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Comment by wruza | Hacker News Reader

I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learned behavior to avoid threaded pedantry or something, but my messages aren’t even long and other people share my frustration too (we communicate 10x faster and clearer between us). I’d write it off to attention capacity issues, but these people often aren’t even busy at all.

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I'm pretty sure it's because they're not paying full attention, even worse, sometimes already building an intense narrative with only few items internalized inside their brains.

I also feel that this is happening more and more, since there's more rewards for giving very small pieces of attention and energy to a bigger pool of people, instead giving extra energy or attention to a smaller pool of people seeking for one's help.

I'm just facing this with a contractor doing repairs in my house, a month ago was finding a decent mechanic to fix just 2 issues on my car.

The first promptly finds energy to discuss things it receives through social networks or messages, but can't provide a decent list of things that I need to provide him to finish his work faster.

The second case took a lot of time and discussing with 6 different mechanics, until th car broke and it was towed.

I'm seeing this more and more, unfortunately.

That actually sounds like a good idea for a technical support app:

The only interaction possible is they can tell you the problem, then you can give them a list of things to try, and they can do nothing but give feedback on each step, in order, and you arent bothered until they at least respond something for each step

This sounds like a recipe to get a lot of `asdfalsfasfsd` responses...

I'm starting to think Humanity's problems are not technical in nature. I don't see how to even think about forcing people to help themselves.

This is obviously satire, but we could make every internet app completely modal: once you start a flow on any site your computer prohibits you from starting any other flow on any other site before you complete the previous one.

Or simply their priorities are not your priorities. They have encountered a problem, they asked for help, but they have 10 other things going on. By the time you answer, they have forgotten half the context of the issue. They try one thing, it doesn't work, they don't have more time right now so they answer that thing 1 didn't work. Repeat.

I find most people suffer from at least one (and more commonly two) of the following: insufficient attention to detail; poor time management; and bad organization skills.

> their priorities are not your priorities.

> insufficient attention to detail

I believe there's a cause effect scenario here.

This is especially true in the trades. If you're able to:

- be on time

- respond to emails/texts, and especially: phone calls

- give quotes

Then if you're even halfway competent, the world is your oyster. Please come do work for me!

If you can manage people and budgets, you can have more work than you'll know what to do with (assuming there's work available).

The inability of many people to focus their attention and prioritize their work is shocking to me. This isn't just for the stereotypical "younger adult" either, this seems to apply across the board (and especially to boomer-aged adults!).

> I'm just facing this with a contractor doing repairs in my house

Are you saying that you give your contractor a list of seven things to address, and find that they only address two and say they're done?

I can't remember where I heard of using painter's tape for this, but it's used as a metaphor in this article https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-blue-tape-list/

.... I also found this link while looking for the above article, https://www.quantumbalancing.com/news/bluetape.htm . That's. ... just... well. Not what I was looking for, but was so remarkable that I thought I would link to it here. I suppose they have probably sold some of their devices. I'm curious to know what the insides are like, but not curious enough to spend $1k+.

Imagine blue tape for software. I guess the closest thing I have seen is

// Fixme: address this later.

> list.shuffle().pop()

Oh, no. It's not a shuffle. They unerringly identify the least important possible action item. Sometimes just a single clause of a single sentence in a list item.

You have to scour your communication of anything that can possibly be interpreted as an easy request. It has to be a curt, imperative, isolated, request to do something hard or it will be ignored.

1. Reboot

2. Wait

3. Update your XYZ

User: I tried the second option but nothing happened

Same conclusion here.

At my last job we had a customer who was famous for doing this. Since he generated a significant amount of sales, we couldn't just sideline him, so I learned to only ask one question at a time on email. Otherwise, if you asked e.g., three questions, it was a complete tossup as to which one he would decide to answer, all the while reminding you that this was a "hair on fire" issue for him.

Compounded with the fact that he was on another continent, multiple time zones away, this made debugging anything a difficult proposition.

We had another customer for the same product in the same country who had absolutely no problem answering whatever questions you asked him, in as much detail as he could supply. It has to be a personality thing.

Makes me thing I need a new email template

"Try this one thing: ....

If you are a detail-oriented person, you could also save us both some time and try these things also ..."

I think this issue is a lot of why ChatGPT feels smart to me. It actually parses all the parts of what I say and tries to respond to it comprehensively. It doesn't always succeed, but it's usually better than my experience asking a multi-part question to a random real-life person in a support role.

I really wish there was a reliable way to ask people.

