
The Church of Interruption - scribu
https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html
======
sgentle
I've noticed a pretty heinous conversational pattern develop out of
interruption sometimes.

In theory, the best way to conduct a church-of-interruption exchange of ideas
is big-endian: you begin by summarising your idea and only then flesh out the
details. That way if your conclusion is understood you find out as quickly as
possible.

Unfortunately, if your conversational partner tends to interrupt incorrectly
or in bad faith, the better strategy is little-endian: you craft your idea in
such a way that it can't be understood until you've finished talking, and is
thus uninterruptible. In extreme cases, you can even make the sentence not
parse until the final word.

Big-endian: "I don't like sand. It's coarse, rough, irritating and it gets
everywhere."

Little-endian: "You know what's coarse, rough, irritating and gets everywhere?
Sand. I don't like it."

Little-endian (parser pipeline stall edition): "What I don't like, because
it's coarse, rough, irritating, and gets everywhere, is sand."

~~~
mbar84
So jokes are Little-endian I guess.

~~~
TuringTest
It makes sense. They say humour is based on creating expectations and solving
them suddenly.

~~~
JadeNB
> They say humour is based on creating expectations and solving them suddenly.

I don't know what it means to solve expectations; I'd guess it means to meet
them, but I've always understood part of the recipe for humour to be
_violating_ expectations.

------
novok
Sounds like 2 cultures, and the adaptive person realizes who they are speaking
to, and adapts to that culture to have better conversations.

I was raised as a 'civil' person, but learned that in some groups, you get a
better result & energy as an interrupter.

Another dynamic is high overt conflict & emotions vs low overt conflict &
emotions cultures. High overt will seem like they are arguing passionately
about something and they will never see each other again, and 10 minutes later
are having tea like it's no big deal, because the emotion level isn't really a
big deal to them. The same emotional display in a non-overt culture and you
can be fairly certain that the conflict is a a fairly big deal, and 10 minutes
later, it won't recover.

~~~
nemo1618
And bad things happen when the high/low wires get crossed. A high-overt
arguing with a low-overt often leads to confusion and resentment, because the
exchange was no big deal to the high-overt, but a hostile act to the low-
overt.

~~~
wool_gather
Yeah, this can unfortunately happen with almost any communication style
mismatch. The best advice anyone can follow is just, _start from an assumption
of good faith_.

I've seen it most bafflingly in a tech help forum I used to frequent: folks
coming for help would get really miffed at requests for
clarification/expansion from the people who were trying to help. Probably some
of those requests should have been worded better -- less terse, a little more
"friendly"? -- but I never really understood the starting point of "anything
other than an answer to my post is rude" that seemed to come up over and over.

------
otikik
I'm a Meek and one of the strategies I have developed for dealing with more
interrupt-based communicators is to rely on an asynchronous, written medium.
Be it slack, a shared google drive doc, whatever. "Hey, can we have a meeting
to discuss X" will often be answered by "here's my written opinion on X and
the different options I see. If you still think we need to meet, here's my
availability". If this doesn't remove the meeting completely, it allows you to
prepare and state your opinion in advance.

Some people don't like it. It's easier to do when you are remote with a
significant time difference.

~~~
bartread
This is a valid approach, but it does have a problem: it can lead to long back
and forth messaging/email exchanges, including lengthy messages.

I don't, generally, have time to write long messages, nor (often) to read
them, so as soon as I see this happening I've started to point out the
behaviour and set up a short meeting to resolve whatever the issues are.

~~~
atq2119
Maybe those short meetings loose some of the nuance of the longer written
discussion and lead to worse decisions.

I'm reminded of Amazon's supposed culture of well-written memos ahead of
meetings.

------
kerkeslager
This is a very compassionate take. I generally find that anything sufficiently
complex can't be communicated with constant interruption, which limits
communicating with interrupters to the point that I don't care to do it. I
like to think I can handle myself in social situations where there's an
interrupter present, but if someone interrupts me frequently I'll usually not
go out of my way to interact with that person.

There are many cases where the attributes I find most intolerable in others
are actually the attributes I find most intolerable in myself, and this is
one. What it comes down to for me is that as a kid I was praised a lot for my
intelligence so I subconsciously see intelligence as my social value, so my
tendency is to always be trying to show how intelligent I am as a social
proof. Among the many frustrating habits that come out of this is interrupting
to show I've understood something quickly. I've gotten a lot better about this
over the years, but still catch myself doing it sometimes. So I appreciate the
author's compassionate view.

------
dustinls
This falls apart when you have an interrupter who thinks they know everything,
but really doesn't have a clue.

They don't let you explain critical detail about something because 'they got
it they got it' and when they inevitably screw up its your fault for not
explaining it right.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
Or interrupters who interrupt not to complete your thought, but to say
whatever they don't want to wait their turn to say.

