Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

You could even say, chat TPT, what do you think this colleague who doesn't really like me because of this reason, we got in an argument once about this thing and now they're mad at me.

What would they want me to do?

What would they want to talk about with me, if anything?

It's wild.

Yeah, so A is for asking.

Okay.

Yeah, ask more questions, ask better questions.

You're already a great question answer.

I mean, look, you've prepped topics.

Yes.

And you're asking so many questions.

We're already off to a great start, Mel.

So what's so funny is a pattern that you might pick up on here is that in every conversation, once you're in it, it's very overwhelming.

You're making tons of choices.

You're trying to listen to what the other person is saying.

You're trying to process it.

You're trying to do this tiny creativity task of how do I come up with something interesting to say back to them?

That's really hard on your brain.

That's a lot of cognitive effort.

So anything you can do ahead of the conversation like topic prep is helpful.