57 ms·

Wait vs. Interrupt Culture

345 points by cbracketdash 4y ago

avmich 4y ago
It's hard to learn one style, being accustomed to another.
- anyoneworks 4y ago
  Isn't that precisely the point of the entire article? It literally ends with encouraging you to try the other one. People don't need encouragement to do easy things.
- awillen 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm an interrupter and it's a tough urge to suppress. That said, I can and absolutely do suppress it, especially in meetings with people who I know are not interrupters, so it definitely frustrates me when there are interrupters who just make no urge to suppress it. In those cases, I try to use my interrupting for good - interrupt the interrupter to ask the very smart but quiet non-interrupters in the room for their thoughts.
EGreg 4y ago
It’s much better to start to interrupt a little and if the person feels they need to continue they will acknowledge that you started and continue talking a bit louder. That way you signal that you have something to retort and they should wrap it up. Think of it like a continuous curve between 0 and 1, rather than a jump to exactly 0 or 1. In general, in debates where you don’t interrupt, people can just gish gallop all over the place. And furthermore, verbal conversations aren’t the best way to solve things. Better to break what you say into written claims, and each one can have a community upvote arguments for and against the claim, hyperlinking to other claims. Most conversations on social networks are totally useless wastes of time where people pretend they know more than they do, and repeat the same thing 3000 other people said in other similar conversations. And nothing gets solved anyway because they have no power to do so LMAO The older I got the more I realized how much of a waste of time most activities are, unless you are enjoying yourself or building something over time, or raising children. Having a conversation about politics has just as much effect as having one about astronomy, and you may as well just read wikipedia, to get a far more balanced and broad view.
- deleted 4y ago
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- 121789 4y ago
  your first point is true and works well if you have a good team or company culture. you have to know when it's not effective, though. some people or groups will try and dominate conversations and if you don't adjust and interrupt (usually loudly), you'll never be heard.
- Rayhem 4y ago
  > It’s much better to start to interrupt a little and if the person feels they need to continue they will acknowledge that you started and continue talking a bit louder. One of my friend groups has established a nose touch as a similar (though perhaps less...rude) signal. If you have a point you'd like to make while someone else is speaking, touch your finger to your nose and keep it there. The speaking party is expected to relinquish the conversation soon so the nose toucher can speak their point while it's still relevant.
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    > One of my friend groups has established a nose touch as a similar (though perhaps less...rude) signal. If you have a point you'd like to make while someone else is speaking, touch your finger to your nose and keep it there. The speaking party is expected to relinquish the conversation soon so the nose toucher can speak their point while it's still relevant. This is a great idea, although of course it relies on agreement and understanding (of the meaning of the gesture). Which you have in a friend group, but can't necessarily be relied upon in, say, a meeting with a large group.
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      Do it a couple of times in any group setting and people will begin to understand and possibly adopt it.
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > It’s much better to start to interrupt a little and if the person feels they need to continue they will acknowledge that you started and continue talking a bit louder. I think absolute pronouncements of what is better or what is worse will always be wrong for someone. For me, I am perfectly capable of waiting a moment after speaking to see if someone wants to respond, and hate having to shout over someone who is interrupting me "a little". But of course it's as unreasonable for me to expect other people always to adapt to my preferences as it is for other people to expect me always to adapt to theirs. Interrupting "a little" also doesn't work if you have an interrupt-ee who expects just to talk louder, and an interrupt-er who does not intend to be put off: that can, and in my experience usually does, just lead to each of them talking a little louder in turn, until they are both practically shouting, often without noticing that they're doing so.
theonemind 4y ago
I speak when I think someone can use what I have to say. If they interrupt me, I just take it as judgment that they disagree and stop talking. Possibly a post-hoc rationalization because I prefer put my energy into what I want to say, not fighting bad conversation flow control. It's just too much of a hassle.
- awillen 4y ago
  I think there's a subtle system that interrupters use (and for context I am definitely an interrupter, though I very consciously work to not be one when I'm with non-interrupters). If I'm speaking and you interrupt, if my expectation is that your thought is more valuable than mine, I stop and let you go. If I think my thought is more valuable, I continue. In this situation, you're doing the same thing. So if we both continue to talk, each of us is signaling that we think our thought is more important, but each of us is also taking in the information that the other thinks their thought is more important. So if you're still talking after some threshold (and this is quick, so that's maybe 2-3 seconds), even though I think my thought is important, it's not 2-3 seconds of interruption important, ergo your thought is probably more important, so I cede the metaphorical baton to you. That might sound insane to non-interrupters, and even for interrupters it's a quick, natural assessment, but if you listen to two interrupters talk for a while, especially about something they're both passionate about, you can pick up on what's happening. That said, there are also some interrupters who just do not stop speaking once they've interrupted no matter what. They're a minority, but they drive me nuts. So it's all relative, I suppose.
  - Karellen 4y ago
    Huh. It's my impression that 2-3 seconds of talking over someone else is not "quick". To me, that's a long time to keep going. I have a similar thought pattern with who's thoughts are more valuable - but my perception is that the person butting in knows what I am saying and what they want to say, whereas I only know what I'm saying. Therefore, they are in a much better position to determine which thought is more valuable, so my best course of action is probably to pass the baton.
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ISO-morphism 4y ago
Related - The Church of Interruption [1]. > When people are interrupting each other - when they're constantly tugging the conversation back and forth between their preferred directions - then the conversation itself is just a battle of wills. But when people just put in one thing at a time, and trust their fellows to only say things that relate to the thing that came right before - at least, until there's a very long pause - then you start to see genuine collaboration. I think that's the meat of the collaborative conversational spirit. Interruption/waiting is one axis, another nearly orthogonal axis is continuation/abandonment of the current topic which correlates more strongly with actual listening rather than politeness. In terms of [1], I've definitely encountered "civil barkers", who will never interrupt you verbally (but usually offer increasingly strong nonverbal cues that they want their turn), then very weakly link into a new topic. That is to say, waiting isn't a sufficient (nor I'd say necessary) condition for constructive conversation. E.g. the Trump/Hillary debate, when asked to say something nice about each other, Hillary immediately pivoted into talking about her platform. [1] https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html
- drewcoo 4y ago
  What that Church of Interruption axis is missing is authority vs freedom Refusing to interrupt is cowing to authority. Refusing to yield is asserting authority. If people feel safe and free to act autonomously and engage in the best way they see fit, they allow interruptions and they interrupt.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    Ah yes, the “I’m not an asshole I’m just independent” argument. Refusing to interrupt is respecting the other person enough to let them say what they think, and trusting them enough that they will grant you the same respect.
    - dleslie 4y ago
      Which they probably won't, if they can prevent it, most of the time. People tend not to invite discussion for the purposes of challenging their positions.
quickthrower2 4y ago
The cost of interrupting someone is killing their train of thought. It is not just a politeness thing. So like everything it depends on the context. Interrupting to keep meetings from getting too long is an essential skill. Especially with someone who has grown up with the blab-until-interrupted protocol!
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  It's a tradeoff between priorities. Easiest seen in speech vs writing. Speech is on the speaker's flow primarily. Listeners are expected to keep up not just in vocabulary, but speed among others. Writing is far friendlier to the reader, being able to set their own pace. Interruptions allow listeners to shift the balance at the cost of potentially destroying the pace. And sometimes destroying the pace is necessary (e.g. endless discussions).
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  The “flow state” is much more than just a train of thought that can be easily recovered if you have decent memory. Your mood - not so much. In case of meetings it’s probably not that critical but could be more expensive for unsolicited interruptions during say coding/design sessions
  - hinkley 4y ago
    That’s a tough one because some people seem to have trouble finding flow state to begin with. I tend to have a fairly easy time but have picked up that few people are as cavalier about it as I am. That may also be why I was able to walk away and experiment with not doing it. Writers, for instance, seem to be notoriously bad at finding flow state. And if I told one to abandon it mid-stream I’d probably get hurt.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  Interruption is sometimes productive though. If the person speaking is not able to stick to one point at a time and instead goes on a monologue expanding multiple topics, others may have critical things to say, but are not able to say because by the time the person stops, the dialogue has moved on to a different topic. This is very important in say a business setting where decisions need to be made while evaluating all the aspects of the task at hand. If useful information is not discussed because the only way it could’ve happened is by interrupting the speaker, then everyone loses out.
blobbers 4y ago
Kind of an interesting take! I definitely know people who find interruption an offense vs. then others who will just continue talking rather allow themselves to be interrupted.
Moissanite 4y ago
Interruptions as part of the natural flow of conversation can pass almost unnoticed, when done appropriately. It is interesting - but mostly frustrating - when people fail at it in a jarring way which comes across as rude. Sadly my wife is one of those people, and her cross-cutting interruptions are a habit learned from her mother. Sigh, mothers-in-law - how distressed I was to discover the stereotype was so accurate... What they miss is that interruptions should be like a "yes, and..." in improv comedy, not a "yesyesyes, BUT..."
- _jal 4y ago
  I find I can't talk to people who do that. Things don't flow, they don't work well, and both of us end up frustrated. So that ends up being a limit for me, I just choose not to interact with people like that if I can help it, and communicating async if I have to.
  - kaashif 4y ago
    In my experience, things work best when interrupters work with interrupters, and waiters work with waiters. That's not to say someone can't switch styles, but the unfortunate reality is that it's easier if people don't have to do that. This results in the kind of self segregation that you do. I've also done that, by switching to a team that shared my communication style. I don't know if this is good or bad, but it does seem to be the path of least resistance.
nordsieck 4y ago
IMO, the most effective solution to this problem is to sidestep the issue altogether by splitting groups so that more people can talk at the same time. It's also much easier to negotiate rules - interrupt vs wait - in a group size of 2-4 than in one on the order of 20 people.
sneak 4y ago
I interrupt because sometimes my attention span and memory can be measured in milliseconds. It’s a bad habit in the wrong circumstances sometimes.
chrismeller 4y ago
Reminds me a lot of this story, which was on HN recently, about the design of open spaces and how offices get them wrong: https://www.mtajchert.com/libraries-and-open-spaces/ https://www.mtajchert.com/libraries-and-open-spaces/ Long story short, a lot of it is just related to the existing societal norms and expectations of different environments, similar to the author.
