Adjusting your rate of speech can make you more persuasive. Slower speech gives someone who’s bound to disagree with you more time to evaluate your point, add in their own thoughts, and dismiss your reasoning with their own existing bias – but talking fast leaves them less time to form an argument and significantly increases your chances of persuading them.  (, , )

Reflecting on his youth, Pablo Picasso once said: “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.’ Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”  (, )