoy. I'm very aware of how
a subject line is read by the recipient, and in
(19:55):
doing so, I'm using it as just a little bit
of marketing. Doesn't have to be over the top, doesn't
have to be you know, one trick that will cause
you to lose weight, but it should be something that
entices you into this correspondence.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, I'm probably opening the one about the one weird trick.
I don't know. I think we're all helpless.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So when it comes to that subject line, how about
in terms of the rhythm of your days, are you
the sort of person who's in and out of email
a lot or you'd have set times when.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
You check it.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Oh no, I'm in and out of email all day now.
I will say my ideal day in my actual days
tend to differ quite a bit. But one thing I
do do is every night before I go to bed,
I just look at my calendar for the next day
and I fill in blocks with the work that I
want to do. So, for instance, for today, it has
this conversation with you, and then on my calendar it
says for the next forty five minutes answer emails, and
(20:42):
then I have another conversation, and then for forty five
minutes after that, I have something that says work on
fact checking letters. So basically what I'm trying to do
is I'm trying to plan out my entire day. Now,
that doesn't mean that I hit all of those exactly
on the nose, but I know that today I have
forty five minutes to deal with all the emails that
I need to do deal with, and then I'm not
going to have another chance to look at them until
(21:02):
six or seven tonight, and that's going to help me
prioritize what I actually look at. So I think. I
think oftentimes starting is the hardest part, right. Deciding to
choose switch from one task to the next is challenging.
But if we can make that decision in advance, if
we tell ourselves when we're in a what's known as
a cool period, when the work isn't right in front
(21:24):
of us, that tomorrow at nine o'clock, when I'm in
a hot mindset, instead of going and doing something pointless,
I'm going to spend forty five minutes on email. But
that's it. It makes it easier.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I love the idea of scheduling the exact amount of
time you are going to spend on email as well.
I think for many people it becomes I mean it's
like tidying the house. I mean, you can fill any
amount of time that you choose to give.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Oh, absolutely, And the more you answer emails, the more
emails you get, right, It's it's I think that oftentimes
people use their email inbox as a to do list,
and that's exactly the wrong way to use it, because
what you're doing is you're letting other people put items
on your to do list that you might not want
to do. What's important is to take control of that.
So I don't have I don't have inbox zero. I
(22:07):
don't have a certain number of emails in my inbox
that I care whether it's above or below that number.
I just glance at it at least once a day
to see if there's anything pressing that needs to be
dealt with right now. And if the answer is no,
then I'll wait until I have more time. I think
the most important thing is to forgive yourself for email.
You should feel no guilt over not returning an email.
(22:28):
Just because somebody has emailed you does not imply an
obligation on your part to reply or return that email
unless it's something you want to do.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
All right, Well, that's tough love, but we'll try to
keep that in mind. So, Charles, since you've been our
guests on the show before, I always ask people something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Well, so it's a great question. So we just moved
right from from one house to another house, and in
one of the things that's been driving me crazy is
that there's been boxes all over and having a having
like this visual clutter in my in my eyesight has
been really hard. And so what I did is yesterday
I just spend a bunch of time picking up boxes
(23:11):
and putting them into into basically this side room that
we were not using. Now, this is not particularly efficient.
I'm gonna have to take those boxes back out of
that room. I'm gonna have to unpack them. Not only that,
but in that room it's very hard to get organized
because there's a whole bunch of boxes in there. But
what I recognize is that I'm more efficient and more
productive when I have sort of a clean, simple visual
(23:34):
field around me. And taking the time to create the
environment that makes you most productive is oftentimes one of
the most productive things you can do.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Well, it's it's kind of like putting the emails at
a folder that you don't want to see at this
point to maybe deal with them later.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
But yeah, exactly, And I have a folder like that.
I have a folder called AA to Do. And what
happens is if an email has been sitting in my
inbox and like I don't want to deal with it,
and it's been there for a long time and it's
stressful just to see it, I put it in that folder.
And the key is I never opened that folder.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
It's gone.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
It's like the stuff I was put in the donation box,
and you wait for a while and then if you
don't open it in six months, it's out, and.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I don't have to feel guilty that I deleted it.
