The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: STFU - The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in An Endlessly Noisy World, by Dan Lyons

Fresh from hours of pundit cross examining and dissecting the first (and probably only) Presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, it’s hard to imagine a timelier read than Dan Lyon’s modern classic STFU all about why we might all be better off if we could just get better at staying silent:

Learning to shut the fuck up will change your life. It will make you smarter, more likable, more creative, and more powerful. It might even help you live longer.

People who talk less are more likely to get promoted at work and more likely to prevail in negotiations. Speaking with intention—that is, not just blurting things out—improves our relationships, makes us better parents, and can boost our psychological and even physical well-being. Failing to shut the fuck up, however, will definitely fuck you up.

We live in a world that doesn’t just encourage overtalking but practically demands it, where success is measured by how much attention we can attract: get a million Twitter followers, become an Instagram influencer, make a viral video, give a TED Talk. Shutting up should be the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is nothing, right? But, in fact, not talking requires a lot of concentration. It’s probably more difficult than talking.

In the book, Lyons explores what he calls the “six types of overtalkers” and diagnoses himself as having talkaholism, an apparently real condition defined as “a form of extreme, compulsive overtalking that is akin to an addiction.” More than the research, though, he’s a journalist and comedy writer (formerly writing for the HBO show Silicon Valley) and he brings his trademark wit to the topic and compellingly makes the point that perhaps the path to respect, sanity and just a little better world is for all of us to teaching ourselves to STFU.

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About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I will be featuring a new “non-obvious” book selection worth sharing. Titles featured here may be new or from the backlist, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great books that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.