js2 4y ago
I'm first-born and was very much an interrupter growing up. I try to be cognizant of it these days because I value my marriage. (Fortunately my spouse has the patience of Job and we've been together over three decades.) :-) My second-born brother perceived my interruptions as aggression/dominance and eventually started out-interrupting me. I find it hard to have a conversation with him on any topic that we even slightly disagree. My third-born sister is just a very loud and gregarious person. My fourth-born sister, being the youngest, found it very difficult to get a word in edge-wise among the four of us. She grew up to be very aggressive in her speaking when she has a point she wants to make, but is also a very patient listener. Just don't dare interrupt her when she has something to say. Anyway, I found this paper from a few years back about interruptions among SCOTUS justices pretty interesting: "Female Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted More by Male Justices and Advocates" (2017) https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-interrupted-more-by-male-justices-and-advocates https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-in... Which led to the court changing its oral argument rules: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/oct/15/us-supreme-court-female-justices-interruptions-sonia-sotomayor https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/oct/15/us-supreme-court... Conversational styles and gender: https://news.stanford.edu/2018/05/02/exploring-interruption-conversation/ https://news.stanford.edu/2018/05/02/exploring-interruption-...
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  I'm noticing there's no mention of how long speakers would continue without voluntarily allowing someone else to speak before being interrupted.
  - js2 4y ago
    The paper linked from the HBR article has examples where the justices get interrupted literally in the middle of their questions: > Antonin Scalia: No. He reached the conclusion because-- > Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.: And that’s completely supported by the proffer. > Antonin Scalia:--He reached the conclusion because he-- > William H. Rehnquist:--No two voices at the same time. Justice Scalia is asking you a question. > Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.: Excuse me. Scalia talking right over the top of Sotomayor: > Bert W. Rein: His estimate was that a very small number, and it--it’s in his opinion. It’s--it’s not only by percentage, but it’s by number, and that number is insignificant relative-- > Sonia Sotomayor: Do you think--do you think that change has to happen overnight? And do you think it’s-- > Antonin Scalia: Excuse me. Can I--can I hear what you were about to say? What are those numbers? I was really curious to hear those numbers. > Bert W. Rein: He assumed, at the outside, that any of the admits that were actually African-American or Hispanic outside the Top Ten, he said let me take that assumption and see what it would add So I don't think it's the case that the justices are getting interrupted in the middle of long-winded questions. In any case the paper examines interruptions with respect to gender, seniority, and ideology and has a lot more detail than what's in the article.
scotuswroteus 4y ago
It feels like society is falling apart and we're supposed to trust our fellow conversationalists to go where the conversation should. As democracy crumbles and the climate of our earth becomes unlivable, I have no doubt your polite approach to engaging others will make them feel comforted in their last moments.
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MetaMonk 4y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023
westoncb 4y ago
Here's why interrupt is inherently more efficient: as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting, you have shifted the communication mode from: A) Anticipate up front what other person needs to hear and say it all B) Rapid adjustment to ideal info requirements as your model of their knowledge/interest is live-updated. But the trick people seem to miss is that interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts make the whole thing possible. When I'm talking with someone for whom this style is natural, there can be many very rapid small gestures to interrupt, which sometimes are accepted and sometimes are rejected by a small "just let me keep going, you'll see why" gesture. Each of those gestures takes a fraction of a second (and generally does not actually break flow of speech, just eye contact + a little head motion), and conversations employing them are far more enjoyable because information flow is near optimal. On the other hand, when speaking with anti-interrupt people, I often get so bored it's hard to pay attention because either 1) they left something out that I wanted to ask about so I can't follow what they are saying, or 2) I already had a thorough understanding of something they insist on giving a long explanation of.
- taeric 4y ago
  This feels like you are trying to explain common card game semantics of instants versus turn plays. With the twist that you are arguing that instants are the correct and more efficient mechanism. But here is the thing. Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out. And even those that are, have well agreed "cards" that can be done in different situations. To argue that all things should be "instant" playable is a tough sell.
  - awillen 4y ago
    The post you're responding to this qualified it with "as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting" - that addresses your point. This doesn't necessarily work well in a context where people are unfamiliar, but with close friends/colleagues/family who are all on board with this conversation paradigm and familiar with each other's interruptive style, it works very well.
every 4y ago
If I may interrupt here, I found the small, faint type on the site an annoyance...
Barrin92 4y ago
As the article itself points out it depends a lot on who is talking and in what environment. The 'let them talk' approach works well for people who can speak concisely and keep on topic. But if you have someone who is prone to just go on tangents or repeat themselves endlessly interruption isn't a bad thing for a conversation. For example I don't think I could make it through the same 20 year old Stallman stump speech in person without losing my mind. There's people who exhibit a really bad combo of being repetitive, verbose and allergic to challenge that makes for dreadful conversations.
jrootabega 4y ago
This is a great example of why in-person collaboration is irreplaceable for discussions and the like. With people you are familiar with, you can semi-interrupt with facial expressions, movements, grunts, etc. You can use body language and tone of voice to make a side remark or "threaded" discussion. You can interrupt at the exact right time and interleave your words with other people's. You can, simply by looking at the other listeners, confirm whether anyone else has the same concerns that you do. And it's instant. So the acceptable threshold for interruption gets higher and the consequences get lower. On high-latency, low-bandwidth channels (Google Voice, I'm looking in your direction...), you choose between long, confusing silent waiting and constant infuriating interruption.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  "Irreplaceable" is not accurate, since as you said, the big issue is with high latency and low-bandwidth channels. In the same city with a good connection, video is often about as good.
  - jrootabega 4y ago
    I still think it's accurate, especially in the context of the article. Video doesn't give you eye contact, let alone selective eye contact among a group. Video doesn't let your ears hear the room around in you in 3d.
    - ilaksh 4y ago
      VR can provide those things (eye contact maybe with Meta Quest Pro, we'll see if it works)
      - jrootabega 4y ago
        Eh...I think it will be bad enough at those things for a long enough time that it effectively will not provide those things, but rather inferior imitations. And since we've shifted from video links to VR, I'll boldly state that any solution that requires strapping a box to your face is not going to cut it.
osigurdson 4y ago
This is the largest issue that I have with MS Teams. Latency of even a few hundred milliseconds substantially throw conversations off. Instead of interrupting at the right inflection point, you are interrupting directly while someone is talking. Conversations degrade to serial monologs which I'm convinced is less effective overall.
zmmmmm 4y ago
Oddly I have found that switching nearly entirely to video meetings has helped me participate better, because it gives me "license" to interrupt. I'm culturally a hard-line non-interrupter. In person I will always wait until the other has finished speaking, collating a list of items to address with them (often forgetting them along the way). In video calls I have experienced a new sense of permissiveness where I find it's much easier to jump into the middle of a conversation. I'm not sure if it's because everybody is waiting that extra few hundred ms due to latency, or if it's purely a psychological difference of not being face to face with them in person, or knowing that people will be judging me less harshly because it's plausible I'm interrupting due to latency rather than out of disrespect for what they are saying. I know this is opposite to the experience for many others who I assume have an easier time with in-person interactions because they feel very natural going with the conversation flow.
- sirmarksalot 4y ago
  I've noticed the same thing. In in-person conversation, I'm usually slow on the draw when it's time for the next person to speak, and if I'm with interrupters, they almost always beat me to it. But in video calls, the extra round trip of lag gives me just enough quiet to signal that it's my turn to talk, so I don't get shut out quite as much. Even if someone else is quicker on the draw, I've already started talking, so I don't just instinctively shut up when I hear another person going first.
- ambrose2 4y ago
  This is the opposite as my experience. I find it hard to interrupt or even interject over zoom because it’s so hard to time.
  - aendruk 4y ago
    Yep, too often the lag transforms an interjection into an interruption.
bovermyer 4y ago
I think my biggest breakthrough was when I learned it was sometimes OK to interrupt. Prior to that... I avoided interrupting under any circumstances. And that was a mistake.
mkaic 4y ago
I have a strong habit of "autocompleting" people's thoughts in my head before they're done saying them. I'm only right maybe ~60% of the time, but it comes with a strong urge to interrupt them and let them know where I think they're going. This is especially true if I can tell that it will take them multiple sentences to finish their thought. It does not come from a place of "you're wasting my time, I get it, jeez", but more from a "I understand the point you're making and I am eager to hear the next thing you have to share." What I've noticed is that my habit of interruption is received wildly differently by different kinds of people. It drives some people absolutely crazy, and in these settings I've learned to be a little more mindful and try to restrain myself from interjecting so frequently. However, for other people, it works wonderfully and we'll get into a really fast-moving conversation where less redundant information is shared. My theory is that two well-intentioned interrupters can have a pleasant conversation, and two well-intentioned waiters can have a pleasant conversation, but any pairing of an interrupter and a waiter will be disastrous unless both are very mindful of how they participate in the conversation.
- casparvitch 4y ago
  Have you found any patterns to the people in these two groups? I find that older (50+) people are far more likely to get upset with my interruptions.
  - mkaic 4y ago
    I have ADHD and I've anecdotally found that other ADHD people tend to be far more receptive to it, because it's how they often work too. Apparently it's a common symptom?
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > What I've noticed is that my habit of interruption is received wildly differently by different kinds of people. It drives some people absolutely crazy I think it hugely depends on which of the cultures you grew up in. I grew up in an interrupting culture family - interrupting was just the norm, nobody considered it rude. My wife grew up in a wait culture family. If I interrupt her she can get really mad. Over the years I've had to learn to use the wait-method when talking to her and it's made me more mindful of the two different cultures. I try to do more waiting than interrupting anymore since I now realize there's a large percentage of the population that considers interrupting to be rude. There's also another thing that the waiters can consider an interruption, but I guess I never considered an interruption - saying something in agreement with the speaker as sort of an affirmation of what they're saying. My wife considers that an interruption, I consider it just participating in the conversation.
riwsky 4y ago
