Detailed Notes
Welcome back to another insightful Develpreneur conversation with Rob and Michael on communication. In this episode, they focus on tools and expectations. Over the years, communication methods have evolved significantly, and with them, the expectations surrounding their use have also changed. Today, we'll explore different types of communication tools, the appropriate contexts for each, and how to manage expectations around them.
Read more at https://develpreneur.com/navigating-communication-tools-in-modern-workplaces
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Transcript Text
[Music] for I can cut there we go because Michael was just saying we might say something important record soon enough and he's not wrong uh We've we've had I think we've lost 15 20 minutes of discussion sometimes not hitting record soon enough so welcome back uh if I can move my mic out of the way doing a little technical stuff here uh as we're getting started so I'm as I was about to say I think what I want to talk about today for the first at least our first little bit here this next podcast episode I want to focus on it's essentially in a general sense it's email but it's also like communication and things like that as far as like timings and particularly because we've got so many tools out there that we communicate with that I think I want to dive into that and um sort of give you a little bit of like a hot seat thing too because I want to talk about my thoughts on a couple of these tools like slack and text and email and I want to hear your thoughts as well and I think there different for the Next Generation you know the the Millennials and such that are even younger than us that are coming in but I think it's an important thing that we need to you know make clear so I think this will be a fun little it's a little bit of a side trip for us and then we'll between now and the next time next 30 minutes or so we'll figure out what our next episode's going to be uh and it may be a follow-up but I figured i' just Dive Right into this sound good sure um in the context are you thinking uh just the different ways that we can communicate with in our industry business whatever more or less yeah I mean it's just like there's so many I think it's almost everybody these days I mean you find all sorts of groups that professional personal communication and and now they cross line so much as well have all these different ways we communicate and I think there's in some cases we just feel like particularly as a professional we feel like we just have to like respond immediately if we get a slack message at 3 in the morning we have to respond and that's not really true and so that's where I want to talk a little bit about that and what I'm thinking and a little bit of it is uh I guess self-defense self-care things like that so that you're not getting sucked into stuff that you don't want to and I've had more than a few cases of that that I've done it and that also recently that I've had conversations that I've accidentally pulled other people in and it's like wait a minute like you didn't really need to do that I didn't mean for you to be up till 1:00 am struggling through this thing I just like threw a little question out so um I for that's probably a good little topic for us to to go into good you wna uh include any of the uh Focus things that certain apps and technologies have also thrown out there since you did mention kind of quality of life work life yeah I mean if there's stuff like that anything that comes to mind because this is yeah this is really just a I said this is one of those it's like hey it's about beer o'clock and we're going to sit down and just talk about like hey what is your experience with this and so see where it goes sure works for me awesome well hello and welcome back you're here we're here we're going to have a conversation and we're going to talk today about uh communication but more specifically tools and expectations I'm Rob Broadhead I'm one of the founders of develop or/ building better developers and on the side is Michael why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself hey everyone my name is Mike MOS I'm also one of the co-founders of developer Nur and also founder of Envision QA so today we are gonna first I'm gonna sort of give my thoughts on a couple of we'll call them families of communication tools and sort of the expectations that I think are there and these have grown up over the years where some of these things didn't even exist when I started out things like um actually most of this stuff did not exist we didn't have text messages we didn't I mean we had email that was about it and we had news groups which is a whole different thing that nobody I think even follows anymore uh but now there's so many different ways do it and then because they've come along really in a very short period of time five to 10 years from a when you think about professions and careers and things like that that's actually a a portion of somebody's career or professional development or the existence of a company an organization and so want to talk a little bit about standards and if they're not standards that are out there it's maybe how you want to go set your own standards or work with your organization to do them first thing and this is a little bit of a surprise to Michael I was just like hey here's a cool thing so I'm going to throw this out to him so apologies if he stumbles or or fumbles it's my fault not his because I like just you know threw him a curveball now the reason that this popped up is because I've had just in the recent weeks I've had a couple of instances where I've had somebody sent reach out to me via various forms and I ended up doing you know responding faster than they expected and I ended up sort of like disrupting my life when it really wasn't needed it wasn't an emergency uh which is not always a fun thing it's like hey if you can push it back you don't need to disrupt your life I've also had people that I've reached out to and I've thrown something out there and the next thing I know they just spent five hours