I am a slow thinker but learnt a trick early on from an American girl I met in a bar: she said that a lot of Americans think and are perceived as quick thinkers but often it's not the case: they just don't stop talking. And if you keep talking, about whatever (no one listens anyway), indeed you get ahead. I met that girl when I was 19, now i'm 50 and still it works well in social settings. People like me at parties as just blabber on wherever you put me. But when you ask me a question about math or software, I am quiet for too long, which makes me better at those than many I think as I see many of my colleages just blabber on about those things too and, while seemingly quick, they are often very wrong and shouldve kept their mouth shut.

▲

e40 2 days ago | parent [-]

As an American I see this a lot (talking to fill the spaces), and it’s really irritating. I have family members who do it, and it’s really hard to have meaningful conversations with them. My relationship with them suffers, too. One of them chastised me once for not sharing information about myself, my reply was “every time I start to you change the subject” … that was met with stunned silence. It got marginally better after but reverted to the mean fairly quickly.

Listening is a great skill to have.

	▲	anonzzzies 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I fully agree, but some people are attracted to this space filling 'switched on' (it's not, I am thinking about something completely different and just generating random output with the speech center of my brain) peolple; it's some kind of a hack to be 'liked' and 'thought off as being a fast thinker'. I never use it with friends or colleagues. But it works very well in interviews, parties, social gatherings, VCs etc.
	▲	bluGill a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I sometimes have to yell "shut up" when this gets too much for me. I can't get a word in because they are filling space (sometimes complaining that I don't talk enough).