Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

Even the mindset of how do I be funny is not correct.

The goal is how do I be optimally interested in the other person?

How do we together find the fun?

Not how do I be funny?

And

every person on the earth is the ultimate source of being.

Everyone has so many lived experiences that you can learn from, everyone.

And they are just like an endless font of things to be discovered through question asking.

There's really nice research on conversational endings that has come to light in the last five years.

When you think of conversation as this almost impossible to solve coordination problem, the final coordination decision is when to leave.

It's why it always feels so awkward and weird because I can't possibly know when you want to be done.

You can't know when I need to be done or want to be done.

So we just need to get comfortable with the fact that like you're never going to get it right.

Nobody knows when to end a conversation.

Most people are always going to be dissatisfied.

They might've wanted it to be longer.

They might've wanted it to be shorter.

So embracing and accepting that awkwardness, that difficulty, just saying, nobody knows.

We're just going to say, this was great.

I loved it.