I actually never feel the urge to respond quickly to a text message. I treat it as the asynchronous platform that it is. Phone calls on the other hand are way more intrusive than text messages and I hardly ever answer any call because of it.
I actually never feel the urge to respond quickly to a text message. I treat it as the asynchronous platform that it is. Phone calls on the other hand are way more intrusive than text messages and I hardly ever answer any call because of it.
... which is an infuriating habit and a huge impediment to work.
E.g., Your job has run away with our timeshare. Your email program is closed, you aren't signed onto IM, and you blithely ignore your ringing phone. I have to file a service ticket, summon support from ten timezones away, and it gets killed in a half hour. Or if you picked up the phone, you could have killed it in ten seconds.
E.g., We are having a discussion about a critical decision. We wage email wars back and forth for days, each getting more disturbed that the other is completely misunderstanding some key point. Or if you picked up the phone, we might have easily sidestepped the miscommunication and reached an immediate understanding instead.
If nothing else, a voice on the phone humanizes you more than Times New Roman 12pt, which reminds people they are working with other humans- and that in itself can nip issues in the bud.
Calling me is literally ringing a bell and demanding I speak to you this instant. If you ring this bell for something that doesn't actually need my immediate attention then you don't respect my time and I won't give it to you.
I give others this respect, I almost never call anyone unless it's an emergency, and if I want to speak to someone I wait until it looks like they're not occupied. To me this seems like respect, but I'm open to the possibility that I have communication issues.