~~~
Bekwnn
That seems to fall under "Barkers"

~~~
mannykannot
The distinction between interrupters and barkers is more of a slippery slope
than a sharp divide.

~~~
entropicdrifter
You could say that about the distinctions between most groups of humans.
There's almost always overlap/normal distribution

------
mirimir
I'm an interrupter, by nature. And I also have a tendency to talk when I'm
nervous. As TFA says, I'm fine with other interrupters. We have great
conversations. We start finishing each others thoughts. But otherwise, not so
great.

Probably the best insight that I got from group therapy was being told that I
needed to learn when to shut up. So I've learned to be adaptive. And when I'm
nervous, I've learned to draw people out.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Do you ever stop thinking about what you're about to say and instead focus on
how your audience is reacting to what you just said? I find watching peoples'
faces and any cues that reveal their emotion helps me gauge whether or not I'm
having a "not so great" conversation, which allows me to be less interrupt-y
and more of a listener.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, I do that constantly. I tried direct sales for a while, and one of my
long-term jobs involved public speaking. So I've had some training.

Also, and maybe this will seem strange, I often feel like I'm just pretending
to be a "normal person".

------
rgoulter
This also supports that: if person A has the expectation "they'll
interrupt/reply once they understand" and B has the expectation "let the
speaker finish", this leads to A rambling. (A has no indication that things
were understood).

~~~
Cthulhu_
I think in a lot of situations there needs to be one of the parties that
steers the conversation a bit - interrupt themselves or the other party if
they're going on a tangent. It takes some time and practice but it will pay
off in the end.

------
jamesblonde
I am an interrupter living in a land of strong civility. Self-awareness will
bring you a bit of the way to fitting in, but I am always known as an
interrupter. Tbh, i haven't changed entirely, because we have a startup, and
my opinion is that strong civility is not always the most effective
communication pattern when stuff needs to get done now. Strong civility works
great where you have longer term plans and people who stick to them and
resources. Startups don't have much of that.

------
knzhou
Beyond just interrupting or not, there are norms in conservational turn taking
that vary between languages, cultures, and individuals, which are well studied
by linguists.

One example is the use of pauses. To me, in casual conversation, pausing for
half a second cedes the floor, and pausing for two seconds means we're done
with a topic. But I had a friend who would always pause for two seconds before
saying anything at all. Neither of us interrupted, but there were still
constant collisions.

------
forgingahead
Sounds like every bloody "interviewer" in the West now -- interrupting people
whilst they're speaking, loudly assuming the worst possible characterisation
of what was said (or flatly misrepresenting what was said), and going off on a
tangent to promote their own agenda/viewpoint to anyone unfortunate enough
trying to follow along.

------
vemv
Pro tip: as you speak, after each message (sentence, couple of sentences) make
sure your interlocutor understood that part - verbally or not.

It's not the same as using short sentences - personally I don't expect/allow
to be interrupted (my friends know me for that).

By ensuring your messages are understood, you also make sure you are having an
actual conversation, and not a mutual brain dump (which tends to lead to
having a strawman POV of each other's point).

------
psim1
“...if I don’t signal my understanding in the same way you do – you’ll just
keep talking, imagining I don’t get it.”

I like to hear someone's thought and then digest on it. If my partner in
conversation just keeps on re-explaining his or her thoughts, thinking is
halted. I have to keep on filtering what is said, even if it's basically the
same thing repeated, to make sure I didn't miss something. The end result is
that my partner speaks three or four times as much as he or she needs to, and
I am left understanding less than if the thought was said to me once with a
little time to think afterward.

------
andrewstuart
I feel like I'm getting worse at communicating as I get older.

My former partner kept telling me I don't listen.

Which resulted in my thinking "What, what does that even mean?".

To this day I am still trying to learn how to listen.

I am also very much aware I am an interrupter. I know how bad this is and even
so it is still hard to stop.

I also interrupt when I am excited and enthusiastic and when I like the person
I am talking to.

I think the two are connected. One is less inclined to interrupt if one is
actually truly listening.

Interrupters aren't having a conversation with you. They are having a
conversation with themselves and not listening, just waiting to talk.

