5 ways to listen better | Julian Treasure | TED

Summary

This talk explores the art of listening, highlighting our diminished ability to truly hear and understand what we're exposed to. The speaker discusses the importance of conscious listening for personal growth and societal connection, noting how modern distractions have eroded this skill. Offering practical exercises like silence, sound awareness, and listening positions, the speaker encourages us to rediscover the power of listening to foster a more connected and peaceful world.

Takeaways

• 👂 Listening is a crucial part of communication, yet we retain only 25% of what we hear.
• 🔍 We use techniques like pattern recognition and differencing to extract meaning from sound.
• 🎶 Sound helps us understand our environment through its patterns and differences, even in noisy situations.
• 📚 The advent of recording technologies has diminished the need for careful listening, impacting our ability to listen attentively.
• 🌐 Our modern noisy world can make it difficult to focus on listening, leading to a preference for sound bites over oratory.
• 🎧 Many people use headphones to create personal sound bubbles, reducing the shared experience of listening.
• 📉 The constant bombardment of loud media has desensitized us, making it harder to appreciate quieter, subtler sounds.
• 🧘‍♂️ Listening is essential for understanding and connection, and a lack of it can lead to a frightening lack of empathy and understanding.
• 🤔 The speaker suggests five exercises to improve conscious listening: silence, the mixer, savoring, listening positions, and the RASA acronym.
• 📈 Practicing these exercises can enhance our listening skills, potentially leading to a more connected, understanding, and peaceful world.
• 🌟 The speaker passionately advocates for the teaching of listening as a skill in schools to prevent a decline in our ability to connect and understand each other.

Q & A

What percentage of communication time is spent listening, according to the speaker?

The speaker states that we spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening.

How much of what we hear do we typically retain?

The speaker mentions that we retain just 25 percent of what we hear.

What does the speaker define listening as?

Listening is defined by the speaker as making meaning from sound, a mental process of extraction.

What is one technique we use to distinguish noise from signal?

One technique mentioned by the speaker is pattern recognition, particularly recognizing our own name in a noisy environment.

What is 'differencing' and how does it relate to listening?

Differencing is a technique where we listen to differences and discount sounds that remain the same, helping us focus on new or changing sounds.

What role do filters play in our listening process?

Filters help us to go from all sound to what we pay attention to, often unconsciously creating our reality by determining what we focus on.

Why did the speaker say we are losing our ability to listen?

The speaker suggests that the invention of recording technologies, a noisy world, personal sound bubbles created by headphones, and a preference for sound bites are contributing to the decline in our listening skills.

What is the importance of intention in listening, as mentioned by the speaker?

Intention in listening, such as the speaker's promise to his wife to listen to her every day as if for the first time, is important as it sets a goal for conscious and attentive listening in relationships.

How does sound help us understand our surroundings in terms of space and time?

Sound helps us understand our surroundings by giving us cues about the size of a space through reverberation and the number of people around us through micro-noises. It also embeds time, allowing us to experience the flow from past to future.

What are the five exercises the speaker suggests to improve conscious listening?

The five exercises are: 1) silence for three minutes a day, 2) 'the mixer' to identify individual sound channels, 3) 'savoring' mundane sounds, 4) changing listening positions to suit what is being listened to, and 5) using the RASA acronym (Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask) in communication.

Why does the speaker believe that teaching listening in schools is crucial?

The speaker believes that teaching listening in schools is crucial because conscious listening is essential for full, connected living, understanding each other, and spiritual connection, which are all fundamental for a world of peace and understanding.

Outlines

00:00

👂 The Art of Listening

This paragraph discusses the importance of listening and our current inability to do it effectively. It defines listening as a mental process of extracting meaning from sound and describes techniques such as pattern recognition and differencing that help us focus on relevant sounds. The speaker also touches on the impact of technology and noise on our listening skills, leading to a decline in our ability to concentrate and understand. The paragraph concludes with the speaker's intention to improve his own listening skills and the idea that sound is integral to our perception of space and time.

05:01

🎶 Enhancing Conscious Listening

The second paragraph presents a passionate call to action for improving our listening skills. It begins with a personal confession of the speaker's love for mundane sounds, illustrating the beauty in everyday noise. The speaker then introduces several exercises to enhance conscious listening: embracing silence, practicing auditory awareness in noisy environments, savoring ordinary sounds, experimenting with different listening positions, and using the RASA acronym (Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask) for effective communication. The paragraph concludes with a plea to teach listening as a skill in schools and a vision of transforming the world into a more connected, understanding, and peaceful place through conscious listening.

Keywords

💡Listening

Listening is defined as the process of making meaning from sound, a crucial aspect of communication. In the video, it's highlighted that people spend a significant portion of their time listening but retain a mere 25% of what they hear, indicating a need to improve this skill. The script emphasizes the importance of conscious listening in creating understanding and connection among individuals.

💡Pattern Recognition

Pattern recognition is a technique used in listening to distinguish noise from meaningful signals, especially one's own name. The script uses the example of a cocktail party to illustrate how people can subconsciously pick out their name from a crowd, showing how this ability is integral to the process of listening and filtering out irrelevant sounds.

