Listening Skills

Just how many people actually listen? 

To begin with, listening is not hearing. 

Listening is when you stop talking and pay attention to whoever to talking, and making sense of what the person is trying to express. There is no urgency to getting the person to complete the sentence, or there is no attempt to quickly form an impression or a solution for the person.

It's just plainly digesting what the person is trying to express. Period.

Many of us, me included, hears more than listen. We like to take every opportunity to rebute, or complete a sentence of another person. Or attempt to quickly dish out solutions for the person even without allowing the person to complete what he or she is trying to express. 

In our fast paced society, we have started to move and talk faster. Now we don't listen anymore, because listening takes much longer time. We just roughly 'listen' and when we think we already know, we start our own conclusions.

It's the same for emails. I have this serious problem of misinterpreting emails. My problem is scanning through email contents quickly and reply. My objective then was to get a mail replied. Now with this insight, I tell myself I must read carefully, pause and then reply to those official emails so as not to waste anyone's time trying to explain their content once more.

But of course, this only limits to those who words their content clearly. 

And writing and talking correctly, is of course, another issue altogether.