Great photographers wait for light. Sometimes the right moment isn’t now, it’s in twenty minutes.

Conditions are a variable, and waiting is a way of changing them for free. The same scene in different light is a different photograph, and the same conversation after somebody has eaten is a different conversation. Skill is partly knowing that the subject is fine and the moment is wrong.

So get into the habit of asking whether now is the right twenty minutes. If you need to ask somebody for something, do it when they are not walking out of the door. If the thing you want to say is important, wait until the room is calm, and use the waiting to decide what you actually want.