Have you ever been talking to someone and notice they’re not really listening so much as waiting for their turn to talk? It’s pretty frustrating and it can make you feel unimportant.

There’s a difference between listening and waiting to talk.

Some people just want someone to be their sounding board and they feign interest only in as much as it gives them an audience.

It’s easy to spot in real life, but what we don’t realize is that we’re often doing this with our content. We’re just talking about whatever we want to talk about and hoping people care. Sometimes they do and we’re happy, other times they don’t and we’re sad.

But there’s a more intentional way to go about it. I call it reading minds.