See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-cooperative-overlapping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-coop...
gz5 4y ago
High variance in groups with different cultural norms. And, even within those groups, there is variance based on the level of trust within the group and the context of the conversation. Example: I like observing negotiation-heavy (implicit or explicit) conversations between two groups of people on deep or nuanced topics. If one group has folks 'interrupting' each other in a natural, accretive, iterative way, then it often means they have a high level of trust in each other and confidence.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
> This seemed totally crazy. Some people would just blab on unchecked, and others didn't get a chance to talk at all. Some people would ignore the norm and talk over others, and nobody interrupted them back to shoot them down. Yes, I can totally relate to this feeling. I grew up in an interrupting culture family. My wife grew up in a wait culture family. I've learned to try not to interrupt her because when I do she can go all Galadriel on me. So over the years I try to wait - and it can still be really hard to do. I suspect that people who find it easy grew up in the waiting culture families. We used to have a neighbor who would talk & talk saying the same thing over and over just in slightly different ways. It was really frustrating to try to wait her out because she'd go on and on for a long time without a pause- but I did suspect that she did this because she didn't feel heard in life.
- throwaway98797 4y ago
  people who get interrupted a lot often have very little to say this in turn makes them monopolize the poor soul who doesn’t interrupt them
- bittercynic 4y ago
  >did this because she didn't feel heard in life I think this is an under-appreciated reason why people socialize, and people who aren't getting the level of socialization they need can have a compulsion to pursue conversation by any means necessary. I feel for cashiers and waiters when they have lonely customers.
_tom_ 4y ago
Does no one else just talk simultaneously? I only do this with friends I am familiar with, but it's quite efficient to respond to things in real time, without waiting for people to stop.
- throwaway_au_1 4y ago
  A guy I used to work with would interrupt, start talking and continue talking while I was. Sometimes, I would continue for a few seconds in the hopes that it would prompt him to think "Whoops I just interrupted, I'll say 'oops sorry go on' now", but after several comical instances of us both speaking simultaneously for what felt like at least 10-20 seconds (probably only 5 realistically), I realised how ridiculous this was and I resigned to letting him interrupt. He was a great engineer and a good guy so I was happy to accommodate it rather than calling him out. Work contexts do interesting things to social dynamics.
- mcluck 4y ago
  This sounds like my own personal hell
gsk22 4y ago
It also matters what type of conversation is being had. I'm more of a waiter than interrupter, who lives with a strong interrupter. If we're having a debate or discussing the newest silly thing in the news or whatever, it's not a big deal -- the topic was never _that_ important that I care about getting interrupted. However, I find it very rude and annoying to get interrupted while telling a story. Like, event XYZ happened on the drive home, or something that happened with others in our mutual friend group. It's only going to take a minute or two for me to tell the whole story, but 15 seconds in it's been hijacked and the interrupter is off on their own tangent.
- kaashif 4y ago
  > It's only going to take a minute or two for me to tell the whole story, but 15 seconds in it's been hijacked and the interrupter is off on their own tangent. The interrupters can only be fought on their terms. Fight fire with fire. Interrupt back and just keep telling the story.
  - rufius 4y ago
    Or choose to leave. I have walked out of meetings, having been repeatedly interrupted despite telling the interrupter that I did not appreciate it. I’m not hard line on “no interrupting”, but if I ask someone to stop, then I expect them to stop. Or I’ll just leave. I have other things I could be doing.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Very much this. As a few others have noted, it's not an absolute, and some interruptions --- for clarifying questions or corrections, say --- are welcomed. But to interrupt continuously, to do so in a way that disrupts rather than promotes the conversation, to not catch the nonverbal cues that this is annoying, and then to ignore multiple spoken requests to please not do that ... is beyond frustrating. I've expereinced this with friends and coworkers I otherwise respect and admire their knowledge and capabilities. But in spoken interactions they're unbearable. Message-based comms, where there's a discrete comment-and-response cycle, as on HN, email (lists or exchanges), and many message boards, though not quite so much text-based chat, is interesting in that it's possible to say (or write) one's piece without interruption. Of course, whether or not that's read is another question.... One of the people I'm thinking of specifically in this case actually does communicate quite well in written form. Verbal, interactively, again, not so much.
gojomo 4y ago
These differences are also regional & cultural. Here's a good intro from sociolinguist Deborah Tannen on how interrupting & overtalking as practiced cooperatively in New York (& related cultures) clashes with other American regional styles: https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/newyorkcity/ https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/newyork...
willjp 4y ago
This is so interesting. At home, we absolutely have wait culture. My mother moderates informally using a round robin format. Most places I have worked have had interrupt culture. I hated going to meetings, it felt like the people that spoke loudest “owned” the meeting. After a while I started taking notes, but never participating. It was easier to get answers afterwards by talking directly to the stakeholders once they were identified. It is so interesting to me to hear the counter argument here, that some people actually prefer this method of communication, I’ll need to think about what my participation looks like in this culture.
- ambrose2 4y ago
  I found it easier to learn and practice interrupt culture with close friends first, one on one. And then practice it with good friends, and then acquaintances, and then in groups. It takes time, confidence, and trust.
  - willjp 4y ago
    That’s a great idea! Thank you!
urthor 4y ago
Ben Hoffman might have gone to the talking school. But, he's missing the point here. There's two types of conversations in life. "Brain in 5th gear conversations." Every word carefully chosen. And the second type, "Priority 2" conversations. Priority 2 is where both parties winging it and do their best via heuristic. Most folk wait their turn during Priority 2. It's just the convention, nobody is in a rush. For engineers, every conversation ends up being Priority 2 because their brain is gutted from coding. However, they need to get shit done, fast, and get back to coding. Hence the convention to interrupt conversations and get to the point. It's a speed vs productivity vs margin of error triple constraint. What Hoffman doesn't realize is the goal. Deliberately practicing 5th gear conversations forces you to concentrate on the material.
- sublinear 4y ago
  Totally agree. Not many forms of communication require as much careful decision making as coding. You can do it fast or you can do it right. Getting priorities straight is a matter of competence, not culture. If you've ever wondered why people scoff at the term "software engineer", this is one potential answer.
nevatiaritika 4y ago
If I decide to not interrupt, automatically I tend to atleast let them know I have something to say that is SO important. I will tend to change my body language (become eager) or just mouth something (aa). Online, I unmute myself. I think its the only solution I have to demonstrate my intent to interrupt without actually doing it.
sublinear 4y ago
For what it's worth I highly disagree with a lot of the opinions in here. Waiting prioritizes clear communication at the expense of some time that is almost always justified. People who wait are typically detail oriented and have the infamously prevailing cooler heads. They're the ones actually getting stuff done while management impatiently glances at their pathetically underspecified checklists. Interrupting prioritizes a false sense of efficiency and just seems like weak impulse control or a bad short-term memory. Every interrupter I've ever met is disorganized and unreliable.
- derekbaker783 4y ago
  Personally, I'll often interrupt when I know someone is wrong about a topic, in the interest of efficiency.
  - sublinear 4y ago
    How can you possibly know someone is wrong until you've heard them out? It's very much worth questioning what your accuracy threshold is before deciding to interrupt. Maybe they're wrong about a minor detail but have a much better overall plan. Maybe they have some ideas buried under all the mud that are worth the wait. If the perception of efficiency is always the priority, that will come at the cost of everything else.
    - derekbaker783 4y ago
      It only takes a single sentence sometimes.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  > Interrupting prioritizes a false sense of efficiency and just seems like weak impulse control or a bad short-term memory. Every interrupter I've ever met is disorganized and unreliable While I have noticed that ADHD people gravitate towards interrupters, and are more likely to be disorganized and unreliable, generalizing this to all interrupters is absurd. Everybody in my mom's family is an interpreter, including my mom. You will meet few people more organized and reliable than her.
coding123 4y ago
I thought this was going to be about promises, await/async, callbacks, stacks and blocking.
- Test0129 4y ago
  It would be pretty cool if while I was spinlocking waiting for someone to make their point I could suspend the thread and do something else.
- sophacles 4y ago
  It is
ilaksh 4y ago
I think its sad that we have to frame it this way. This is just manners versus lack of manners. Its not a different culture. Its a lack of culture. There is no excuse for constantly interrupting people. Its disrespectful and counterproductive. There is a bit of subtlety also in that interrupting in the middle of a word is more rude than in the middle of a sentence versus a paragraph. If, for example, someone has completed the third sentence of a paragraph that is clearly wrapping up, and pauses longer before what apparently may be the fourth sentence, but the other person thinks they have already got the message, it might not necessarily be rude at all to start talking before the last (probably not really important) sentence comes out. Sometimes it depends on the context and how long the pause is. Lack of common courtesy is unfortunately very common. That doesn't mean we should accept it without comment.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Manners are almost entirely dependent on culture. There is no natural law that says the person who starts talking first has a right to talk. It's a reasonable rule, but not the only reasonable one.
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    I didn't say anything about natural law. Most contexts globally where there is education and respect will show this type of common courtesy. If there is a lack of respect of education or both, more rude interruption is likely. I think there are for example some contexts or cultures where there is less respect, for example some executives talking to workers in certain countries. But it's not excusable and the workers there who are the majority in that country will not have the same behavior.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pmichaud 4y ago
  I’m having trouble reading this comment as sincere, even though I think it probably is. You’re not trolling?
aidenn0 4y ago
Oh, this is something my wife and I ran into. My family dinners would have 6 conversations going at once with people fluidly moving between them, often by interrupting the person talking. My wife's family has dinners where there is exactly one conversation and nobody interrupts. Even with 16 people at a table.
rapjr9 4y ago
I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the power dynamics of interruption. It is well known in psychology that interrupting anothers speech is a way to exert power. The boss can interrupt anyone, no one interrupts the boss. It's one of several types of interruption: https://www.psychmechanics.com/psychology-of-interrupting/ https://www.psychmechanics.com/psychology-of-interrupting/ Interrupting someone can say "I am more important than you". This can also cause failures to communicate since the boss can change the subject and the interrupted speaker may never get to finish their thought. I've seen projects fail because a boss intentionally interrupted people who were trending in a direction they did not want to go, squashing anyone who was pointing out a major flaw in the bosses plans, which resulted in building things in a bad way and then having the flaw manifest and cause the project to fail. There are other types of interruption though that can be more supportive or more like parallel conversations. The efficiency of those often depends on the quality of the participants memory and ability to follow multiple threads simultaneously.
