Ask HN: Anyone else stumble mid-sentence when explaining something? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Anyone else stumble mid-sentence when explaining something?

10 pointstreyfitty9 comments

Since I’m interviewing again, I found that as I got older, I’ll answer a question in STAR format and notice 2 things:

1. I often forget what I was talking about mid-sentence and find myself digressing.

2. I often feel pressure to be eloquent with word choice, and I can see my brain going haywire trying to sort an array of adjectives in my head to find the right words… but the end result is a bunch of confused faces. In other words, I think people think I’m BS’ing, and in a way, I am.

As you age, do you find it harder to decode thoughts -> encode in brain -> decode using speech? Is this something I should get checked out?

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I remember when I first started working at Bell Labs, way way back in 1978, I had just got my MSEE and had the world by the tail. But there was some old timers there that, I learned to really respect. They spoke more slowly than I did and sometimes stumbled a little. But, man, the knowledge there! It is something that stuck with me over the years.

Now, I am, I guess one of those old timers. But, I am pretty lucky to work with a lot great people and I try to remember that experience of mine and relate to some of the younger people that are a little quicker than me on some things. I feel that, I provide a lot of value still, and, I get feedback from a lot of younger people that helps confirm that for me.

I would advise, to try to convey your wisdom, don't try to mimic being young, be you, slower, but wiser perhaps. You have valuable experience, offer that for what it is worth and do not worry if you cannot find the perfect word or phrase, just share your knowledge, wisdom and experience.

As you gain evermore knowledge and experience, you have a greater quantity of material to draw upon. When explaining things you realize that there are related more basic facts that are also relevant and might be relevant or assist in clarifying what you are talking about.

As a former academic and lecturer, I find it very useful to write for specific audiences. After several revisions I narrow down to the best way to deliver specific nuggets of information in specific contexts. For example, communicating with researchers at a conference is very different to teaching the same topics to first year students.

Slow. Down.

I bet you're talking faster than realize.

I challenge you to do the following.

Before you even start breathing to speak, fully think what you're going to say in your mind. You'll think you'll speaking stupidly slow. So... I challenge you to record yourself doing this and watch it back. What you'll find is that you sound authoritative, like a professor.

The reality is that you have a massive amount of time to think before you speak. So even if you lose your train of thought mid- sentence, you have plenty of time to figure out what's going on and think about what to say next.

It depends on the audience. As a young developer, talking to the “old guys” could be somewhat intimidating. You haven’t proven yourself and worry about ruining what little credibility you may have. As your career progresses, and you become one of the new “old guys”, it’s talking to management that can derail you. I’ve seen two patterns here. The first is to talk to them as if they were your technical peer (usually they aren’t). If they fail to understand, it’s on them. The other approach is to tailor your explanation to the individual by watching for non-verbal cues, like the deer in the headlights look. You will necessarily stumble a bit in the process. Over time, you’ll learn the approach for each individual and how to infer the approach for new individuals. And then? Well, many of us become managers ourselves and slowly, though too fast, we are no longer peers but rather one of those people for whom the technical folks have to tailor the response. It can be challenging at times. But generally, I’ve not found it to be a “brain problem”, rather an experience problem.

I'm 61 and not interviewing. But I have started working with seniors online in Brisbane helping Mac users with their lived experience online. These are otherwise smart people, who just don't have the depth of keyboard time we do, and are drowning in the online world. "My daughter gave me this mac. how do I drive it and why do I have so many pole-dancers as friends in facebook..." conversations.

I have exactly this problem you describe. I have a sold causal chain of reasoning why I want them to learn to use keyboard accellerator commands and not the touchpad (which they look at, because they lack confidence) and I have solid reasons why I want them to run backups, and not just yank the USB disk, and when it comes to explaining it, I get tongue tied. And I hasten to add I am anything BUT tonguetied most of the time.

Something about the situation demands I try harder: present real, understandable, plain english reasoning why I think they should do these things. It's hard. I can't just jargon my way out. I am reaching for the word-expressions of the brilliant Ideas I have "inside"

Overall I find adjectives and adverbs don't help. "its better" isn't a good reason to do something. "It will interfere less with your real goal" is closer, but I stumble over the fact "this is just how I do it, and so I can help you better if you do it the way I do it" is sometimes the key drive.

(not the USB unplugging. They need to learn that)

Stress can cause a breakdown in the functions like sentence construction. You need to practice, so you don't need to use so much of the awesome brain power you have, to emit the words. You know what helps? Talking to yourself, and reading aloud. Become more fluent, by speaking. Learn the cadence of your own voice. Write things down, and read them back and then try writing NOTES and reading back the expanded version.

You will (ok, you may) find it gets easier with practice.

IF you watch any true crime, people in police interview do not speak fluently usually. They're maximally stressed. it shows in how they articulate. Every word has to be judged for its future probitive impact. if I say "I don't THINK I stabbed him " what is the value of THINK in that sentence...

In my case, I blame the habit of mimicking Beavis and Butt-Head as a teenager.

Sounds like a way around the problems you describe might be to use shorter sentences and engage in small conversations as you follow the STAR [1] format -- not to attempt to answer it all in one go.

Also, asking for verification that your listener understands the same thing as you thought you said as you go will increase your confidence, and likely reduce the occurrence of these stumblings.

I blame the isolation of pandemic for people getting out of the habit of these interactions, and causing such stumblings to be more noticable.

I am not a doctor and this is just my opinion, etc

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_task,_action,_resul...

I am learning at 50 I actually do not say at times what I think I have said. As humans, we are not perfect.

I listen to people more now and talk less. Don't try so hard. Keep 'eloquent' for your coding. Go for friendly with your language. Say what needs to be said and look at people when you are talking to them.

Used to! So I just decided to practice explaining things in my head while alone. Helped a lot.

Perhaps writing, e.g. a blog post, will further help.

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