💡Differencing

Differencing is another listening technique mentioned in the script, which involves focusing on changes in sound rather than static, unchanging noises. The example of pink noise being played continuously is used to demonstrate how the human ear naturally tunes out constant sounds, emphasizing the importance of dynamic changes in auditory stimuli for effective listening.

💡Filters

Filters refer to the mental processes that help individuals select what they pay attention to from the vast array of sounds available. The script explains that most people are unaware of these filters, yet they significantly shape our reality by determining what we focus on. The concept is central to the theme of conscious listening and the need to be aware of and control these filters.

💡Intention

Intention, in the context of the video, is the commitment to listen actively and attentively, as exemplified by the speaker's promise to his wife. The script uses this concept to underscore the importance of a deliberate approach to listening, suggesting that a conscious intention to listen can enhance the quality of our interactions and relationships.

💡Sonority

Sonority is described as the combination of sound and meaning, encapsulated in the quote 'Sonority is time and meaning.' The script uses this term to convey the idea that sound is not just a physical phenomenon but also a carrier of significance and a medium through which we experience the passage of time.

💡Noise

Noise, in the script, refers to the overwhelming and distracting auditory and visual stimuli in the modern world that make it difficult to focus on listening. The term is used to illustrate the challenges of maintaining conscious listening in an environment filled with competing sounds and images.

💡Sound Bites

Sound bites are short, catchy phrases or statements designed to be easily digestible and memorable. The script critiques the shift from oratory to sound bites, suggesting that this trend contributes to a culture of impatience and superficial communication, detracting from the depth and quality of listening.

💡Desensitization

Desensitization is the process of becoming less responsive or sensitive to stimuli, such as media headlines that have to 'scream' to get attention. The script discusses how this phenomenon makes it harder for people to pay attention to subtle and understated messages, highlighting the impact on our ability to listen deeply and empathetically.

💡Conscious Listening

Conscious listening is the deliberate and focused act of paying attention to sound with the intent to understand and connect. The script emphasizes the importance of this practice for fostering understanding and connection, and as a countermeasure to the decline in listening skills due to modern distractions.

💡RASA

RASA, a Sanskrit term meaning 'juice' or 'essence,' is used as an acronym in the script for effective listening and communication: Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask. This acronym encapsulates a strategy for engaging in active and empathetic listening, which is presented as a tool for improving communication and understanding.

Highlights

We retain just 25 percent of what we hear, indicating a significant gap in our listening effectiveness.

Listening is defined as making meaning from sound, emphasizing its mental and extraction process nature.

Pattern recognition is a key technique in distinguishing noise from meaningful signals, especially our own name.

Differencing allows us to cease hearing constant sounds over time, highlighting our focus on changes in sound.

Filters unconsciously dictate what we pay attention to, shaping our reality by what we choose to listen to.

Intention in listening is crucial, as demonstrated by the speaker's commitment to listen to his wife as if for the first time every day.

Sound places us in both space and time, with reverberation and micro-noises informing us of our surroundings and the flow of time.

The invention of recording technologies has diminished the premium on accurate and careful listening.

The modern noisy world tires us, making it difficult to focus on listening and leading to a preference for sound bites over oratory.

Personal broadcasting is replacing the art of conversation, reflecting a shift away from active listening.

Desensitization to media requires sensational headlines to capture our attention, making it harder to focus on subtler sounds.

Conscious listening is essential for understanding, and its absence can lead to dire consequences.

Five exercises are suggested to improve conscious listening: silence, the mixer, savoring, listening positions, and the RASA acronym.

Silence for three minutes a day can recalibrate our ears to hear quiet sounds again.

The mixer exercise involves identifying individual sound channels in a noisy environment to enhance listening quality.

Savoring encourages appreciation of mundane sounds, revealing the 'hidden choir' in everyday life.

Listening positions allow for adjusting one's focus to different scales of sound, playing with our internal filters.

The RASA acronym (Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask) is a tool for effective communication and active listening.

The speaker advocates for teaching listening as a skill in schools to prevent a future where people do not listen to each other.

A call to action is made for the TED community to help teach listening in schools and transform the world into a more connected and peaceful place.

Transcripts

We are losing our listening.

We spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening,

but we're not very good at it.

We retain just 25 percent of what we hear.

Now -- not you, not this talk,

but that is generally true.

(Laughter)

Let's define listening as making meaning from sound.

It's a mental process,

and it's a process of extraction.

We use some pretty cool techniques to do this.

One of them is pattern recognition.

(Crowd noises) So in a cocktail party like this,

if I say, "David, Sara, pay attention" -- some of you just sat up.

We recognize patterns to distinguish noise from signal,

and especially our name.

Differencing is another technique we use.

If I left this pink noise on for more than a couple of minutes,

(Pink noise) you would literally cease to hear it.

We listen to differences; we discount sounds that remain the same.

And then there is a whole range of filters.

