I'd recommend trying to get to a room where family member/friend etc. is in their environment, throw casually "hey, can we talk" and move outside of the room waiting for them to come over.<p>They will expect something is/was wrong. Simply because people organically don't communicate like that. There is no N minutes pause between prompt and the message. Having separate communication prompt is signaling for bracing or softening, i.e. delivery of bad news.<p>Sure, a lot of people learned to cope with this, but that's definitely not normal communication. It's also wasting other people's time and showing lack of respect. Having someone wait on hook for 2 minutes while thoughts are being typed out is exact same type of power move as "yeah, I called you, but wait a sec till I finish my crossword". Is the other person online presence really indispensable to a degree that the thoughts cannot by typed out without it? As a counter move (if someone wants to be mean) you can respond "Hey, I'm here, but I'm starting my focus session right now, so I'll check my Slack/E-mail/IRC/Teams in 45 minutes, what's up?"<p>So yeah.. don't do this in professional communication.
While some may not agree with how this is formulated, I think the point is a part of a bigger concept - don't be <i>unpredictable</i>. Don't make things <i>unpredictable</i>.<p>Work is a necessity. We're not all neurotypical, relaxed, outgoing persons - some of us may even suffer from mental issues - and we still have to work. <i>Predictability</i> - i.e. removing all the mystery from communication - helps a lot.<p>"Hey, can you talk for a second?" - is unpredictable. I have no way of knowing whether you want to talk to me about weather or shoot me with a gun. "Hey, can you talk for a second about X? [+additional info if needed]" - is predictable and gives me a clear idea about what you want to talk about.<p>Of course, communication takes effort, and it is unreasonable to demand everyone to follow these guidelines all the time. But that doesn't mean they're bad guidelines.
It's a sad state of affairs when people are so anxious that a simple inquiry can cause them distress.<p>I don't know if it's character, upbringing or just the modern work environment but it really ought not to cause anyone any concern if someone just wants to check if you're available.
I got a very spooky email from HR a few years back:
"Hi, this is X from HR. We want to talk to you about an incident that occurred a few months ago. Can we meet on Thursday 3 PM?"
"Okay what incident are you referring to"
"I'll let you know on Thursday"<p>I then messaged my boss he told me the incident was something dodgey someone had said to me.
Amazing how many people (especially from HR) don't get this. The other day I got a calendar invite from a random HR person who I've talked to before that said nothing but "Sync". It made extremely distressed until I messaged that person asking for more information and it turned out to be something completely innocent. Just write it in the damn invite then instead of giving me a heart attack!
This is true for many things -- emails, forum/community posts -- always have a context, especially with the Subject. When one sends out something, it is for the recipient and not for the senders' convenience. I'm still learning but I love setting enough context for the recipient to either take action or form a decision, starting from the Subject which is the core of the whole content.<p>I once read about the idea of BLUF[1] - “Bottom Line Up Front”, popularized by the military - because lives may be dependent on how fast a message gets its context to the recipient. I love that idea and love practicing it. These are applicable, not just with emails, bit also with short text messages.<p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)</a>
My kid's school is very sensible about this. If they have to phone you during the day for something minor they always start with "Hello, this is <school name>, there's nothing to worry about." It saves parents that 5 seconds of panic that something terrible has happened.<p>> don't just say hello in chat.<p>This drives me crazy. It's like they are trying to maximise the amount of other people's time they're wasting.
Regardless of my position I have always sent my full request in a message to anyone that I wouldn't consider a friend (as in someone more significant to a co-worker).<p>And generally speaking if it's among friends it's something super casual like "yo" or "sup" generally because I have no specific subject, I just want to chat generally.<p>This is not just because I don't like freaking people out but also because I respect their time. I don't want them to get the first interrupt and then wait for 60s while I type out the actual request I have of them.
