While traveling recently, I've had a fellow passenger who apologized for not talking enough only to then continue and talk non-stop. A few days later, the same thing happened with a taxi driver. It seems that often when people say sorry for not talking much (or other behavior) then it is a good indication they will talk more than you expect or want.
Who's scale are we using?
We each have our own scale and often don't check the other person's scale.
Junior developers coming out of college think they are experts at programming because they got A+ on their course work. During interviews, we often ask new developers to rank themselves from 1 to 10 on their expertise in some programming language they learned - and almost always getting somewhere around 8 or 9. (10 is being avoided by the candidate out of minimal modesty).
Why even use a scale?
Do we really need to place ourselves on a scale? It seems that we too often, and in an unsolicited manner, like to grade ourselves and perhaps even talk about ourselves in general. Usually in self boasting. Also, in general, our scale does not matter. We may be talking less than some but if our conversation partner is a monk, perhaps our few words may be considered as too much.
In some cases we are being asked to asses ourselves, as in the case of job interviews. If we grade ourselves, should it be our scale or our listener's scale?
When interacting with others we may be better off not putting ourselves on any scale or if asked, at least use our listener's scale. Modesty is often a good policy. Self delusion and disregard for our conversation partner is definitely not a good policy.
On a side note - we can and should feel good about ourselves when we're good. We just need to remember that there is no need to brag about it and that there are others out there that are even better.
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