Benjamin Franklin
Give up the word certainly
He changed the sentence, not the opinion
The Autobiography, Parts One and Two
Somebody told him to his face that he was insufferable. What he changed was not what he thought but how he phrased it.
What actually happened?
The young Franklin loved to argue and won everywhere. A Quaker friend told him kindly that he was generally thought proud, overbearing and rather insolent, and gave him instances. He took it, and the remedy is unusually specific. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiment of others, and all positive assertion of my own. He banned the words: certainly, undoubtedly. In their place — I conceive, I apprehend, I imagine a thing to be so, or it so appears to me at present. He kept it fifty years.
Changing the phrasing is doable; changing the character is not
Become humble is character engineering with no delivery date. Ban two words and substitute three phrases is a rule you can keep this afternoon. He did not wait to feel different — he started at the outermost operable layer. The sentences changed, the exchanges followed, and the character came last.
To stop steamrollering meetings, a hard rule beats an intention: say I may be missing something before every position you take.
An assertion forces a defence; a conjecture leaves a way in
It is certainly this turns the conversation into a win and a loss: the other person concedes or fights, and most fight. I conceive it to be this lets them add, correct, half-agree. They need not admit error in order to come closer to you, and lowering that cost is half of persuasion.
There is a problem with this plan gets a defence. There is a piece I have not worked out gets an explanation. Same information, opposite circuit.
Winning the argument and getting it done are different aims
What he wanted when young was refutation, and refuted people do not help you afterwards. Very few of those who go quiet have been persuaded; most have merely stopped speaking. Change the aim from leaving them nothing to say to leaving them willing to work, and the vocabulary follows.
You demolish the objectors, the proposal passes, and those people put nothing into delivery. Every argument won is paid for with interest later.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you are about to state a judgement you are completely sure of.
Ask first: am I trying to win this sentence, or to have this person put work in afterwards?
Where it goes wrong: using I conceive as sarcastic politeness while the content still flattens people; or refusing to take any position at all because assertion is banned.
Lines to keep
I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so.
No one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me.
Same situation, other people are asking
I was right, everyone agreed, and nothing got done afterwards.I state things as fact and people close up. Is it the wording?I win the argument and lose the room · all 2 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.