- c0mptonFP 4y ago
  Without interruptions, I would not be able to finish meetings on time. EVER. Information exchange is always the bottleneck in larger organizations, so efficiency of meetings is really important. I will interrupt someone if I understood their point, and we have different, more pressing items on the agenda. It's not a power play, not psychological warfare or bullying. I just want to get shit done on time.
  - tchaffee 4y ago
    Companies with a waiting culture get things done on time. You might perceive interrupting as being more efficient but interrupting has its own set of inefficiencies.
    - c0mptonFP 4y ago
      Ok, next time an engineer on my team can't stop himself from talking about his SIMD lock-free distributed queue, I'll just keep listening. Maybe I get to sleep in the office too.
alex_young 4y ago
The big problem with interrupting is that you simply cannot both actually listen to someone and formulate an argument at the same time. This pattern just leads to people talking without being listened to.
DeathArrow 4y ago
Interrupt culture seems more creative to me and also reaching conclusions faster. However it's not always ok to interrupt. It's ok to interrupt if the discussion is set up from the beginning as such and after the person who speaks finishes his idea.
jvvw 4y ago
Deborah Tannen talks about this type of thing in her book 'You Just Don't Understand'. There's a whole chapter about interrupting. There is a difference between overlapping and trying to dominate and it talks about successful and unsuccessful 'co-operative overlapping'. It talks about culture too. Also this article: https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html
langsoul-com 4y ago
It's eaiser to gauge how interested in a story someone is if they interrupt for something. If they truly aren't interested then you can pivot accordingly. Although some people might listen to the end and be engaged, or you could tell by their facial expressions. That isn't always perfect, some people naturally aren't expressive. By default, you got no clue what they're feeling.
Tade0 4y ago
Why assume that there are just two, mutually exclusive schools of thought? My experience is people usually decide whether to wait or interrupt depending on context - they just different in their assessment of the situation. Personally I often explicitly yield to someone who to me appears like they want to say something, but are waiting for the right moment. In face to face conversation I sometimes lift my finger and make an "uuuuum" face to signify that I want to say something right now. People usually respond to that very well - the more braindead my expression, the better. In college our conversations were moderated and you would lift your hand if you wanted to say something, and the moderator would at times interrupt the person speaking. On one hand everyone waited, on the other people were interrupted constantly. To me this is how most real world conversations work and pigeonholing them into just two categories is counterproductive.
karaokeyoga 4y ago
A similar phenomenon happens with various Western speakers in Japan: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/aizuchi-japanese-listening/ https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/aizuchi-japanese-listening/ It's a bit different as "aizuchi" is merely signaling that you're being listened to, rather than an actual switching of speakers. "Enthusiastic listening" is how I've heard it described, and it can be a distraction if you're not used to it.
taink 4y ago
Reminds me of this other article I read a while ago in that thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023 Definitely an interesting thought. I think there are problems with both interrupting and waiting. Interruption works only if the other person works in the same way. It can, however, be very efficient because the flow of the conversation is much faster. It also simply does not work in group settings. Waiting allows to converse with the most people, but it is harder to do and requires much effort to put into practice correctly. It also relies on people talking in short bursts to simply provide their input on the topic at hand, so there's still a certain amount of discipline required. That's why I prefer text-based conversation. You can come back to what other people said easily, have less trouble remembering what you want to provide input on, and can skip the parts you already know about. It takes more time than verbal communication, but it's truly the best way to communicate in my opinion. The only real problem is that you lose an important part of communication; physical cues, tone, etc. Text has a lot of trouble conveying emotions.
scotty79 4y ago
I'm 100% in interrupt culture. When I interact with people from wait culture it's pretty bad experience for me because not being interrupted feels for me like not being listened, understood or like nobody cares what I'm saying. Occasionally it seems even cruel when I'm mistaken at the beginning of my thread but they silently let me go on with stating my erroneous conclusions from false premise. Only then to hear that all my input was sheer garbage. The only two people from wait culture I've met were from management (they were just my friends, I had no professional relationship with them). I think wait style must have been pretty natural for them because they are used to nobody saying anything to them while they are talking and maybe even untill explicitly asked. And since they are nice people they mirrored that in their behavior.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  > not being interrupted feels for me like not being listened When people listen to you talk, you feel like they're not listening? Where do you think that stems from? It seems peculiar that as someone more actively listens to you, you feel just the opposite.
  - fknorangesite 4y ago
    Because in an interrupt culture, the speaker expects not just active listening but active feedback.
- Ruthalas 4y ago
  > not being interrupted feels for me like not being listened I'm curious if this is the case if the other party is giving other visual indications of focus. (Making intent eye contact, nodding, etc.) Obviously it may still be uncomfortable because it's not your preferred communication/feedback style, but I'm curious if that mitigates the feeling of not being listened to or not.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    I'm not great at eye contact. Especially when I'm focusing on something I'm trying to convey. But that could probably help. I remember the most intense feelings of being not listened in situations where eye contact was not possible. For ex we were walking side by side or doing something manual facing away from each other.
rroot 4y ago
I think this article portrays a lack of understanding of conversational dynamics based on my experience with people. Interruption isn't black and white and to me there is nothing nice about people who interrupt by default. Still I usually don't don't mind interruptions when in a friendly brainstorming or casual conversation with good people. But the interrupter has to understand that he's interrupting and do it in a good way. But things like interrupting and going totally off topic, interrupting to argue or interrupting when power dynamics are at play is entirely a different beast. I feel like the first version I mentioned should have a different name than this one.
sanitycheck 4y ago
I don't have a good enough memory for the "wait" style of conversations. I'd need to take notes. "We know X=1, so we should do Y which involves connecting A to C and removing B, so D, E & F need feature Z to be implemented in the next T months." * Actually, X=2 so the logic as presented is questionable at best * (but people don't like all their ideas to be dismissed with a single point, so we continue...) * We can't remove B, it's required by M & N * E doesn't need feature Z * Feature Z depends on feature Q which won't be done in T months The interrupt version is better: "We know X=1..." * Do we? I think X=2 "Is it? Why do you say that?" * Reasons
gregwebs 4y ago
I grew up with the interrupting style, but when I realized some people get very offended by it, I decided to switch to waiting. Now that I am on the receiving end of interruptions, I notice the main problem with interrupting- that the interrupters often think they know what is going to be said, but are wrong. This is inefficient and not a proper exchange of ideas (which requires thinking about what was said), which can easily feel demoralizing. I find that waiting is actually a lot more efficient than interrupting if everyone can talk succinctly and avoid useless tangents (which isn’t easy to do). You do have to lead by example here and often have to step back and moderate the conversation that way. It’s mind opening to see some of these articles advocating for the interrupting style. I see how it can work well, and I will try to adapt to that style some more in some circumstances. And in particular try to develop more signaling abilities. However, in my experience interrupting is useful just when someone is not succinct- otherwise it’s too easy for interrupters to do a poor job listening and actually facilitate a good conversation.
xani__ 4y ago
satisfice 4y ago
“When people are interrupting each other - when they're constantly tugging the conversation back and forth between their preferred directions - then the conversation itself is just a battle of wills” This is a common lazy conclusion that extraverts frequently hear from introverts— when they can be bothered to speak up. No, it’s not a battle of wills. It’s not really a battle. It’s the music of enthusiasm; the peal of many bells. Energy is not necessarily a curse; placidity is not necessarily a virtue. Let’s respect that there are different cultures. I come from enthusiasm culture. My culture works. There are other cultures, and they can also work.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  If only those cultures would work separately instead of getting in each other’s way.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
I'm a part of spice-culture because I like spicy food. Are you a part of wuss-culture because you don't like spicy food? I'm also a part of male-culture ... wait, no that' one isn't allowed.
rkangel 4y ago
One thing that's interesting about remote work and Teams calls is that the 'interrupt' mode doesn't work particularly well. The subtle increase in latency means that you're not interrupting when out think you are and often two people interrupt at the same time and you end up in a 'random backoff' situation. The client team I work with is kind of trying (although without verbalising) to move more towards a "wait" mode of talking, assisted by the "put your hand up" functionality in Teams. The problem we run into is that it isn't clear whether you should be speaking before or after the next person - sometimes you have a supplementary point about the exact current topic that makes more sense to be said before the next person slightly changes the subject. In an engineering discussion it makes a lot more sense to make your point about the performance of the feature in discussion before the conversation moves to talking about testing it!
photochemsyn 4y ago
Just go to the passing around the talking stick with a timer attached model. It's also why the 15 min presentation followed by 5 min Q & A is a decent communication model, you can do three per hour and then the meetings over.
jamessb 4y ago
This is often referred to "high-involvement" vs "high-considerateness" [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen#%22High-involvement%22_vs._%22high-considerateness%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen#%22High-involve...
ivanhoe 4y ago
Say what you want but chit-chatting with people you know is far more fun and dynamical when everyone feels free to interrupt others. Part of that culture is of course learning to not let go, and fight back those interrupting you - refusing the interrupt request if you will. Wait culture is IMHO more appropriate for larger groups of people and more formal settings, or some subjects that are very important to the one speaking, so interruption would be disrespectful.
rikeanimer 4y ago
lol I thought we were discussing programming paradigms-- but at the same time I think considering the NVIC and different peripheral/vs high speed busses may be relevant.
euroderf 4y ago
This has an analogy (maybe?) in service culture. In the US if the guy behind the counter is making a sandwich for someone else, I can ask him/her a quick question and get an answer without disrupting the flow of work. But in Finnish culture this is a no-no: the customer "owns" the worker until task completion. It is (IMHO) wildly inefficient.
Timwi 4y ago
In operating systems, we call that cooperative multitasking (everything up to DOS+Windows 3.11, where software is allowed to hog the CPU until it explicitly yields) versus preemptive multitasking (Windows 95 onwards, where software is regularly interrupted by the OS). There's a reason preemptive multitasking has “won” and nobody wants to go back to cooperative. A lot of software just isn't cooperative (i.e. doesn't yield enough).

