Matt Abrahams: New beginnings allow us the opportunity to reflect, learn, and grow.
As we enter 2026, I hope everyone takes a moment to identify a few actions and
approaches you learned in 2025 that you hope to implement in the new year.
We can all benefit from a fresh start in the new year.
My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at
Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.
2025 was an exceptional year.
Here at Think Fast Talk Smart we expanded the number of
episodes we release each month.
We now have video for every episode.
We have more detailed release notes and English language learning content
for each episode, and we started a robust online learning community
that keeps growing every day.
But most importantly, we've had the opportunity to learn so many important
and insightful skills to help us hone and develop our communication and careers.
Sticking with our annual tradition, I'd like to share with you ten ideas from
this past year's episodes that I'm working on to put into practice in my own life.
In what follows, i'll share the guest's name and episode number before
providing a summary of the concept and how I'm trying to apply it.
I'll start with the more recent episodes and work backwards.
I hope my strivings ignite some ideas for you to implement.
Gina Bianchini, episode 243.
Facilitation is productive, proactive serendipity.
The ability to convene people and guide them towards important, meaningful goals,
regardless of if they're personal or professional, is really challenging.
I think facilitation is one of the most challenging communication skills
because you have to manage so many things, timing, context, differing
personalities and approaches.
At times, I can be overstructured in the way I run meetings or host events.
Gina's advice reminds me to plan, to architect, but not to be too controlling.
I'm learning to let go and allow things to happen.
For my future events, I now plan to set things in motion by thoughtfully
planning an agenda, organizing the environment, and providing some high level
input, like initial opening questions.
But then I'm going to try to step back and let the event unfold organically.
Gina Bianchini: The social lubricant that exists to create
networks of people and communities of people come from confidence.
When you feel good, when you feel like you have something to bring to the picnic.
And so a facilitator also does something really important, which
is, I'm gonna make sure you don't feel like you're on the spot.
So in facilitating I'm gonna structure, I'm gonna guide, I'm going to be
in charge of the experience that we are creating here together, so that
you get results and transformation.
Matt Abrahams: Muriel Wilkins, episode 240.
Toxic productivity.
Getting things done at any cost.
I am a really bad sleeper.
Always have been.
A lot of it has to do with not being able to turn off my brain when I try to sleep.
I'm super driven and I run my life by a to-do list.
Muriel helped me realize that my drive to get things done, what she
calls toxic productivity, actually works against me because it drains my
energy and my productivity decreases.
My new practice based on my conversation with her, is to take time every Sunday
to prioritize what I can accomplish on a given day for the upcoming week.
And at the end of each day, instead of focusing on all the things
I did not get done, I try to celebrate the things I did complete.
I feel more energized and focused.
Although I'm still not sleeping super well, I am feeling better.
More work to be done on the sleep.
Muriel Wilkins: There is healthy productivity and toxic productivity.
Toxic productivity is getting things done at any cost, and it is universally
applied across anything that has the notion of needing to be completed.
And by the way, the toxic productivity is really driven by
a mindset of, I need it done now.
There's a sense of urgency in everything and everything needs to be done.
While healthy productivity is more about doing things and
focusing on things that matter.
So beyond that, you have to understand then what is it that matters, right?
There's a certain level of prioritization that needs to happen, and the belief that
will drive the healthy productivity is more around something like, I'll do the
best that I can with the time that I have.
So what I love about that is that it takes into account that we have
constraints, whether we like it or not.
We have guardrails.
And the guardrails are what is the best that I can do?
Meaning what is within my capabilities, or my team's capabilities, or the
organization's capabilities, and what is the time limit that I have?
And then, what's doable within that timeframe?
And there is a cost to both toxic and an opportunity with healthy
that we can see happen within organizations, but also on ourselves.
So most people don't really discern between the two.
They just think about being productive rather than shifting their mindset
so that they can have one type of productivity versus the other.
Matt Abrahams: Jenn Wynn, episode 222.
Synergy is on the other side of dialogue.
I really appreciated Jenn's advice on difficult conversations.
I find that my initial instinct in many conflictual situations is to
retreat, or the opposite, jump right in.
The reality is that I need to engage the other person as a partner to explore
and problem solve the issue at hand.
It's about the conversation, the dialogue.
When I approach a challenging conversation, I now try to start by
asking an open-ended question that demonstrates I want to understand the
other person's perspective and situation.
I next try to paraphrase to show I appreciate what they said.
I remind myself that understanding and appreciation do not mean I
agree, but they do open the door for collaborating and connecting.
