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I talk very fast, especially when caffeinated. From discussing this with people in my life I have come to believe that I speak via a different mental process th

by ajkjk 7y ago

I talk very fast, especially when caffeinated. From discussing this with people in my life I have come to believe that I speak via a different mental process than some other people. Which is interesting. Namely: my verbal brain races ahead of the rest of my brain, and seems to think better than my internal monologue. It seems smarter and better able to make connections than when I think on my own, as if my brain is wired in a verbal-first way. From speaking to others I think there is some discrete variation in this property. Some people's internal monologues, or maybe it's their 'writing' brain, is more heavily wired into their intelligence than their verbal brain. Some people speak slowly and deliberately and dislike fast-talkers because they run a more complicated mental process to formulate and process language than I do.

Ftuuky 7y ago
I was never able to articulate this, thank you. It seems I think better when talking (very fast) than when writing or thinking. Why is that?
ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
Speaking different languages also changes your verbal tracing. I heard agglutination languages like German does this to you and so do Tamil speakers which also uses agglutination
ajkjk 7y ago
If anyone is interested, here are a couple of other qualities that might be correlated with this one. I wonder if anyone else sees the same patterns: - aphantasia (not seeing images in my head) - being of eastern-european / ashkenazi jewish descent - reading a ton as a child instead of socializing - liking intuitive reasoning and geospatial reasoning, such as physics over logic, algebra over analysis (within math), higher-level languages over systems-level ones, and OOP over functional programming - being very distractable / ADD and easily addicted to things like video games
- redka 7y ago
  That's interesting - my girlfriend seems to very much fit the description. Would you say you have difficulty formulating full arguments in your head? Do you talk when you think by yourself? When "thinking" aloud by talking to someone you're bound to sometimes stray and perhaps need to take a different line of reasoning to make a coherent argument. Does it pose a challenge to not get attached (maybe defensive) to what you said for this process to be efficient? - especially before someone whose opinion matters to you; or in an argument.
- cstrat 7y ago
  I feel like I experience this in a similar way to yourself. I also struggle to see images in my head sometimes, I am mostly of european decent (German/Czechia on one side - Australian/English on the other side). Loved reading as a child, although I wouldn't say instead of socialising but I read a lot more than was typical. Couple this with an addictive personality. I really get into sports, activities, and video games. Obsessed with them for months at a time. I love the idea of building xxx app/business - but I rarely stick with these through to completion. Almost as if I get all the joy and enjoyment from the formulation of ideas and the beginning of the journey but get over it quickly and move on to something else.
- moltar 7y ago
  Yup relate on most of these qualities, including Eastern European, but no Jew via DNA test at least, but anecdotally maybe.
  - ajkjk 7y ago
    yeah, I have no idea which attributes might be the 'cause', and probably a lot of HNers probably match a lot of that anyway. But it's interesting to be on the lookout for correlations.
jobigoud 7y ago
I believe there was a research showing that verbalizing helps people think. I always think aloud for hard issues. (underrated perk of remote work, you can talk to yourself without looking crazy).
cyberferret 7y ago
This is my problem. I think faster than I can talk, and sometimes I am a whole sentence ahead in my brain than what is coming out of my mouth. As well as making me talk faster and harder to understand, a lot of times people I am talking to tend to disconnect from what I am saying purely because I am disconnecting from what I am saying myself. Side story: Just the other morning I was walking around my neighbourhood when I bumped into a friend. My brain was debating whether I should say "Good Morning Natasha" or "Hey Tash" and what came out of my mouth was "Gmrly Nash". Definitely a race condition happening there, which is often the case.
- collyw 7y ago
  Try some meditation. It sounds like you are getting way too many thought grabbing your attention and you are trying to compensate by talking fast.
artificialLimbs 7y ago
I used to almost exclusively speak very quickly. I've been intentionally slowing down for years. A helpful exercise for this is to convert all of your words to their most simplistic synonyms when you speak with people, such that ever younger audiences can understand you.
thomasqm 7y ago
i also do this and say stupid shit i never knew it was possible to actually think before you talk
pks016 7y ago
Interesting indeed. I talk very fast too, generally. In my presentations and talks(only few I had given), I used to talk fast and people will loose interest in the talk. I got many good feedback to slow down a bit, I did it by adding pauses at relevant points (still in practice). I have kind of two hypothesis especially for me. Why I talk fast? a) My local/native language is fast paced. May be due that in English too I am talking fast. b) My mother also talks very fast. May be I got certain traits from her.

