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All my realtime 'pings' (phone/text/im) inevitably start with some form of the question: "Hi, how busy are you?" IMHO, this is a sneaky way to get the person to

All my realtime 'pings' (phone/text/im) inevitably start with some form of the question: "Hi, how busy are you?" IMHO, this is a sneaky way to get the person to be honest about their immediate availability. By acknowledging straightaway that they might be busy, I give them a polite 'out', of sorts. If I urgently need something done, my openings are usually of the form, "Listen, I have a(n urgent) favor to ask. How busy are you?" Almost always works for me regardless of the communication medium used. Email, by its very nature, is supposed to be asynchronous. I wouldn't rely on email to convey anything more than delayed request/response conversation.

stollercyrus 13y ago
I like your "Hi, how busy are you?" approach.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
  Thanks. I realized a few years ago that that was the question I would have asked myself, if I were to interrupt myself when I was in the middle of doing something important. It has served me well ever since... :)
vidarh 13y ago
When someone start a request in a near-realtime medium with stuff like that, I instantly get annoyed as it is immediately wasting time for me in having to respond and way for their actual request. I much prefer you make the request right away without waiting, and just tacks on whatever pleasantries you feel necessary. Then I don't need to roundtrip with you to figure out whether or not what you are requesting is actually more important than what I am doing right now.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
  I see what you mean, but, personally, I'd much rather have the recipient ignore me than get yanked out of 'the zone' with my query that may or may not be up their alley. It is not so much pleasantries as a super-short 'SYN-ACK' and then straight to the point. Also, as I was mentioning in another comment, people on my realtime communication media contact list are quite close - the kind who would definitely respond to a SYN-req with stoic silence. I guess, it is a communication quirk that has evolved around my network and may not be true about the rest of the world. Apologies if I made it sound like that. As I said in another comment, to each their own. Shall we agree to differ on this one? :)
robzyb 13y ago
> "Hi, how busy are you?" I usually respond to that with a "why do you ask?" This might be because I'm not too busy to give you a couple of quick verbal answers about some figures that I've just given you, but I am too busy to revise them because you've just received new information.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
  Yup. That's the response, I usually get. This is where I would normally lay out the gist of my problem, e.g. "If you aren't too busy, I need help with zipping files on the client side, is there a JS library (or anything) that will allow me to do that? I need it by <insert urgency of request here>" I make two implicit assumptions here: One, (and this is highly subjective but it seems to apply to my personal network) if you are very busy/'in the zone', you won't respond to my first ping. If you do respond to my first ping, you might not yet be 'in the zone' and I'm not (yet) wasting valuable productivity time. Furthermore, I immediately lay out the gist of the conversation but there is no obligation on you to answer. Win-win, even if I say so myself? Of course, although this holds true about me and my personal network, it may not apply anywhere else. :)
hnriot 13y ago
If you start a message that way you're likely to irk your recipient. It's very rude to start out with "listen". And there's nothing about the nature of email that is asynchronous, gmail has blurred the lines between email and chat. An email reaches me just as quickly as iMessage et al My guidelines are use iMessage/bbm/txt for conversational inquiries where there is a need for back and forth type interaction and email for everything else. There's no difference in their delivery time with gmail. My daughter thinks of email as just for school stuff. Everything else is over other mediums, mainly iMessage (mainly due to the magic like "..." Indication) or Instagram. Time has changed things. Email is now as instant as instant messaging and IM is now as media rich as email, supporting photos and video etc. the lines between these have blurred mainly due to the smartphone. Once your messaging channel was coupled to the delivery vector, but now my MacBook Pro can receive iMessages and my phone can receive emails. I don't want a unified messaging interface because I can use different ones for different people and don't feel anxious about any of this. If I want to avoid the world for a while I have a mute button.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
  The contacts on my realtime communication media are all close people - the kind that won't hesitate to ignore my interruption if they are really truly busy. Also, I use the Hindi word "Sunn..." which means the same as (but is not as intrusive-sounding as) "Listen" but it doesn't translate very well in English. For me, email is more of a documenting system rather than conversation. Also, in my mind, I still consider email to be a medium for formal exchange inspite of the fact that smartphones have made them almost instantaneous, as you very well put it. Still, to each their own, I guess. Thanks for the insight! :)

stollercyrus 13y ago

I like your "Hi, how busy are you?" approach.

DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
Thanks. I realized a few years ago that that was the question I would have asked myself, if I were to interrupt myself when I was in the middle of doing something important. It has served me well ever since... :)

vidarh 13y ago

When someone start a request in a near-realtime medium with stuff like that, I instantly get annoyed as it is immediately wasting time for me in having to respond and way for their actual request. I much prefer you make the request right away without waiting, and just tacks on whatever pleasantries you feel necessary. Then I don't need to roundtrip with you to figure out whether or not what you are requesting is actually more important than what I am doing right now.

DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
I see what you mean, but, personally, I'd much rather have the recipient ignore me than get yanked out of 'the zone' with my query that may or may not be up their alley. It is not so much pleasantries as a super-short 'SYN-ACK' and then straight to the point. Also, as I was mentioning in another comment, people on my realtime communication media contact list are quite close - the kind who would definitely respond to a SYN-req with stoic silence. I guess, it is a communication quirk that has evolved around my network and may not be true about the rest of the world. Apologies if I made it sound like that. As I said in another comment, to each their own. Shall we agree to differ on this one? :)

robzyb 13y ago

> "Hi, how busy are you?" I usually respond to that with a "why do you ask?" This might be because I'm not too busy to give you a couple of quick verbal answers about some figures that I've just given you, but I am too busy to revise them because you've just received new information.

DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
Yup. That's the response, I usually get. This is where I would normally lay out the gist of my problem, e.g. "If you aren't too busy, I need help with zipping files on the client side, is there a JS library (or anything) that will allow me to do that? I need it by <insert urgency of request here>" I make two implicit assumptions here: One, (and this is highly subjective but it seems to apply to my personal network) if you are very busy/'in the zone', you won't respond to my first ping. If you do respond to my first ping, you might not yet be 'in the zone' and I'm not (yet) wasting valuable productivity time. Furthermore, I immediately lay out the gist of the conversation but there is no obligation on you to answer. Win-win, even if I say so myself? Of course, although this holds true about me and my personal network, it may not apply anywhere else. :)

hnriot 13y ago

If you start a message that way you're likely to irk your recipient. It's very rude to start out with "listen". And there's nothing about the nature of email that is asynchronous, gmail has blurred the lines between email and chat. An email reaches me just as quickly as iMessage et al My guidelines are use iMessage/bbm/txt for conversational inquiries where there is a need for back and forth type interaction and email for everything else. There's no difference in their delivery time with gmail. My daughter thinks of email as just for school stuff. Everything else is over other mediums, mainly iMessage (mainly due to the magic like "..." Indication) or Instagram. Time has changed things. Email is now as instant as instant messaging and IM is now as media rich as email, supporting photos and video etc. the lines between these have blurred mainly due to the smartphone. Once your messaging channel was coupled to the delivery vector, but now my MacBook Pro can receive iMessages and my phone can receive emails. I don't want a unified messaging interface because I can use different ones for different people and don't feel anxious about any of this. If I want to avoid the world for a while I have a mute button.

DjangoReinhardt 13y ago
The contacts on my realtime communication media are all close people - the kind that won't hesitate to ignore my interruption if they are really truly busy. Also, I use the Hindi word "Sunn..." which means the same as (but is not as intrusive-sounding as) "Listen" but it doesn't translate very well in English. For me, email is more of a documenting system rather than conversation. Also, in my mind, I still consider email to be a medium for formal exchange inspite of the fact that smartphones have made them almost instantaneous, as you very well put it. Still, to each their own, I guess. Thanks for the insight! :)