Nancy Kline created and pioneered the development of the The Thinking Environment and teaches Time To Think Courses, leads the Time To Think Faculty and delivers keynote presentations around the world. (taken from her website) There is no doubt that she is an expert in her field and I'm sure her courses are of value to many people. Unfortunately this is not what comes across when reading The Promise That Changes Everything.

My interest in her book was simple - we live in an era dominated by technology which conditioned us to have little time to pause and listen to the voices of others, Our attention span has shrunk to such an extent that we need to interrupt, correct and hijack the conversations of our colleagues, friends and loved ones. Not only is this rude, but it has a negative impact on relationship and on a larger scale on how we relate to each other in societies, causing polarization.

As Nancy mentions in the book "... according to the Gottman Institute in Seattle, three years ago the average listening time of even professional listeners was twenty seconds. Now it is eleven." Imagine how little can a person express in eleven seconds before they are interrupted.

The Promise That Changes Everything has plenty of valuable information. For example, the physical effect it has on your body when someone interrupts you and how it leads to a disconnection from the other person.

The problem is that the core message of the book and the most useful information is hidden away in an enormous amount of repetition. The book becomes long-winded, not getting to the point succinctly. Ironically, this causes the reader's mind to wander. It almost seemed as if the author herself was writing down her thoughts as they occurred - almost too conversational.
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I have to admit, I could not finish it - which is a pity, because I do think this is an important aspect we all could work on and which might improve our relationships significantly.

Thank you to Penguin General UK and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

The Promise That Changes Everything is a book about interruption and how it affects everything from our relationships to our learning. I found a particularly insightful part of the book to be the discussions about the polarisation of people on different issues and how interruption (whether through actual or by just not listening to what they are saying) to be really interesting.

However, on the whole I found the book to be way too convoluted. It felt throughout that the author was just trying to fit in as many words as possible, which distracted completely from the main premise of the book. It felt like a book that could have been half the size if it had been more refined. The book felt like a slog and it felt like a great deal of mental effort to sit down and read it.

I think the main premise of the book exploring interruption and how it affects your life to be really worthwhile and valuable as a self reflection tool. Unfortunately I just don't think it was well executed.