These filters take us from all sound

down to what we pay attention to.

Most people are entirely unconscious of these filters.

But they actually create our reality in a way,

because they tell us what we're paying attention to right now.

I'll give you one example of that.

Intention is very important in sound, in listening.

When I married my wife,

I promised her I would listen to her every day

as if for the first time.

Now that's something I fall short of on a daily basis.

(Laughter)

But it's a great intention to have in a relationship.

(Laughter)

But that's not all.

Sound places us in space and in time.

If you close your eyes right now in this room,

you're aware of the size of the room

from the reverberation and the bouncing of the sound off the surfaces;

you're aware of how many people are around you,

because of the micro-noises you're receiving.

And sound places us in time as well,

because sound always has time embedded in it.

In fact, I would suggest that our listening is the main way

that we experience the flow of time

from past to future.

So, "Sonority is time and meaning" -- a great quote.

I said at the beginning, we're losing our listening.

Why did I say that?

Well, there are a lot of reasons for this.

First of all, we invented ways of recording --

first writing, then audio recording and now video recording as well.

The premium on accurate and careful listening has simply disappeared.

Secondly, the world is now so noisy,

(Noise) with this cacophony going on visually and auditorily,

it's just hard to listen;

it's tiring to listen.

Many people take refuge in headphones,

but they turn big, public spaces like this,

shared soundscapes,

into millions of tiny, little personal sound bubbles.

In this scenario, nobody's listening to anybody.

We're becoming impatient.

We don't want oratory anymore; we want sound bites.

And the art of conversation is being replaced -- dangerously, I think --

by personal broadcasting.

I don't know how much listening there is in this conversation,

which is sadly very common, especially in the UK.

We're becoming desensitized.

Our media have to scream at us with these kinds of headlines

in order to get our attention.

And that means it's harder for us to pay attention

to the quiet, the subtle, the understated.

This is a serious problem that we're losing our listening.

This is not trivial,

because listening is our access to understanding.

Conscious listening always creates understanding,

and only without conscious listening

can these things happen.

A world where we don't listen to each other at all

is a very scary place indeed.

So I'd like to share with you five simple exercises,

tools you can take away with you,

to improve your own conscious listening.

Would you like that?

Audience: Yes!

Good. The first one is silence.

Just three minutes a day of silence is a wonderful exercise

to reset your ears and to recalibrate,

so that you can hear the quiet again.

If you can't get absolute silence,

go for quiet, that's absolutely fine.

Second, I call this "the mixer."

(Noise) So even if you're in a noisy environment like this --

and we all spend a lot of time in places like this --

listen in the coffee bar to how many channels of sound can I hear?

How many individual channels in that mix am I listening to?

You can do it in a beautiful place as well, like in a lake.

How many birds am I hearing?

Where are they? Where are those ripples?

It's a great exercise for improving the quality of your listening.

Third, this exercise I call "savoring," and this is a beautiful exercise.

It's about enjoying mundane sounds.

This, for example, is my tumble dryer.

(Dryer)

It's a waltz -- one, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three.

I love it!

Or just try this one on for size.

(Coffee grinder)

Wow!

So, mundane sounds can be really interesting --

if you pay attention.

I call that the "hidden choir" -- it's around us all the time.

The next exercise is probably the most important of all of these,

if you just take one thing away.

This is listening positions --

the idea that you can move your listening position

to what's appropriate to what you're listening to.

This is playing with those filters.

Remember I gave you those filters?

It's starting to play with them as levers,

to get conscious about them and to move to different places.

These are just some of the listening positions,

or scales of listening positions, that you can use.

There are many.

Have fun with that. It's very exciting.

And finally, an acronym.

You can use this in listening, in communication.

If you're in any one of those roles --

and I think that probably is everybody who's listening to this talk --

the acronym is RASA,

which is the Sanskrit word for "juice" or "essence."

And RASA stands for "Receive," which means pay attention to the person;

"Appreciate," making little noises like "hmm," "oh," "OK";

"Summarize" -- the word "so" is very important in communication;

and "Ask," ask questions afterwards.

Now sound is my passion, it's my life.

I wrote a whole book about it. So I live to listen.

That's too much to ask for most people.

But I believe that every human being needs to listen consciously

in order to live fully --

connected in space and in time to the physical world around us,

connected in understanding to each other,

not to mention spiritually connected,

because every spiritual path I know of has listening and contemplation

at its heart.

That's why we need to teach listening in our schools as a skill.

Why is it not taught? It's crazy.

And if we can teach listening in our schools,

we can take our listening off that slippery slope

to that dangerous, scary world that I talked about,

and move it to a place where everybody is consciously listening all the time,

or at least capable of doing it.

Now, I don't know how to do that,

but this is TED,

and I think the TED community is capable of anything.

So I invite you to connect with me, connect with each other,

take this mission out.

And let's get listening taught in schools,

and transform the world in one generation

to a conscious, listening world -- a world of connection,

a world of understanding

and a world of peace.

Thank you for listening to me today.

(Applause)