I still remember how much of a zealot I was my first year of college. I wanted to tell everyone exactly how “I felt” about everything (this fanaticism is hammered into young people these days). I spoke up vigorously among my colleagues, argued every silly point, and lost a lot of friends during that time. Looking back, it was embarrassing. I had no idea what I was talking about. I was just an immature ass, pure and simple.

Fast forward seven years, seven jobs, a wife, a son, and a bit more humility (I hope). It is 2016.

We are waist deep in one of the most interactive, most interconnected, media-obsessed societies the world has ever known and the noise of the news-cycle is deafening. We find that to even hear ourselves above the din, we must scale new heights, scream even louder, and constantly be everywhere; an impossible task to manage.

In trying to fathom how my old self would have reacted to the cacophony of the net, all I have to do is browse my timeline or watch a trending hashtag and observe the thousands of people who litter these platforms with garbage.

As we turn towards a New Year, let us reconsider how we interact with others all the time (not just online), and discover if we are truly gaining anything from our relationships aside our own vain amusement.

Here is what I have learned. I hope it helps:

1. Time is our most valued commodity. Shut up.

I remember watching a friend of mine at some social gathering yank out his smartphone, proceed to take a few shoddy photos of his 3 month old, spend another 3–4 minutes filtering it, then another 2 minutes trying to come up with a witty accompanying remark and gift it to the world. All the while, his small son had slowly toppled forward and was quietly (like a soldier) face-planting the ground.

They had both done this before.

SHUTTING UP online is really the first step of a bigger problem. Spending improper amounts of (often vulgar) time on social media screaming about things is just a red flag of how someone already acts interpersonally.

You hear that time is precious and family is important but we all (including me) jump on a browser at the first sign of kinship that gets too awkward or uncomfortable for our liking. We regress to browsing Reddit or whatever our preferred commodity of aloofness is. Worse yet, we find it almost natural now to take pictures of every meal, every landscape selfie, and every smile our kids pumps out. But what are the rewards for these actions?

In The Glass Cage and The Shallows Nicholas Carr points to the lack of feedback mechanisms on the internet that lure us in with no obvious reward. Websites are built to drag us through a maze of interests, never leading to a conclusory end. Like the father ‘gramming his son, one yearns for the social rewards of people enjoying his shares, but there is no clear evidence of it, even despite a quantitative notion of “likes.” Carr:

“Through the statistical “discovery” of potential friends, the provision of “Like” buttons and other clickable tokens of affection, and the automated management of many of the time-consuming aspects of personal relations, they seek to streamline the messy process of affiliation. Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, celebrates all of this as “frictionless sharing” — the removal of conscious effort from socializing. But there’s something repugnant about applying the bureaucratic ideals of speed, productivity, and standardization to our relations with others. The most meaningful bonds aren’t forged through transactions in a marketplace or other routinized exchanges of data. People aren’t nodes on a network grid. The bonds require trust and courtesy and sacrifice, all of which, at least to a technocrat’s mind, are sources of inefficiency and inconvenience. Removing the friction from social attachments doesn’t strengthen them; it weakens them. It makes them more like the attachments between consumers and products — easily formed and just as easily broken.”

Over and over Facebook studies have shown that people have anywhere from few to many reasons for actually “liking” something — in other words, because the like is free, it holds little value and can take on the quality of whatever the person giving it decides. Quickly you can see how the distributive property of “sharing” offers a gift of unknown receipt. Rarely will you know how many people have truly enjoyed your gift.

CONCLUSION: Time is incredibly precious. Technology can often expand our abilities to commune with others, like video-chatting with my parents who live 8 hours away. But when it instead contracts or interferes with the people we love, it is time to SHUT UP, put the computer down and challenge ourselves to grow.