~~~
jacobolus
“You’re not listening” often means something like “I am feeling some strong
emotion (anger, frustration, sadness, ...) but you are not validating my
feelings, and that lack of validation itself feels like rejection.”

Even something as simple as echoing back someone’s statements, or saying “it
seems like you are feeling angry because ...” can make a large difference.
Once you have shown that you understand and can name or describe the person’s
feelings it is often much easier to discuss possible solutions to practical
problems. But if you jump straight to offering practical advice, that is often
unwelcome.

(Of course, it might sometimes literally mean “you’re not listening”, which
probably needs a different remedy.)

Let me recommend the book _How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids
Will Talk_ even if you never talk to kids.

------
niyaven
I believe that there is also cultural factor.

Some are famous for interrupting often (in France for instance), whilst for
others it is the opposite. It can also be related to the language, e.g. in
German or Japanese the verb is at the end of the sentence. Because of that,
one need at least to wait for the person to finish the sentence to understand
it.

That being said, you surely find German interrupters, and French adepts of the
Strong Civility, but maybe in different proportions.

------
lbj
I'll be honest, I disengage from interrupters almost immediately. They
consistently miss the point in their eager to hear their own shallow thoughts.
Its boring.

~~~
alecmg
But at least they show early that they missed the point and let you catch it
early and explain better.

Instead of politely listening and after you finish ask what does the first
thing (vital to understanding the whole speech) even mean.

~~~
fogetti
So basically they are forcing the speaker to explain the same thing as they
would have continued anyway, plus they even force the same speakers to fix the
interrupters' mistakes in their thinking. Why is that good?

~~~
lbj
You're exactly on point, and your 1:1 exchange here demonstrates the principle
of shallow thoughts perfectly.

------
alex_young
I'm more interested in the Cult of Listening.

First you listen and really try to understand not only the what but why from
the person you're having a conversation with.

Then you paraphrase what you heard back to make sure you understand and that
they can hear it back and agree.

If you do these two things you'll find that most people are actually pretty
reasonable and you can in turn have a reasoned and listened to response and,
shockingly, a real conversation.

~~~
Cthulhu_
That's a really important skill to have really; in software development
there's a huge ego culture going on, people having their own opinions and
clinging to them. But the path to maturity and / or seniority involves opening
up to other people's opinions, truly understanding them instead of just
pushing your own through. Active listening (which is what you're describing
there) is a huge part of it. You can't argue with someone if you're not
willing to listen in the first place.

------
quickthrower2
Some people keep talking for a long time unless interrupted. They might even
go in an infinite loop, reconfirming what they already said! For such people,
while normally meek I force myself to interrupt!

~~~
Cthulhu_
Yup, and it's absolutely fine to do so - however, you also need them to
understand what they're doing themselves, give them some advice on how to
communicate more effectively. As another commenter pointed out, some people
talk a lot because they're nervous, because they are afraid if they stop
talking they won't get another say in a matter. They need coaching,
reassurance, etc as well.

~~~
quickthrower2
Absolutely. I should also mention I don’t get angry with them, I appreciate
they have a different style of communication.

