30 Days of Better Listening - 10 Years On

I'm sure we have all felt like we could improve our listening skills. I know this activity was a positive way for me to reset and focus on just that. Since then, I've been caught up in the day-to-day and promptly forgot most of these lessons. This will be a common theme with a lot of the experiences I will talk about in these reflections.

This Activity was based on a couple of Julian Treasure's TED Talks - you can read the outline of here. The bulk of it did come from his 5 ways to listen better talk though.

How this has evolved

This is a weird one, because my listening skills in relation to my work have significantly improved but I sometimes feel like my more casual listening skills have gotten worse. Of course, this makes complete sense once I look through the reflection sketchnote for this activity.

See, graphic scribing requires highly focused listening. But it's more about listening for synthesis to convert the messages and ideas into a poster. Whereas, the more casual listening skills are still very open to distractions and other noises.

All this is to say that I realise I need to focus more in casual conversations - especially focus on removing distractions. It will probably be good for me to be a little bit more intentional about the soundscape I usually work in - my home. I spend a lot of time in silence when my work involves writing and comprehension, but I probably allow too many random podcasters into my space when I'm drawing and creating. Something to think about, as I might be introducing too many distractions that I end up blocking out anyway.

I would still encourage everyone to listen to to Julian's TED Talks (all of them!) and think about how you can improve your soundscapes and ability to listen.