They may now take my office phone away, please.

Wednesday, dark, a tad colder, but still clear.  A non-eventful drive in listening to some really good music (see below).  Harrison and Co. in particular were doing some very serious electric jamming.

As Joan would say, "Can we talk?"  Specifically, about the workplace technology of communication and getting anything done.  Even more specifically, about the phone versus almost everything else.  I'm really ready to get rid of the phone in my office and my workplace phone number, with the possible exception as a tool of convenience for external (to the campus) folk. 

The last couple of weeks have been a tyranny of phone calls, and have created a bow wave of calls I have to respond to that keep piling up faster than I am finding the necessary minutes for responding to them.  Most of the voicemail messages have not been urgent or even something worth the time and effort (of either party) to catch each other.  All of them could have been handled more efficiently via email.

I blame the technology, I really do. The phone requires the same immediacy of moment that a face to face meeting does, with the added poison of having a voicemail box at the other end.  Someone calls I can either allow myself to be interrupted, giving their whatever a higher priority than what I was working on (sight unseen, of course, since I don't know what the caller wants until they start talking), or let them leave a message.  A left message now becomes a ball dropped in my court.  Now it is suddenly my responsibility to try and catch them to find out what they wanted from me in the first place.  And since most folks don't give any indication of what they need in a left voicemail, most of the time I have no idea why I'm now trying to catch up with them.  So the phone call is either an interruption or a new to-do list item.

The workplace phone doesn't respect the triage of the day, the priority or urgency of any other tasks, or the attention/focus of the recipient.  When I call someone it is with the hope they will answer and I can get their time and attention for whatever I happen to be focused on, right then and there.  It doesn't have the courtesy of meeting time, scheduled to ensure a best time is identified by both parties; it just bursts in.

I don't allow myself to be sucked into meetings I don't need to attend, so why do I allow myself to be sucked into meetings via the phone whenever someone else has a question or need that relates to their project-at-hand?  Only because the alternative to answering is to have the ball happily dropped in my court.

There is also the whole inefficiency of the phone and voicemail-tag process.  Party A is currently focused on widget-issues and calls party B. B is doing something else, so A leaves a message.  B gets a chance to return the call, but now A is doing something else.  Repeat, at least a few times. Sooner or later either A or B will actually manage to catch the other at their desk, but chances are good at least one of the two won't really be in the prepared head-space for the widget-issues discussion. The same question sent via email would likely have been resolved much sooner and with more thought.  Catch me on the cuff and you get whatever I can salvage from memory.  Give me a chance to think and prepare and you will likely get a much more useful response.

My plea: save synchronous communication in the workplace for face to face meetings and those emergencies when tracking someone down by cell phone is really urgently justified.  And hallway pleasantries (not oh-while-I-have-you-in-my-sights meetings!) of the sort that make the world go 'round and the workplace a civil and enjoyable place to work.  Everything else should use an asynchronous form of communication technology.  Email is best, since inboxes really can serve as (wait for it.....) inboxes. Text messages are ok, but realize they are not in my primary working inbox, so may get less attention after my initial "yo dog!" reply.  Chat is just a second phone that requires typing instead of talking and which also allows long distracted pauses on the part of either/both parties, don't go there.

Thanks for listening, that feels better.  Except for the list of calls I still have to return this morning.  However, since my productive time is very early morning and most of the folks I need to call back are not in and working at this hour, I'll have to see what I can get back to between meetings throughout the day, and I know exactly how well that's going to work. <sigh>

Today's iPod shuffle mix (the real reason I do this silly daily blog) was strangely playlist-like.  Even the one classic ballad from an earlier era (than the other tunes) was done by a rocker of similar age:

• Arlo Guthrie: City of New Orleans
• Rod Stewart: These Foolish Things
• George Harrison: I Remember Jeep
• The Beatles: Glass Onion