I usually have some latency between when someone says something and when I&#x27;ve finished running my &quot;Am I about to say something stupid, pedantic, incorrect, boring, or cruel?&quot; checks on my response. In my experience, removing filler words makes people think that you weren&#x27;t listening to them or aren&#x27;t going to bother to responding to what they said. I&#x27;ve had to deliberately practice saying &quot;umm...&quot; before speaking rather than just being silent while I thought about my response.