Ha, one of the most relatable HN submissions in a long, <i>long</i> time.<p>Many people, me included, link those out-of-the-blue messages with "you are fired" or "can you please work weekends for one month", and both are not welcome news.<p>But there's also very often another thing: a creator/maker like the programmers are (or should be) assuming that the other party will not interrupt you if it wasn't for anything important -- because you know you wouldn't want that for yourself and are trying to be considerate towards other people's concentration.<p>Turns out however, people send these messages for all sorts of random unimportant things. With time I learned to respond immediately so I don't allow any anxiety to take a hold in me -- but then when I see that it's something trivial (and is not blocking the other party) I also immediately reply with "sure but I'll do it later since I got plenty on my plate right now". A few people took offense but I got over it. They too.<p>---<p>But then there's also the other extreme. My last long-ish contract I was in a company where the CTO and his second in command were literally impossible to reach outside of biweekly scheduled meetings -- and even then nothing they deem off-topic is allowed. I get that you have to preserve your focus and concentration but they took it to the other extreme and it was very, VERY not okay because super important decisions only the CTO can make were being dragged out for months, leading to improvisation by the rest of the team that was then criticized by the said CTO.
> A piece of advice <i>I wish I could give</i> my manager is don't be spooky.<p>Why not politely talk to your manager and let them know that this behaviour is not appropriate / productive?
The post is missing that the effect of the described behaviour is very context dependant. For example, I am not afraid of my main client at all. If I get a message from him like "Can we talk" it is just that. He wants to talk about something that is not so important or too complicated to describe it in the message. And if I get repeated phone calls it means that he is either on his mobile travelling and is trying to reach me when he has a signal or that he has a limited time-frame to reach me for whatever reason. In other words: Our communication is not scary by default, and if something scary was imminent, he would surely announce it.
I get this. We never know when the company is going to forecast that it needs a round of redundancies. When they do so, they would send a meeting request saying something like "important company status update" with no other information, because they don't want to divulge anything before the meeting. After going through the redundancy selection and surviving it, any future emails that say things like "important company status update" are quite worrying. And they send things like that all the time, because they don't think it's important to tell us why they're calling a meeting.
If someone says "Have you got a minute?" the natural people-pleasing human response is to say yes because you assume that someone won't interrupt you unless it's important. You need to let go of that notion and assume that their inquiry is of the lowest possible priority, and literally <i>anything</i> else you're working on is more important. Unless you've got nothing else on at the time this means you can happily say "No, I don't have a minute."<p>People will quickly learn that they need to say <i>why</i> they need to interrupt you in order to actually break your flow.
I relate heavily to this, but I know that I'm an anxious person. So I absolutely appreciate when the people around me provide context for why they're messaging me and I've also gotten my close friends and family to text me before they call me.<p>However I also know that it is not on them to deal with my anxiety. That's on me and I need to actively work on managing my anxiety instead of relying on the people around me to do that for me.<p>It's always difficult to infer someones character from a few lines of text, but it seems fairly obvious that the author has not yet understood that they are (contrary to their own belief) prone to anxious thoughts.<p>Some comments here make this out to be an extreme character flaw, or think this is somehow an indicator that society is going downhill, but having anxious thoughts is not inherently a bad thing. Being unaware of your own tendency to produce anxious thoughts however is a bad thing. Anxious thoughts that aren't actively managed will influence your behavior and your decision making processes.<p>The usual advice is of course meditation, but just knowing being aware of your own anxious thoughts is often times enough to combat them.
They'd hate where I work. Rather than message to ask to call, we just call.<p>The whole point of calling is to reduce the pain of having to type out a load of stuff that's easier to say and comes with the extra nuances of verbal communication. I can't imagine they'd prefer the repeated flashings of <i>your manager is typing...</i> over minutes.<p>Just sending "hello" is annoying though, I'll give them that.
I'm not sure if "spooky" is the right word (why would you assume you're in trouble?), but it sure helps to have context, and if it's just to prepare by opening the right documents to quickly look up stuff. That's why if find the last paragraph the most useful advice here. Please don't break my concentration by writing just "Hello" and having my actively wait for you to type your concern. And <i>please</i> don't wait for me to write "Hello" too before you even start.
> Repeated pings fall under the same category. If I'm available, I would have replied to you already.<p>Managers that do this are micro-managers and won't listen to the advice.<p>My written conversations with my manager are asynchronous, even when via Slack. I know he will answer when he can and I will answer when I can.<p>So if it's urgent it goes in the team chat, where we can take a collective decision without having a less technical manager be the bottleneck.
The more we become overly sensitive, the harsher it will feel if we accidentally miss being overly sensitive. Now you tell me I shouldn't use "you have a sec?" ? if this goes on where are we going to be in 10 years? No personal communication at all anymore because it might make somebody feel anxious and I can only have a personal discussion with them if I send a week before a full agenda and rundown?
