Vendor engineer left a message, content consisting of the usual politeness and his phone number. Refers to an email chain about an issue. This may seem rude of me but I am nonplussed. It will be polite to call, and so I guess I shall. But it seems to me there is nothing to accomplish over the phone. Chit chat a little, I'm not as up on the issue as others, what next. If this is unusual then I want to understand why I feel this way.
I've decided it's because I'm in a panic over getting a design done and don't want to tolerate a big block of time taken away from it. A five minute conversation is a big block of time. Whatever we accomplish can be done in a ten second email scan and reply. This matters, theoretically, because of how my brain prefers to operate. I jump to this to that to this. Actual conversations require continual focus. I don't have time for continual focus. Let's just stick with email.
Why is this a new awareness? I've an artist around (referred to once as Delta and illustrated for your pleasure a few times since) whose brain behaves similarly and who is not afraid to just let it run. This means conversations sometimes change direction or end abruptly as a swift and sudden chain reaction of thought takes place and sets a new context. I have no problem with this and in fact have found it liberating to just go along with it and let mine do the same.
Obviously I spent a lot more time focusing on this posting than the phone call will take, so time isn't the real answer. And I can focus on conversations just fine if I choose to. Maybe I just don't want to pick up more pieces of a side project that I've volunteered for (and need the eventual solutions from) but don't want to actually work on. Yeah, that's it. I knew if I thought about it, it would boil down (as most things do) to my brain just plain being lazy.
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Correct, time is usually not an issue, but we also usually make it one because it's easy to seize on, something others will understand, and so it goes. Really, I suspect, it's because of other things -- phone calls are social and you don't want to socialize with this person, even on that level, maybe. Or maybe more side pieces as you say.
I have an in-house vendor who, when I send an e-mail, ALWAYS calls to confirm pretty much exactly what the e-mail tells him. I reason that he's just not an e-mail person, or that he doesn't process things in written form as readily as in verbal, or was trained to followup by phone because he got something wrong a few times and people screamed at him, or whatever.
For the mind/topic jumping thing: I cannot tell you how used to this I am. It ain't just you, honey. I can refocus people as I need to in my cat herding capacity, but usually I just let them ramble around all over the place.
I say I cannot process things verbally, but that's not entirely true. If I stop to pay attention, I process just fine and can translate things into written form so that I can then reprocess it all. But I usually don't want to be arsed to pay attention to people going blah blah blah unless they're talking about something interesting, like me, f'rex.
Okay, now even I am irritated with him. Between the IM and the email, that's two opportunities to just ask the damn questions wasted on asking if he can ask questions. There's polite and then there's just annoyingly timid and inefficient.
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