You're on Speed: Why Slow Conversations Feel Unbearable Now

The other day, I was talking with a senior executive about an important strategic matter, and I had the bizarre—yet totally familiar urge—to put him on 1.5x speed.

Not because he was boring. Not because he was unclear. Just because my brain is becoming wired that way.

Granted, I’m a Manhattan gal who’s now living in the South, and my pained desire for conversational acceleration is a cross-cultural reality. But it’s not just me, and it's not just a regional difference. It’s a change in our brains coming about from the way that we listen to content on podcasts and audiobooks.

Like the way we instinctively try to pinch-zoom a newspaper photo, the impulse to “digitally modify” real life is creeping into how we interact with people. That subtle pressure to accelerate everything? It’s everywhere. I’m noticing that my own nervous system is no longer as tolerant of the human pace of communication.

This quickening in our wiring has upsides. We can absorb political coverage, audiobooks, and podcasts more efficiently. We track trends quickly. But it’s also eroding something and increasing a kind of endless pressure, the pressure to consume more and more, the pressure to tick up our battle rhythm at every moment.

And when the preset on our phones or computers is accelerated, we forget to categorise the kind of listening that’s before us. With contemplative or introspective content, there must be space in between for us to personalise what's being said. Not every video or audio file is the same.

More like this: The Endless Soundtrack — Rethinking Our Reliance on 24-7 Entertainment

I’m curious: what will researchers find in 5 or 10 years? Will we become less tolerant of each other’s pacing in general? Will it feel viscerally impossible to listen to a child, an older person, or someone forming creative thought in real time?

I'm particularly concerned about this trend for leaders. Most of us operate with a lot of internal power. We already drive harder and faster than most of the world, and that has served us. But having that natural tendency to be constantly caffeinated may make us more and more intolerant to slowness, and will absolutely have an effect on our reachability by others. It will further increase the power distance that prevents people from being honest with us, or being intimate with us, or sharing a nascent creative idea in its early stages.

The phenomenon known as “popcorn brain” describes how overstimulation from fast digital inputs—like social media, video snippets, and even sped-up podcasts—can fragment our attention and train the brain to crave instant gratification. More of that dopamine that we love so much. Neuroscientists are observing that this shift may shorten attention spans and increase baseline stress levels.

And yet, not all the news is bad. A recent study published in BMC Medical Education found that listening to educational content at 1.5x or even 2x speed did not significantly affect comprehension or long-term retention among medical students. So yes—our brains can handle the learning pace. But the bigger question might be: at what cost?

So here’s what I’m suggesting we experiment with:

• Varied Pace for Varied Content: Choosing to slow down certain content—especially when it’s rich, subtle, or challenging.
• Regulation through Speed Control: Abstaining from a jacked-up pace if the body happens to need a restorative cadence.
• Embracing 1.0 Speed: Making space in conversations for the natural rhythm of human expression and remembering how to lean into it.

With powerful new tech, the greatest value comes when we stay in control. We must step back and see how our relationship with technology is changing us, and we must always take back the wheel.

Where have you noticed this tension? Have you too found yourself reaching for the fast-forward button on real life?

This was also published on Juliet Funt's LinkedIn.

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