In fact, I still have it. Someday, who knows, one
hundred years from now, I might actually open that folder.
But the point is that right now I've decided I
don't need to and that there's no point in having
it on my consciousness.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Absolutely if we love getting rid of clutter. So what
are you looking forward to right now?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
One of the things I'm looking forward to is I'm
looking forward to hearing from people about how they communicate better.
You know. One of the things that's been such a
delight is that after writing this book, I get emails
from people saying, I haven't talked to my brother in
you know, four years, and then I read this book
and it gave me a way to go and have
this conversation. Or I've been meaning to ask for a
raise for the last six months and I didn't know
(24:56):
how to do it, and then I read your book
and it gave me a gave me a step by
step guide on how to have that kind of conversation.
And so if anyone listening, if you've had a great conversation,
I would love to hear from you and to hear
how it went and why you think it went so
well and what you learned from it.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Well, be sure to reach out to Charles, and so
I should ask you, how can people find you?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yeah? Absolutely, they can find me online. I'm at Charles
Duhig dot com, which is Duhigg or I have a
substack newsletter called the Science of Better And if you
just google Science of Better or my name, or even
Power of Habit or Supercommunicators, it'll certainly come up. And
I'd love to love to hear from you and love
to have you as a subscriber. Awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
We'll be sure to check that out so Charles, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone
for listening. If you have feedback about this or any
other episode, you can always reach me at Laura at
Laura vandercam dot com and in the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
(26:05):
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(26:27):
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good Morning, This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I'm delighted to welcome Charles Duhig back to Before Breakfast.
(00:29):
Charles is the author of several best selling books, including
the Power of Habit and Super Communicators, which is newly
out in paperbacks.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
So Charles, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yeah, really excited to have you back.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So, if we have any new listeners who've joined us
in the last year or so, maybe you could tell
everybody just a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Absolutely, I'm an author. I wrote the book The Power
of Habit, and also my most recent book is Super Communicators,
and I'm a writer at the New Yorker magazine previously
with The New York Times. I write about business and
investigations and tech for the most part.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
In AI, Absolutely, so, I know you have written about
a ton of different topics, but I thought, in our
time here today we could focus a little bit on
your most recent book with communication and in particular how
better communication can save us time, because that was a
big thing for people who listen to this show. So first,
(01:25):
what tends to go wrong with communication that winds up
being a major time suck?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's a great question because oftentimes, when we're
in a conversation and we want to actually communicate with
the other person and miscommunication is happening, which means they
can't understand us, we can't understand them. The consequences are
pretty dire, right. They can go off and spend days
working on a project without understanding that you actually asked
for something different, or there can be these hurt feelings.
(01:52):
So for this miscommunication and what's often happening there is
that people are having different kinds of conversations without realizing it. Right,
what neuroscience tells us is that almost all discussions fall
into one of three buckets. There are these practical conversations
where we're talking about plans and making choices together and
solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell
(02:16):
you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to
solve my feelings. I want you to empathize, I want
you to relate to me. And then finally, there's social conversations,
which is about how you and I relate to each
other in society and the identities that are important to us.
And all three of these different kinds of conversations are important,
and frankly, all three of them might happen during a
long discussion or a big discussion. But what researchers have
(02:38):
found is if we aren't having the same kind of
conversation at the same moment, I cannot hear what you
are trying to tell me, and you cannot fully hear me,
and in fact will feel disconnected from each other. So
if I'm telling you how like, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
No, it's just gonna say that's interesting, because you know,
when we're talking about how bad communication saves us time,
I was going to say it would even just be
the back and forth, like having you know, ten different
messages go back and forth of trying to figure something out.
But you're saying it's it's not even so much that
is that people are having a different conversation.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Well, and oftentimes that back and forth. In fact, one
of the things that we know about productive conversations is
that they tend to involve a lot of what's known
as ping ponging, Right, Like I'll say something and then
you kind of pick up on it, and you might
interrupt me, and then I'll interrupt you, and like that
means that we're both involved in the conversation. We're really
hearing each other. It's not that the goal is to
make conversations as brief as possible, because if you think
(03:30):
about it, if the goal of a conversation is simply
to import impart information, then it shouldn't really be a conversation.