345 points by cbracketdash 4y ago

avmich 4y ago

It's hard to learn one style, being accustomed to another.

anyoneworks 4y ago
Isn't that precisely the point of the entire article? It literally ends with encouraging you to try the other one. People don't need encouragement to do easy things.
awillen 4y ago
Yeah, I'm an interrupter and it's a tough urge to suppress. That said, I can and absolutely do suppress it, especially in meetings with people who I know are not interrupters, so it definitely frustrates me when there are interrupters who just make no urge to suppress it. In those cases, I try to use my interrupting for good - interrupt the interrupter to ask the very smart but quiet non-interrupters in the room for their thoughts.

EGreg 4y ago

It’s much better to start to interrupt a little and if the person feels they need to continue they will acknowledge that you started and continue talking a bit louder. That way you signal that you have something to retort and they should wrap it up. Think of it like a continuous curve between 0 and 1, rather than a jump to exactly 0 or 1. In general, in debates where you don’t interrupt, people can just gish gallop all over the place. And furthermore, verbal conversations aren’t the best way to solve things. Better to break what you say into written claims, and each one can have a community upvote arguments for and against the claim, hyperlinking to other claims. Most conversations on social networks are totally useless wastes of time where people pretend they know more than they do, and repeat the same thing 3000 other people said in other similar conversations. And nothing gets solved anyway because they have no power to do so LMAO The older I got the more I realized how much of a waste of time most activities are, unless you are enjoying yourself or building something over time, or raising children. Having a conversation about politics has just as much effect as having one about astronomy, and you may as well just read wikipedia, to get a far more balanced and broad view.

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121789 4y ago
your first point is true and works well if you have a good team or company culture. you have to know when it's not effective, though. some people or groups will try and dominate conversations and if you don't adjust and interrupt (usually loudly), you'll never be heard.
Rayhem 4y ago
> It’s much better to start to interrupt a little and if the person feels they need to continue they will acknowledge that you started and continue talking a bit louder. One of my friend groups has established a nose touch as a similar (though perhaps less...rude) signal. If you have a point you'd like to make while someone else is speaking, touch your finger to your nose and keep it there. The speaking party is expected to relinquish the conversation soon so the nose toucher can speak their point while it's still relevant.
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > One of my friend groups has established a nose touch as a similar (though perhaps less...rude) signal. If you have a point you'd like to make while someone else is speaking, touch your finger to your nose and keep it there. The speaking party is expected to relinquish the conversation soon so the nose toucher can speak their point while it's still relevant. This is a great idea, although of course it relies on agreement and understanding (of the meaning of the gesture). Which you have in a friend group, but can't necessarily be relied upon in, say, a meeting with a large group.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    Do it a couple of times in any group setting and people will begin to understand and possibly adopt it.
JadeNB 4y ago
> It’s much better to start to interrupt a little and if the person feels they need to continue they will acknowledge that you started and continue talking a bit louder. I think absolute pronouncements of what is better or what is worse will always be wrong for someone. For me, I am perfectly capable of waiting a moment after speaking to see if someone wants to respond, and hate having to shout over someone who is interrupting me "a little". But of course it's as unreasonable for me to expect other people always to adapt to my preferences as it is for other people to expect me always to adapt to theirs. Interrupting "a little" also doesn't work if you have an interrupt-ee who expects just to talk louder, and an interrupt-er who does not intend to be put off: that can, and in my experience usually does, just lead to each of them talking a little louder in turn, until they are both practically shouting, often without noticing that they're doing so.

theonemind 4y ago

I speak when I think someone can use what I have to say. If they interrupt me, I just take it as judgment that they disagree and stop talking. Possibly a post-hoc rationalization because I prefer put my energy into what I want to say, not fighting bad conversation flow control. It's just too much of a hassle.

awillen 4y ago
I think there's a subtle system that interrupters use (and for context I am definitely an interrupter, though I very consciously work to not be one when I'm with non-interrupters). If I'm speaking and you interrupt, if my expectation is that your thought is more valuable than mine, I stop and let you go. If I think my thought is more valuable, I continue. In this situation, you're doing the same thing. So if we both continue to talk, each of us is signaling that we think our thought is more important, but each of us is also taking in the information that the other thinks their thought is more important. So if you're still talking after some threshold (and this is quick, so that's maybe 2-3 seconds), even though I think my thought is important, it's not 2-3 seconds of interruption important, ergo your thought is probably more important, so I cede the metaphorical baton to you. That might sound insane to non-interrupters, and even for interrupters it's a quick, natural assessment, but if you listen to two interrupters talk for a while, especially about something they're both passionate about, you can pick up on what's happening. That said, there are also some interrupters who just do not stop speaking once they've interrupted no matter what. They're a minority, but they drive me nuts. So it's all relative, I suppose.
- Karellen 4y ago
  Huh. It's my impression that 2-3 seconds of talking over someone else is not "quick". To me, that's a long time to keep going. I have a similar thought pattern with who's thoughts are more valuable - but my perception is that the person butting in knows what I am saying and what they want to say, whereas I only know what I'm saying. Therefore, they are in a much better position to determine which thought is more valuable, so my best course of action is probably to pass the baton.

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ISO-morphism 4y ago

Related - The Church of Interruption [1]. > When people are interrupting each other - when they're constantly tugging the conversation back and forth between their preferred directions - then the conversation itself is just a battle of wills. But when people just put in one thing at a time, and trust their fellows to only say things that relate to the thing that came right before - at least, until there's a very long pause - then you start to see genuine collaboration. I think that's the meat of the collaborative conversational spirit. Interruption/waiting is one axis, another nearly orthogonal axis is continuation/abandonment of the current topic which correlates more strongly with actual listening rather than politeness. In terms of [1], I've definitely encountered "civil barkers", who will never interrupt you verbally (but usually offer increasingly strong nonverbal cues that they want their turn), then very weakly link into a new topic. That is to say, waiting isn't a sufficient (nor I'd say necessary) condition for constructive conversation. E.g. the Trump/Hillary debate, when asked to say something nice about each other, Hillary immediately pivoted into talking about her platform. [1] https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

drewcoo 4y ago
What that Church of Interruption axis is missing is authority vs freedom Refusing to interrupt is cowing to authority. Refusing to yield is asserting authority. If people feel safe and free to act autonomously and engage in the best way they see fit, they allow interruptions and they interrupt.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  Ah yes, the “I’m not an asshole I’m just independent” argument. Refusing to interrupt is respecting the other person enough to let them say what they think, and trusting them enough that they will grant you the same respect.
  - dleslie 4y ago
    Which they probably won't, if they can prevent it, most of the time. People tend not to invite discussion for the purposes of challenging their positions.

quickthrower2 4y ago

The cost of interrupting someone is killing their train of thought. It is not just a politeness thing. So like everything it depends on the context. Interrupting to keep meetings from getting too long is an essential skill. Especially with someone who has grown up with the blab-until-interrupted protocol!

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
It's a tradeoff between priorities. Easiest seen in speech vs writing. Speech is on the speaker's flow primarily. Listeners are expected to keep up not just in vocabulary, but speed among others. Writing is far friendlier to the reader, being able to set their own pace. Interruptions allow listeners to shift the balance at the cost of potentially destroying the pace. And sometimes destroying the pace is necessary (e.g. endless discussions).
dilyevsky 4y ago
The “flow state” is much more than just a train of thought that can be easily recovered if you have decent memory. Your mood - not so much. In case of meetings it’s probably not that critical but could be more expensive for unsolicited interruptions during say coding/design sessions
- hinkley 4y ago
  That’s a tough one because some people seem to have trouble finding flow state to begin with. I tend to have a fairly easy time but have picked up that few people are as cavalier about it as I am. That may also be why I was able to walk away and experiment with not doing it. Writers, for instance, seem to be notoriously bad at finding flow state. And if I told one to abandon it mid-stream I’d probably get hurt.
darth_avocado 4y ago
Interruption is sometimes productive though. If the person speaking is not able to stick to one point at a time and instead goes on a monologue expanding multiple topics, others may have critical things to say, but are not able to say because by the time the person stops, the dialogue has moved on to a different topic. This is very important in say a business setting where decisions need to be made while evaluating all the aspects of the task at hand. If useful information is not discussed because the only way it could’ve happened is by interrupting the speaker, then everyone loses out.

blobbers 4y ago

Kind of an interesting take! I definitely know people who find interruption an offense vs. then others who will just continue talking rather allow themselves to be interrupted.

Moissanite 4y ago

Interruptions as part of the natural flow of conversation can pass almost unnoticed, when done appropriately. It is interesting - but mostly frustrating - when people fail at it in a jarring way which comes across as rude. Sadly my wife is one of those people, and her cross-cutting interruptions are a habit learned from her mother. Sigh, mothers-in-law - how distressed I was to discover the stereotype was so accurate... What they miss is that interruptions should be like a "yes, and..." in improv comedy, not a "yesyesyes, BUT..."

_jal 4y ago
I find I can't talk to people who do that. Things don't flow, they don't work well, and both of us end up frustrated. So that ends up being a limit for me, I just choose not to interact with people like that if I can help it, and communicating async if I have to.
- kaashif 4y ago
  In my experience, things work best when interrupters work with interrupters, and waiters work with waiters. That's not to say someone can't switch styles, but the unfortunate reality is that it's easier if people don't have to do that. This results in the kind of self segregation that you do. I've also done that, by switching to a team that shared my communication style. I don't know if this is good or bad, but it does seem to be the path of least resistance.

nordsieck 4y ago

IMO, the most effective solution to this problem is to sidestep the issue altogether by splitting groups so that more people can talk at the same time. It's also much easier to negotiate rules - interrupt vs wait - in a group size of 2-4 than in one on the order of 20 people.

sneak 4y ago

I interrupt because sometimes my attention span and memory can be measured in milliseconds. It’s a bad habit in the wrong circumstances sometimes.

chrismeller 4y ago

Reminds me a lot of this story, which was on HN recently, about the design of open spaces and how offices get them wrong: https://www.mtajchert.com/libraries-and-open-spaces/ https://www.mtajchert.com/libraries-and-open-spaces/ Long story short, a lot of it is just related to the existing societal norms and expectations of different environments, similar to the author.

js2 4y ago

I'm first-born and was very much an interrupter growing up. I try to be cognizant of it these days because I value my marriage. (Fortunately my spouse has the patience of Job and we've been together over three decades.) :-) My second-born brother perceived my interruptions as aggression/dominance and eventually started out-interrupting me. I find it hard to have a conversation with him on any topic that we even slightly disagree. My third-born sister is just a very loud and gregarious person. My fourth-born sister, being the youngest, found it very difficult to get a word in edge-wise among the four of us. She grew up to be very aggressive in her speaking when she has a point she wants to make, but is also a very patient listener. Just don't dare interrupt her when she has something to say. Anyway, I found this paper from a few years back about interruptions among SCOTUS justices pretty interesting: "Female Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted More by Male Justices and Advocates" (2017) https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-interrupted-more-by-male-justices-and-advocates https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-in... Which led to the court changing its oral argument rules: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/oct/15/us-supreme-court-female-justices-interruptions-sonia-sotomayor https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/oct/15/us-supreme-court... Conversational styles and gender: https://news.stanford.edu/2018/05/02/exploring-interruption-conversation/ https://news.stanford.edu/2018/05/02/exploring-interruption-...

