How to Stick to Your Topic and Save Your Neck

John DeLorean with namesake (Photo by Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Conversations are often like football games in which each speaker tries to score a touchdown. We all find ourselves in conversations in which we try to get our topic discussed while other participants try to block us and introduce their own topics. When this happens to us, one defense is to keep recycling our topic until eventually we get our listeners to hear us out. The way we maintain our topics is an important...