working through something when I really didn't need them to do that it was one of those like hey if you've got time and so there's also a a clarification of our Communications that I'm going to touch on now the first thing is I want to talk about a couple of families of communication types that we have now and the one is the instant and this is and there's sort of two levels of each of these and so there for instance let's think of uh direct personal and then there's also professional so for an instant personal would be text message because it's your phone you're probably presumably you're carrying your phone uh unless it's a business phone then okay it's a business text but most people you've got your personal number somebody gets you a send you a personal text that's an instant you know practically like somebody poking you in the on the shoulder saying hey kind of thing professional sense would be more like our messaging tools that we are typically logged into during the day such as slack now those those because we are uh they're much less they're much more passive and much less active then I think there is a different level of expectation of responses to those uh and then we move sort of beyond that we get into more of the uh we'll call them like the dialogue type things which could be a text message depending on how you do it but more often it's going to be something like uh mail message email is going to be pretty common for that uh there may also be postings that you would put on like uh and particularly not live not the kinds of tools people are constantly logged into like slack you're probably going to be logged into all day or teams but if it's a LinkedIn message or Facebook message or social site message that's something that yeah you may or may not get to that so it probably has a a lower priority and a lower guarantee of you being a ailable now your mileage may vary so you may be somebody that is always on um Snapchat or something like that and I know people like that that or Facebook and nobody's on Facebook all the time I guess but there are tools out there that people are on it all the time and your friends and your family maybe and even maybe your profession depending on what profession you're in they may know that and they may use that tool for that instant messaging and it's and it they're expecting you to you know they're going to send it and they expect you to read it within say a minute or so that's your instant message Style versus some like ah you'll probably read it in the next few hours and then there's the longer term stuff that typically has been email or even leaving a voicemail which is like you'll get back to it within one business day or something like that now from your expectations and this is both sides of it think about the expectations of the immediacy of the communication form you're sending whether you're sending something or receiving something so particularly if I ask Michael if I say hey can you check out this site if I send him a text then I'm probably expecting him to take a look at it like right now it's either that or I'm you know it's one of two things it's that and he knows this but it's or I'm out somewhere and I just need to do that and we'll do this sometime I just need to like do it before I forget and usually that's what we will do because we want to be clear is if if there's a text it's going to say hey check out this site I just found it just wanted to let you know something along those lines if it's something that is and it's usually going to be more personal in that side if it's something more professional then we'll probably hit each other up on like a slack or somewhere like that where that person is probably available and it's probably going to be viewed during working hours and so if you're getting something during working hours it's probably work rated stuff it's something that from your professional point of view you need to take a look into it if you're getting something on a personal Channel like a Tex then if it's work it's usually going to be considered emergency like urgent because if I get a text like I did today I've got a customer that can reach me via uh upwork he can reach me via email he can reach me via teams he can reach me via text and something came up to the point where he had like sent something on teams he needed he had some urgency so he escalated it and sent me a text and I was like oh yeah I have I've missed that cool and so took care of that literally right before this call started because it was like Hey I can take care of this quickly and that's part of I think the expectations if it's a text it's either blowing up critical got to be fixed right now or I'm expecting that this is something that you can just like knock out real quick and it's just going to be sort of like a hey before we forget can we do this real fast if it's on a slack or some Channel like that then it's going to be again usually um a self-defined unit of work keep it you don't want to you're not going to have like big long text messages or slack messages you might but you probably shouldn't because people aren't going to want to read through that whole thing they're going to keep it like a bullet point kind of level send that to them they'll address it and vice versa once you get it you can take a look at it address your item respond to it say hey we got it move on if you need to do something that's longer there is this thing called a phone so you can pick that up and call them you can schedule a meeting via like a zoom or something like that you may do a jump on to one of the varying ways that you can do a remote call remote conference uh which is you know whether it's a video phone call or whether it's through one of your tools and then you've got the the longer thing of the more longer term larger scope discussions which usually is going to be email now personally that's when you just sit down with somebody and start talking to them if it's professionally the nice thing about email is it can give you a history of the conversation and you may get this through other tools but email is one that everybody