I’ve been wondering for awhile, how much does lack of typing proficiency contribute to this problem?
There is one co-worker who always wants to huddle if any Slack thread gets busy. In a complete separate conversation they told me that they are a hunt and peck typist. This person is an incredible engineer.
I put 2 and 2 together. In Slack conversations I am absolutely burying them in paragraphs of text because I can type quite fast. They can’t keep up.
I’m sure there are also other factors like language proficiency, written communications skills, etc. But I think the lack of typing proficiency may pushing people away from written communication.
Outside of the workplace, people who do not even have keyboards (phone/tablet only) may be contributing less to text chat conversations than others. They are also the people who only use voice messages.
Anecdotally, I've noticed an inverse relationship between ability to read and preference for oral communication.
My takeaway from this has been to prefer short, highly-formatted emails over meetings and chat. I put the "Bottom Line Up Front", try to limit paragraphs to two sentences (takeaway and detail), use indentation to indicate which sentence(s) are less important, and always direct questions at a particular person.
Email allows slow readers, slow thinkers, and slow writers to ingest, digest, and respond at their own pace.
I disagree with the author's hope for AI. "Orality" doesn't leave room for deep thought. It demands immediate response. It rewards those who keep talking. It doesn't allow for linking and references.
While we're getting AI that can show how it arrived at a response, and AI that can summarize your spoken words, we don't have AI that can show how you arrived at your response. That's on you.
I always got a grumble after reading a long email and seeing tldr at the bottom. It would take only a few seconds of the writer's time to put it at the top...
How can you work with computers all day and be a hunt and peck typist? I'm not judging, I just don't understand. Is this some sort of medical condition?
I was never really interested in learning the touch typing technique and basically just kept advancing hunt and peck into a kind of floating hands style. My registration to key positions is based more off the outer keys on the keyboard. Switching keyboards takes longer to get used to the new one. Using random keyboards or typing while standing I'm generally back to looking at the keys. Sitting down at my partner's desk and using their keyboard with blank keycaps is seriously annoying. I've clocked about 140wpm on my own keyboards though, so shrug. My real question is how do people keep at "hunt and peck" and not eventually get quicker? And how do people use things like touchscreen phone keyboards to compose anything longer than ten words, not getting frustrated and giving up?
Not quite to the level of hunt-and-pecking but unless you are typing up reams of boilerplate, typing speed really isn't a bottleneck to intelectual work with a computer.
I like being able to type fast enough to take meeting notes in realtime with minimal attention to what my fingers are doing. I find this method to be great for helping me actually remember what happened. FWIW I was a hunt & peck-er until I wrote my masters thesis in 2021, and touch typing is absolutely one of the most useful skills I've ever learned.
“Paragraphs of text” in a back and forth on Slack probably does mean time to have a call. It’s an anti pattern imo.
Whether the problem genuinely needs that much context to explain or you are flooding them with low signal logorrhea (another common problem), both cases are solved with an in-person or audio chat.
Actually, as I say this, I wonder if this is part of why some people actually like AI autocomplete. If you struggle to type, the predictive stuff has a lot more value.
That's a remarkable insight! I have been a fast typist since I was young, and I have never found it worth the trouble of using even regular autocomplete - it distracts me more than it helps. I have yet to try AI autocomplete, either, because the problems it apparently solves don't really seem to be problems I have. It had never occurred to me that typing skill might have something to do with this.
Paragraphs of text is a waste of time. I did a basic experiment for about a week where I typed everything out vs called a huddle when things got too verbose in similar threads and the time savings were ~8x
They were so good I’m now convinced that a slack thread that gives everyone context that then jumps into a huddle at the right time is more effective than scheduled meetings.
Hate this mentality. 1) written text is often more clear and concise 2) written text leaves a reference that can be used later whereas huddles leave me wondering wtf we just talked avout 20 minutes ago.
Those two points are important for me, too.
Conversations are important, too. However, if there's no need to write down the result then a) or the topic was something a minor detail, b) or we are in 'crises management' mode (maybe permanently).
Working in a almost full-remote org, I resonate with the foggy aspect. On transcripts and record keeping, I feel most remote orgs keep pretty good transcripts of their meetings and people understand why it matters and play by the rules.
Then, requests to have oral conversations outside of scheduled meetings usually means something derailed.