As a manager I always state in my message what I want to talk about. Or what a meeting is about.<p>There is a big difference between "Can we talk?" and "Can we talk? Want us to look over the roadmap real quick". The first one could be anything and the other person will always imagine all kinds of stuff. Likely even lose productivity over it. The second one is a no brainer.
Original by Adam Keys <a href="https://therealadam.com/2021/11/01/dont-be-spooky/" rel="nofollow">https://therealadam.com/2021/11/01/dont-be-spooky/</a><p>Discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29130590" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29130590</a>
I understand people are wired differently and react differently to this situation.<p>It is helpful for one's own mental health to <i>Assume Positive Intent</i> when context is missing from messages. If it is really bad news that the other party wants to discuss, there is nothing you can do about it. You might as well deal with it during/after the discussion. If it is a benign discussion, all your anxiety would have been pointless anyway.<p>The corollary is that if you are sending a message, it just takes a few additional words to provide context (don't be cryptic; don't write a Tolstoy novel). That saves time on both sides. It preps the recipient to come prepared with information for the discussion and hopefully makes the discussion short and productive.
If someone can't say "got a minute to chat?" or even "hello" to you without causing anxiety, you need a long break, a new job, or professional help.<p>Surprised at all the comments agreeing with this article.
Please don’t lobby for standards of social behavior that substantially disadvantage the majority to save a little awkwardness for a minority.<p>I want people to ping me. I don’t mind “hello” in chat. It makes sense. It is a stand-in for dropping by my desk.<p>If I were working with you I would be very willing to accommodate your anxiety. But what you’re doing here is implying that we all want to shut down casual real-time chatting (wherein I don’t want to say anything of substance unless I know my correspondent is present).
As a manager, it's trivial to just add "you're not in trouble" to the end of a message like this, even if you can't imply what it's about.
> do things around the house<p>This sounds like advice specific for WFH, but it also applies to people working at the office.<p>The other person may be talking to someone else, in an unscheduled meeting, having a coffee, or simply have notifications off to be able to focus. I used to have them off for most of the day, and just check for messages at a half hour interval, otherwise it’s a total productivity killer. In a real emergency people will reach for a phone call.
I guess it's a bit similar to <a href="https://www.nohello.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.nohello.com</a>
The initial message triggers you to worry about an uncertain topic, it's much better to know from the initial message what the conversation will be about
> A corollary to this piece of advice I wish I could give to some other coworkers is don't just say hello in chat.<p><a href="https://nohello.net/en/" rel="nofollow">https://nohello.net/en/</a>
It gets bad when people with odd anxieties project them onto everyone around them.<p>There's an entire social (edit:changed that word from 'political' which I didn't mean to say) orientation around this.<p>See the hilarious 2019 Socialist Convention where they talk about people clapping as 'harm' or wearing perfume as 'aggressive' or taking a particular tone as 'oppressive', etc.<p>"Hey, can we chat!" is now "Triggering" etc.. ?<p>We're really going to be dragged aside by HR now because "Hey, can we chat?"<p>Yeah ... no.<p>I think it's up to the author to seek help.<p>I don't deny they have an issue, but I'm wary that it's mostly theirs to contend with.
I'm of two minds on this issue.<p>I recognize myself in what the author is describing. In fact, I always describe what I want to talk about in my initial message, and ask before calling because I hate when it happens to me.<p>On the other hand, if Soviet soldiers can hold off the Germans at Stalingrad, I don't have to replicate their mental fortitude but I can at least replicate <1% of it. And that includes not freaking out with minor white collar bullshit in a developed country.<p>Never confronting anxiety just increases it in the long run.
If you are so weak you cannot pretend to influence and change the behavior of others.<p>So, this debate is absolutely ridiculous and stupid.<p>And this shit represents the pinnacle of a generation so fragile and incompetent that it will lead to "worse times".
This person needs to consider mindfulness meditation.<p>It almost seems like they are assuming some catastrophe is around every corner.<p>If your boss says "hey got a moment to chat" you have a choice in how you react to the information. Assume they want to just chat and engage, or freak out and think the world is ending. Both options are possible, one has a nicer outcome. It's important to remember and remind yourself that you have control about how you feel about things.<p>I know I do work. I can justify my time, If my boss pulls me aside and redirects my work. That's totally fine, I work for them.<p>But generally, meetings invites and messages should contain lots of info and context. Chatting with your boss shouldn't be scary, if it is, maybe consider a new boss.