The Surprise Benefit of Talking to Yourself
It only works if you do it out loud
Whenever I’ve got bad writer’s block, or I’m anxious about an interview, or I’m not sure how to approach a conversation with an editor—or, for that matter, a friend — I talk to myself. Out loud.
I like to go for a drive, or a walk, or even jump in the shower, and I just chatter away. I try out lines until I find the perfect opener for the story I’m stuck on, rehearse arguments, and brainstorm with my voice until my ideas come together.
Sure, anyone who happened to hear me having these full-blown conversations with, uh, nobody might think it was a little weird. But by talking to myself, I’m actually helping my brain work better and quicker.
Self-talk starts when we’re very young, as you’ll know if you’ve ever heard a toddler babbling away to themselves. And there’s a reason we start to talk to ourselves at that crucial stage of cognitive development: It improves our processing skills.
That carries over into adulthood, according to one 2012 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They found that when people were asked to search for common objects in a supermarket, they found the item faster if they said its name aloud, as opposed to just picturing the item as they looked for it. In other…
