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This is a surprisingly popular take, so I'm curious. If texting didn't exist and everyone you talk with had to switch to talking over the phone, how many peopl

This is a surprisingly popular take, so I'm curious. If texting didn't exist and everyone you talk with had to switch to talking over the phone, how many people would you have to answer per day? This is assuming everyone would turn a text conversation into a call, which obviously is the worst case and wouldn't happen. Everyone with "text message anxiety" I know acts like they have 20 friends blasting on their phone every day, sucking up all of their precious Netflix time, yet I look at their Whatsapp and it's two unread messages from yesterday at best (DMs, of course – undirected group chat messages obviously don't count, groups can be muted and no one expects a reply on those unless they're tagged or it's a general question to arrange something, which is rare).

jasode 4y ago
>If texting didn't exist and everyone you talk with had to switch to talking over the phone, how many people would you have to answer per day? I understand the purpose of your question but it's not constructive to the discussion because you've framed it in terms of not having technical choices to get the response you want. Therefore, the obvious outcome is that people have to have a non-zero amount of answering the phone. Putting constraints on technology (no texting) in a hypothetical question to force people into tautological answers (aha, so you were able to respond to voice calls without bleeding to death which means your feelings are illogical.) Same idea as interrogating people who don't like boats and ships with "gotcha!" style questions: "But what if airplanes didn't exist and you needed to cross the ocean?" -- Obviously, you'd have unhappy travelers that forced themselves to use ships that didn't want to. People do what they have to do which overrides unpleasant actions. But the discussion isn't about what people _had_ to do. It's about _preferences_. The blog author eventually called Barclay's bank but he really didn't _want_ to. A lot of people including many old people before Generation X don't like answering phones. My previous comment about learning that lesson: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008851
- disruptiveink 4y ago
  Not exactly. You are correct I was being slightly duplicitous, but the point I was trying to make is the claims of being "flooded" by personal requests for conversation are, in my experience, almost entirely overblown – note that I'm talking personal here, not business/work related. The objections to having conversations with friends always seem to boil down to "I need to focus" and "too many interruptions". When you're an IC being constantly interrupted by meetings, I agree. But to apply the same logic to personal acquaintances and friends? Anecdotally, people who claim they have no time for talking on the phone will have approximately 2-3 friends they talk on a regular (not even daily) basis and spend afternoons binging TV shows. Framing it as a "so much context switching required!" is what's really intellectually dishonest here. Perhaps there's something that is making people anxious or annoyed of talking synchronously with friends over the phone. Sure. But to transpose the work argument doesn't hold water. Also, once again, anecdotally (but I'd love to see studies about this), people who claim they "only operate well asynchronously" will Never. Ever. Reply to text/email.
  - bruce343434 4y ago
    You seem to imply that interruptions to watching passive entertainment don’t count as interruptions, is this correct and if so, why do you do that?
julik 4y ago
I can easily answer that - we have to look no further than the early 200s as well as the experience of our (GenX) parents. Where I used to work a lot of the things were settled by internal telephone calls within the office. On a normal workday I would receive anywhere from 10 to 30 calls, when work sessions were intense it would near 50-60 for a working day. Since the work I had to do was extremely detail-oriented and required a lot of concentration these calls were absolutely destroying my productivity. My parents would receive about 5 to 20 calls every day, which I had to answer and be sort of like a secretary (as they were often not at home) - this was before mobile phones. This was an experience that was very very not pleasant.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Well it was how life was. I was a product manager and then an analyst and I got phone calls from various people all the time at my desk. It was just how business worked. Yes I was grateful when someone just asked a simple question by internal only email instead. And yes you called friends out of the blue because how would you communicate otherwise?
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  60 calls in an 8-hour day is a call every 8 minutes, on average. This includes the time actually talking on the phone, and whatever non-phone duties you'd have. That's not an impossible rate. It does seem improbable, however.
gregmac 4y ago
You made it clear in another reply you weren't including work, which for me is where the bulk of disruptive interruptions come from. Some days it may only be a couple, but it can also easily be dozens. On a personal level, I don't consider "Netflix time" interrupting anything -- it's like the lowest priority thing I ever do, and I'd happily answer a call from a friend or family member. I and most of my friends have kids, so we rarely spontaneously call each other: it's usually preceded by a text along the lines of "You around?". I'm not sure what would happen with only phone; probably just less communication overall. Today I'll sometimes get (or send) a text in the middle of the work day, but I'm not sure that would be replaced by a phone call -- it would either happen outside work hours or not at all. Excluding group chats is also not really fair: for example a group chat I'm in now has been about arranging a get-together soon, and that would likely involve several phone calls to make it happen and figure out a time that works for most people. There's also some correspondence that happens over email today that you'd have to consider. For example, if you're moving (selling / buying houses) there's a whole ton of things with real estate agents, lawyers, bank and insurance that have to happen. If your lawyer calls to confirm a couple details, you either interrupt what you're doing or pay them extra as they can't finish their work and will have to pick it back up later (your return call is just as interrupting to them!).

