Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Real change isn’t about knowing what to do — it’s about actually doing it, one small choice at a time.

Change doesn’t come from one big breakthrough. It comes from the small choices we make over and over — often in moments we barely notice.

Eric Zimmer, behavior coach, host of The One You Feed podcast, and author of How A Little Becomes A Lot, says the real challenge isn’t figuring out what to do — it’s closing the gap between knowing and doing. “We all have areas where we know exactly what would help,” he says. “But somehow, we still don’t follow through.” His approach focuses on something simpler and more effective: small, low-resistance actions done consistently over time. “It’s not about doing everything,” Zimmer explains. “It’s about doing something — again and again — in the same direction.”

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Zimmer joins host Matt Abrahams to unpack how lasting change actually happens. From building awareness in the middle of everyday life to designing habits that are easier to stick with, he shares practical strategies for turning intention into action. “You don’t need to wait until you feel ready,” he says. “You can act even when it’s uncomfortable.”

Episode Reference Links:
Connect:

Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:41) - From Addiction to Transformation
  • (03:51) - The “Two Wolves” Parable
  • (05:36) - Awareness in Communication
  • (07:10) - Building Awareness Through Small Habits
  • (09:04) - The Knowing–Doing Gap
  • (10:28) - The SPAR Framework
  • (14:03) - Motivation vs. Action
  • (20:45) - The Final Three Questions
  • (26:12) - Conclusion

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Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Eric Zimmer
Behaviour Coach | Author | The One You Feed Podcast Host

What is Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques?

One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication.

Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges.

Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: When it comes
to communication and life, big

things come from small things.

My name's Matt Abrahams and I
teach Strategic Communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to Think Fast
Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today I look forward to
speaking with Eric Zimmer.

Eric overcame personal battles
with homelessness and heroin

addiction at the age of 24.

And then had a very successful
career in high tech.

He later became a behavior coach
and an award-winning podcaster

with his show, The One You Feed.

Eric has spent over 20 years studying
human transformation and habit formation.

His latest book is called How A
Little Becomes A Lot: The Art of Small

Changes for a More Meaningful Life.

Well, welcome Eric.

Thank you for being here.

I'm excited to learn from you today.

Eric Zimmer: Hi, Matt.

I really appreciate you having me.

I'm excited to be here also.

Matt Abrahams: Should we get started?

Eric Zimmer: Please.

Matt Abrahams: Alright, let's
start with your personal story.

Can you share how your journey from
addiction to sobriety has really helped

form who you are and informs what you do?

Eric Zimmer: Yeah.

It would be almost impossible for me to
imagine what I would be like without it.

At 24, I was a homeless heroin addict.

I weighed a hundred pounds.

I had Hepatitis C. I was looking at going
to jail for upwards of 50 years, and I

was fortunate to get sober at that age.

And what I learned through that process
is just so deeply embedded in the

way that I view the world that, as
I said, I can't imagine a different

way of viewing the world, right?

We just get to a point where we all see
the world the way we see it, and that's

a pretty embedded part of my story.

And so I learned a lot through
all of that, as you might imagine.

And it turns out that a lot of
that is relevant not just to people

facing serious, a life threatening
addiction, but to life in general.

And we live in a more and more addictive
culture in so many different ways today.

That's the start of things for me.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent.

Thank you for that.

You often leverage the two wolves parable.

Can you share with us what this
story is and the lesson you'd like

all of us to take from the story?

Eric Zimmer: Sure.

Many of your listeners may have heard it
before, but it's a story that says we all

have these two wolves inside of us that
are always at battle with each other.

One is a good wolf, which represents
things like kindness and bravery and love.

And the other is a bad wolf,
which represents things like

greed and hatred and fear.

And the grandparent is telling
this story to their grandson.

They say, we have these wolves
inside of us, and the grandson

wonders which wolf wins.

And the grandparent
says, the one you feed.

So the great thing about a parable like
that is the minute I say it, you get it.

On one level, you're like, oh, I see.

There are choices that I make that
encourage the better parts of me.

There are choices that I make that
encourage the less good parts of myself.

Which do I want to do?

What I love about the story, particularly
though, is I think it points to a

deep truth, which is that we are
motivationally complex creatures.

We want many different things.

We value different things,
and these things are often

in conflict with each other.

Two wolves is almost an
oversimplification for it, right?

But it speaks to the fact
that we all intimately know

that feeling of being pulled.

You know, I wanna do this,
but I also wanna do that.

I value this, but I wanna do that, right?

That feeling of being pulled is part
of being human and it doesn't go away.

It's what we do with it.

And by recognizing that we are
motivationally complex and recognizing

that we are always making choices,
that we're able to make better ones.

Matt Abrahams: It's a a very powerful
story for sure, and I appreciate the

awareness that it brings to us, that
at any moment we have choices to make.

