Seven days of silence. It seemed like a simple thing to do. Sure, you get kind of used to speaking for the first bunch o’ decades of your life. But seriously, think about how many conversations you have silently these days. IM, email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter. You can be in a crowded room and the only sound is the clickity clack of thumb typing. So, no problem, right?

The major problem is your coworkers. Family, friends, they are easy. Just hand them the business card that says, ‘I took a vow of silence, suck it.’ and most will just nod and carry on. But try that on your boss and they won’t be your boss for long. And not because you get promoted above them. Now, if you have a cool boss, just give them the card or tell them beforehand. If your boss is a jackass, you may have to try something else. You can go with the sore throat, lost my voice, method. But that’s lying and we aren’t about lying here, but about being painfully truthful. So now, I will share with you how to keep perfectly silent around your coworkers and boss. It depends on two traits of most people.

One is people love to talk and two is that people hate, HATE, awkward silences.

So, here is the situation. You are in a meeting. The boss asks a question that you should answer. What to do? Say something? Pee your pants? Nope. Just wait! You will be amazed at how someone will ALWAYS say something or the boss will even ask someone directly other than you! People hate awkward silences more than anything. Now, if they are looking directly at you, this is what you do. Put on a puzzled-trying-to-figure-it-out expression on your face, stroke your chin and make a low humming sound, kinda like “Hmmm…” Then shrug your shoulders as if you don’t know and look at the person next to you or someone you think might have the answer. Then, just keep STARING right at them, they will cave. Trust me. Works every time. Then chuckle to yourself and continue your no speaking experiment.

“Do not speak unless you can improve the silence” -Proverb

Words to live by, although no one actually does. If there is one thing we all do to much of it is talk. Or tweet. Or blog. Most people don’t listen to other people, the world, even their own hearts.

Wow, that was a warm and fuzzy sentence. Enough of that. The next little experiment I tried was that I decided to not speak for 7 days. I thought about going my normal 30 days, but that seemed a little extreme since I have family, friends, work and fellow commuters that continually need me to vocalize about something.

So I started with 7 days. Also,instead of lying and saying I lost my voice, I carried around a little card that said, “I have taken a vow of silence for 7 days, so suck it.” I didn’t think it would be that hard since I still have all the electronic communication methods.

Boy, was I wrong.