basically has access to you're going to have an history of that you're going to be able to walk through at your leisure be able to walk through that email and take notes think about it do what you need to do so it should be that the expectation when you send an email is that they're not going to respond immediately that you're not going to respond immediately and that goes both ways so if I send somebody an email if I'm if I get an immediate response I'm usually shocked I'm usually surprised it's like wow I didn't expect you to read my email right away and be able to respond from a professional point of view I think there's a there's a value in not responding immediately the whole point is you have this opportunity and this is actually in all of these but particularly the longer form things like an email you have an opportunity to read that email read it a second time think about your response craft something that is not a one line like okay I got it unless it is what you can do with an autoresponder that basically something that just says hey I received your email I'm going to take a look into it we'll get back to you within one business day something along those lines now that's sort of like I know that's a a very big umbrella that I put stuff under but those are my thoughts and those are just some of the things that I've got that have you know percolated up and developed over the years and so now I'm going to take that big mess of stuff and set that in your lap for a minute Michael and what are your thoughts on these and how do you a little bit how do you handle these varying things and particularly when we're talking about personal and also when you've got Hustle you've got like primary job versus side hustle stuff all of these things that mix in and how do you see this and and handle the varying levels of of communications so to start out with that one of the things you kind of didn't touch on with the communication is also what type of job you have uh if you have just a standard business job and lives aren't at stake typically you're going to be less likely to respond immediately to a lot of messages uh however and Rob knows this because we both have worked in uh Healthcare sectors or different sectors where life's potentially could be on the line software has to be up for you know Mission critical uh things in those cases unfortunately you are a little more wired into all Communications because if you get an email a text or something at 2 o'clock in the morning typically not necessarily an email but if you get like a text a phone call you know they're if you get a communication at that time of day you typically need to roll out of bed log into your computer and find out what's Burning uh if you're not in a mission critical role and I've fallen into this trap for many years if Rob knows this um he he's uh the first thing that came to my mind when you're talking about you know receiving that email working till 1 o'clock in the morning I remember a project we were on where it was like 2 days before New Year's and all of a sudden our test data stopped working and we had a presentation on July 3rd and here I am working through new years's trying to figure out what the H happened and we find out the next day that oh yeah this other team changed the API That's why nothing worked but you don't know that you know you have miscommunication because the wrong type of communication is going out or the lack of communication is going out like you said and and one of the things I think prioritizing uh with all these communication lers these days is number one if you get a phone call that should be number one you need to just take that know that that's priority someone needs to reach you now typically that's number one that's like Mission critical if they call something's up you need to answer typically second level of IMM Media communication that I tend to deal with a lot is personal text message mesages so I do respond to those but then once you start getting into the other media types like slack teams uh LinkedIn uh well actually we'll put social media aside for a moment so just like slack LinkedIn like upwork things like that typically you tend to watch those during business hours whatever those may be now unfortunately with me with side hustles and multiple projects going on typically a Nino F isn't my typical day typically my day will start maybe at 6 7:00 in the morning while I'm having coffee to make sure I didn't miss anything critical to maybe 8 or 9:00 at night you know I tend to watch them a little bit more than I should email definitely uh is the last uh line a defense I barely checked that maybe uh three four times a day uh picked up a good habit from you know the 5 Hour Work Week really business emails I check it like at lunch and like 2 3:00 in the afternoon and then work email Isn't checked again for the remainder of the day personal email I tend to check that a little bit more but I am getting a little bit better with that but then you throw in the social media channels like LinkedIn Facebook uh you know Instagram if you're not dealing with the side hustle if you're not running a business and you're just working typically you're going to just uh be on those when you want to be on those just be careful that it does not become a crutch that that's all you're doing that you're staring at your phone all day and you're just missing Lu if you're working though if you're running social media campaigns then you tend to run into that double standard where it's like okay am I looking at my phone for personal or am I looking at my phone for work so you kind of want to set some boundaries there uh when you're dealing with social media that you kind of segment the two and then lastly before I uh throw it back to up one of the things I've noticed over the last few years and Apple's great at this and Google's got it too is you can now set like do not disturb you which can limit what Communications come into your phone at certain times so now during the uh business time I have limited all my personal contacts to just emergency contacts during the day on my phone