And by making that conscious
aware, we can have some control.

As you well know, we
focus on communication.

I'm curious, have you in your own
life, or have you coached others or

seen others who have made conscious
choices to feed some value or some

action to help them be better in
their communication versus others?

I can imagine finding myself in a
conflict situation or a negotiation

situation where I might react in one
way, but really should be reacting or

want to be reacting in another way.

I'm curious your experience of
how this applies in communication.

Eric Zimmer: I think that one of
the core skills that underlies

all the work that I do, and also
underlies communication, is awareness.

It's the ability to be able to pause,
see what's happening inside of us, see

what's happening around us, and then
think, what choice do I want to make?

What do I want to do here?

We often operate on autopilot to a great
degree and autopilot's a lovely thing.

In many ways.

It's great that as humans, we can drive
home while I think about something,

great, that's a good use of it.

But when autopilot is operating, and
it often does in communication, that's

not the time we want it to work.

We want our communication to be
thoughtful and conscious, and so building

the awareness, what am I thinking?

What am I feeling, right now, is a core
skill that underlies everything that I do.

Matt Abrahams: How did you train
yourself to find that awareness?

You know, many of us are
so busy or we have so much

information coming at us at once.

How did you learn to do that?

It's a valuable skill, but one
that can be challenging for many.

Eric Zimmer: My book is called How A
Little Becomes A Lot: The Art of Small

Changes for a More Meaningful Life.

So you'll recognize that my answer
is you don't get it all at once.

You get it a little bit at a time.

And in the book I have something that
I think is unique to what I do, which

is it's a method for working with and
changing our habitual thought patterns.

There's a lot of information
out there about what to think.

Think this, don't think that, take this
perspective, don't take that perspective.

But there's very little about
how do you actually do that?

And the way that you have to do
it is by frequent repetition.

So I have something I call still
points, and a still point is just

something that we engineer into our day.

So imagine a still point
being a when and a then.

The when could be like every time
I go to the bathroom, my then

could be, I ask myself what am I
thinking and feeling right now?

If you go to the bathroom five
times a day, you just take that

time and go, what am I thinking?

What am I feeling?

I check in, no big deal.

Any one of them on their own, so what
doesn't matter, but a lot of them done

consistently, over time in the same
direction, you'll become more aware.

You'll find yourself naturally being
more aware because you've woven

it into the fabric of your day.

And it's a lot more likely that at
dinner that evening when you're having

a conversation with your spouse, that
you're gonna recognize what's happening

inside of you if you just reflected
on it four times earlier today.

So that's the mechanism, particularly
with these thought patterns, or something

like being aware, that we can train it.

Matt Abrahams: I love this idea of
training our awareness and the when

then paradigm is really useful.

I wanna talk about the knowing doing
gap that you discuss, and I'm curious

to learn more about what is this
framework and how does it help us

show up well in all our situations.

Eric Zimmer: I think we all have
some aspects of our lives in which we

want to be doing something different.

We may even know exactly
what we want to do different.

We may even know how to do it.

We just find ourselves not doing it.

It could be eating.

It could be exercise,
it could be meditation.

It could be conversations with our
partner, whether at work or at home.

So there's this gap.

And the book is really a response
to how do we bridge that gap?

And I can't put it all into a single
sentence, but the little by little

approach is at the heart of it.

And by little, by little
I mean something specific.

I mean low resistance actions,
meaning something you'll actually do,

done consistently over time, again
and again, in the same direction.

We often are trying to fix four or
five different things at any one

given time in our lives, right?

And so we're doing a little
of this, a little of that,

and it's all over the place.

But when we take small things that we
do consistently, in the same direction,

we bridge that knowledge to action gap.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, so we have
knowledge and then how do we

get that knowledge into action?

And by doing so, first is
awareness, and then finding the

little things that we can do.

And I know you have a
great acronym for this.

I'm gonna ask you about it
because many people listening

know that I, I'm a martial artist.

As part of my training,
I spar with people.

You learn a lot and you get a lot
of instantaneous feedback when

you are in a ring with somebody.

And you use the acronym SPAR as
a way to help us get at the core

of what you're talking about.

Can you break down what SPAR means and
can you apply it to an example related

to communication so that we can maybe
use it directly and help ourselves?

Eric Zimmer: So I wanna start by saying I
think that there are two competencies we

have to get in order to change something.

The first I will call structural.

This is what SPAR focuses on.

It's really about planning.

The second is an inner component.

So the inner component is you might know
exactly what to do, you might remember

to do it, and then you don't do it, in
the moment, and that is usually some

sort of inner emotional type thing.

So SPAR is all the structural, and so
it stands for, S is for specificity.

What am I doing?

Where am I doing it?

How am I doing it?

So let's take communication.