------
GitRHero
Wow, what a trip to see this name at the top of HN. The author was a good
friend of mine in high school, and one of my favorite people I've ever known.
If you're reading this, Sam, I hope you're doing well.

~~~
soneca
Made me curious: was he an interruptor in high school?

------
jyriand
I often feel the urge to interrupt, just to get thing moving faster, but I
don't want to be the smart-ass who is always interrupting with "I know, I
know". So often times I pretend that the presented information is new to me
and give the other person a chance to shine. It's not always easy and here and
there I blurt out "I know", because I feel that they must be thinking that I'm
dumb, or because I don't want to give them the pleasure of being the first
person who enlightened me about this thing. But there is some upside to
playing dumb: after he has finished talking, you can comment about the subject
with some unexpected wisdom, as if you just came up with it.

I don't mind if people interrupt me, as long as they stick to the subject at
hand. But I hate when someone just cut's me off mid sentence and starts
talking about some totally unconnected stuff. I usually see the interruption
coming. They nod impatiently and I see that their mouth is already preparing
the sentence, waiting for a brief pause in my flow, not hearing a single word
I'm saying.

------
rhizome
I don't agree that Strong Civility requires speaking only briefly. In fact, it
makes me think someone who thinks that is just barely suppressing their
interruption. "I'll wait until you finish...for a minute."

No, taking turns speaking is its own reward, just like speeding a conversation
along via interruptions is _it 's_ own reward.

~~~
jacobolus
It’s less about speaking briefly per se, and more about assuming that the
other person understands what you are saying, and saying no more than
necessary to convey the message. Some people will keep elaborating some point
until told to stop, whereas others will assume the other person understood
without any explicit evidence that is true.

I have found that in practice whether speakers assume their listeners
understand them is a separate question from whether they tend to interrupt or
not, however.

The most efficient and effective conversations in my experience are 1:1, with
two speakers who both explicitly verify that the other person understands
their meaning and is using the same definitions of words, and have some kind
of efficient protocol for working backwards from a misunderstanding or gap in
knowledge as soon as one pops up. There has to be enough trust involved that
both interlocutors are willing to quickly and freely admit when they don’t
know something or don’t understand an argument.

~~~
Swizec
I had a team mate once who would go on and on and on explaining the same point
over and over and elaborating a million different ways and it was extremely
frustrating because not once would there ever be a break in his speech to give
others the chance to ask questions (so he'd explain what we actually didn't
understand) or to reply and move the conversation along. It was quite
frustrating.

Many of us resorted to talking over him until he noticed, stopped, and let us
reply. Surprisingly impervious to interruption.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
I had a similar coworker. Worse still because they were a junior who couldn't
yield the floor to anyone, regardless of seniority. Their eyes would become a
little bewildered as anyone talked over them (read as 'everyone') and they
never seemed to grasp what was happening. This piece gives me a better model
for understanding them; just a lost soul deep in the church of civility to the
point of affliction.

~~~
switchbak
Aren't you saying they're someone who won't yield until they've said their
peace? That doesn't sound like the church of civility to me, but more like the
rarer "interrupts, but doesn't want to be interrupted" (Barker) style.

Combined with their lack of experience, I can imagine that would be
frustrating to be around.

------
jay_kyburz
I'm an interrupter, and so are many of my colleagues, but there are a few
people in the office who are not, and they don't enjoy our meetings.

~~~
dbcurtis
And just hazarding a guess, I suspect women transfer out of the group at the
first opportunity.

~~~
closeparen
Alice makes a multipart statement about topics one and two.

Bob replies to topic two and starts to segue to topic three.

Carol has something important to say about topic one.

What is Carol supposed to do? Let the entire chain play out, then transition
back to topic one when there's an opening? I know people can be bitter about
interruption, but in my experience you get a prompt and decisive smackdown for
trying to backtrack, especially when pressed for time. It seems important to
get your point in _while it 's relevant_. Interruption of the form, "hey,
before we move on, can we talk about X" seems to be the way do that.

How would you handle this situation?

I'm especially interested in this, because interruption and other
conversational "traffic control" flow much less naturally on international
video conferences, and our remote meetings tend to be stressful and chaotic
messes. Short of a formal, parliamentarian moderator, it's not clear how to
make these better.

~~~
dwd
Carol has to let it go. Worst thing to do is interrupt the current flow. She
will come across as a "Barker" like she had sat there not listening to what
Alice or Bob had to say and was just thinking about what she wanted to say
about topic one the whole time.

Best thing to do is wait until the end and circle back with a question that
leads into discussing topic one. Doing this you immediately relinquish control
of the conversation, and when appropriate say your thoughts.

Otherwise, just let it go. Is it going to kill you to not say it?

I read a good summary once of analysing the thought process:

\- Does this need to be said?

\- Does this need to be said by me?

\- Does this need to be said by me now?

Which are good questions to ask when interrupting the flow of a conversation.