so like if someone picks up the phone to call me it's going to be work number or a primary contact anyone else it just goes to voice the other cool feature that uh Apple Institute was uh like this uh like the screen time app or screen time configuration and now you can actually turn off things that you don't need to be wasting time on like Facebook uh LinkedIn anything you don't need to be doing during the workday turn off anything you don't need to be doing after your workday you can turn that off and have that be your personal time so you can have business time personal time and then there's other different things you can do like you can set up emails and things like that you could also even turn on you know away uh from like slack teams and that nature that's one other thing to be careful of with communication because if you have that on and you log in at 11 o'clock at night and your boss sees you your boss may say oh he's working let me reach out to him you don't necessarily want to be available all the time but you do want to be available and work when it is an emergency now I want to that's actually that's a great area is the the notifications um and I was just that was just reminded me that I had uh Gmail on my phone has got an override so even though I shut everything off I've got quiet time it woke me up at 3: in the morning where it was like and it was silent but my you know my phone lights up the room when there was some email that came through and I was like what the heck is that so I just made sure I turned off because it had a allow critical or time critical emails to come through anyways I'm like no there is no such thing as a Time critical email for me so I'm going to shut that off now the thing about the statuses is actually I think a an invaluable tool to use to communicate with others particularly because I don't know how many people do it personally but professionally a lot of people will sort of keep an eye out of uh people's statuses on whatever their tool is whether it's like a teams or a slack or something like that and it's really valuable to have that but it's also one of those things that be careful how much you use it because if you want to go heads down or if you're in a call you know like you're on a meeting or something like that where you cannot be disturbed or do not want to be disturbed by all means put yourself in your busy status or whatever your setting is but if you're just like hey I just don't want anybody to bother me and I could take a call but I'm not going to if if you overuse it then basically everybody's just going to ignore it and just going to send you stuff all the time anyways now that may or may not matter but it may be something where your device your tool your platform batches all that stuff up so that when you do turn your status back on it's like f you get flooded with all of that stuff that it was you know it had queued up waiting for you to become active again so check it every so often it's just the same thing now granted is a personal issue or whatever that I an itch problem I have with other people sometimes is when you've got an inbox that's got like four million different you know four million items in your inbox it's like okay that's just too much you've now made that a useless tool to communicate with you now if that's your junk box awesome this delete everything but don't leave the 20,000 messages there unless you're just trying to say look I get a bunch of spam every day week year however long it is so yeah I think there's there are that is a nice thing there's a lot of tools out there that are now and people are becoming and organization is becoming more cognizant about the impact of working 247 and helping us find ways to you know to sort of get back in SLE of that stuff so that even though we're remote and we could work any time that we don't want to that we want to work our hours and don't be afraid to and by Don't Be Afraid definitely communicate with your team particularly if you have't open schedule communicate what your hours are this is a again a personal peeve of mine because my team works whenever the heck they feel like it however and they and sort of work their way into what hours work best for them which is fine it's just it is very helpful for me and helpful for them actually to know what their hours are because if they're not on their you know technically not in their working hours and I send them a request and it may be that I do it in a way that I'm expecting them to respond fairly quickly because I think they're in working hours but if they're not you know if their status is you know active or something like that or if their status is always away then I'm going to send that and I don't have a any indicator that hey they're on you know this is their schedule but if I know that you know hey Michael runs a you know he usually doesn't come in till noon and then he works till midnight then I'll know that so if I send him something in the morning then I'm doing it not expecting him to talk to me until later or if I I'm going to be hesitant like you know to put a phone call in or something because I'm not calling him at his work desk at that point I'm interrupting his personal time so don't be afraid to put that kind of stuff in there schedule those things use your especially if you have a place that is very big on calendars don't be afraid to like block out that you know I'm going to go to lunch for I'm gon to take a 30 minutes lunch and I'm going to be gone you don't have to put lunch there just put you know meeting or something or if you need to focus on like sometime like you know a review process or training or something like that block that stuff out so then other people can see okay you're not available then and they'll schedule around it and if it's an emergency or higher priority they'll say hey can you move something and then go ahead and do that thoughts on that actually closing thoughts on that because we're we're going right through this one one thing we didn't touch on and this is something from the AOL days that I think fortunately has engraved itself into our um