Why the reply starts early

If you've recognised yourself in that kitchen, you may be feeling that you're self-centred, or a bad parent or friend. I don't think so, and the first piece of evidence is a stopwatch.

Tanya Stivers and a team of colleagues timed the gaps between turns in ordinary conversations in ten languages, from major world languages to those of small traditional communities. Everywhere they looked, people avoided talking over each other and kept the silence between turns to a minimum. Average gaps differed a little between languages, but only within about a quarter of a second of each other. The typical gap, in every language tested, was a small fraction of a second.

Stephen Levinson and Francisco Torreira set that figure beside another. The gap between turns is of the order of 200 milliseconds. But laboratory studies of speech show that getting even a single word ready to say takes more than 600 milliseconds, and a sentence takes longer. If people waited until the other person had finished before starting to plan, the gaps would be three or more times as long as they are. So, Levinson and Torreira conclude, listeners must be predicting how the speaker's turn will end and preparing their response in advance. Planning your reply while the other person is still talking is simply part of how conversation works, in every language anyone has measured.

So you're not doing something unnatural. Everyone drafts. The question this book asks is how much and how early. There's a difference between beginning to shape a response in the last second of someone's turn and having a three-minute anecdote loaded by their third sentence.

Then there are the reasons that make the excess attractive, and each of them is real.

You want to help. Someone you love has a problem, and you can see a solution. Holding it back feels almost unkind.

You want to connect. When a story comes to mind that matches theirs, telling it feels like saying "me too, you're not alone".

You want to hold up your end. A conversation feels like a shared job, and you don't want to be the one who lets a silence fall or has nothing to offer.

You don't want to lose the thought. Replies are slippery. If you don't hold on to the good point you've just thought of, it'll be gone by the time they finish, so you grip it.

And you'd like to come across well. It's pleasant to be thought quick, funny, wise or well informed. A ready reply shows you in a good light.

Underneath these are needs nobody should be ashamed of. You want to be useful to the people you care about. You want to be close to them, and to be good company. The question for the next several chapters is whether drafting serves those needs. I'll argue that it works against all three, and that what serves them is the thing it crowds out.