Asynchronous Communication

This Blog Post was originally published on the platform "writelier" (formerly "co-writers" and "200wordsaday"). Sadly the blogging platform was discontinued. I downloaded all my blog posts and prepared them to be republish them here.

I was listening to the Brandonian Doctrine, Episode 20 "The impending doom of a phone call" by Mr TeamStreak (@brandonwilson) himself. I've been listening to his short episodes now almost every day.

And until I listened to Episode 20 I wasn't sure what to write for today. So thank you, Brandon, for today's inspiration.

I also have written about Communication not long ago, so I thought it would fit. Whatever.

I don't enjoy phone calls. You have to respond immediately on questions, sometimes you even don't have time to think about them because the person on the other end of the line is impatient as hell.

Most of the time you get interrupted on whatever you did (for example I was eating before a lawyer called me today) and after the call, you sometimes can't even remember what it was about or you forgot some details because you forgot to ask for them.

Later I called my grandmothers (the one on my father's side of the family and then the one on my mother's side) so find out how they were doing in this quarantine times. That is a time where I like synchronous communication as it is the only method correctly available.

But most of the time I enjoy asynchronous communication. EMails, WhatsApp, (insert any other messengers here), because you can think about your responses.

As I have written in the communications post, body language is really hard to guess. Written words aren't. If they are meant sarcastic, I can add an emoji. If I want to make something clear, write it down.

Most importantly, I can react asynchronously. People aren't offended if you don't reply to them immediately (although some people seem to be). And so you can focus on your current task, before switching to responding mode again.

I can turn off notifications if they overwhelm me. Sure I could turn off my phone anyway, which I'm already doing overnight (no message can be that important that I can't wait a few hours). But if you get a call, most of the time you pick up.

And as you pick up, your focus is gone.