Society back when it was really cool to get that little uh pop up You've Got Mail has turned into all these beeps Bops vibrations whatever that you are constantly anxiously you hear a noise you think oh my God I got go took my messages turn that crap off if you want to have a life and be sane turn that off or like Rob was saying schedule meetings or if use your tools so like I said iPhone uh allows you to block off time so you can actually put when you go to sleep so there's a little thing if you actually set up the alarm or sleep time on the phone once it hits that it turns everything off it will only allow your personal uh uh like Cal or contacts to call you directly um otherwise every else is turned off till you actually wake up past your wake up time or you turn that off slack has similar features you can actually put time on you your work hours so it shows you available slack also gives you the ability to uh put in like busy time so like when I first log in in the morning I'm online yes I'm on slack but for the first hour all my communications are muted now if I have slack up and I'm watching sure I can respond but it turns off that notifications so I'm not constantly being distracted I can check my email I can try to uh recap what I was doing the previous day so don't let communication devices apps rule your life take the control back look at the device look at the tool and figure out how it allows you to configure when you're available when you're not available and make sure make sure that you are clear with your customers your friends your boss that these are the hours I work I will only respond during these times if and only if it is an emergency call me you know don't leave it all to text messages you know if it is a priority One mission control you know critical call you know don't forget you know that's the whole point of a phone it is to call people not text not email that's the computer feature a phone is a phone everything else that they crammed into these things these days is a computer so with that take your life back you know get that work life balance back I agree and that's that's a perfect wrap up for this I will add only on the um the quiet time notifications you can do it's actually that was a life-changing thing for me to be able to just have at night my iPhone just it at a certain time it just shut it goes into night mode and it doesn't wake up again until the next morning and I have so really the only people that get a hold of me are close family like in a few exceptions everything else it just sits there so if I wake up at three in the morning and I want to check email or messages awesome but if I don't want anybody to get a hold of me they don't and the only people that I have there are the ones that it would be you know critical or an emergency to do so so now it's time for you to go out there and like start playing with all your settings turn off all your notifications get all your stuff set up like these these really are key things to making the tools work for us instead of us work you know the we slaves to the tools there is a book actually I can find it right now um go take you can go take a look it's called the it's either I think it's called the 40-day digital fast or it's just called the digital fast and it is about it comes out of fasting and not eating and doing other stuff but the idea of like getting away from devices and it's not a throw all your devices out kind of thing it's really especially the prep part of it the first part of the book where it's like okay if you're going to prepare yourself because we do need digital devices professionally we use them all the time but it it tells you about it's a lot of really cool little things that I didn't know about for example last one and then I'll wrap up I let you guys go is you can put your iPhone into a black and white mode so that it is all of the colors and everything like that disappear it really changes it's like you don't like looking at your iPhone as much anymore because it's not as pretty however you cannot play Wordle because it all of those like yellow green red butt squares that you get they're all black and white now so if you have something that you do even though you don't want you you want to have your digital fast you might have to be careful that being said be careful out there go out there have a good time enjoy shutting off some of your notifications and we will come back and check out in with you next time around with whatever our latest little Biv advice pet peeve or soapbox moment is as always go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time oh that was fun those are good yeah I think that's especially as you started talking to it I was like I think it's like this was a good episode to have it's just one of those that I think periodically especially because we we so often talk about um side hustles and EXT like squeezing every minute out of your day and I do that I mean I'm like I'm that person I get like almost lectured people are like why how do you do that why do you do that I'm like well when I get done there will not be on My Grave he was a you know he wasted a lot of time I may have played a lot of games at some point but no time wasting in there yeah time in fact I was talking to Dave today because of the uh 400 assessment I'm working on and he's like dude how do you find the time to do all this it's like given the fact that I don't like medications I don't like being medicated I've had insomnia since I was 16 so you just learn to manage life and fill your time with important things or not necessarily important thing but things that you like to do versus like taking pills and just being in a haze I it's I you just got to make sure that you balance that stress and relaxation and as you've known for years you know I it it waines and flows and yeah yeah I mean that's just you gota you've got to find that balance and it's and some you your body adjusts to whatever you make it so you also have to sort of keep an eye out from a long-term Health Point of View and and things like that but there are a lot of ways to kill two bird three