Talk To Yourself

Talking to yourself has several benefits. First, it forces you to process information in a different way. Perhaps you have a picture in your head of what you mean; putting it into words can draw your attention to details that you otherwise might overlook.

Second, talking to yourself helps you to remember things. A simple, “I’m putting the keys on the table near the door,” can help you remember where your keys are. I recently found myself in one city with an airplane ticket home from another city. I found a friendly airline agent who helped me change tickets at not cost. While I was waiting I said to myself, “Her surname is So and So, but she doesn’t look like one. And her first name is the same as that woman’s.” The next day when I was to leave the airline said they wouldn’t honor my ticket, since it was from another city. I explained that Ms. So and So said… It was clear that if I had just said, “Some agent said…” that they wouldn’t have honored the ticket, but because I new the agent’s name, which I had memorized by accident, they honored the ticket.

Third, research on problem solving shows that if you talk out loud when working on a problem, particularly a complex problem, then you solve the problem more quickly. Japanese math classrooms, for example, are very noisy. All of the kids talk out loud while working. In comparison with their American counterparts, these kids score on average 25% higher.