It's one thing to say like, well, I want
to communicate better with my children.

Okay, what does that mean?

Oh, I want to make sure I have
10 minutes a day that I talk to

them, and I really, really listen.

That's some degree of specificity.

Now, I would take it further
and be like, well, when is that

10 minutes going to happen?

Because while we're trying to build a new
behavior, ambiguity is always the enemy.

We wanna have all our energy
go to doing the thing.

So specificity.

The P stands for prompts.

How do I remember?

So I'm gonna spend at dinner every night,
I'm gonna ask my children a question

about their day that's thoughtful and
I'm gonna share something from my day.

How do I remember to do it?

Maybe I just need a little thing that
I set down next to my dinner plate

that says, like, remember to ask X.
It sounds silly, but we're so busy.

Our brains are full of so much stuff.

We frequently just forget.

So P stands for prompts.

A stands for alignment.

And one of the things, if we asked all
behavior scientists in the world to come

together and agree on one thing, it would
be hard to do, but I think the thing they

would say is, don't rely on willpower
or discipline any more than you have to.

Set up your environment to
make it likely you do it.

So alignment is about doing that.

So what's an example for communication?

Part of our environment is other people.

So I might, if I have a spouse, I
might say, can you help me remember?

That's setting up my alignment.

Or saying to them ahead of time, this
is something I wanna do every evening,

would you support me in doing it?

Alignment.

And then finally, R stands for resilience,
which basically means planning for what

is going to go wrong or could go wrong.

So what am I going to do?

If I'm not at home for dinner,
is there still a way that I could

have that conversation that I want
to have with my kids each day?

Maybe there is.

Maybe I say, oh, if I don't
make it home for dinner, I'll

do it with them before bed.

Or if I'm traveling, maybe I'll send them
a text where I ask them the question.

And so SPAR allows us to get
everything set up and have clear

plans for what we're going to do,
how we're going to do it, what we're

gonna do when we're unable to do it.

Then we can put all our
attention into the actual doing.

So that's SPAR with an
idea around communication.

Matt Abrahams: I love it.

It sets us up for success and
it makes us more thoughtful and

intentional in what we're doing.

So many of us could just be frustrated
that we don't have the connection with

our kids that we want to, for example.

And this becomes a very clear action
plan that is likely to succeed.

One, because it's defined,
and two, because we align it

with others and our situation.

And I really like the resilience
point, which is in some

ways contingency planning.

What do I do if I can't execute on this?

So specific, have prompts,
alignment, and resilience.

Thank you.

And you said that this is
one part of the equation.

This is the framework side.

The internal motivation side, talk
to me a little bit about that.

You know, I can have the
desire but not the will.

Curious, how do we get that motivation?

Eric Zimmer: I don't love to talk
about motivation a ton because it's a

feeling and feelings just come and go.

They change.

Now, I do think it's important that we're
clear on why something matters to us.

So, if we're going to say, I'm going
to do X, Y, or Z, why does it matter?

We wanna get to the heart of that and
we wanna understand it emotionally.

But waiting to be motivated is
often a trap because you don't have

to be motivated to do something.

I exercise many, many days when
I am very far from motivated.

I do not feel like doing
it at all, and yet I do it.

So the emotional side is, let's
stick with the example we've got.

You are there and you want to ask the
question, but your teenager tends to

be like, oh dad, you know, or they
just don't really like to do it.

And so you're like little
tentative about wanting to do it.

And so it's easy in the moment,
okay, I should do it now, but I'm

not going to do it 'cause it makes
me a little bit uncomfortable.

That's the emotional inner aspect of it.

And what we don't need to do
is solve all the discomfort.

All we have to do is figure out,
what is it that I need to do to get

me over the hump in that moment?

And that's what SPAR does, is
it puts us at a choice point.

And at a choice point, we either act the
way we want or the way we didn't want to.

If we didn't do what we wanted to do,
we can zero in right in on that moment.

What was I saying to myself?

So I identify in the book what I call
the six saboteurs of self-control.

One saboteur of self-control
is the insignificance trap.

It means that we don't connect
the dots between the little things

we do today with the big picture.

So it's very easy to be like, ah,
I'm just not gonna do it tonight.

I mean, what does it really matter?

One night's not a big deal.

'Cause we emotionally don't wanna do it
'cause it's a little uncomfortable for us.

If we're in that, we need
to say to ourselves, wait.

Every chance to connect with my child
is important to me, and I know it's

gonna be slightly uncomfortable.

I also know that this is very
aligned with what I value, and

so I'm gonna be uncomfortable.

I can still do it.

That's an example of just taking
that moment and rescripting what

it is we're saying to ourselves.

So if we can identify what is it that's
getting in the way, we can learn to

talk to ourselves and essentially
coach ourselves to take the action.