"I need your engagement level to be set to 10 for this communication. It's ok if you can't do that, but then just say you can't do that. I'm already set to 10 and rando guesswork / tidbits are only going to cause problems."

Even just "nope can't do it" responses would save me time.

I just got off a critical call with folks pulling stuff out of their ... and it was a nightmare / complete waste of my time.

I think that's unreasonable to ask for just about anyone. The only time that's going to work is if you're helping them with an issue that's critical to them. Otherwise you are never going to get their full attention, it even close.

Much easier and safer is to drill into your own head that your own engagement level may be at 10, but the other person's is probably going to be more like 2. And that's fine.

I don't think it is unreasonable, if they can't for whatever reason their answer is "I can't." that's 100% fine.

I'm not asking them to be at 10, I'm asking they not engage unless they are.

> I think that's unreasonable to ask for just about anyone.

Notice your parent doesn't say "you must be at 10," but rather "let me know if you can't be at 10." I think that's perfectly reasonable, as long as you're willing to accept almost always getting "no."

> Much easier and safer is to drill into your own head that your own engagement level may be at 10, but the other person's is probably going to be more like 2. And that's fine.

But sometimes that's not fine! For example, if you're giving a list of instructions for some safety-critical procedure, it's not fine to find out later that the nodding "uh-huh, uh-huh" actually meant "I'll do what I remember and what sounds easy," and it's much better to do nothing than to proceed with partial information.

You need to be able to send a form to people with required fields.

In written communication it often works for me to create an explicit numbered list with indentations and plenty of white space between the items. It also makes it easier to refer to the items in the following communication.

I have to be really careful to never write a paragraph to a colleague or vendor dev under any circumstances. (God forbid a run-on sentence..)

I have to give every idea it's own sentence, and every sentence must be separated by double space at minimum.

And then I can't offer more than maybe four complete ideas, no more than one of which can demand a response.

There is a Youtuber and AI safety researcher that I support on Patreon's "poor person tier" and they were gonna do a Q&A video so asked us to offer questions for the video, so I offered five in one post as a list.

They wound up answering every question in my list of five, spent enough time on some of them that I think that may have been part of the motivation for them to break it up into two videos, and even emailed me the answer to the one out of five points they didn't address in the video.

In contrast if I render a list at any of my colleagues or vendor dev teams there is a <20% chance that they will address or even acknowledge 2 whole separate items out of the list, so the points they don't address get frequently brought back up again and dropped again. :(

So AI researcher has.. ..list comprehension. (YEAAAH!!)

Would you care for a counterpoint?

This comment should be three paragraphs. As written, it’s very hard to read and I get lost.

If this was a professional communication and you had asked three questions, I might understand one or might not. Now I have no issues saying “dude, your writing is very hard to follow.” But what if your colleagues are nicer than I am?

Or just spitballing. You’ve admitted that you’re the kind of person who will set traps for your colleagues. What if they’re just sick of your shit but are too conflict avoidant to say that?

Okay, different person as the one you responded to. Your entire comment was reasonable up until the last line.

What is that even based on? Where did they admit to setting up traps? Is that your take on their comment about trying to ask three questions in one message?

Because, even without them creating paragraphs, it is abundantly clear they just mean that as something from experience. Not something they do as something to spring a trap on people.

This is a good example. They wrote:

“When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain.”

Confronted is a big word with a hostile intent. They’re incredibly measured in their language and use precise language. That sounds like a trap to me - it’s:

A.) Asking three questions and only get 1/3 answered.

B.) Waiting for a suitable period of time to elapse.

C.) Confronting them while expecting an explanation.

Letting time go by, “confronting them” and expecting an explanation is a trap. It assumes that they can even remember the conversation! Why not send a follow up email immediately and politely ask again? Heck, that’s a good excuse to use “circle back” in conversation. :)

If you missed that first read, no worries because so did I. I had to read the comment three times and then I kind of shaked my head because they are so measured and precise, and that’s an awfully big statement to make about colleagues.

I feel like you are reading way to much into it. To the point that this is almost appropriate https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-violent-role-of-relentle...

Confronted isn't necessarily a hostile word. It is a very apt word to use for the action off asking someone about the other two points. They even made it clear that it was in a constructive manner.

May I ask, do you often feel like you are operating in a hostile environment?

It was just a poor choice of word. Should have said “asked them about”.

You’ve admitted that you’re the kind of person who will set traps for your colleagues

We were all close and could discuss “meta” from time to time, in a friendly constructive manner. You’re probably reading more into this aspect than there is.

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