We have the capacity for about 1.6 human conversations, so if you're listening to one conversation particularly, you're only left with 0.6 for your inner voice that helps you write.
— Julian Treasure
We spend all our time teaching reading and writing. We spend absolutely no time at all, in most schools, teaching either speaking or, more importantly still, listening.
I'm totally obsessed with sound. It's my life.
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.
Ears are made not for hearing but for listening. Listening is an active skill, whereas hearing is passive. Listening is something that we have to work at - it's a relationship with sound. And yet, it's a skill that none of us are taught.
We vote for politicians with lower voices, it's true, because we associate depth with power and with authority.
The human voice: It's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably. It's the only one that can start a war or say 'I love you.' And yet many people have the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them.
You are one-third as productive in open-plan offices as in quiet rooms. I have a tip for you: if you work in spaces like that, carry headphones with you, with a soothing sound like birdsong. Put them on, and your productivity goes back up to triple what it would be.
There are just huge benefits to come from designing for the ears in our health care.
You can detect a hostile listening or a bored listening or a tired listening or an excited and engaged listening.
It's a common mistake to speak the same to everybody. We all have different filters.
Not even a woman cannot understand two people talking at the same time.
Men tend to listen in what I call a reductive way, which is to say for a point, for a solution. You know, we like to have a problem and solve it. Bang. Thank you very much. On to the next thing.
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.
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.
Your ears are always on - you have no ear lids. They work even when you sleep.
I think absolute honesty may not be what we want. I mean, 'My goodness, you look ugly this morning.' Perhaps that's not necessary.
Sound is complex; there are many countervailing influences. It can be a bit like a bowl of spaghetti: sometimes you just have to eat it and see what happens.
If you're listening consciously, you can take control of the sound around you. It's good for your health and for your productivity. If we all do that, we move to a state that I like to think will be sound living in the world.
Sound affects us physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally all the time. The sound around us is affecting us even though we're not conscious of it.
Listening is a crucial aspect of democracy. Listening creates understanding, and understanding permits one of the most important things about every democracy, which is civilized disagreement.
We move through soundscapes all the time, and most of them are accidental - a by-product. Most retail soundscapes are accidental, incongruent with the brands, and mostly hostile.
There's a lot of research now showing that noise, and the lack of quiet working space, is one of the biggest issues for all office workers.
I would suggest that our listening is the main way that we experience the flow of time from past to future.
The trouble with listening is that so much of what we hear is noise, surrounding us all the time.
The Hindus say, 'Nada brahma,' one translation of which is, 'The world is sound.' And in a way, that's true, because everything is vibrating.
My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative, and it's hard to listen. I remember one day, I said to her, 'It's October 1 today,' and she said, 'I know, isn't it dreadful?' It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
Music is the most powerful sound there is, often inappropriately deployed. It's powerful for two reasons: you recognize it fast, and you associate it very powerfully.
Some of my best friends are architects. And they definitely do have ears. But I think sometimes they don't use them when they're designing buildings.
We're designing environments that make us crazy. And it's not just our quality of life which suffers. It's our health, our social behavior, and our productivity as well.
For the great speakers, it's all about the audience. And the feeling they have is that they're giving a gift, of maybe knowledge or inspiration or motivation.
