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Comment by Regardsyjc | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have tips or resources on how to improve their listening skill? I know I'm a terrible listener because I'm always looking for solutions but I know that 80% of the time, they just want to be heard.

I can barely turn off my thoughts when I'm meditating, how can you give your undivided attention without any internal distractions? What do you do when the conversation feels boring or tedious?

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Practice, practice, practice. I find it hard as all heck not to be in problem solving mode. That's essentially what we do in the tech industry in our jobs. Take a problem, break it down to manageable chunks and fix the them.

Do some digging around and read up on "Active Listening". The bare bones of it are just to hear what the person is saying, and reflect it back. "It sounds like you're frustrated because <paraphrase>." If you're attempting to accurately paraphrase, it will take quite some concentration on what someone is saying. The devil is in the details, and so is a lot of subtleties.

It might be worth seeing a counsellor, they're trained in, and can help you to develop, these kinds of skills.

Instead of thinking about what they're saying, study their emotional cues. Its a skill and it takes attention and practice, and distracts from thinking about solutions.

>Does anyone have tips or resources on how to improve their listening skill?

Get married?

I think it's more about "Wanting to say something and acting" rather than not listening. You want to act and provide solution because maybe you are an engineer at heart.

Try to count to 3 in your mind before saying something.

I would also invest in hobbies where there is a lot of thinking and less action.

Good: - Chess - Yoga - Anything where you need to wait/think before acting

Bad: - Quick quiz apps - Anything that require you to act quickly

Unfortunately some cultures cherish and reward "quick thinking" and action over real thinking.

I could see some jobs prioritizing quick, reasonable reactions over long-term optimal solutions, so the culture might be understandably aligned. Maybe site reliability or release eng.

Take notes. That forces you to process what they are saying instead of thinking about your response. You’ll have plenty of time to talk when they stop.

Instead of trying to come up with solutions focus on being able to repeat back what you just heard, in fact, it might be helpful to the person if you summarize what they said so they know they've been understood. Just stop there, don't offer any advice unless you really believe they're asking for it.

I keep a notebook and open a new page every time I walk into a meeting. I take down all salient points. If I have trouble putting something down, that's usually an indication I need to ask more questions.

In my 1-1s (as the subordinate) this note taking sometimes makes me nervous. It begins to feel like a therapy session. “Did I say something wrong? Was I just being weird? Is he gonna hold me to some offhand, throwaway comment I just made???”

If you’re taking notes it helps if you communicate what you’re doing with them, and what exactly you wrote down. I have adjusted my 1-1 conversation to avoid anything that might be considered a commitment or otherwise official. So that I speak very vaguely now. And often avoid issues that are related to my current role or work. In the past not doing so has bit me. Even though I’ve been told the 1-1 time is not about status updates.

In my case, I jot things down at every meeting so everyone in my team is used to it (or at least I think so).

It isn't about you providing the answer. It is about you asking questions and later providing options to help them find the answer. And often with this approach they may find a better answer than you were initially thinking.

If the server's on fire and you have a fire extinguisher, use it. Times are rarely so urgent, and in such an occasion you need to debrief and get input anyway.

I am not an expert but I think it's impossible for someone to turn off thoughts. One school of thought is to distract your mind from thoughts by focusing on breathing. Another way is to just observe the thoughts without trying to suppress it. Yet another way is to discover the source of the thought (search for "who am I" by Ramana Maharshi)

Reading works of literature, it sort of helps me to understand the people around me. Sometimes it helps to understand people and their motives, sometimes you get to be more compassionate, it depends.

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