Honestly, this feels harder for me than writing code.
I keep rephrasing messages to avoid ambiguity and make sure my point is clear. Recently I realized this takes up almost a third of my working time.
Do you experience something similar? How do you deal with this trade-off between being clear and being fast?
codingdave•1w ago
Take the necessary time to communicate well, without guilt. Even if it does take extra hours out of your day, clarity in communication will speed up everything else. At the same time, understand which messages truly matter - a note to a peer asking a basic question should not take hours, but a message introducing new ideas to a group of senior leaders in order to change the company strategy should absolutely take a long time to write.
simon-rebbins•1w ago
I try to separate cases where a quick reply is good enough from ones that actually need more care. The tricky part for me is volume and context switching. There're many messages every day, all in different contexts, and even deciding which ones deserve extra attention takes mental effort. That's where I start feeling the cumulative cost, rather than any single message being hard on its own.
JohnFen•1w ago
I've found that, generally, casual inquiries don't usually need a deep explanation. They usually just need a fast, actionable answer. Provide that, then attach or link to another document that provides the full, deep explanation.
simon-rebbins•1w ago