Either they're about to say something that can't be left in writing, or they intend to have a discussion that they shouldn't be having in the first place (they'll ask for something I'll probably have to refuse). Or things got awry enough that speed matters over tracability and transparency, and we're basically in red alert.
Right now I think "can we have a quick call" in a single message without any other context is probably the most dreadful thing to say to someone at work.
One reason for this shift to oral communication, I think, is that people are less intrinsically willing to do "little things" in writing that make communication easier and less opaque (or more legible, in the post's terminology.)
The example I'm thinking of from my own experience is the "roger" or "message received" confirmation, or lack thereof. In email, Slack, and other writing-first communication channels, the default behavior is not to confirm that you've received a message.
In emails, because it's unclear if replying "got it/okay/received" is socially acceptable – or if it isn't, and just adding an unnecessary message to their busy inbox. Slack sort of solves this with the reactions, but even then, enforcing this across all company communication channels feels heavy handed.
Compare this to a quick Zoom call / Slack hangout, where I can tell you something and immediately know that you've heard me. I still might need to remind you later, but that's a reminder, not a check to see if you got the message in the first place.
I'm curious about how the actual discussions go. I'm with you in that people default to no reaction (in writing or oral), except when there is an explicit request.
In practice there's a ton of Slack messages I write that have no reaction whatsoever, but if they're in a thread with new messages coming after, we can all assume people commenting have read what was said before. That's the basic structure of a conversation.
Announcements kind of messages, sent in isolation, are more tricky. But then, if it matters to have a reaction, we get used to explicitely ask for it IMHO (e.g. some event needs to be acknowledged), and it's kinda the same in a real time meeting: you'll also make sure people are listening and understood your announcement, and not doing something else on the side.
...if they're in a thread with new messages coming after, we can all assume people commenting have read what was said before...
IME this actually isn't always the case, especially if it's a busy channel. And so it ends up being more effective to just book a 15 minute Zoom call with someone if you need to actually get their attention, rather than put a message in a channel and/or privately.
Emails in particular are annoying for read receipts, at least on outlook, read confirmations are their own mail, and don't pool so anytime you have to send something with more than a few recipients you're setting yourself to get spammed randomly whenever they feel like it and since it's opt in per mail, you can't actually trust it
> This chit-chat async glimmer of multiple conversations, hemming and hahing and trying so hard to implement ephemerality.
> It’s so flammable, right now, too. We talk and then suddenly misunderstand, and the misunderstandings jump from conversation to conversation faster than we can track. No-one is on the same page, because there are no pages — just scrolling and backscrolls.
Is the author's final point that we might use LLMs to help deal with these issues? Perhaps so, but I think instead of asking how to simply cope with it, we might ask ourselves what the underlying reasons are and how to deal with them.
I do agree with them though, in that we often subject ourselves to too much noise, and not enough signal (meaningful, productive conversations and relationships) but what would introducing LLMs really do here? Allow us to more efficiently consume noise, and maybe respond more verbosely to the signal, just resulting in more noise? On the other hand, trying to, for example, build communities where people can develop meaningful connections with people, have substantive conversations, and grow with each other, might produce better results.
You can help fight it back. Next time someone sends you a message with a vague request - ask for a ticket with proper description. Next time someone suggests groundbreaking idea - ask for RFC with details. Next alignment meeting with 10 people where only one or two are talking - ask whether email will suffice.
It would be great to have a machine of loving grace summarizing and organizing all the hitherto ephemeral information, at least within an organization.
As a fan of Oblomov, have you tuned into Spike Milligan?
His life work has a lot of relevance to the notion of oral culture inasmuch as Spike was a superlative orator and racounteur, and I think - if you don't know of Spikes' relationship with Oblomov - you're in for a treat ... ;)
There are different ends of the 'reproducibility spectrum' that Spike will take you to, though ..
I’ve been wondering for awhile, how much does lack of typing proficiency contribute to this problem?
There is one co-worker who always wants to huddle if any Slack thread gets busy. In a complete separate conversation they told me that they are a hunt and peck typist. This person is an incredible engineer.
I put 2 and 2 together. In Slack conversations I am absolutely burying them in paragraphs of text because I can type quite fast. They can’t keep up.
I’m sure there are also other factors like language proficiency, written communications skills, etc. But I think the lack of typing proficiency may pushing people away from written communication.
Outside of the workplace, people who do not even have keyboards (phone/tablet only) may be contributing less to text chat conversations than others. They are also the people who only use voice messages.
