Why Talking to People Feels Harder Now

Babe, I think we're getting socially flabby.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, yeah, we're talking to AI all day. You're talking to AI all day.

That's true. I talk to AI more than I talk to you at this point.

We are gonna talk about a new MIT report that just came out, and we have to discuss what they found.

Usually when you read these AI reports, it's always about the thinking side of it, the plagiarizing side of it. But what I was super fascinated was to read about the connection side of the story. And what they found is that students aren't interacting as much as they used to on campus. What does that mean? It means they're not going to study groups anymore. They're not asking as many questions in the classroom. They're not going to the office hours that professors or TAs have.

They're having less conversations before class, after class, in hallways. These accidental conversations are what fuel our learning, but they also fuel our sense of connection. Those conversations that we used to have before class, and Scott and I actually met in college, so this is very real for us. We met in college, we met in school, and our first conversations were not that great. They were a little awkward. They were a little bit like, oh, we're trying to figure it out. That is the whole point of conversation. Not all conversation is easy. In fact, the less we do it, the harder it is.

What's so important about these accidental social interactions was that they're accidental and they might be clumsy and they might be awkward and they don't have to be good. Some of them might be good. Some of them might be awesome.

Yeah.

But just as many, if not more, are awkward. But what matters is the fact that we had them. And if we defer those interactions, if we don't even have them at all, that means that we have to wait till later in life, or maybe never have those interactions to figure out, man, that conversation didn't go well, I better do it different next time.

And I literally think that every time you have a conversation with someone else, at work, or on campus, or at the grocery store, you're doing a social rep, right? You're practicing, ah, gosh, gotta get over that awkwardness. Oh yeah, handshake. Those social reps are essential for making us feel socially strong, and my worry is The less we have those reps, the weaker we will become, and therefore the even harder conversations will be. In this way, my take from this is we are gonna have to work to go to the social gym.

Think about when you actually go to the gym. I don't enjoy going to the gym.

I don't enjoy it.

I don't enjoy lifting weights.

I don't like it, no.

But do I do it? Yes, I do it because I know it's good for me, and I know there's a lot of reasons to do it, health-wise, appearance-wise, all of those reasons. Social reps are the same thing. You know, they may not be great, But they're good. The fewer conversations we have means that each one is worth more by itself, right? Think about an athlete. An athlete gets to warm up. They get to go to practice every single day, and then they're showing up ready and ready to go when it's game time. Same thing applies to your social interactions, right? If you're going in for an interview, but this is the first interview you've had or face-to-face conversation you've had with someone in a couple months—

And all you've been doing is practicing by yourself in front of the mirror, or you've been at home for the last 2 days prepping.

Probably not gonna go that well, right?

It's gonna feel hard. The act of eye contact, handshake, all that's gonna just feel harder because we're out of practice with it.

The loss of these accidental reps means that we have to be intentional about replacing them with something else. One thing they explicitly recommended is that now instructors add social interaction time to the syllabus, to the curriculum, right? Think about the simplicity of that, but also the radical change that is. That never used to be even considered something you had to do because it was by default. It was going to happen no matter what. Now it's optional, now it has to be prescribed.

So if you are leading a team or you're on a team of people, when are you having the purposeful conversations? When are we having time in our day to be able to connect very quickly, and what is the icebreaker? What is the conversation starter? I think we're gonna have to start bringing conversation more purposefully into our day. I think that there's a new job coming. I think there's gonna be a new CCO, Chief Conversation Officer. I think we're gonna have more roles in organizations that are actually managing the conversation at work, keeping our conversational strength up. There's gonna be conversation facilitators, there's gonna be some conversation coaches. We are already doing this. I'm already being brought into companies to help facilitate great conversation. I think this is a great thing and a very cool new job title. And by the way, it doesn't mean that I don't think that you should practice with AI. I think AI can be a great conversation coach first, right? So I think that we can use AI in the right way. We can, We can use it to brainstorm. Yes, we can use it to practice, we can use it to role play, but then we have to actually take it into real life, right? So this is why I think we have, there's 2 things at play here, is one is we have to have more in-person conversations to do the social reps, but also it's scary. It's really, it's really scary to have the in-person conversations. So the second thing to think about here is how do we put in the reps safely? So this is why we have Prosocial.

Which I love, 'cause you can do it in a private, low stakes, low pressure way and get out all those weirdnesses before you have to do it in person.

Weirdnesses, get out all the weirdnesses.

Social weirdnesses.

Yes, I, I also think like it's, a way to add a little bit of pressure to conversation. You can flex the muscle, you can practice a little bit, you can get kind of socially flexible. Also, you can do it in pretend high-stakes interactions, right? So like, what do we have? We have like talking to your boss.

Asking for a raise, job interviews.

Ooh, negotiating. Giving feedback. Uh-oh.

All those hard conversations. But what's great is it also knows you too, because you take the PSI, you know all of your 7 dimensions that you maybe have some strong areas, maybe not so strong areas, and it's gonna coach you in exactly the way that you need to be coached based off of your specific social situation.

I also think what's critical here is you might be making accidental mistakes without realizing it. So now it can, it can look at your email, it can coach you while you're writing your email. Yep.

It connects to your messages. Yeah. Connects to your email, connects to your calendar, and it will tell you exactly where you maybe have tripped up without you knowing it.

In real time. So if you're talking to someone and you're losing the niceties, you're maybe saying something in a way that isn't gonna, uh, land very well, you have this tool that's gonna say, hey, hey, wait a second, let's do a rep. Let's do a rep. And it'll help correct you so that when you get in person, and the whole goal of this is to help you before you get in person, right? But we actually have to get to that in-person part.

Mm-hmm.

Is that when you get in person, you're like, oh yeah. Last time I did this, I remember Pro Social told me, right, right, right. I'm gonna try a different flex.

And this is so important because as our in-person interactions get more rare, they get more valuable, right? We can't, we lose those accidental practices, those accidental reps, but we have to do the intentional reps. So if you do the intentional reps, you can actually show up to that interview ready to go. You can show up to that job, or you can show up to that raise request ready and poised and knowing that you've rehearsed it so that you can do it right the first time.

You know, at the end of our life, I think we're gonna look back and yeah, maybe we're gonna be proud of a job well done. You know, maybe we're gonna be like, oh wow, my biceps are, are so strong. But I think more so we're gonna be like, wow, I have great relationships with my friends. I have amazing relationship with my partner. I have amazing relationship with my kids. And if we don't learn and practice on how we create those relationships, I think we're gonna regret it at the end.

Hmm.

Here is our big challenge for you, which is, Don't lose the casual conversations. Practice going out and raw-dogging social experiences, right? Like no AirPods, no phone, waiting in line with nothing to do, trying to say something to the person in front of you, trying to talk to your lovely barista. Go get a haircut and talk to your hairdresser. Go get a shave and talk to your barber. Those conversations are like going to the gym. The more you do, the stronger you'll get. 9 power questions to level up your relationships at work, At home, with new friends and old ones. Research-backed ways to transform how you connect. Use them to fall in love or just like each other. One Conversation, Nine Questions. Let's go. Preorder now wherever books are sold and send this to someone you want to know better.