si dawson

I'm going to start a lit­tle geeky, but be patient, I'll keep it super short & it's totally relevant.

What's inter­est­ing about TCP (heard of TCP/IP? Yeah, it's part of that) is how the ini­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the 'hand­shak­ing' bit goes. Very roughly, it's goes like this:

1. Hello? [SYN]
2. I can hear you! [SYN-ACK]
3. Me too! [ACK]

Here's a pic­ture I found to stop you falling asleep. See? They're just start­ing a wee conversation:

(ok, geek stuff over. Told you it'd be short.)

So what, I hear you say. Well, TCP runs every­thing. The entire inter­net, any smart phone, hell they're even talk­ing about using it to talk to satel­lites out across the solar sys­tem. Any­thing smarter than a toaster these days depends on it to oper­ate properly.

So yeah, it's important.

And so are those "ACK"s. Notice how 2/3 of the ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion is just ACKs? Com­put­ers like to be ACKnowl­edged. It makes them feel safe & secure.

Well, here's a secret — so do people.

See, the ACK doesn't really add any use­ful infor­ma­tion to the con­ver­sa­tion, and yet, it's critical.

It doesn't answer any ques­tions, doesn't actu­ally 'do' any­thing, and yet every­thing falls apart with­out it.

Same thing with human com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we're just more resilient, so that falling apart is less obvious.

If you say "Hey!" to a friend, and they don't respond, how are you going to feel? Pretty ter­ri­ble, I'd bet. At the very least, you'd won­der if they saw you, or maybe if you upset them some­how, or if there was some­thing wrong.

All it takes is a flick of their eyes or a smile to let you know that your com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been received & all is well in the world.

Of course, face to face com­mu­ni­ca­tion is pretty obvi­ous like that.

How about other forms, like email (or even twitter)?

How often have you received an email that you weren't ready to answer imme­di­ately? Maybe you were busy, it was long, required thought, or you just weren't in the mood. A response as sim­ple as "Thanks for email, crazy day, will respond later tonight" can work won­ders. It lets the other per­son know that their email has been received, that you're just busy, and that they're not being ignored. Plus it buys you a lit­tle time.

Twit­ter (or tex­ting) is even more extreme, of course. But how often have you tweeted some­one & got no reply, then won­dered "Did I offend them?" "Are they ok?" "What's going on?" Any of these thoughts would be a rea­son­able response, and all could be removed with a sim­ple "Thanks! :)" or equivalent.

It's not the length of reply that mat­ters, just the emo­tion behind it. In fact, the shorter the reply the bet­ter, gen­er­ally. Just enough to let the per­son know you're there, you care, & you're think­ing of them.

It may feel like you're over-communicating, but really you're just acknowl­edg­ing the impor­tance of that other per­son to you.

How long does this sort of thing take? About as long as flick of the eyes across a crowded room. Maybe a second.

Qual­ity com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not about length. It's about emo­tion & clar­ity. A quick gen­uine reply fol­lowed by a con­sid­ered response later is far supe­rior to a mam­moth mis­sive in a week, with the other per­son left hang­ing the entire time.

Also, it's much less stress­ful for you, as you don't have it hang­ing over your head with that same sense of urgency. You win, they win. What's not to like?