Conversations Misalign on Ending

Across 1,172 participants, only 17% said their last conversation ended when they first wanted it to; about half felt it ran too long and a third too short. People also misjudged when their partners wanted to stop, implying that ending a conversation is a coordination problem under uncertainty, not just politeness. This suggests explicit check-ins or timeboxing could improve both everyday talk and meetings. — Treating conversational endings as a coordination failure has implications for meeting culture, event design, interviews, and norms that quietly waste time and goodwill.