I should just tell you, Laura, the weather today is this,
and so therefore you should wear a raincoat. But I
think what's important is that when we are in a conversation,
we're actually trying to learn from each other. We're trying
to share our own perspective, and to do that, we
(03:51):
have to be able to hear the other person. And
that means we have to get a ligned on what
kind of conversation we're having.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
So, what are some best practices then for make making
sure that we are having an effective conversation?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Absolutely so, the first and most important thing is to
ask more questions. One of the things that we know
about consistent supercommunicators, and we're all super communicators at one
time or another, but consistent supercommunicators people who can connect
with almost anyone, is that they tend to ask ten
to twenty times as many questions as the average person.
And some of those questions don't even register as questions.
Are things like oh, oh, what'd you think about that?
(04:23):
Or what'd you say next? Or what do you think
about this? They're invitations to a conversation. But some of
the questions are what are known as deep questions. And
a deep question is something that asks about our values
or beliefs, or our experiences. And that can sound a
little intimidating, but it's as simple as if you meet
someone who's a doctor, for instance, instead of asking them, oh,
what hospital do you work at, you can ask them, oh,
(04:45):
what made you decide to go to medical school? Right?
That second question, that second question is actually an invitation
for someone to tell me something about themselves that's real,
and that's how we tend to get aligned. That's the
best practice for getting aligned with the other person, making
sure we're having the same kind of conversation at the
same moment.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, well, I'm curious about.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I mean, you know, that's one thing for if we're
having a face to face person, you know, in person conversation,
but so many of these conversations take place like back
and forth over email. Are there way is to make
sure that we are communicating more effectively in that medium.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, there's a couple of things that we know about
email in particular. The first is that asking questions on
email is actually even more powerful. Right, So if you
just have two people saying this is what I think,
this is what I think, that's not really going to
work out. But if somebody says, look, I'm just wondering, like,
like you said that this was really important to you,
Can you just give me a little bit of background
on why it's important to you. That's as easy to
do in an email as it is at face to face.
(05:41):
But we do know that some of the things about
email that are true are that, first of all, it
tends to be there's a set of rules around email
that we've all internalized, but sometimes we forget to remind
ourselves of We know, for instance, that sarcasm does not
work an email. Right when I'm speaking to you, can
hear the sarcasm in my voice. When I'm type something,
you don't know if I'm being serious or sarcastic. We
(06:02):
also know that politeness pays huge dividends when we're conversing online.
The simply saying please and thank you oftentimes, and studies
show this can bring down the temperature of a conversation significantly.
But equally, the thing about email is that it's asynchronous, right.
That's really one of the huge benefits of it is
that it's immediate and when I hit send, you get
(06:24):
it right away. But also I can hit send tonight
and you don't have to look at it until tomorrow morning.
And so I think recognizing that an asynchronous kind of
communication sometimes means you need to explain something a little
bit more. Oh, last night, you know, I went home
with my wife and we had this conversation. Really, communication
is about trying to over communicate, or at least thinking
(06:46):
about how we're communicating. And it's not hard, it doesn't
take much time. But the people who are the best
communicators are the ones who just spend half a percent
more thinking about what they're saying.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
And what about in meetings, for instance, I wonder if
this sort of norms around communication that can make meetings
more effective and hopefully, you know, not drag on as
long as many tend to do.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yeah, there's actually a lot of research into how to
communicate in meetings, and the goal of all this communication
in a meeting is to create what's known as psychological safety.
Psychological safety is the most important characteristic in bringing a
team together, allowing them to feel like a cohesive unit
as opposed to just individuals operating next to each other.
And there's two things that researchers have found particularly helped
(07:30):
create psychological safety. The first is what's known as equality
in conversational turntaking. If you have dominated the conversation, you've
spoken way more than anyone else. That's not a great sign.
On the other hand, if you've spoken way less than
everyone else, that might mean that you're not being invited
or feel comfortable enough to voice your opinion. And so
(07:50):
for a leader of a meeting like that, what's really
important is to draw people out. Hey, Susie, you know
you mentioned this thing last meeting, and I haven't heard
much from you. Tell me what you think about this.