~~~
fogetti
Your view is extremely simplistic and just doesn't reflect the sophistication
of any abstract and complex conversation.

Especially if the topic at hand is a new territory with a lot of unknown
unknowns. If no-one ever explicitly says that "OK, we covered topic one and
now we move on to topic two. Is there anyone who wants to add comments?", then
the conversation was not very civil, was not yet over, and whoever organized
the meeting was an amateur, and let the worst thing happen: Alice and Bob
change topics for no reason, instead of stopping them short.

~~~
dwd
You're reading a lot into what was a fairly simple scenario with no mention of
what the topics were. It came across as being an informal meeting with no
agenda, moderator or stated outcomes.

About all we can assume from the scenario are the power dynamics. Alice spoke
first which says it's either her meeting or she is the ranking person there -
not Carol.

If it was a meeting to address the potential critical failure of a system that
Carol is the most knowledgeable about, then yes, she should speak up. It could
be potentially negligent to not do so, but most meetings are not that.

------
zzmp
This is beautifully written.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
The use of dialogue to illustrate the point was great.

~~~
fenomas
One suspects the author is a big fan of _Gödel Escher Bach_.

------
dpc_pw
When talking, I feel like a CPU waiting for DRAM reads all the time. "Gee...
why is this going so slow?!" Anything that can speed things up is appreciated.
Talk fast, interrupt me, let me interrupt, fill the gaps, ask what you don't
understand, point what I got wrong, and lets complete this data transmission
as soon as possible.

~~~
draugadrotten
Interrupting when talking is simply the human equivalent of XON/XOFF flow
control in RS232. Some humans are not capable of such software flow control
and need the human RTS / CTS handshake which is probably body language. And
then other humans simply don't have flow control enabled. At all.

~~~
dpc_pw
I love this metaphor. :)

------
noway421
Most annoying to me, from the top of my head, is when you are trying to find a
word to say, and your interlocutor finishes your sentence with a word which is
sort of fits in, but not the one you had in mind.

I'm not sure I'm all that against interrupters, and I think I can handle them
and can sort of be one myself, but it is surely exhausting.

------
PhasmaFelis
Excited conversations between geeks tend to ramble a lot with a lot of
interruptions, and while everyone's having fun, many conversational threads
get abandoned as people get drawn into the new topic and forget what they were
planning to say.

I invented conversation queues for me and my friends. Whenever someone is
inspired to tangent onto a new topic, they interrupt only long enough to point
at me and say a word or two, which I write down. The next time there's a lull
in conversation, I announce the next topic in the queue and cross it off, and
the person who inserted it gets to expound.

It seems to work really well, and the list can get quite long with a few hours
over coffee or beer.

------
paulsutter
I’ve noticed this can happen in Slack. I see someone is typing - and because I
assume it’s a full duplex channel, I start typing too while I wait for their
answer. And they stop typing. When I delete what I began to type, they resume.

------
joosters
The article talks about interrupters, but I think it confuses two types of
them: People who interrupt to say their piece, and people who interrupt to
complete the other person’s sentence.

Both are annoying, but people who complete others’ sentences are IMO worse:
it’s a way of showing that you don’t care what the other person thinks,
especially when the interrupter guesses wrong and the speaker has to out-talk
them in order to get their actual words in.

~~~
Cthulhu_
That's definitely a distinction to make. The person completing the sentence
will feel - or emit the feeling - that they get what you mean already but the
speaker is being too slow. In a case like that it's important for the speaker
to be assertive and raise their hand, mention the other person's behaviour and
finish the sentence themselves. Like a sharp callout of the other person's
behaviour, a meta-statement about what is happening. Just pointing it out is
already enough for a lot of people. That will cost some extra energy though,
because you're not just talking about subject x, but you're also mindful of
your own and others' behaviour in a conversation.

------
imhelpingu
Or everyone could just stop being a little bitch about everything 24/7.

