The challenge: Don't speak in future tense | Hacker News Reader

The challenge: Don't speak in future tense

sivers.org

Two out of his first three quotes are not actually in some form of future tense. "We are", and "I am getting ready" are both present tense, albeit of differing forms. Of course, he's correct that they're talking about things that will materialize in the future.

Tense is surprisingly difficult to nail down in English. By some definitions, it doesn't have a future tense at all, it has a handful of future 'aspects,' the difference being that a tense uses verb inflection and an aspect uses auxiliary verbs. The examples show how the distinction between an auxiliary and lexical verb can blur around the edges, which is actually how auxiliary verbs formed in the first place.

Sorry for the nitpicking, and you are correct that there's a mismatch between the title and the content (an increasingly severe problem). I was hoping for a linguistics discussion.

The main verbs are pretty much unconditionally about present actions: "We are in talks", and "I am getting ready". Of course the complete phrases certainly look to the future, which is the author's point. I'm just being nitpicky.

>Tense is surprisingly difficult to nail down in English.

I'm blaming it on whoever misplaced most of our inflections and our case system like 800 years ago. Old English was a cool language.

Spoken German has even fewer tenses. You have the present tense, which you use for talking about present and future events, and the perfect, used for talking about the past. That covers at least 95% of all uses.

From the article (emphasis mine):

"Everyone speaks in future tense. (Or, more specifically, present-tense inaction, future-tense action.)"

Each of his examples is of two parts following the pattern described: present-tense inaction, future-tense action.

I have worked remotely a lot and I've always tried to reduce the overhead of communication by actually doing stuff rather than saying I'll do it, etc. I.e. rather than

I'll look at it

....

Looking at it

....

Working on it

....

Done.

I try as much as possible to do

Done.

Mostly because of "The Mythical Man-Month." Some people don't deal well with it, though.

I find that this means there is an ambiguity between "I have not read this email" and "I am working on this"

Also, certain things that need to be done can be done by multiple people, so a "I am working on it" email is a good locking mechanism.

(I usually say "I'll look at it", delay, "Done" to remove some ambiguity.)

I think both you and the parent poster make valid points. The key thing is to send something vague-enough in the first email. For example, don't say "I think that's a problem with X and I'm looking into it", just say "I'm looking at it". In other words, only communicate the lock you're acquiring on the task and save the rest for the "done" email.

Sure. It's all about judgement as to whether setting that lock adds too much overhead to be efficient. If it's a small enough task, it doesn't matter if multiple people do it.

This is why bugtrackers have separate "Accepted" and "Fixed" states. :-)

Another interesting thing to pay attention to is how often people talk about what's wrong and that it needs to be fixed, but fail to provide a road forward.

Example:

"This web page is horrendous"

(everyone nods)

"We need to find a way to make it better"

(everyone nods)

"Now moving on to the next topic, we're moving too slowly..."

It's rare to find a person that suggests solutions to problems rather than just pointing out that they exist...

I think it can be summarized in one word: meeting. Do you agree?

> Do you agree?

I think we should discuss it to make sure we're on the same page. I booked 313 for the afternoon.

Sure, every time I see a classic meeting, the meeting is about how everything sucks or how we could do if only (put anything here)

Instead, when we (developers) have our mourning scrum meeting, we just need 5 minutes to discuss what to do for the day.

Shit can happen, and sometimes a meeting is really necessary, but from my experience it doesn't justify the real cost of it in most cases (number of people multiplied for their hourly rates)

Yeah, that's where it happens the most. I think someone should do something about it.

Let's put that to a vote for the agenda for the next meeting.

I work for a government agency. In order to have even a meeting the managers exchange emails to test the waters to see if an action group needs to be formed to assess the viability of creating a comittee to study the concept for eventual inclusion in a meeting agenda. You guys in the private sector have it easy.

Nonconstructive criticism is just as bad about meetings as it is during meetings. The value of a meeting is entirely dependent upon what the people involved in the meeting bring to it. Bad meetings are caused by people being unprepared and not knowing what they want to get out of the meeting. If all you bring to the table is fatalism, the meeting will suck for you.

This also plagues local sci-fi fandom. I always hear about the cool new idea that person is never going to finish or even start.

The thing is the person got the some attention and endorphine rush from said attention.

Why go though the actual work?

In Bob Shaw's book on science fiction writing, he said that when he has told the gist of a story to someone, it releases some of the need to tell the story, and so it's less likely to get written. Therefore, when he's bouncing ideas off someone, and he gets a really good idea, he won't say anything about it, in order to conserve its energy, so it can be channeled into the actual writing.

He claims that "announcing your plans makes them less likely to happen" yet many people, including me, hold the exact opposite opinion, that announcing your plans makes you more likely to work toward them.

"Remember that announcing your plans makes them less likely to happen."

I partially disagree with this. When I publicly commit that I'll do x thing, no matter what, I'm more likely to do it because otherwise people would think that I'm only a charlatan.

I think talking in public about your idea is very important especially if you have to do some kind of report at the end.

It's not an absolute truth, but overhyping something is dangerous. Even if you do get it done, you'll be compared to much higher expectations, and your result will look worse in comparison.

Saying, "I will do X", is pretty important for general efficiencies sake though. It gives other people who have done X a chance to give advice and people who were thinking of doing X a chance to avoid doing it or pitch in.

Informing people when and where you'll give a talk is also pretty critical to actually having people show up.

This is easy if you're speaking in English: http://english-jack.blogspot.com/2007/09/if-they-will-only-l....

sounds like he actually meant that people are full of shit.

I'm going to regret how many down votes I get on this comment.

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