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Sorry, but this is not accurate: People messaging over Slack 100% makes us more effective. Like any technology, including printing 20 pages of status report, th

Sorry, but this is not accurate: People messaging over Slack 100% makes us more effective. Like any technology, including printing 20 pages of status report, there are ways to be efficient with them, and ways to be inefficient with them. The workforce right now are growing up as digital natives. Time to act like it.

droopyEyelids 3y ago
The concept you're missing is that a barrier to communication, like sending the fax, forces one to organize their thoughts before impinging on another person's time. So while digital communication has a lower round trip time, it also has a lower barrier to entry, which means you get more communications and they're less focused. This leads to situations like my inbox, with 50 messages a day that are parts of huge unfocused threads and it can take 5 minutes of diligent effort to find out if my attention is even required, and at that point my 'action' will probably be to reply to the thread asking for clarification, setting off the same bullshit task for all the people CC'ed
- an_aparallel 3y ago
  wonder if this is an opportunity for some enterprising individual to sell llm powered "idea distillation before hitting send" (as a service)...that was intended as a joke...but i can see it being great hahaha.
- whatisyour 3y ago
  When has increased barrier to communication ever been good? It's better to reduce barrier and change training rather increase barrier as a punishment.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    > When has increased barrier to communication ever been good? Phone call costs used to mean you probably wanted to answer every phone call you received, rather than missing calls you should have answered because you're so used to ignoring them since most are spam and fraud. IDK about good in terms of humanity or whatever, but if I could snap my fingers and set a $0.05/minute rate on all phone calls, and $0.15 for long distance connections of any kind, I'd do it, because it'd be a net-improvement for everyone I know. > It's better to reduce barrier and change training rather increase barrier The medium is the message. You want to change the message, look at the medium, not the people.
- harry8 3y ago
  Friend of mine had an idea of an email budget - everyone gets x emails a month. Can't send any after that. Ok it would never work because idiot senior managers would give themselves 100x then dole out extra to their tamed pets but you can see why the idea is attractive to consider.
- spandrew 3y ago
  Or grow up and accept that a volume of emails and comms are expected when you're coordinating with dozens of other human beings.

droopyEyelids 3y ago

The concept you're missing is that a barrier to communication, like sending the fax, forces one to organize their thoughts before impinging on another person's time. So while digital communication has a lower round trip time, it also has a lower barrier to entry, which means you get more communications and they're less focused. This leads to situations like my inbox, with 50 messages a day that are parts of huge unfocused threads and it can take 5 minutes of diligent effort to find out if my attention is even required, and at that point my 'action' will probably be to reply to the thread asking for clarification, setting off the same bullshit task for all the people CC'ed

an_aparallel 3y ago
wonder if this is an opportunity for some enterprising individual to sell llm powered "idea distillation before hitting send" (as a service)...that was intended as a joke...but i can see it being great hahaha.
whatisyour 3y ago
When has increased barrier to communication ever been good? It's better to reduce barrier and change training rather increase barrier as a punishment.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  > When has increased barrier to communication ever been good? Phone call costs used to mean you probably wanted to answer every phone call you received, rather than missing calls you should have answered because you're so used to ignoring them since most are spam and fraud. IDK about good in terms of humanity or whatever, but if I could snap my fingers and set a $0.05/minute rate on all phone calls, and $0.15 for long distance connections of any kind, I'd do it, because it'd be a net-improvement for everyone I know. > It's better to reduce barrier and change training rather increase barrier The medium is the message. You want to change the message, look at the medium, not the people.
harry8 3y ago
Friend of mine had an idea of an email budget - everyone gets x emails a month. Can't send any after that. Ok it would never work because idiot senior managers would give themselves 100x then dole out extra to their tamed pets but you can see why the idea is attractive to consider.
spandrew 3y ago
Or grow up and accept that a volume of emails and comms are expected when you're coordinating with dozens of other human beings.