That's the first thing in quality and conversational turn ticking
The second important tactic is what's known as ostentatious listening.
And it's particularly important that leaders do this that when
I listen, I make it obvious to you that I'm listening. Hey, Jim,
(08:14):
that's a really good point you brought up. Let me
repeat it back just to make sure I understand it,
or you know, Frank, I remember earlier this meeting you
said this, and I'm wondering how it connects to this
new idea. What happens when a leader engages in ostentatious
listening is that other people start to echo him, or
mirror him, or copy him or her, almost unconsciously, and
(08:36):
so as a result, what you get is a room
where people are talking up in roughly equal measure. And
that doesn't mean the same number of minutes or the
same number of words, but roughly everyone has a chance
to participate, and that we are all showing that we
are listening to each other, which means we are actually
listening to each other.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
That's going to work, wonders Yeah, Well, I love the
phrase ostentatious listening. I'm going to have to start using
that one. That's great to going above and beyond with
the listening. Well, We're going to take a quick ad
break and then we'll be back talking with more about
ways that better communication can save us time. So I'm
(09:13):
here talking with Charles Doujig about ways we can communicate better.
We've been talking about communication and email communication in meetings.
I want to throw out one of the sort of
most difficult ways to communicate, the group text that you know,
I think many people have had the experience of things
sort of going off the rails, or even a simple
(09:35):
thing of trying to get everyone together for lunch. You
know that many people are involved, it goes many directions.
You want everyone to be heard, but sort of making
a decision with five people is often very difficult. I
wonder if there are ways we can communicate effectively in
those situations.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well let me ask you, so, when's the
last time you were in a group text that you
thought went well.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Well, I've had a few. I've had a few.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
You know. Usually it's if you've gotten together recently and
you're all sort of chatting about.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Something that just happened.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You know, you're rehashing what happened, sharing the inside jokes
of what came out of that, and laughing on it
as sort of a way to send everyone off into
the world.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah, and I think what's happening there is that because
you are you've been together recently, there's kind of an
almost meta conversation happening in that group text. Right, remember
when we were all together and Jane said this one thing,
like I'm going to make a joke about that. That'll
harken back to it. What we know is that one
of the best things you can do for communication is
(10:34):
engaging what's known as meta communication, which is very simple
and time efficient. It's a matter of saying, hey, look,
my goal in this conversation. I want to have a
meeting with you to sit down, and my goal is X.
That's a meta conversation. I've told you what my goal
is for this conversation, and I might ask you what's your goal,
like what do you hope to get out of this discussion.
Oftentimes in group chats, we don't engage in meta conversation. Right,
(10:58):
So somebody says, hey, you know, I'm wondering if you
should go see that movie on Friday night, And you
don't know, are they proposing this, are they asking it?
If you guys really want to go? Are they suggesting
that we actually make a plan, and so as a result,
one person says like, oh, yeah, that sounds good, and
another person says, yeah, I can be there at six
(11:19):
fifty five in the evening and I'll meet you guys
exactly in front of the theater. So what's happening there
is that people are having different kinds of conversations. Right,
someone's making a general comment, someone's making a specific comment.
The other thing that happens in a group text, and
this is true group emails, is that nobody feels the
obligation to respond because it's a group that was sent
the message was sent to, So for the sender, it
feels very very lonely that they send, you know, twenty
(11:42):
of their best friends, Hey, does anyone want to go
to the movies? No one person responds. I think that
they all their friends hate them. But it's actually because
when you're in a group, you don't feel any obligation
to respond. You assume that it's up to the group.
So the things that we can do that can make
them better is just to be very explicit about why
we are texting. Hey, guys, I want to see if
you'd like to go see the movie on Tuesday. If so,
(12:03):
then can you meet at the movie theater at six
fifty five. Please respond to me either privately or or
over the group. Okay, that's great, Right. Everyone knows exactly
what they're supposed to do, they know why you're having
this conversation, and they can easily opt out and say, hey,
I'm not interested. But that's what often happens in group
text is that the meta conversation gets very muddled.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, so what I'm.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Hearing you say here is that conversations in general need
an intention, right. I mean, we run our mouths all
the time, we have no idea why we are doing so.