jasode 4y ago

>If texting didn't exist and everyone you talk with had to switch to talking over the phone, how many people would you have to answer per day? I understand the purpose of your question but it's not constructive to the discussion because you've framed it in terms of not having technical choices to get the response you want. Therefore, the obvious outcome is that people have to have a non-zero amount of answering the phone. Putting constraints on technology (no texting) in a hypothetical question to force people into tautological answers (aha, so you were able to respond to voice calls without bleeding to death which means your feelings are illogical.) Same idea as interrogating people who don't like boats and ships with "gotcha!" style questions: "But what if airplanes didn't exist and you needed to cross the ocean?" -- Obviously, you'd have unhappy travelers that forced themselves to use ships that didn't want to. People do what they have to do which overrides unpleasant actions. But the discussion isn't about what people _had_ to do. It's about _preferences_. The blog author eventually called Barclay's bank but he really didn't _want_ to. A lot of people including many old people before Generation X don't like answering phones. My previous comment about learning that lesson: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008851

disruptiveink 4y ago
Not exactly. You are correct I was being slightly duplicitous, but the point I was trying to make is the claims of being "flooded" by personal requests for conversation are, in my experience, almost entirely overblown – note that I'm talking personal here, not business/work related. The objections to having conversations with friends always seem to boil down to "I need to focus" and "too many interruptions". When you're an IC being constantly interrupted by meetings, I agree. But to apply the same logic to personal acquaintances and friends? Anecdotally, people who claim they have no time for talking on the phone will have approximately 2-3 friends they talk on a regular (not even daily) basis and spend afternoons binging TV shows. Framing it as a "so much context switching required!" is what's really intellectually dishonest here. Perhaps there's something that is making people anxious or annoyed of talking synchronously with friends over the phone. Sure. But to transpose the work argument doesn't hold water. Also, once again, anecdotally (but I'd love to see studies about this), people who claim they "only operate well asynchronously" will Never. Ever. Reply to text/email.
- bruce343434 4y ago
  You seem to imply that interruptions to watching passive entertainment don’t count as interruptions, is this correct and if so, why do you do that?

julik 4y ago

I can easily answer that - we have to look no further than the early 200s as well as the experience of our (GenX) parents. Where I used to work a lot of the things were settled by internal telephone calls within the office. On a normal workday I would receive anywhere from 10 to 30 calls, when work sessions were intense it would near 50-60 for a working day. Since the work I had to do was extremely detail-oriented and required a lot of concentration these calls were absolutely destroying my productivity. My parents would receive about 5 to 20 calls every day, which I had to answer and be sort of like a secretary (as they were often not at home) - this was before mobile phones. This was an experience that was very very not pleasant.

ghaff 4y ago
Well it was how life was. I was a product manager and then an analyst and I got phone calls from various people all the time at my desk. It was just how business worked. Yes I was grateful when someone just asked a simple question by internal only email instead. And yes you called friends out of the blue because how would you communicate otherwise?
dredmorbius 4y ago
60 calls in an 8-hour day is a call every 8 minutes, on average. This includes the time actually talking on the phone, and whatever non-phone duties you'd have. That's not an impossible rate. It does seem improbable, however.

gregmac 4y ago

You made it clear in another reply you weren't including work, which for me is where the bulk of disruptive interruptions come from. Some days it may only be a couple, but it can also easily be dozens. On a personal level, I don't consider "Netflix time" interrupting anything -- it's like the lowest priority thing I ever do, and I'd happily answer a call from a friend or family member. I and most of my friends have kids, so we rarely spontaneously call each other: it's usually preceded by a text along the lines of "You around?". I'm not sure what would happen with only phone; probably just less communication overall. Today I'll sometimes get (or send) a text in the middle of the work day, but I'm not sure that would be replaced by a phone call -- it would either happen outside work hours or not at all. Excluding group chats is also not really fair: for example a group chat I'm in now has been about arranging a get-together soon, and that would likely involve several phone calls to make it happen and figure out a time that works for most people. There's also some correspondence that happens over email today that you'd have to consider. For example, if you're moving (selling / buying houses) there's a whole ton of things with real estate agents, lawyers, bank and insurance that have to happen. If your lawyer calls to confirm a couple details, you either interrupt what you're doing or pay them extra as they can't finish their work and will have to pick it back up later (your return call is just as interrupting to them!).