A man would have no pleasures in discovering all the beauties of the universe, even in heaven itself, unless he had a partner to whom he might communicate his joys.
~ Cicero
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Communication
It’s in the telling, not the story
My time is my only real resource. My time is finite. I’m temporarily able-bodied. I’m temporarily in control of my thoughts—and only mostly in control if I’m honest. We feel deeply touched when someone pays attention to us. This is why many people fight (figuratively and literally) for attention. The power of all the solitary experiences (books and music, meditation and personal movement, writing and all other composition, regardless of medium) is that we are free from the constraints of others’ time. With the solitary we remain entirely in control of the use of our own time.
By comparison, the consumption of stories via electronic media can leave us feeling peculiarly undernourished, dissatisfied and unfulfilled, as if we had just gulped down fast food. Despite an insatiable desire for more, we rarely feel uplifted, and it’s not often that we think about the characters for days afterwards. Storytelling is the oldest, purest and most direct form of human communication. Modern technology is no substitute for this unique compact between narrator and listener.
~ Richard Hamilton from, https://aeon.co/essays/a-story-told-aloud-in-person-has-a-power-like-no-other
The trick (in addition to T. E. Lawrence’s “not minding it hurts”) is to be aware of when we need to surrender our control to the others’ time. Sometimes we need to be enthralled. Sometimes we need to feel touched. Sometimes we need to feel ourselves given over to the power of others. For that, the power is more so in the telling.
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Do you get me meaning?
And one of my goals as the communicator is to make it as easy as possible for you to get the meaning I’m intending to convey.
~ Shane Parrish from, https://fs.blog/language-not-just-code/
The article also has a tidy explanation of irony. Irony (humor, sarcasm and many other linguistic forms) work so well because they are very powerful. A few words said and heard in person can transfer large ideas. The article goes all the way to mentioning our “power to attribute mental states to others.” A subtle and, frankly, amazing power of projection. My mental state, plus your mental state, plus my saying some words, should have gotten you to this other mental state. Heady stuff.
If I wrote, “That was fun.” you’re pretty sure those three words were only part of what the speaker was trying to convey. By default, we have to go with the literal interpretation, but feel we’ve been gypped. We feel the urge to skip back a few lines looking for hints to reveal the rest of the meaning meant to be conveyed. We are accustomed to having to write much more to get the same job done. I have to write: Then, with a wry smile, “That was fun.”
Which is all very interesting. But today, the question I have is: Wait. How did I ever get good at this insanely complex process without ever having anyone explicitly tell me anything about it?
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Get to the point
Perhaps the most critical communication skill. Be brief. Use as few words as possible to say what you need, and everyone will appreciate it.
~ Morgan Housel from, http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/rare-skills/
I’m aware that my blog posts, and the weekly 7 for Sunday email derived from them, are often a rambling mess of garage-door-up thinking. I do edit. The key thing that I’m trying to do is to integrate ideas into what I already know, to see what new connections and new ideas I might find. So this post is not at all about telling you, Dear Reader, how to get to the point or even how important it is to get to the point. In fact, I don’t have a point (in this post in particular, and also generally.) Most of the time, if I reach the end of the post and discover I do in fact have a point… well, that’s terrific. I feel it would be cheating to then cover up my work by editing the thing to get more directly to the point.
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Communication
People fail to get along because they fear each other; They fear each other because they don’t know each other; They don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Word words werds
It begins to look, more and more disturbingly, as if the gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from all the rest of life. Language is, like nest building or hive making, the universal and biologically specific activity of human beings. We engage in it communally, compulsively, and automatically. We cannot be human without it; if we were to be separated from it our minds would die, as surely as bees lost from the hive.
~ Lewis Thomas from, https://fs.blog/2016/05/lewis-thomas-on-our-social-nature-and-getting-the-air-right/
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I’m going to guess you just spent some time trying to work out what I mean to convey through this assembly of: my title, that pull-quote, who might Thomas be, and that bit of vaguely familiar Latin. Interesting.
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Rolling up, clues, and glue
Sometimes I find things and I don’t know what to do with them. Here, for example…
Turns out I’m not the only one who obsesses over how to improve text-based communication. There’s a lot of context that we often infer, on-the-fly as we’re communicating with asynchronous messaging. Rolling that up (hiding it from sight) and down (revealing it) is not done by any current system that I know of.
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Nostalgic
All people have a “tact filter”, which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it.
~ Jeff Bigler from, http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
A short and startlingly insightful idea about— …well, no. I’m going to make you click.
Also: Cue my misty-eyed nostalgia. That’s what the web looked like in ’96. Back when I proudly wielded the self-selected job title of “spyder.” (Do I have to explain that? Please tell me I don’t have to explain that.)
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10 Millennia
… in which one would actually not mark the site, but mark many other sites with clues, that once put together, would be a sort of test to be sure you understood the dangers — before revealing the location.
~ Alexander Rose from, https://blog.longnow.org/02008/07/16/communication-measures-to-bridge-10-millennia/
Sometimes I find things which just simply make me go, ‘wow.’ Here’s one. :)
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Context matters
Not only are others blind to the larger context but we are often blind to their context. Only by zooming out and looking at the situations through the eyes of multiple people, can you begin to acquire perspective. And perspective is the key to removing blind-spots.
From https://fs.blog/2011/12/situations-matter/
For example: Knowing who wrote something provides useful context. In this case, the piece has no attribution—which is silly since it’s a useful, concise summary.