by ajkjk 7y ago

Ftuuky 7y ago

I was never able to articulate this, thank you. It seems I think better when talking (very fast) than when writing or thinking. Why is that?

ganeshkrishnan 7y ago

Speaking different languages also changes your verbal tracing. I heard agglutination languages like German does this to you and so do Tamil speakers which also uses agglutination

ajkjk 7y ago

If anyone is interested, here are a couple of other qualities that might be correlated with this one. I wonder if anyone else sees the same patterns: - aphantasia (not seeing images in my head) - being of eastern-european / ashkenazi jewish descent - reading a ton as a child instead of socializing - liking intuitive reasoning and geospatial reasoning, such as physics over logic, algebra over analysis (within math), higher-level languages over systems-level ones, and OOP over functional programming - being very distractable / ADD and easily addicted to things like video games

redka 7y ago
That's interesting - my girlfriend seems to very much fit the description. Would you say you have difficulty formulating full arguments in your head? Do you talk when you think by yourself? When "thinking" aloud by talking to someone you're bound to sometimes stray and perhaps need to take a different line of reasoning to make a coherent argument. Does it pose a challenge to not get attached (maybe defensive) to what you said for this process to be efficient? - especially before someone whose opinion matters to you; or in an argument.
cstrat 7y ago
I feel like I experience this in a similar way to yourself. I also struggle to see images in my head sometimes, I am mostly of european decent (German/Czechia on one side - Australian/English on the other side). Loved reading as a child, although I wouldn't say instead of socialising but I read a lot more than was typical. Couple this with an addictive personality. I really get into sports, activities, and video games. Obsessed with them for months at a time. I love the idea of building xxx app/business - but I rarely stick with these through to completion. Almost as if I get all the joy and enjoyment from the formulation of ideas and the beginning of the journey but get over it quickly and move on to something else.
moltar 7y ago
Yup relate on most of these qualities, including Eastern European, but no Jew via DNA test at least, but anecdotally maybe.
- ajkjk 7y ago
  yeah, I have no idea which attributes might be the 'cause', and probably a lot of HNers probably match a lot of that anyway. But it's interesting to be on the lookout for correlations.

jobigoud 7y ago

I believe there was a research showing that verbalizing helps people think. I always think aloud for hard issues. (underrated perk of remote work, you can talk to yourself without looking crazy).

cyberferret 7y ago

This is my problem. I think faster than I can talk, and sometimes I am a whole sentence ahead in my brain than what is coming out of my mouth. As well as making me talk faster and harder to understand, a lot of times people I am talking to tend to disconnect from what I am saying purely because I am disconnecting from what I am saying myself. Side story: Just the other morning I was walking around my neighbourhood when I bumped into a friend. My brain was debating whether I should say "Good Morning Natasha" or "Hey Tash" and what came out of my mouth was "Gmrly Nash". Definitely a race condition happening there, which is often the case.

collyw 7y ago
Try some meditation. It sounds like you are getting way too many thought grabbing your attention and you are trying to compensate by talking fast.

artificialLimbs 7y ago

I used to almost exclusively speak very quickly. I've been intentionally slowing down for years. A helpful exercise for this is to convert all of your words to their most simplistic synonyms when you speak with people, such that ever younger audiences can understand you.

thomasqm 7y ago

i also do this and say stupid shit i never knew it was possible to actually think before you talk

pks016 7y ago

Interesting indeed. I talk very fast too, generally. In my presentations and talks(only few I had given), I used to talk fast and people will loose interest in the talk. I got many good feedback to slow down a bit, I did it by adding pauses at relevant points (still in practice). I have kind of two hypothesis especially for me. Why I talk fast? a) My local/native language is fast paced. May be due that in English too I am talking fast. b) My mother also talks very fast. May be I got certain traits from her.