DangitBobby 4y ago
I'm noticing there's no mention of how long speakers would continue without voluntarily allowing someone else to speak before being interrupted.
- js2 4y ago
  The paper linked from the HBR article has examples where the justices get interrupted literally in the middle of their questions: > Antonin Scalia: No. He reached the conclusion because-- > Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.: And that’s completely supported by the proffer. > Antonin Scalia:--He reached the conclusion because he-- > William H. Rehnquist:--No two voices at the same time. Justice Scalia is asking you a question. > Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.: Excuse me. Scalia talking right over the top of Sotomayor: > Bert W. Rein: His estimate was that a very small number, and it--it’s in his opinion. It’s--it’s not only by percentage, but it’s by number, and that number is insignificant relative-- > Sonia Sotomayor: Do you think--do you think that change has to happen overnight? And do you think it’s-- > Antonin Scalia: Excuse me. Can I--can I hear what you were about to say? What are those numbers? I was really curious to hear those numbers. > Bert W. Rein: He assumed, at the outside, that any of the admits that were actually African-American or Hispanic outside the Top Ten, he said let me take that assumption and see what it would add So I don't think it's the case that the justices are getting interrupted in the middle of long-winded questions. In any case the paper examines interruptions with respect to gender, seniority, and ideology and has a lot more detail than what's in the article.

scotuswroteus 4y ago

It feels like society is falling apart and we're supposed to trust our fellow conversationalists to go where the conversation should. As democracy crumbles and the climate of our earth becomes unlivable, I have no doubt your polite approach to engaging others will make them feel comforted in their last moments.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MetaMonk 4y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023

westoncb 4y ago

Here's why interrupt is inherently more efficient: as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting, you have shifted the communication mode from: A) Anticipate up front what other person needs to hear and say it all B) Rapid adjustment to ideal info requirements as your model of their knowledge/interest is live-updated. But the trick people seem to miss is that interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts make the whole thing possible. When I'm talking with someone for whom this style is natural, there can be many very rapid small gestures to interrupt, which sometimes are accepted and sometimes are rejected by a small "just let me keep going, you'll see why" gesture. Each of those gestures takes a fraction of a second (and generally does not actually break flow of speech, just eye contact + a little head motion), and conversations employing them are far more enjoyable because information flow is near optimal. On the other hand, when speaking with anti-interrupt people, I often get so bored it's hard to pay attention because either 1) they left something out that I wanted to ask about so I can't follow what they are saying, or 2) I already had a thorough understanding of something they insist on giving a long explanation of.

taeric 4y ago
This feels like you are trying to explain common card game semantics of instants versus turn plays. With the twist that you are arguing that instants are the correct and more efficient mechanism. But here is the thing. Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out. And even those that are, have well agreed "cards" that can be done in different situations. To argue that all things should be "instant" playable is a tough sell.
- awillen 4y ago
  The post you're responding to this qualified it with "as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting" - that addresses your point. This doesn't necessarily work well in a context where people are unfamiliar, but with close friends/colleagues/family who are all on board with this conversation paradigm and familiar with each other's interruptive style, it works very well.

every 4y ago

If I may interrupt here, I found the small, faint type on the site an annoyance...

Barrin92 4y ago

As the article itself points out it depends a lot on who is talking and in what environment. The 'let them talk' approach works well for people who can speak concisely and keep on topic. But if you have someone who is prone to just go on tangents or repeat themselves endlessly interruption isn't a bad thing for a conversation. For example I don't think I could make it through the same 20 year old Stallman stump speech in person without losing my mind. There's people who exhibit a really bad combo of being repetitive, verbose and allergic to challenge that makes for dreadful conversations.

jrootabega 4y ago

This is a great example of why in-person collaboration is irreplaceable for discussions and the like. With people you are familiar with, you can semi-interrupt with facial expressions, movements, grunts, etc. You can use body language and tone of voice to make a side remark or "threaded" discussion. You can interrupt at the exact right time and interleave your words with other people's. You can, simply by looking at the other listeners, confirm whether anyone else has the same concerns that you do. And it's instant. So the acceptable threshold for interruption gets higher and the consequences get lower. On high-latency, low-bandwidth channels (Google Voice, I'm looking in your direction...), you choose between long, confusing silent waiting and constant infuriating interruption.

ilaksh 4y ago
"Irreplaceable" is not accurate, since as you said, the big issue is with high latency and low-bandwidth channels. In the same city with a good connection, video is often about as good.
- jrootabega 4y ago
  I still think it's accurate, especially in the context of the article. Video doesn't give you eye contact, let alone selective eye contact among a group. Video doesn't let your ears hear the room around in you in 3d.
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    VR can provide those things (eye contact maybe with Meta Quest Pro, we'll see if it works)
    - jrootabega 4y ago
      Eh...I think it will be bad enough at those things for a long enough time that it effectively will not provide those things, but rather inferior imitations. And since we've shifted from video links to VR, I'll boldly state that any solution that requires strapping a box to your face is not going to cut it.

osigurdson 4y ago

This is the largest issue that I have with MS Teams. Latency of even a few hundred milliseconds substantially throw conversations off. Instead of interrupting at the right inflection point, you are interrupting directly while someone is talking. Conversations degrade to serial monologs which I'm convinced is less effective overall.

zmmmmm 4y ago

Oddly I have found that switching nearly entirely to video meetings has helped me participate better, because it gives me "license" to interrupt. I'm culturally a hard-line non-interrupter. In person I will always wait until the other has finished speaking, collating a list of items to address with them (often forgetting them along the way). In video calls I have experienced a new sense of permissiveness where I find it's much easier to jump into the middle of a conversation. I'm not sure if it's because everybody is waiting that extra few hundred ms due to latency, or if it's purely a psychological difference of not being face to face with them in person, or knowing that people will be judging me less harshly because it's plausible I'm interrupting due to latency rather than out of disrespect for what they are saying. I know this is opposite to the experience for many others who I assume have an easier time with in-person interactions because they feel very natural going with the conversation flow.

sirmarksalot 4y ago
I've noticed the same thing. In in-person conversation, I'm usually slow on the draw when it's time for the next person to speak, and if I'm with interrupters, they almost always beat me to it. But in video calls, the extra round trip of lag gives me just enough quiet to signal that it's my turn to talk, so I don't get shut out quite as much. Even if someone else is quicker on the draw, I've already started talking, so I don't just instinctively shut up when I hear another person going first.
ambrose2 4y ago
This is the opposite as my experience. I find it hard to interrupt or even interject over zoom because it’s so hard to time.
- aendruk 4y ago
  Yep, too often the lag transforms an interjection into an interruption.

bovermyer 4y ago

I think my biggest breakthrough was when I learned it was sometimes OK to interrupt. Prior to that... I avoided interrupting under any circumstances. And that was a mistake.

mkaic 4y ago

I have a strong habit of "autocompleting" people's thoughts in my head before they're done saying them. I'm only right maybe ~60% of the time, but it comes with a strong urge to interrupt them and let them know where I think they're going. This is especially true if I can tell that it will take them multiple sentences to finish their thought. It does not come from a place of "you're wasting my time, I get it, jeez", but more from a "I understand the point you're making and I am eager to hear the next thing you have to share." What I've noticed is that my habit of interruption is received wildly differently by different kinds of people. It drives some people absolutely crazy, and in these settings I've learned to be a little more mindful and try to restrain myself from interjecting so frequently. However, for other people, it works wonderfully and we'll get into a really fast-moving conversation where less redundant information is shared. My theory is that two well-intentioned interrupters can have a pleasant conversation, and two well-intentioned waiters can have a pleasant conversation, but any pairing of an interrupter and a waiter will be disastrous unless both are very mindful of how they participate in the conversation.

casparvitch 4y ago
Have you found any patterns to the people in these two groups? I find that older (50+) people are far more likely to get upset with my interruptions.
- mkaic 4y ago
  I have ADHD and I've anecdotally found that other ADHD people tend to be far more receptive to it, because it's how they often work too. Apparently it's a common symptom?
UncleOxidant 4y ago
> What I've noticed is that my habit of interruption is received wildly differently by different kinds of people. It drives some people absolutely crazy I think it hugely depends on which of the cultures you grew up in. I grew up in an interrupting culture family - interrupting was just the norm, nobody considered it rude. My wife grew up in a wait culture family. If I interrupt her she can get really mad. Over the years I've had to learn to use the wait-method when talking to her and it's made me more mindful of the two different cultures. I try to do more waiting than interrupting anymore since I now realize there's a large percentage of the population that considers interrupting to be rude. There's also another thing that the waiters can consider an interruption, but I guess I never considered an interruption - saying something in agreement with the speaker as sort of an affirmation of what they're saying. My wife considers that an interruption, I consider it just participating in the conversation.

riwsky 4y ago

See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-cooperative-overlapping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/opinion/interrupting-coop...

gz5 4y ago

High variance in groups with different cultural norms. And, even within those groups, there is variance based on the level of trust within the group and the context of the conversation. Example: I like observing negotiation-heavy (implicit or explicit) conversations between two groups of people on deep or nuanced topics. If one group has folks 'interrupting' each other in a natural, accretive, iterative way, then it often means they have a high level of trust in each other and confidence.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

> This seemed totally crazy. Some people would just blab on unchecked, and others didn't get a chance to talk at all. Some people would ignore the norm and talk over others, and nobody interrupted them back to shoot them down. Yes, I can totally relate to this feeling. I grew up in an interrupting culture family. My wife grew up in a wait culture family. I've learned to try not to interrupt her because when I do she can go all Galadriel on me. So over the years I try to wait - and it can still be really hard to do. I suspect that people who find it easy grew up in the waiting culture families. We used to have a neighbor who would talk & talk saying the same thing over and over just in slightly different ways. It was really frustrating to try to wait her out because she'd go on and on for a long time without a pause- but I did suspect that she did this because she didn't feel heard in life.

throwaway98797 4y ago
people who get interrupted a lot often have very little to say this in turn makes them monopolize the poor soul who doesn’t interrupt them
bittercynic 4y ago
>did this because she didn't feel heard in life I think this is an under-appreciated reason why people socialize, and people who aren't getting the level of socialization they need can have a compulsion to pursue conversation by any means necessary. I feel for cashiers and waiters when they have lonely customers.