2. You are not the smartest person in the room, let alone the world. Shut up.

Not too long ago an email hit my inbox with a well-marketed title, “How To Become a Social Influencer.” The title itself insinuating that I am a smart enough person, in general, to influence people. Just not smart enough to be one online. How flattering! The problem is, not everyone is smart or “influencing,” so how could this self-help guide broadly make influencers of dumb people? The answer is pretty clear…

SHUTTING UP in person is equally hard for us. The reason for this is that, as humans, we routinely maintain an improper view of knowledge that leads to great confusion, especially in conversation.

First, we believe that all-knowable knowledge is accessible anytime (especially with the advent of Google) and, second, that each of us has a fairly good grasp of everything and can speak to them. These are both untrue. Unsurprisingly, the resulting discussions are a total waste of time.

We like to think we know everything. And we like others to think we know everything too. That is part of the reason we spend so much time online, “learning” new things and exploring new concepts; our desire to be super knowledgeable. But that should not surprise anyone — in fact, some probably think omniscience is a noble goal.

The issue here, going back to Nicholas Carr, is that we are striving to replace wisdom and intellect with various types of automation. We believe that if we develop a fairly good brain chemistry (without the work) and simply connect to data and information from the web that it can make us “knowledgeable” on any subject. We know this is not true and we know the people who do it, because they are insufferable to talk to.

In a noisy society, we may grow to believe that volume (a pun, I know) is king and if we are not actively participating, we are falling behind. However, this could not be farther from the truth: being silent does not make you stupid; it makes you silent. Withdrawing with “I don’t know,” should not be grounds for exile but a respectable humility.

Conclusion: You are not that smart. In thousands of years of written history, someone has probably said what you are defending better than you. Find that person instead of babbling and using your confidence as a fuel source. Take part in discussions that are helpful and be humble about what you do not know. You should constantly be learning from your relationships with other people. If you are not, you are missing out on a great deal.

3. Being annoying will make you memorable, but listening will make you successful. Shut up.

I’ve done hundreds of “info-interview” coffees with interns, colleagues, and young folks of the like. It’s a DC thing and, though I hate it, have come to enjoy the new people I meet. One day, due to the sheer volume of my time this was taking up, I decided I would do some experimenting and start making specific calls to action of my coffee dates. Mind you, these were not scary / unnecessary things. They would be requests such as: a) send me your resume; b) follow up with me by email; c) connect with me in a week, I know of a job; d) I will do X for you, just email me. The result? only 5% of all my coffee dates actually followed through on my requests.

Even listening has a SHUTTING UP quality to it. You may not realize it, but you communicate a lot about who you are by the way you listen to others. If someone is too good to listen to the least important of people, perhaps an intern or a young college student, it says a great deal about who that person is; equally is true of younger folks seeking only some gain from their efforts.

Although great leaders may not have a lot of time to spend chatting about frivolities, they often are successful specifically because of the care and accessibility they have shown to those around them. Those people whom I have found to be the best in their field usually are the most eager to help, even though it may not always be convenient for them.

Listening has a strange quality to it. Because listening is the act of true condescension, it can augment the flow or mood of a conversation or communicate something in ways active participation cannot. The classic example being “when you are right and your wife is not.” While expressing an observation that is indeed correct, it might not be the best course of action for the rest of your week.

This art applies to relationships but also certainly to the workplace. Nobody ever likes the guy who is right about everything. The subtlety is in listening, gauging the situation and helping all those involved; not helping yourself or making a public show.

Conclusion: The more you find yourself holding back the flurry of thoughts you just have to share!, the more in control you will be of your relationships. Everyone has had this rare experience at some point — you sat down with someone unfamiliar and had a wonderful time. They actually listened to what you said and you both had a great, substantive meeting. These are the fruits of shutting up and listening.

Conclusion:

It is never too late to start shutting up. And with some practice, you will find the action (or lack thereof) is completely liberating.

Maybe I am just old at this point, but the day I realized I no longer had to fight every battle and conjure the wittiest retort in every bout, I was much happier. I started focusing on the things that were actually important to me.