Sunday, ten past six

It's ten past six on a Sunday and your daughter has rung, as she does most weeks. Hannah is twenty-four and lives in Leeds. You're in the kitchen with the phone against your shoulder, peeling carrots.

She's telling you about her flatmate, Beth. Beth has started having her boyfriend to stay four nights a week. He uses the hot water and eats Hannah's food, and he's there in the living room every evening. Hannah says she's tried to bring it up and Beth got prickly.

About twenty seconds in, you know what you think. Hannah should call a house meeting and propose that the boyfriend contributes to the bills. You had exactly this problem in your own shared house in 1994, with a man called Gareth who ate everyone's cheese, and a house meeting sorted it out. You can feel both of these, the advice and the Gareth story, lined up and ready. You go on saying "mm" and "oh dear" at the right moments, and you're mostly waiting for Hannah to draw breath.

She does. You say, "You know what you need to do? Call a house meeting. We had this in Headingley with a chap called Gareth." You tell the Gareth story. It takes about three minutes, and it's quite a good story.

Hannah says, "Yeah. Maybe." There's a short pause. "Anyway. How's Dad's knee?"

The call lasts eleven minutes. They used to last forty.

Three weeks later your sister mentions in passing that she was sorry to hear about Hannah and Tom. You don't know what she means. It turns out that Hannah and her boyfriend of two years split up a month ago, and that she told her aunt and not you. You're hurt, and you're puzzled. You ring her every week. You've always been there for her, and you can't think why she wouldn't tell you.

Here's what you didn't hear on that Sunday, because it came after your reply had formed. Hannah said, "And honestly, I think it's getting to me more because everything's a bit much at the moment." That was the last thing she said before she drew breath. It was an invitation. Someone who was listening would have asked, "What else is a bit much?" You told her about Gareth and the cheese.

I'll use a few terms throughout. The reply is whatever you've composed to say next, whether it's advice, a story, a joke or a rebuttal. Drafting is composing and holding the reply while the other person is still talking. The last sentence is what they said just before they stopped, which is the part that drafting most reliably costs you. The beat is a short pause after they finish and before you speak. A follow-up is a question about what they just said.

Drafting has some regular features. This list is my own observation and not a research finding.

The reply arrives early. It's usually there within the first few sentences, as soon as you've recognised the general kind of thing you're being told.

Once it's arrived, it needs looking after. You have to hold on to it and rehearse its opening, and you have to watch for a gap. That's a task, and it uses attention.

Your responses while you wait are generic. You say "mm" and "right" and "oh no", and any of them would fit almost any story.

You come in fast. You speak the instant they stop, or slightly before.

And your reply fits the beginning of what they said better than it fits the end.

Try one thing before reading on. In your next three conversations, don't change anything. Just notice the moment when your reply arrives, and roughly how far into their turn it was. Then, after the conversation, try to recall the last thing they said before you spoke. Most people who try this are taken aback by how early the reply arrived, and by how little of the last sentence they can recall.