_tom_ 4y ago

Does no one else just talk simultaneously? I only do this with friends I am familiar with, but it's quite efficient to respond to things in real time, without waiting for people to stop.

throwaway_au_1 4y ago
A guy I used to work with would interrupt, start talking and continue talking while I was. Sometimes, I would continue for a few seconds in the hopes that it would prompt him to think "Whoops I just interrupted, I'll say 'oops sorry go on' now", but after several comical instances of us both speaking simultaneously for what felt like at least 10-20 seconds (probably only 5 realistically), I realised how ridiculous this was and I resigned to letting him interrupt. He was a great engineer and a good guy so I was happy to accommodate it rather than calling him out. Work contexts do interesting things to social dynamics.
mcluck 4y ago
This sounds like my own personal hell

gsk22 4y ago

It also matters what type of conversation is being had. I'm more of a waiter than interrupter, who lives with a strong interrupter. If we're having a debate or discussing the newest silly thing in the news or whatever, it's not a big deal -- the topic was never _that_ important that I care about getting interrupted. However, I find it very rude and annoying to get interrupted while telling a story. Like, event XYZ happened on the drive home, or something that happened with others in our mutual friend group. It's only going to take a minute or two for me to tell the whole story, but 15 seconds in it's been hijacked and the interrupter is off on their own tangent.

kaashif 4y ago
> It's only going to take a minute or two for me to tell the whole story, but 15 seconds in it's been hijacked and the interrupter is off on their own tangent. The interrupters can only be fought on their terms. Fight fire with fire. Interrupt back and just keep telling the story.
- rufius 4y ago
  Or choose to leave. I have walked out of meetings, having been repeatedly interrupted despite telling the interrupter that I did not appreciate it. I’m not hard line on “no interrupting”, but if I ask someone to stop, then I expect them to stop. Or I’ll just leave. I have other things I could be doing.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Very much this. As a few others have noted, it's not an absolute, and some interruptions --- for clarifying questions or corrections, say --- are welcomed. But to interrupt continuously, to do so in a way that disrupts rather than promotes the conversation, to not catch the nonverbal cues that this is annoying, and then to ignore multiple spoken requests to please not do that ... is beyond frustrating. I've expereinced this with friends and coworkers I otherwise respect and admire their knowledge and capabilities. But in spoken interactions they're unbearable. Message-based comms, where there's a discrete comment-and-response cycle, as on HN, email (lists or exchanges), and many message boards, though not quite so much text-based chat, is interesting in that it's possible to say (or write) one's piece without interruption. Of course, whether or not that's read is another question.... One of the people I'm thinking of specifically in this case actually does communicate quite well in written form. Verbal, interactively, again, not so much.

gojomo 4y ago

These differences are also regional & cultural. Here's a good intro from sociolinguist Deborah Tannen on how interrupting & overtalking as practiced cooperatively in New York (& related cultures) clashes with other American regional styles: https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/newyorkcity/ https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/newyork...

willjp 4y ago

This is so interesting. At home, we absolutely have wait culture. My mother moderates informally using a round robin format. Most places I have worked have had interrupt culture. I hated going to meetings, it felt like the people that spoke loudest “owned” the meeting. After a while I started taking notes, but never participating. It was easier to get answers afterwards by talking directly to the stakeholders once they were identified. It is so interesting to me to hear the counter argument here, that some people actually prefer this method of communication, I’ll need to think about what my participation looks like in this culture.

ambrose2 4y ago
I found it easier to learn and practice interrupt culture with close friends first, one on one. And then practice it with good friends, and then acquaintances, and then in groups. It takes time, confidence, and trust.
- willjp 4y ago
  That’s a great idea! Thank you!

urthor 4y ago

Ben Hoffman might have gone to the talking school. But, he's missing the point here. There's two types of conversations in life. "Brain in 5th gear conversations." Every word carefully chosen. And the second type, "Priority 2" conversations. Priority 2 is where both parties winging it and do their best via heuristic. Most folk wait their turn during Priority 2. It's just the convention, nobody is in a rush. For engineers, every conversation ends up being Priority 2 because their brain is gutted from coding. However, they need to get shit done, fast, and get back to coding. Hence the convention to interrupt conversations and get to the point. It's a speed vs productivity vs margin of error triple constraint. What Hoffman doesn't realize is the goal. Deliberately practicing 5th gear conversations forces you to concentrate on the material.

sublinear 4y ago
Totally agree. Not many forms of communication require as much careful decision making as coding. You can do it fast or you can do it right. Getting priorities straight is a matter of competence, not culture. If you've ever wondered why people scoff at the term "software engineer", this is one potential answer.

nevatiaritika 4y ago

If I decide to not interrupt, automatically I tend to atleast let them know I have something to say that is SO important. I will tend to change my body language (become eager) or just mouth something (aa). Online, I unmute myself. I think its the only solution I have to demonstrate my intent to interrupt without actually doing it.

sublinear 4y ago

For what it's worth I highly disagree with a lot of the opinions in here. Waiting prioritizes clear communication at the expense of some time that is almost always justified. People who wait are typically detail oriented and have the infamously prevailing cooler heads. They're the ones actually getting stuff done while management impatiently glances at their pathetically underspecified checklists. Interrupting prioritizes a false sense of efficiency and just seems like weak impulse control or a bad short-term memory. Every interrupter I've ever met is disorganized and unreliable.

derekbaker783 4y ago
Personally, I'll often interrupt when I know someone is wrong about a topic, in the interest of efficiency.
- sublinear 4y ago
  How can you possibly know someone is wrong until you've heard them out? It's very much worth questioning what your accuracy threshold is before deciding to interrupt. Maybe they're wrong about a minor detail but have a much better overall plan. Maybe they have some ideas buried under all the mud that are worth the wait. If the perception of efficiency is always the priority, that will come at the cost of everything else.
  - derekbaker783 4y ago
    It only takes a single sentence sometimes.
aidenn0 4y ago
> Interrupting prioritizes a false sense of efficiency and just seems like weak impulse control or a bad short-term memory. Every interrupter I've ever met is disorganized and unreliable While I have noticed that ADHD people gravitate towards interrupters, and are more likely to be disorganized and unreliable, generalizing this to all interrupters is absurd. Everybody in my mom's family is an interpreter, including my mom. You will meet few people more organized and reliable than her.

coding123 4y ago

I thought this was going to be about promises, await/async, callbacks, stacks and blocking.

Test0129 4y ago
It would be pretty cool if while I was spinlocking waiting for someone to make their point I could suspend the thread and do something else.
sophacles 4y ago
It is

ilaksh 4y ago

I think its sad that we have to frame it this way. This is just manners versus lack of manners. Its not a different culture. Its a lack of culture. There is no excuse for constantly interrupting people. Its disrespectful and counterproductive. There is a bit of subtlety also in that interrupting in the middle of a word is more rude than in the middle of a sentence versus a paragraph. If, for example, someone has completed the third sentence of a paragraph that is clearly wrapping up, and pauses longer before what apparently may be the fourth sentence, but the other person thinks they have already got the message, it might not necessarily be rude at all to start talking before the last (probably not really important) sentence comes out. Sometimes it depends on the context and how long the pause is. Lack of common courtesy is unfortunately very common. That doesn't mean we should accept it without comment.

aidenn0 4y ago
Manners are almost entirely dependent on culture. There is no natural law that says the person who starts talking first has a right to talk. It's a reasonable rule, but not the only reasonable one.
- ilaksh 4y ago
  I didn't say anything about natural law. Most contexts globally where there is education and respect will show this type of common courtesy. If there is a lack of respect of education or both, more rude interruption is likely. I think there are for example some contexts or cultures where there is less respect, for example some executives talking to workers in certain countries. But it's not excusable and the workers there who are the majority in that country will not have the same behavior.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pmichaud 4y ago
I’m having trouble reading this comment as sincere, even though I think it probably is. You’re not trolling?

aidenn0 4y ago

Oh, this is something my wife and I ran into. My family dinners would have 6 conversations going at once with people fluidly moving between them, often by interrupting the person talking. My wife's family has dinners where there is exactly one conversation and nobody interrupts. Even with 16 people at a table.

rapjr9 4y ago

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the power dynamics of interruption. It is well known in psychology that interrupting anothers speech is a way to exert power. The boss can interrupt anyone, no one interrupts the boss. It's one of several types of interruption: https://www.psychmechanics.com/psychology-of-interrupting/ https://www.psychmechanics.com/psychology-of-interrupting/ Interrupting someone can say "I am more important than you". This can also cause failures to communicate since the boss can change the subject and the interrupted speaker may never get to finish their thought. I've seen projects fail because a boss intentionally interrupted people who were trending in a direction they did not want to go, squashing anyone who was pointing out a major flaw in the bosses plans, which resulted in building things in a bad way and then having the flaw manifest and cause the project to fail. There are other types of interruption though that can be more supportive or more like parallel conversations. The efficiency of those often depends on the quality of the participants memory and ability to follow multiple threads simultaneously.

c0mptonFP 4y ago
Without interruptions, I would not be able to finish meetings on time. EVER. Information exchange is always the bottleneck in larger organizations, so efficiency of meetings is really important. I will interrupt someone if I understood their point, and we have different, more pressing items on the agenda. It's not a power play, not psychological warfare or bullying. I just want to get shit done on time.
- tchaffee 4y ago
  Companies with a waiting culture get things done on time. You might perceive interrupting as being more efficient but interrupting has its own set of inefficiencies.
  - c0mptonFP 4y ago
    Ok, next time an engineer on my team can't stop himself from talking about his SIMD lock-free distributed queue, I'll just keep listening. Maybe I get to sleep in the office too.

alex_young 4y ago

The big problem with interrupting is that you simply cannot both actually listen to someone and formulate an argument at the same time. This pattern just leads to people talking without being listened to.