Matt Abrahams: That's a very
powerful idea, the rescripting.

And the rescripting comes from an
awareness, and the awareness comes

from the discomfort, you know?

So it's a natural cascade.

Where am I feeling uncomfortable?

Where's the discomfort?

What might be leading to it?

And that requires us to self-reflect
and to understand our values

and how we're not aligned.

And then from there, think
about the rescripting.

Eric, this has been a
fantastic conversation.

So much of what you say is directly
applicable and aligns with a lot

of the things that I think about.

I'd love to wrap up as we always do.

I ask three questions at the end.

One I create just for you and the
other two I've been asking all along.

Are you up for that?

Eric Zimmer: Yes.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent.

You host a podcast.

Eric Zimmer: Yep.

Matt Abrahams: Share with me something
that's surprised you as you've done

this, in terms of things you've
learned or uncovered as a host

or interacting with your guests.

Eric Zimmer: It's very tempting when
doing it to have someone on, I'm gonna

have you on the show, for example, so
it's gonna be very tempting to get you to

say a lot of smart things that are gonna
help our listeners, and that's important.

I've also realized though, that a
big part of communication is not

exactly the things that you teach.

It's the spirit in which you teach them
and the way that you make people feel like

you understand them, they understand you.

And so I think for me it's been, I've
recognized more that, yes, I wanna get the

good ideas out of the people that come on.

I also wanna create an environment
where I connect with that

person, they connect with me.

We have a genuine conversation, and I'm
also trying to, in a sense, think about my

listener as I'm going, and think of them
as that other part of that conversation,

I think, is one of the things that
I've just gotten better at over time.

Matt Abrahams: It is an ever
evolving skill, isn't it?

I find the conversations wonderful, but
I also find the learning that I have.

What I heard you say is it's really
about connection beyond content.

That's so true for me as well.

I'll be curious to get your
answer to our second question.

Who's a communicator
that you admire and why?

Eric Zimmer: There are so many
great communicators, but when

I saw this question, I thought
of someone named David Whyte.

David Whyte is a poet and an essayist,
and what I love about David Whyte is

he is willing to be very spare with
what he says and doesn't feel the need

to overexplain it, which part of what
poetry tends to do, it lays something

out there and lets it work on you.

David does that in essays, and I've
interviewed him a few times for the show.

He's incredibly articulate, incredibly
smart, has a wonderful Irish accent,

you could listen to him for days.

It takes me a little while to downshift
into David's pace, but when I do, I

just feel like there is this sort of
stunning luminosity to what he writes.

And so he's an example of a
type of communicator for me that

shows how they pay attention.

It's what I love about poets.

They teach me how to pay attention
to the world differently.

They're observing the ordinary
in a way that I'm generally not.

So they are communicating, but they're
also teaching me how to see, and David is

one of the best examples of that to me.

Matt Abrahams: How
poetically put yourself.

You've learned a lot from him and others,
but a communicator you admire is one who

teaches you how to see things differently.

And I also heard in that they
help you downshift, in this

case to resonate at their level.

And like you, I can be moving, at
least mentally, in a frenetic pace,

and some of the best communicators
and best communication I've had

is when I slow down and connect.

So thank you.

Final question.

What are the first three ingredients that
go into a successful communication recipe?

Eric Zimmer: I think intention.

What is important about this conversation?

What do I want to happen
in this conversation?

What matters here?

Is a really, for me, in conversations that
are important, clarity is really useful.

Kind of back to what we talked about
with SPAR, then I think it's attention.

We often think that good
communication means all our

attention is on the other person.

I don't think that's true.

I think that, yes, we have to be very
focused on the other person, but I think

a certain amount of attention has to be
to what's going on inside of us as we're

having the conversation, because otherwise
we are always reacting internally.

If we're not aware of it, if all
our attention is out there, then

everything's getting churned up back
here and I don't know what it is.

So I need to keep some part of
my gaze what's going on inside

me so that I can work with it.

So I think intention where I want
the conversation to be in general,

attention on me and the other
person, and then, I think for me,

there's always a pause element.

There's always an element
of slow down and pause.

Matt Abrahams: So intention,
directionality, attention, both

externally and internally, and
slowing down, being present, pausing.

I completely agree.

If those are in alignment, the
communication is successful.

Well, Eric, I appreciate all the insights
that you have shared specifically

around how we can change and align
ourselves with our goals, how it's

little things that lead to big things.

And it's choices we make.

What do we feed?

How does it align with our values?

Thank you so much, and best
of luck with your new book and

continued success with your podcast.

Eric Zimmer: Thanks so much, Matt.

It's been a pleasure.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for another episode of

Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more about behavior
change and personal growth, please

listen to episode 86 with BJ Fogg.

This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

With thanks to the Podium Podcast Company.

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