Jenn Wynn: So sometimes the issue is not listening enough and sometimes
it's not showing that we are listening.
So those are two distinct skill sets.
At the end of the day, I think about dialogue as the free flow of meaning.
And so if I've done it well, effective dialogue grows the shared
pool of understanding between us.
I understand how you made meaning of a situation, and you understand
how I made meaning of a situation.
So that means that I've gotta inquire.
I've gotta ask enough questions to understand how you experienced that,
that client meeting, that argument my husband and I may have had.
And then once I've listened, internalized, the meaning you
made, I've gotta paraphrase it back as a check for my understanding.
A real humble attempt to say, this is my summary of what I think you
experienced, but is that right?
Fix what I'm missing?
Is it half right and I miss the other half?
And once we can paraphrase, this is a skill that, honestly, I think it's
like punching above its weight, right?
After I've taken all this time to really ask these open, thoughtful questions,
get curious, understand your perspective, make sure you show the person that
you are internalizing what they said.
And like you said, it's not agreeing, it's just acknowledging.
And when they finally say yes, that's it, then you've grown the
shared pool of understanding, at least from their perspective.
And then you can go share yours, and that's where you move into advocacy.
But at the end of the day, the balance you're looking for is
inquiry, paraphrasing, and advocacy.
And inquiry and paraphrasing are listening skills.
Both to understand what the other person experienced and confirm
with them that my understanding was correct of their experience.
Matt Abrahams: Richard Edelman, episode 215.
Actions build trust.
If you don't do something, you can't talk about it.
Trust is fundamental to all of our relationships and wellbeing.
Last year, one of my top ten actions came from Jamil Zaki to trust
loudly by speaking out my trust in people, like saying, I trust
you to act on what we discussed.
Richard builds on this by reminding us that we do trust,
we don't just talk about it.
I'm trying to implement this advice in two ways.
I now thank people when they put trust in me, and I follow up and
share what I've done as a result.
For example, a colleague of mine recently asked me to teach
a class they needed to miss.
I thank them for trusting me to cover their content, and after I
taught the class, I sent an email detailing what I had done and
how the students had responded.
Richard Edelman: I think action builds trust.
If you don't do something, you can't talk about it.
The second is to speak broadly, meaning talk to your employees first
and then talk to other stakeholders.
So inside out.
And then the third is as there's been dispersion of authority, you have to
talk, but then the employees have to talk.
It has to be a cadence, and there has to be a broad inclusion of
forms of media, again, from creators to podcasters to mainstream.
Matt Abrahams: Alex Rodriguez, episode 201.
Communication is an unselfish act.
ARod clearly summarizes one of the most frequently cited bits of
advice we have heard on the show.
Communication is not about you.
It's about your audience.
It's not about what you want, but what others need.
The reality is that all of us suffer from the curse of knowledge and the
curse of passion, which leads us to make assumptions, go too deep, use jargon.
The only antidote to the curse of knowledge and passion
is empathy and curiosity.
You need to be curious enough to think about what is important
to your audience and empathetic enough to do something about it.
Whenever I write, teach, or present, I now try to ask myself four questions that
help me tailor my messages to my audience.
First, I'll ask, what is their knowledge level on my topic?
What are their attitudes on the topic?
Third, what are their areas of resistance, hesitation, and concern?
And finally, what motivates them and how can they benefit from what I'm saying?
Alex Rodriguez: I think someone that I would say has their ten thousand hours
and whatever they're talking about, right?
Because you, you can't replace credibility.
Someone who can speak passionately and clearly and don't speak in too
many jargons and too many acronyms.
Like really give it to me like as simple as possible.
And someone who can actually lead me to my next question.
So there's a little bit of a revolver.
Monologues are never fun.
Uh, I much more have a dialogue.
It's more dynamic, it's more commercial, it's more sellable,
it's better for television.
Keeping it tight I also think it's really important.
I think a lot of communicators sometimes think about, what do I have to do to
be a great communicator to sound smart?
I think you should be asking, who am I talking to?
Who am I communicating with and what nuggets and value can I bring them?
Because it's really about them.
It's an unselfish act, it's not a selfish act, and that's a big difference.
Matt Abrahams: Spontaneous speaking miniseries, episodes
197, 198, 1 99, and 203.
Be present and prepare to be spontaneous.
I really enjoyed our four episode miniseries on spontaneous speaking.
We all got valuable advice from six guest coaches like Peter Sagal and Chris Voss.
