How I communicate

Following Ben Kuhn’s advice, I figured it would be a good idea to document how I communicate. I think the following quote illustrates why this sort of thing would be a good idea to have:

For instance, back when I used instant messaging a lot, I used it synchronously: I would say something so someone, wait for them to reply, and then immediately start responding. But some of my friends were using it as a fast asynchronous tool, so they would sometimes leave long gaps before they replied to what I said because they were multitasking. I would get frustrated because I thought they were being rude, but they were just using IM with a different norm than I was.

At the moment, I do something like the following.

• Slow and asynchronous: email.
• Fast and asynchronous (though these may lag as well): Text, Facebook, Google Hangouts, Quora messages.
• Synchronous: Phone, Skype.

In general I don’t like texting because I have to manually backup messages. I’ve also disabled Google hangouts/chat in Gmail, so will only see those messages on my phone.

Also, feel free to ping me—I’m somewhat bad at giving timely responses, and a sense of urgency helps for replying to people.