I have been distracted for a while as I dealt with a family emergency. Emerging from this experience, these are my thoughts on modern communication.

Long ago, information was written on paper and came with the post. At first it took weeks, if not months for mail to be delivered to someone… if at all. This was all taken in stride as people focused on the world in front of them, and nothing moved too fast for people to take the time to think. When a sweaty horse and rider showed up and pounded on the door, they knew it was something important. However, even with this sense of urgency, nothing moved so fast that there was not time to think and process things through. The greatest stress of our ancestors was that information did not move fast enough when they wanted it to.

Now, with modern technology, most things move faster than is necessary; faster than we want it all to. With modern messaging, people do not separate out their messages so they know whether a message is important or not. Thus, we tend to treat everything like it were important, causing elevated stress and frustration. People expect instant replies, even for information that is simply not that important, and are trained to get upset and frustrated if they feel they are being pressured. It is like everyone turned into a salesperson all at once. Salespeople do not want their prospective customers to take time to think. They simply want them to sign the papers quickly, before they figure out what is going on.

To find peace, to protect ourselves from this over-reactionary world, we have to apply a little structure and discipline to how we communicate so that we can maximize the amount of thought and processing that we put into the information we share. (This also includes how we consume news.) There are two variables that modern communication should be structured around; how imperative the information is, and how much information there is.¹

• A large amount of imperative information requires a phone call to the person’s primary number.
• A small amount of imperative information requires a text(sms) to the person’s primary number.
• With a large amount of non-imperative information, an email is best.
• With a small amount of non-imperative information, and other social banter, a text to a secondary number or a third party app(mms) is best.

Dividing our communication up in such away would allow people to reduce stress and frustration through the management their notifications. Basically, creating a protocol that tells them if they are getting a letter delivered to their mailbox or a sweaty horse and rider pounding on their door.

• Filter phone calls on the primary number to only those contact who would actual have something important to communicate. (And telling those close family and friends to not leave a voicemail, but to text “Call ASAP” if they don’t get through.)
• Manage the sound of texts coming into the primary number to same effect.
• Turn off the sound and vibration for messages coming in via email, secondary number, or mms chat app, so that on their device they will see an icon telling them that there are new messages to view at their convenience. No sound means no distraction or frustration.
• Expect friends and family to get back as soon as they could with calls and texts, within a day for a secondary number or mms app, and within a week for an email.

Unfortunately, the weakest link in all of this lies in the ability to set up an understanding with friends and family. It takes conscious effort to choose the right form of communication for the nature of the information being shared…. and in our narcissistic society, too many people measure the need for a response not by the value of information they have to share, but by their own desire for attention.

¹ It is good here to remember William James and his lecture “A Will to Believe.” In which he argued (I am over-over-over simplifying) that there were two variables to making a choice; immediate and imperative. And only when a situation is both immediate and imperative is a choice actually significant.