They taught us specific ways to be in the moment and to respond
calmly to what is needed.
The two things I'm working on the most from these episodes is to listen
deeply and practice being spontaneous.
I find this most helpful when I'm answering questions
during a Q and A session.
In the past, once I got the gist of what somebody was asking, I would simply
start thinking of my answer, essentially disconnecting and going inside my head.
Now I really try to listen thoroughly and either paraphrase the question
or ask a follow-up question.
Both paraphrasing and asking a question require deep present listening.
Additionally, to practice being spontaneous, I'll often work with
an AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini to generate potential questions for me.
I feel like an athlete doing practice drills, so when I'm in the game
of Q and A, I can be agile and prepared for whatever comes my way.
Chris Voss: It's just practice, it's preparation, it's putting
in the hours ahead of time.
Anything that looks easy, that somebody makes look easy,
they put a lot of time in.
And so like any skill, you break it down into small pieces and you
practice it live, and then you practice it in small stakes interactions.
As a hostage negotiator, I had enough confidence in a process and I'm like,
all right, I don't know sure how this is gonna come out, but the best
outcome is by just follow the process.
This is the best chance of success.
Peter Sagal: You have to be present.
I think that is the key to anything like what I do for a living, is
to constantly work on, as Ram Dass told us, being here, now.
And being attuned to what's happening, being attuned to the possibilities
of what the future may hold, where this could go, steering it
toward the choice that you prefer.
Matt Abrahams: Ada Aka, episode 191.
Memorable words are concrete, emotional, and informal.
Words matter.
There are many ways to say things, but Ada shared with us
certain words are more memorable.
I now spend more time thinking about my word choice in my interpersonal
communication and my social media.
In fact, I'll let you in behind the scenes.
Every Friday, the Think Fast Talk Smart team comes together and names
our episodes, and we determine the two or three words that will
appear on each episode's show art.
It's a fun game and I look forward to playing it every week.
We always take into account Ada's guidance to use concrete,
emotional, and informal wording.
Next time you listen to an episode, take a look at the title and show art.
How'd we do?
Was it memorable?
Ada Aka: What you can do is, at the end of everything, average all of these
probabilities to say, what are the words that stick in people's minds over time?
And then that's the point that I think is quite fascinating.
Certain words are intrinsically more memorable than others beyond where
they were presented, what they were next to, or who the person was even.
And those types of things I think we can look at two different buckets.
What we call psycholinguistic variables that relate to language
related properties of the words, things like concreteness, a word like
mountain is gonna be more memorable.
Of course, emotions matter quite a bit as well, both in
terms of valence and arousal.
And then contextual diversity was another variable that stood out.
So how many different contexts things appear relate to how much you're
gonna remember those words later on.
Informal language also stood out as being some of the words that tend to be more
memorable, so if your context allows for it, I would also say incorporating,
scattering some of these informal language words like oops, for example, might
be relevant in terms of catching your attention and later making you remember,
not just that word, but that's what's around that particular word as well.
Matt Abrahams: Matt Lieberman, episode 188.
When someone hears a persuasive message, they try on a new identity
and decide if they want to be like that kind of person or not.
Matt's idea profoundly affected how I think about persuasion.
Much of my persuasion simply provides all the reasons somebody should change
in line with what I want them to do.
I tell my students to study so they'll get good grades.
I tell my kids to get sleep so they'll be healthy.
But Matt's suggestion implies that persuasion can be more effective
if we invite the people we're trying to persuade to imagine
themselves having made the change.
In effect, invite them to try on or consider themselves doing
the action or taking on the attitude we want them to have.
Well, I haven't abandoned my old ways of just layering on reasons to do
what I want people to do, I now tell more stories that paint the picture
of what could be for the person.
I use phrases like, what if you could, or imagine what it would be like if?
Matt Lieberman: Part of what is happening when someone is delivering a persuasive
message is that at some level you're trying on a new identity, you can either
choose to adopt that identity 'cause you're like, I'd like to be that person.
I'd like to be the person who smokes less, who gets more steps in every day.
Like, that's an identity I would like to embrace.
Or it's an identity where you're like, yeah, I can't see that being me.
And then that's part of rejecting things.
And so I think part of what our self exists for is to allow for the
influence of the social world around us.
In the West we tend to think our identity keeps the world from getting in and
making us do things we don't want to do.
But I think it's a conduit for getting in the world's norms into your head
when you're young, and then occasionally updating those when you're like,
that's an identity I could try on.