But pausing to think about why I am having this conversation,
either by email, by group text, by in person with
another person can go a long way.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Well, and it's actually a little bit tiger than that,
which is that every conversation you have already has an intention. Right.
You are opening your mouth for a reason. Now you
might not be aware of what that reason is, and
that reason might be I want to make my friend laugh,
or I want to find out how my spouse's day went,
or I want them to understand that I'm angry. There
is an intention behind every time we open our mouth.
(13:05):
There's two questions. Number one, do we know what our
intention is? Have we taken just half a second to say,
like why am I having this conversation? And number two,
are we trying to communicate clearly what that intention is
to the other person and ask them what their intention is?
If we do, the conversation is going to get much better? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Absolutely, Well, I wonder if there's sort of a I mean,
when we talk about that one with a group text,
you kind of wanted to get to a decision.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I mean, I've had a lot.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Of experiences some people kind of go back and forth,
and I don't know if it's that they're trying to
seek consensus. They don't want to put something out there,
but if you're trying to schedule something or get together.
I've had some people who are also like, Okay, yes
we want to do lunch. Let's do either you know
this restaurant, this restaurant or this restaurant on Tuesday. Name
your thing, right, There's some people who go very quickly
(13:53):
to making it happen.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I wonder what we have going on there? Is it
good to do?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
I mean, it does reduce back and forth if somebody
takes I mean it depends on what the like.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Let me ask you, when somebody said, which which kind
of conversation do you prefer? Do you prefer one where
someone says, hey, we should all have lunch and then
you know, like a week and a half later people
have chimed in and a month later you get together,
which is totally fine. Or do you prefer something where
someone says, we should have lunch. Here's three dates for
you to choose from at twelve o'clock and we're going
to do it next week. Which one do you prefer?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I love the second one because because it puts you
in an easy place that you can say yes or
no right with one more step and if it works
for you, great, If it doesn't, it doesn't, but you
don't have to continually come back to it and see
what's going on and follow up and all that. It's
it's that we've gone from intention to reality and like
one small step.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
And that doesn't mean that the first kind of conversation
is the bad kind of is a bad conversation. Right.
There's sometimes when we're just making jokes with our friends
where we don't want to be really efficient. We don't
want to be practical. The whole goal of it is
just to make each other laugh and to have something
to go spend, you know, five minutes on in the
middle of the work day. But I think what that's
important there is to understand and recognize what you want
(15:02):
out of a conversation. If your goal is to go
from hey, let's have lunch to a plan on when
we're going to meet up in you know, twelve hours,
then you should be very explicit and say here's three
dates and tell me which one works for you, or
tell me that you don't you can't join us. But
if your goal is just to kind of like reconnect
with people and you don't really want to have a plan,
(15:23):
and if you have lunch, it's okay, But the point
is that you ask to have lunch, then that's all
right as well. What's important is knowing in your own
head what you're looking for, and what studies tell us
is that if you just take literally two seconds and
say why am I having this conversation, you'll know immediately
why you're having that conversation. It doesn't take much time
(15:45):
to figure out what your intent is. What does take
time is not knowing your intent and then moving around
like a blind person in the dark.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I think the idea of what I mentioning having lunch
but not really wanting to have lunch is a whole
different set of social cues I have not really entirely
figured out. But that's a subject for an entirely different matter.
We're going to take a quick ad break and then
I will be back with more from Charles Doing.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I am back talking with Charles Doing who's the author
of the book Super Communicator, switched out last year and
is out nearly in paperback, so please go check that out.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So, Charles, I'm curious about you.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Do you have any sort of norms around like email
for yourself, like ways that you deal with email more effectively,
any routines.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
That help you. Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, absolutely. So when I send emails, I tend to
use many more bullet points, right, And the reason why
is because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying
to visually suggest to the person what my goal is. Right.