DeathArrow 4y ago

Interrupt culture seems more creative to me and also reaching conclusions faster. However it's not always ok to interrupt. It's ok to interrupt if the discussion is set up from the beginning as such and after the person who speaks finishes his idea.

jvvw 4y ago

Deborah Tannen talks about this type of thing in her book 'You Just Don't Understand'. There's a whole chapter about interrupting. There is a difference between overlapping and trying to dominate and it talks about successful and unsuccessful 'co-operative overlapping'. It talks about culture too. Also this article: https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

langsoul-com 4y ago

It's eaiser to gauge how interested in a story someone is if they interrupt for something. If they truly aren't interested then you can pivot accordingly. Although some people might listen to the end and be engaged, or you could tell by their facial expressions. That isn't always perfect, some people naturally aren't expressive. By default, you got no clue what they're feeling.

Tade0 4y ago

Why assume that there are just two, mutually exclusive schools of thought? My experience is people usually decide whether to wait or interrupt depending on context - they just different in their assessment of the situation. Personally I often explicitly yield to someone who to me appears like they want to say something, but are waiting for the right moment. In face to face conversation I sometimes lift my finger and make an "uuuuum" face to signify that I want to say something right now. People usually respond to that very well - the more braindead my expression, the better. In college our conversations were moderated and you would lift your hand if you wanted to say something, and the moderator would at times interrupt the person speaking. On one hand everyone waited, on the other people were interrupted constantly. To me this is how most real world conversations work and pigeonholing them into just two categories is counterproductive.

karaokeyoga 4y ago

A similar phenomenon happens with various Western speakers in Japan: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/aizuchi-japanese-listening/ https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/aizuchi-japanese-listening/ It's a bit different as "aizuchi" is merely signaling that you're being listened to, rather than an actual switching of speakers. "Enthusiastic listening" is how I've heard it described, and it can be a distraction if you're not used to it.

taink 4y ago

Reminds me of this other article I read a while ago in that thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32545023 Definitely an interesting thought. I think there are problems with both interrupting and waiting. Interruption works only if the other person works in the same way. It can, however, be very efficient because the flow of the conversation is much faster. It also simply does not work in group settings. Waiting allows to converse with the most people, but it is harder to do and requires much effort to put into practice correctly. It also relies on people talking in short bursts to simply provide their input on the topic at hand, so there's still a certain amount of discipline required. That's why I prefer text-based conversation. You can come back to what other people said easily, have less trouble remembering what you want to provide input on, and can skip the parts you already know about. It takes more time than verbal communication, but it's truly the best way to communicate in my opinion. The only real problem is that you lose an important part of communication; physical cues, tone, etc. Text has a lot of trouble conveying emotions.

scotty79 4y ago

I'm 100% in interrupt culture. When I interact with people from wait culture it's pretty bad experience for me because not being interrupted feels for me like not being listened, understood or like nobody cares what I'm saying. Occasionally it seems even cruel when I'm mistaken at the beginning of my thread but they silently let me go on with stating my erroneous conclusions from false premise. Only then to hear that all my input was sheer garbage. The only two people from wait culture I've met were from management (they were just my friends, I had no professional relationship with them). I think wait style must have been pretty natural for them because they are used to nobody saying anything to them while they are talking and maybe even untill explicitly asked. And since they are nice people they mirrored that in their behavior.

lelandfe 4y ago
> not being interrupted feels for me like not being listened When people listen to you talk, you feel like they're not listening? Where do you think that stems from? It seems peculiar that as someone more actively listens to you, you feel just the opposite.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  Because in an interrupt culture, the speaker expects not just active listening but active feedback.
Ruthalas 4y ago
> not being interrupted feels for me like not being listened I'm curious if this is the case if the other party is giving other visual indications of focus. (Making intent eye contact, nodding, etc.) Obviously it may still be uncomfortable because it's not your preferred communication/feedback style, but I'm curious if that mitigates the feeling of not being listened to or not.
- scotty79 4y ago
  I'm not great at eye contact. Especially when I'm focusing on something I'm trying to convey. But that could probably help. I remember the most intense feelings of being not listened in situations where eye contact was not possible. For ex we were walking side by side or doing something manual facing away from each other.

rroot 4y ago

I think this article portrays a lack of understanding of conversational dynamics based on my experience with people. Interruption isn't black and white and to me there is nothing nice about people who interrupt by default. Still I usually don't don't mind interruptions when in a friendly brainstorming or casual conversation with good people. But the interrupter has to understand that he's interrupting and do it in a good way. But things like interrupting and going totally off topic, interrupting to argue or interrupting when power dynamics are at play is entirely a different beast. I feel like the first version I mentioned should have a different name than this one.

sanitycheck 4y ago

I don't have a good enough memory for the "wait" style of conversations. I'd need to take notes. "We know X=1, so we should do Y which involves connecting A to C and removing B, so D, E & F need feature Z to be implemented in the next T months." * Actually, X=2 so the logic as presented is questionable at best * (but people don't like all their ideas to be dismissed with a single point, so we continue...) * We can't remove B, it's required by M & N * E doesn't need feature Z * Feature Z depends on feature Q which won't be done in T months The interrupt version is better: "We know X=1..." * Do we? I think X=2 "Is it? Why do you say that?" * Reasons

gregwebs 4y ago

I grew up with the interrupting style, but when I realized some people get very offended by it, I decided to switch to waiting. Now that I am on the receiving end of interruptions, I notice the main problem with interrupting- that the interrupters often think they know what is going to be said, but are wrong. This is inefficient and not a proper exchange of ideas (which requires thinking about what was said), which can easily feel demoralizing. I find that waiting is actually a lot more efficient than interrupting if everyone can talk succinctly and avoid useless tangents (which isn’t easy to do). You do have to lead by example here and often have to step back and moderate the conversation that way. It’s mind opening to see some of these articles advocating for the interrupting style. I see how it can work well, and I will try to adapt to that style some more in some circumstances. And in particular try to develop more signaling abilities. However, in my experience interrupting is useful just when someone is not succinct- otherwise it’s too easy for interrupters to do a poor job listening and actually facilitate a good conversation.

xani__ 4y ago

satisfice 4y ago

“When people are interrupting each other - when they're constantly tugging the conversation back and forth between their preferred directions - then the conversation itself is just a battle of wills” This is a common lazy conclusion that extraverts frequently hear from introverts— when they can be bothered to speak up. No, it’s not a battle of wills. It’s not really a battle. It’s the music of enthusiasm; the peal of many bells. Energy is not necessarily a curse; placidity is not necessarily a virtue. Let’s respect that there are different cultures. I come from enthusiasm culture. My culture works. There are other cultures, and they can also work.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago
If only those cultures would work separately instead of getting in each other’s way.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

I'm a part of spice-culture because I like spicy food. Are you a part of wuss-culture because you don't like spicy food? I'm also a part of male-culture ... wait, no that' one isn't allowed.

rkangel 4y ago

One thing that's interesting about remote work and Teams calls is that the 'interrupt' mode doesn't work particularly well. The subtle increase in latency means that you're not interrupting when out think you are and often two people interrupt at the same time and you end up in a 'random backoff' situation. The client team I work with is kind of trying (although without verbalising) to move more towards a "wait" mode of talking, assisted by the "put your hand up" functionality in Teams. The problem we run into is that it isn't clear whether you should be speaking before or after the next person - sometimes you have a supplementary point about the exact current topic that makes more sense to be said before the next person slightly changes the subject. In an engineering discussion it makes a lot more sense to make your point about the performance of the feature in discussion before the conversation moves to talking about testing it!

photochemsyn 4y ago

Just go to the passing around the talking stick with a timer attached model. It's also why the 15 min presentation followed by 5 min Q & A is a decent communication model, you can do three per hour and then the meetings over.

jamessb 4y ago

This is often referred to "high-involvement" vs "high-considerateness" [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen#%22High-involvement%22_vs._%22high-considerateness%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen#%22High-involve...

ivanhoe 4y ago

Say what you want but chit-chatting with people you know is far more fun and dynamical when everyone feels free to interrupt others. Part of that culture is of course learning to not let go, and fight back those interrupting you - refusing the interrupt request if you will. Wait culture is IMHO more appropriate for larger groups of people and more formal settings, or some subjects that are very important to the one speaking, so interruption would be disrespectful.

rikeanimer 4y ago

lol I thought we were discussing programming paradigms-- but at the same time I think considering the NVIC and different peripheral/vs high speed busses may be relevant.

euroderf 4y ago

This has an analogy (maybe?) in service culture. In the US if the guy behind the counter is making a sandwich for someone else, I can ask him/her a quick question and get an answer without disrupting the flow of work. But in Finnish culture this is a no-no: the customer "owns" the worker until task completion. It is (IMHO) wildly inefficient.

Timwi 4y ago

In operating systems, we call that cooperative multitasking (everything up to DOS+Windows 3.11, where software is allowed to hog the CPU until it explicitly yields) versus preemptive multitasking (Windows 95 onwards, where software is regularly interrupted by the OS). There's a reason preemptive multitasking has “won” and nobody wants to go back to cooperative. A lot of software just isn't cooperative (i.e. doesn't yield enough).