Why listening is hard

One thing I heard regularly in my work is that people struggle to take notes in meetings saying that they just can’t get everything that is said.  But why is it that we can’t make notes as we would like?

Which of these do you think is fastest?  If you were to sort them into speed order with the fastest at the top of your list and the slowest at the bottom, which order would you put them in?

COPY TYPING - LISTENING – HANDWRITING - SHORTHAND - SPEAKING (Audio book speed) - READING

Compare your thoughts with our list below.

Listening 450 words a minute

Reading 250 to 300 words per minute

Shorthand 225 words per minute

Speaking 150-160 words a minute (audio books)

Copy typing 80 – 95 words a minute

Handwriting 22 – 31 words a minute

So we listen really fast, read and take shorthand pretty quickly too. When it comes to speaking and copy typing they’re not slow. But handwriting? That comes in a poor last in terms of speed. Is it any wonder that we struggle to take notes when people are talking?

Here’s some food for thought: if we can listen to 450 words in a minute but there are only 150 – 160 words spoken in that minute, what is our brain doing in between?

Incidentally U.S. researchers discovered that the human brain can interpret images that the eye sees in just 13 milliseconds thank goodness we don’t try and take notes of what we see!

When people talk, listen completely: Ernest Hemmingway