Anecdotally, I've noticed an inverse relationship between ability to read and preference for oral communication.
My takeaway from this has been to prefer short, highly-formatted emails over meetings and chat. I put the "Bottom Line Up Front", try to limit paragraphs to two sentences (takeaway and detail), use indentation to indicate which sentence(s) are less important, and always direct questions at a particular person.
Email allows slow readers, slow thinkers, and slow writers to ingest, digest, and respond at their own pace.
I disagree with the author's hope for AI. "Orality" doesn't leave room for deep thought. It demands immediate response. It rewards those who keep talking. It doesn't allow for linking and references. While we're getting AI that can show how it arrived at a response, and AI that can summarize your spoken words, we don't have AI that can show how you arrived at your response. That's on you.
I always got a grumble after reading a long email and seeing tldr at the bottom. It would take only a few seconds of the writer's time to put it at the top...
How can you work with computers all day and be a hunt and peck typist? I'm not judging, I just don't understand. Is this some sort of medical condition?
I was never really interested in learning the touch typing technique and basically just kept advancing hunt and peck into a kind of floating hands style. My registration to key positions is based more off the outer keys on the keyboard. Switching keyboards takes longer to get used to the new one. Using random keyboards or typing while standing I'm generally back to looking at the keys. Sitting down at my partner's desk and using their keyboard with blank keycaps is seriously annoying. I've clocked about 140wpm on my own keyboards though, so shrug. My real question is how do people keep at "hunt and peck" and not eventually get quicker? And how do people use things like touchscreen phone keyboards to compose anything longer than ten words, not getting frustrated and giving up?
Same reason I didn't take a calligraphy class so I could handwrite.
Hunt and peck is perfectly functional for most typing. People can hunt and peck quite quickly.
The question is do you type slowly or quickly, not which method you use.
Not quite to the level of hunt-and-pecking but unless you are typing up reams of boilerplate, typing speed really isn't a bottleneck to intelectual work with a computer.
I like being able to type fast enough to take meeting notes in realtime with minimal attention to what my fingers are doing. I find this method to be great for helping me actually remember what happened. FWIW I was a hunt & peck-er until I wrote my masters thesis in 2021, and touch typing is absolutely one of the most useful skills I've ever learned.
“Paragraphs of text” in a back and forth on Slack probably does mean time to have a call. It’s an anti pattern imo.
Whether the problem genuinely needs that much context to explain or you are flooding them with low signal logorrhea (another common problem), both cases are solved with an in-person or audio chat.
This is real. I’ve had people ask if I used AI when taking notes live. They’d never seen anyone fast enough to keep up.
Actually, as I say this, I wonder if this is part of why some people actually like AI autocomplete. If you struggle to type, the predictive stuff has a lot more value.
That's a remarkable insight! I have been a fast typist since I was young, and I have never found it worth the trouble of using even regular autocomplete - it distracts me more than it helps. I have yet to try AI autocomplete, either, because the problems it apparently solves don't really seem to be problems I have. It had never occurred to me that typing skill might have something to do with this.
I toyed with predictive stuff and noticed that I started leaning into its predictions too much, altering the course of what I truly wanted to say.
Paragraphs of text is a waste of time. I did a basic experiment for about a week where I typed everything out vs called a huddle when things got too verbose in similar threads and the time savings were ~8x
They were so good I’m now convinced that a slack thread that gives everyone context that then jumps into a huddle at the right time is more effective than scheduled meetings.
Hate this mentality. 1) written text is often more clear and concise 2) written text leaves a reference that can be used later whereas huddles leave me wondering wtf we just talked avout 20 minutes ago.
Those two points are important for me, too. Conversations are important, too. However, if there's no need to write down the result then a) or the topic was something a minor detail, b) or we are in 'crises management' mode (maybe permanently).
One way monologues may be concise but conversations with a lot of back and forth are slow and painful
Working in a almost full-remote org, I resonate with the foggy aspect. On transcripts and record keeping, I feel most remote orgs keep pretty good transcripts of their meetings and people understand why it matters and play by the rules.
Then, requests to have oral conversations outside of scheduled meetings usually means something derailed.
Either they're about to say something that can't be left in writing, or they intend to have a discussion that they shouldn't be having in the first place (they'll ask for something I'll probably have to refuse). Or things got awry enough that speed matters over tracability and transparency, and we're basically in red alert.
Right now I think "can we have a quick call" in a single message without any other context is probably the most dreadful thing to say to someone at work.