One way in which everyone—I can think of exactly one person, whom I’ve personally spoken with, who is the exception to that “everyone”—leaves out important context is by not being clear where ideas have come from. Everyone speaks as if each idea is patently obvious; “the sky is blue,” doesn’t need context when humans on Earth are speaking. But when you start to pay attention, almost everything else does need context. Where in fact did I hear this idea? Why am I repeating it here, in this conversation? Does my personal experience and opinion, agree or disagree with this idea?
A few years ago, I started demarcating ideas with, “I think…,” when it’s an original composition of thought, and “it seems obvious that…,” when that is the case. (And I only spout the third sort of idea—the ones I got from others—when I can recall or track down where I got it.) This forces me to sort my ideas by their contexts. Certain, uncertain, likely, unlikely, etc.. The first thing that happened was I started spouting off random crap far less often. The second thing that happened was that I found, (and have subsequently made a habit of looking into,) a lot of ideas in my head that were of dubious veracity.
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Do you have an “ask”?
I don’t always have an “ask.” But when I do, I make it clear and I usually lead with it. This plays out in countless ways, and I’m hoping it’s so obvious that I don’t need to give any examples. Rather, I’ll just go meta:
When you have an ask, is it clear—really clear—in your communication?
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Mindful communication
With few exceptions, e-mail use arose organically within organizations, with little thought applied to how digital communication might best serve the relevant objectives.
~ Cal Newport from, https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2015/06/18/the-e-mail-productivity-curve/
As usual, this is an interesting article from Newport. He proposes a productivity curve for email—how productive we are without, with-some, with-more, with-too-much—which explains perfectly why some people love email and some people hate it.
The key point about email is to use it intentionally. Not simply one’s own use; not simply, “I only check my email twice a day,” or, “I’m always at ‘inbox zero.'” The key is to deploy email wisely, in a way which increases productivity of a team, (family, community, whatever.) If adding email into the mix is going to increase productivity, then do so. Then zoom out and look at all your other communication tools, and perform the same calculus. Email is simply one example of a tool which initially [hopefully] increases productivity, but too-soon becomes a detriment.
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Why, on balance, I don’t use Slack
Someone asked me if I knew where the Slack was for such-and-so project. I said I didn’t know, but that I knew one did exist. I felt compelled to explain that I walked away from Slack entirely, but I couldn’t explain why succinctly. Next time this happens I can just link here. :)
What’s wrong with real-time chat?
I believe attention is one of your most precious resources. If something else controls my attention, that something else controls what I’m capable of. I also believe your full attention is required to do great work. So when something like a pile of group chats, and the expectations that come along with them, systematically steals that resource from me, I consider it a potential enemy. “Right now” is a resource worth conserving, not wasting.
~ Jason Fried from, https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat/
Slack is a stream of real-time communication. I don’t work that way. Yes, one can tune and configure just how/when/how-much the Stream from Slack interrupts and notifies you. But I prefer zero unexpected interruptions.
Here are three articles against Slack:
Productivity is best achieved through focus and flow, and anything that takes you away from your focus goes against productivity. So, Slack — which is built as an internal, real-time, “always on,” multi-channel system with notifications — is distracting by design.
~ Dvir Ben-Aroya from, https://medium.com/swlh/why-slack-will-never-replace-email-873a20856716
…in your 20’s you work by brute force, in your 30’s you find ways to work more efficiently, in your 40’s you see the horizon and think on more of a magnitude scale.
~ Kiki Jewell from, https://medium.com/@kikiorgg/why-slack-sucks-for-older-people-and-young-people-have-something-to-learn-8866a25e9951
With Slack I can either be there, being pinged regularly with company wide updates, updates for a channel that was relevant three hours ago but not now, questions from other users they could otherwise figure out but decide are easier to ask me; or select Do Not Disturb mode.
~ Christopher Batts from, https://medium.com/@chrisjbatts/actually-slack-really-sucks-625802f1420a
…and to be fair, one talking about some situations where it might be useful:
At one extreme are interruptions where your attention is demanded on the spot. These sorts of interruptions include a phone call or someone walking into your office. At the other extreme are interruptions that occur only on your time, email for example. Ideally all communication would occur over email (and not just to limit interruptions), but we do not live in an ideal world.
~ Michael Atwood from, https://medium.com/@mdatwood/slack-does-not-suck-ea166d8a2fb1
Slack and other similar tools fill the space between someone standing in your office and email.
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Spontaneity, creativity and the ability to connect
… A lot of it is relaxation. I ran into, the acting guru from the actors studio once, in an airport, and we just chatted. And he said, “you know what the actors in the movies in the 40s had, that was helpful to them? They knew how to make themselves relax on camera.” Because most of them were not experienced or trained actors, and they had to be comfortable. That’s why you constantly saw them lighting a cigarette or sitting on the edge of a desk. Anything to help them relax. And in that relaxation, which you can get other ways if you learn, comes spontaneity, creativity, the ability to connect with the other person, because you’re not worried about yourself. You’re not thinking ‘how am I doing, am I too fat…’
~ Alan Alda from, https://art19.com/shows/clear-vivid-with-alan-alda/episodes/4a35b668-2adc-4aa3-83b0-25ef831568d2
Theirs was a wide-ranging and very interesting conversation about the healing power of music. Around this part, they were talking about how some people seem to be natural-born communicators. In particular, how some people just seem to “fill up a space”—in a good way.
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