So I say like, hey, look, I wanted to talk
about this new apartment that we're buying. There's three things
that I'd like to address. A view number one number two,
number three, And what I'm saying explicitly is here are
(16:58):
the three questions that I'm asking, right, I'm not just
sending you an email and hoping that you pill out
the questions that are important to me. I'm going to
make it explicit. The other thing is we have this
saying in journalism, which is I didn't have enough time
to write short, right, And I think this gets it
something kind of important, which is everyone who's written knows
this feeling that when you're rushed and in a hurry,
(17:21):
oftentimes you write longer more than when you're not in
a hurry, and you have the time and the luxury
to figure out what you want to say and to
write short. And the same thing is true of sending
emails or any other kind of communication. Oftentimes we use
an email to figure out what we mean to say
through the process of writing the email, and that's helpful
(17:42):
because then we know what we want to get across,
we know what we want to ask, we know what
our intent is. But if we've used an email to
help us figure out what we want to say, it's
worthwhile to reread that email and take out the fluff,
because inevitably the path of figuring out what I want
to say involves a lot of side avenues that aren't
that useful to me and or useful to the other person.
(18:05):
So I think one of the things with written communications
is that if we self edit, even just the lightest
kind of self edit, that we know that that actually
makes the communication much richer and actually more efficient for
everyone involved.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
All right, so we're going to use bullet points, we're
going to edit ourselves.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Right, But if you were figuring out what you were
trying to say, you're going to go back, take all
that out, put in what you're actually going to say.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Then I'm curious about subject lines.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Because I think this is this is just I mean,
it's only a few words, and yet in and of itself,
that can be whether the email gets opened, it can
be you know, how quickly it gets responded to. And
yet most of us are not you know, professional email marketers,
like we have no idea how to title an email
to get somebody to open it.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Well, I think that we should think of a subject
line as marketing. Right. Sometimes we use the subject line
as like, here's the here's the summary of what I'm
about to email you. That's not what a SA subject
line should be A subject line should be a little
bit of marketing. Hey, here's a funny joke for you. Okay,
Now if I yeah, there's one weird trick and so
and so. I think the thing is that you know, obviously,
(19:13):
we know what's interesting to us, we know what's likely
to cause us to open an email, and if we
just think about that for the other person that we're
sending an email to, I think it'll work. So when
I send emails out to people I don't know, I
often say from Charles Dohig, the author of Supercommunicators in
the Power of Habit, because I think for some percentage
of people they are familiar with my work and so
(19:34):
they think, oh, I got an email from Charles doing.
But for other people, I might say, you know, uh,
from the New Yorker, a quick question for you for
an article I'm writing, right, And for a certain type
of person, they're thinking, oh, if they have a quick
question for me, I might appear in this article. And
that's something that I enjoy. I'm very aware of how
a subject line is read by the recipient, and in
(19:55):
doing so, I'm using it as just a little bit
of marketing. Doesn't have to be over the top, doesn't
have to be you know, one trick that will cause
you to lose weight, but it should be something that
entices you into this correspondence.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, I'm probably opening the one about the one weird trick.
I don't know. I think we're all helpless.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So when it comes to that subject line, how about
in terms of the rhythm of your days, are you
the sort of person who's in and out of email
a lot or you'd have set times when.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
You check it.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Oh no, I'm in and out of email all day now.
I will say my ideal day in my actual days
tend to differ quite a bit. But one thing I
do do is every night before I go to bed,
I just look at my calendar for the next day
and I fill in blocks with the work that I
want to do. So, for instance, for today, it has
this conversation with you, and then on my calendar it
says for the next forty five minutes answer emails, and
(20:42):
then I have another conversation, and then for forty five
minutes after that, I have something that says work on
fact checking letters. So basically what I'm trying to do
is I'm trying to plan out my entire day. Now,
that doesn't mean that I hit all of those exactly
on the nose, but I know that today I have
forty five minutes to deal with all the emails that
I need to do deal with, and then I'm not
going to have another chance to look at them until
(21:02):
six or seven tonight, and that's going to help me
prioritize what I actually look at. So I think. I
think oftentimes starting is the hardest part, right. Deciding to
choose switch from one task to the next is challenging.