That’s what my VP messaged me with right before laying me off with 0 notice.
One reason for this shift to oral communication, I think, is that people are less intrinsically willing to do "little things" in writing that make communication easier and less opaque (or more legible, in the post's terminology.)
The example I'm thinking of from my own experience is the "roger" or "message received" confirmation, or lack thereof. In email, Slack, and other writing-first communication channels, the default behavior is not to confirm that you've received a message.
In emails, because it's unclear if replying "got it/okay/received" is socially acceptable – or if it isn't, and just adding an unnecessary message to their busy inbox. Slack sort of solves this with the reactions, but even then, enforcing this across all company communication channels feels heavy handed.
Compare this to a quick Zoom call / Slack hangout, where I can tell you something and immediately know that you've heard me. I still might need to remind you later, but that's a reminder, not a check to see if you got the message in the first place.
I'm curious about how the actual discussions go. I'm with you in that people default to no reaction (in writing or oral), except when there is an explicit request.
In practice there's a ton of Slack messages I write that have no reaction whatsoever, but if they're in a thread with new messages coming after, we can all assume people commenting have read what was said before. That's the basic structure of a conversation.
Announcements kind of messages, sent in isolation, are more tricky. But then, if it matters to have a reaction, we get used to explicitely ask for it IMHO (e.g. some event needs to be acknowledged), and it's kinda the same in a real time meeting: you'll also make sure people are listening and understood your announcement, and not doing something else on the side.
...if they're in a thread with new messages coming after, we can all assume people commenting have read what was said before...
IME this actually isn't always the case, especially if it's a busy channel. And so it ends up being more effective to just book a 15 minute Zoom call with someone if you need to actually get their attention, rather than put a message in a channel and/or privately.
That sounds like the kind of reminder we'd do in a weekly team meeting or project review, but you might have different use cases in your mind.
In general the cost of having a separate meeting is kinda high (apart from booking the spot, it generally also means an agenda and a transcript)
Emails in particular are annoying for read receipts, at least on outlook, read confirmations are their own mail, and don't pool so anytime you have to send something with more than a few recipients you're setting yourself to get spammed randomly whenever they feel like it and since it's opt in per mail, you can't actually trust it
That's why I love emoji reactions so much. You can send acknowledgment without spamming the thread with acknowledgment messages.
> This chit-chat async glimmer of multiple conversations, hemming and hahing and trying so hard to implement ephemerality.
> It’s so flammable, right now, too. We talk and then suddenly misunderstand, and the misunderstandings jump from conversation to conversation faster than we can track. No-one is on the same page, because there are no pages — just scrolling and backscrolls.
Is the author's final point that we might use LLMs to help deal with these issues? Perhaps so, but I think instead of asking how to simply cope with it, we might ask ourselves what the underlying reasons are and how to deal with them.
I do agree with them though, in that we often subject ourselves to too much noise, and not enough signal (meaningful, productive conversations and relationships) but what would introducing LLMs really do here? Allow us to more efficiently consume noise, and maybe respond more verbosely to the signal, just resulting in more noise? On the other hand, trying to, for example, build communities where people can develop meaningful connections with people, have substantive conversations, and grow with each other, might produce better results.
This deeply resonates with me.
You can help fight it back. Next time someone sends you a message with a vague request - ask for a ticket with proper description. Next time someone suggests groundbreaking idea - ask for RFC with details. Next alignment meeting with 10 people where only one or two are talking - ask whether email will suffice.
It got hugged to death
https://archive.md/PvQRi
It would be great to have a machine of loving grace summarizing and organizing all the hitherto ephemeral information, at least within an organization.
The website isn't loading for me, so I guess I'll have to ask someone to read it orally and tell me what it's about.
I am very fond of Oblomov. Always considered him a role model, in hypothesis. I'll get around to emulating him one day.
I suspect Günter Grass was a fan too. Meyn the trumpeter in "the tin drum" and his lifestyle.
As a fan of Oblomov, have you tuned into Spike Milligan?
His life work has a lot of relevance to the notion of oral culture inasmuch as Spike was a superlative orator and racounteur, and I think - if you don't know of Spikes' relationship with Oblomov - you're in for a treat ... ;)
There are different ends of the 'reproducibility spectrum' that Spike will take you to, though ..
Part of my childhood. The war biography has it's moments. The battle to stay in bed the longest indeed.