One Communication Lesson I Learned from Stanford

And How Scientists Are Creating Friendship Formulas

Author

Chris Miller
June 21, 2023

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Read Time: 3 minutes

Hello! & welcome to another day of opportunity where scientists are working in labs to create a friendship formula 🧬 

Let’s get straight to it. Here’s what’s on the menu today:

🧬 One scientific manual to make friends

📽️ A trick I learned from Stanford

💡 A story about listening and hearing

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🧬 A scientific manual to make friends

In 2018, The Atlantic published an article that proposed an outline of what it takes to make a friend. This article, which cited research by one of my favorite social researchers, Dr. Jeff Hall, stated that the average American was losing friends and confidants.

Well - how do we make friends? According to this article, it takes you:

  • 50 hours of socializing to go from acquaintance to casual friend

  • an additional 40 hours to go from casual friend to real friend

  • and then, an additional 100 hours to become a close friend!

While this seems like A LOT, it’s important to note that there are a TON of variables at play.

📽️ A trick I learned from Stanford

Structuring information increases processing fluency. People retain information 40% more reliably when it’s presented in a structure. For instance:

  • Problem → solution → benefit

  • What → so what? → now what?

Using structures will give you a pathway to follow as a speaker and they’re helpful for the audience because they’re intuitive.

It is a good idea to memorize a few structures so that you can use them as speaking templates, especially if you’re put on the spot and you’re unable to prepare!

The video is long, but I linked the clip to start at a short section explaining the importance of using structures. If you have the time, I’d recommend adding this whole video to your list because it’s full of gems.

💡 Listening is different than hearing

Let’s imagine two characters, Julia 🙍🏼‍♀️ and Lucy 👩🏾‍🦳.

  • Julia had a tough day at work and she wanted to process it with someone so she called Lucy.

  • Lucy, also had a tough day, so she put Julia on speaker, muted her end, and walked away from the phone.

  • Lucy could still hear everything Julia was saying, but she was only listening for when Julia was going to stop talking because then she’d need to run to the phone.

Oftentimes in conversation, we do a lot of hearing yet little listening.

👨‍💻 I Got You Covered!

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Thanks for reading.

See you next time!

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