Matt Abrahams: Arthur Brooks, episode 181.
Meaning in life has three parts, coherence, purpose, and significance.
These days, I find myself being more thoughtful about how I spend
my time and with whom I spend it.
Maybe it's because I'm getting older and hopefully wiser, but I want my
actions and time to have meaning.
Arthur's articulation of the three components of what makes for a
meaningful life has been very helpful.
I've turned them into a decision making tool of sorts.
When a new opportunity arises, I ask myself how it aligns with my
vision for what I want to focus on.
What am I passionate about in the task?
And I ask, does it really matter to me?
Arthur Brooks: So you know, what's the meaning of life is too big a question.
When you break it up into smaller questions, however, it's something you
really can pursue pretty effectively.
Meaning has three parts for people.
The first is called coherence.
And that's the question, why do things happen the way that they do?
You need to have a belief about why things happen.
The second is purpose.
Purpose and meaning are not the same thing.
Purpose is goals and direction, the direction in which your life is
going for what particular reason.
And last, but not least, is significance.
Why does it matter that I'm alive?
Would it matter if I weren't alive?
You need answers to that particular question.
So I get at it with a kind of a two question quiz.
You can kind of collapse that into two question quiz that I give my
students, and by the way, that I give my adult children too.
The key to finding meaning is to go in search of the answers to two questions.
Why am I alive?
And for what would I be willing to die?
And that's important because the first question is, who
created me or for what reason?
Or both?
You need a theory about that.
You need a belief about that.
You need something that you're willing to stake a claim on it.
And second is, what would you go to your grave with a smile on your face for?
What would you give your life for?
And if the answer is nothing or I don't know, you just flunked the quiz.
But that's good news because now you know to go in search of.
Matt Abrahams: Laurie Santos, episode 179.
Negative emotions are like the engine light on your dashboard of your car.
If you don't deal with them now, worse things will happen.
It's so easy for me to distract myself from the negative emotions I feel.
Laurie's advice is to tackle them head on.
She reminds us that one way to be happy is to do things that make us
happy, but the other way is to reduce the things that make us unhappy.
We need to do both.
Ever since having a conversation with her, I try a three step approach.
When I feel a negative emotion, being upset, frustrated, jealous,
first I sit with the emotion.
This is hard for me, but I try to feel it and understand it.
Second, I give myself a little grace.
This is also hard.
I say it makes sense to feel this emotion because, and third, I
come up with an action plan to address the negative feeling.
Sometimes it's as simple as journaling about it.
Other times it's having a challenging conversation.
But I have found this not only makes me feel better, but it makes it easier the
next time I feel that negative emotion.
Laurie Santos: I work with college students where, just culturally right
now, we have these conversations about good vibes only, and you know,
you experience any frustration or like mild sadness or fear before a
test and you're like I have to get clinically evaluated, something's wrong.
And so I think yes, it is important that we have negative emotions, like
an appropriate good life with lots of goals and values is gonna have
some negative emotions, and they're there to do something that's really
evolutionarily important, which is that they signal how we should behave.
We know evolutionarily we have these bodily sensations that don't feel good,
but that they're really important, right?
You put your hand on a hot stove, you know that's gonna be painful, but it's the pain
that's telling you to do something, right?
It's telling you, hey, move your hand.
And I like to think of negative emotions the same way, right?
If you're feeling sad or feeling lonely, that means you might need to
make changes in your life that kind of deal with that loneliness or sadness.
If you're feeling angry, that's often a sense that there's some
sense of justice that's being violated that you need to fix.
A big one if you're feeling overwhelmed, right, that's an honest signal that you
need to take something off your plate.
And so I think of negative emotions as kind of like the, the engine
light on our dashboard in our cars.
It's sort of a pain in the butt, but if you don't deal with that, then, you
know, worse things are gonna happen later when you're on the highway.
And negative emotions work the same way.
Matt Abrahams: Well, there you have it.
The ten concepts I'm actively working on in 2026 to hone and
develop my communication and career.
I hope my list has inspired you to create a list for yourself.
What Think Fast Talk Smart tips and tools will you work on this year?
Remember, you're not alone in this effort.
We have lots of great episodes and activities coming up
this year to help you.
And please consider joining our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning
Community to collaborate and learn from listeners like you around the
globe at fastersmarter.io/learning.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think
Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.
To learn my list of topics from 2025, please listen to episode 177 and the list
from 2024 can be found in episode 120.
This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.
With thanks to Podium Podcast Company.
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