But if we can make that decision in advance, if
we tell ourselves when we're in a what's known as
a cool period, when the work isn't right in front
(21:24):
of us, that tomorrow at nine o'clock, when I'm in
a hot mindset, instead of going and doing something pointless,
I'm going to spend forty five minutes on email. But
that's it. It makes it easier.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I love the idea of scheduling the exact amount of
time you are going to spend on email as well.
I think for many people it becomes I mean it's
like tidying the house. I mean, you can fill any
amount of time that you choose to give.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Oh, absolutely, And the more you answer emails, the more
emails you get, right, It's it's I think that oftentimes
people use their email inbox as a to do list,
and that's exactly the wrong way to use it, because
what you're doing is you're letting other people put items
on your to do list that you might not want
to do. What's important is to take control of that.
So I don't have I don't have inbox zero. I
(22:07):
don't have a certain number of emails in my inbox
that I care whether it's above or below that number.
I just glance at it at least once a day
to see if there's anything pressing that needs to be
dealt with right now. And if the answer is no,
then I'll wait until I have more time. I think
the most important thing is to forgive yourself for email.
You should feel no guilt over not returning an email.
(22:28):
Just because somebody has emailed you does not imply an
obligation on your part to reply or return that email
unless it's something you want to do.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
All right, Well, that's tough love, but we'll try to
keep that in mind. So, Charles, since you've been our
guests on the show before, I always ask people something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Well, so it's a great question. So we just moved
right from from one house to another house, and in
one of the things that's been driving me crazy is
that there's been boxes all over and having a having
like this visual clutter in my in my eyesight has
been really hard. And so what I did is yesterday
I just spend a bunch of time picking up boxes
(23:11):
and putting them into into basically this side room that
we were not using. Now, this is not particularly efficient.
I'm gonna have to take those boxes back out of
that room. I'm gonna have to unpack them. Not only that,
but in that room it's very hard to get organized
because there's a whole bunch of boxes in there. But
what I recognize is that I'm more efficient and more
productive when I have sort of a clean, simple visual
(23:34):
field around me. And taking the time to create the
environment that makes you most productive is oftentimes one of
the most productive things you can do.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Well, it's it's kind of like putting the emails at
a folder that you don't want to see at this
point to maybe deal with them later.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
But yeah, exactly, And I have a folder like that.
I have a folder called AA to Do. And what
happens is if an email has been sitting in my
inbox and like I don't want to deal with it,
and it's been there for a long time and it's
stressful just to see it, I put it in that folder.
And the key is I never opened that folder.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
It's gone.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
It's like the stuff I was put in the donation box,
and you wait for a while and then if you
don't open it in six months, it's out, and.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I don't have to feel guilty that I deleted it.
In fact, I still have it. Someday, who knows, one
hundred years from now, I might actually open that folder.
But the point is that right now I've decided I
don't need to and that there's no point in having
it on my consciousness.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Absolutely if we love getting rid of clutter. So what
are you looking forward to right now?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
One of the things I'm looking forward to is I'm
looking forward to hearing from people about how they communicate better.
You know. One of the things that's been such a
delight is that after writing this book, I get emails
from people saying, I haven't talked to my brother in
you know, four years, and then I read this book
and it gave me a way to go and have
this conversation. Or I've been meaning to ask for a
raise for the last six months and I didn't know
(24:56):
how to do it, and then I read your book
and it gave me a gave me a step by
step guide on how to have that kind of conversation.
And so if anyone listening, if you've had a great conversation,
I would love to hear from you and to hear
how it went and why you think it went so
well and what you learned from it.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Well, be sure to reach out to Charles, and so
I should ask you, how can people find you?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yeah? Absolutely, they can find me online. I'm at Charles
Duhig dot com, which is Duhigg or I have a
substack newsletter called the Science of Better And if you
just google Science of Better or my name, or even
Power of Habit or Supercommunicators, it'll certainly come up. And
I'd love to love to hear from you and love
to have you as a subscriber. Awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
We'll be sure to check that out so Charles, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone
for listening. If you have feedback about this or any
other episode, you can always reach me at Laura at
Laura vandercam dot com and in the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
(26:05):
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(26:27):
your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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