birds 18 birds with one stone and so it does come down to a little bit working smarter instead of harder and being productive instead of busy if you can take busy out of your life and just focus on the productive it makes is amazing the the difference that makes and it's it's something I'm reminded about every time when I go from like a season of a lot of meetings where you're just constantly scrambling and doing stuff and not able to to focus to season or even sometimes within a day where I can just be like okay I'm going to go put on my focus music I'm going to put headphones on I'm going to listen to some noise and I'm going to just start cranking and then next thing no I've cranked out a lot of stuff because I was able to really focus on it so that will wrap up this one well yeah yeah thought to that it it kind of boils down a little bit to like the the Netflix culture the whole Digital streaming culture where we've gone from from small bite-sized pieces that we can adjust over time to here let's dump 20 hours worth of a TV show and now you lose 20 hours of your life and now you're stressing to try moderation moderation people you know it even like with what we just talked about with the cell phones communication you know just moderate what you consume can help deess your life yeah unless you're watching the latest Fallout season then just go ahead and just like binge the whole thing um yeah that's like it's a that's a whole different level of stress is adding on the stuff of like God this is a great Cliffhanger I want to watch the next epode in the next episode and I gosh I'm trying to remember there was one trying to think of who did oh I think it was stranger things is one of them they did a brilliant job of changing the episode length and always doing it on something like on a on some sort of ending where you're like oh I got to watch the next episode and so you just like get into it and then you look at you think like oh they're always about 45 minutes you realize oh I just did an hour and 20 minute episode or something like that where they like change around it's that's the fun things you they can do with those kinds and I think I think Marvel did that with one or two of their latest ones like like when they did the trying to remember maybe it was Daredevil or one of those they did even early on there's some of those that'll play with that stuff and it's a whole different artistic license you have doing that sort of like podcasts sometimes you can be short and sometimes you can go long [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
for I can cut there we go because
Michael was just saying we might say
something
important record soon enough and he's
not wrong uh We've we've had I think
we've lost 15 20 minutes of discussion
sometimes not hitting record soon enough
so welcome back uh if I can move my mic
out of the way doing a little technical
stuff
here uh as we're getting started so I'm
as I was about to say I think what I
want to talk about today for the first
at least our first little bit here this
next podcast episode I want to focus on
it's essentially in a general sense it's
email but it's also like communication
and things like that as far as like
timings and particularly because we've
got so many tools out there that we
communicate with that I think I want to
dive into that
and um sort of give you a little bit of
like a hot seat thing too because I want
to talk about my thoughts on a couple of
these tools like slack and text and
email and I want to hear your thoughts
as well and I think there different for
the Next Generation you know the the
Millennials and such that are even
younger than us that are coming in but I
think it's an important thing that we
need to you know make clear so I think
this will be a fun little it's a little
bit of a side trip for us and then we'll
between now and the next time next 30
minutes or so we'll figure out what our
next episode's going to be uh and it may
be a follow-up but I figured i' just
Dive Right into this sound good sure um
in the context are you thinking
uh just the different ways that we can
communicate with in our industry
business whatever more or less yeah I
mean it's just like there's so many I
think it's almost everybody these days I
mean you find all sorts of groups that
professional personal communication and
and now they cross line so much as well
have all these different ways we
communicate and I think there's in some
cases we just feel like particularly as
a professional we feel like we just have
to like respond immediately if we get a
slack message at 3 in the morning we
have to respond and that's not really
true and so that's where I want to talk
a little bit about that and what I'm
thinking and a little bit of it is uh I
guess self-defense self-care things like
that so that you're not getting sucked
into stuff that you don't want to and
I've had more than a few cases of that
that I've done it and that also recently
that I've had conversations that I've
accidentally pulled other people in and
it's like wait a minute like you didn't
really need to do that I didn't mean for
you to be up till 1:00 am struggling
through this thing I just like threw a
little question out so um I for that's
probably a good little topic for us to
to go into good you wna uh include any
of the uh Focus things that certain apps
and technologies have also thrown out
there since you did mention kind of
quality of life work life yeah I mean if
there's stuff like that anything that
comes to mind because this is yeah this
is really just a I said this is one of
those it's like hey it's about beer
o'clock and we're going to sit down and
just talk about like hey what is your
experience with this and so see where it
goes sure works for me awesome well
hello and welcome back you're here we're
here we're going to have a conversation
and we're going to talk today about uh
communication but more specifically
tools and expectations I'm Rob Broadhead
I'm one of the founders of develop or/
building better developers and on the
side is Michael why don't you go ahead
and introduce yourself hey everyone my
name is Mike MOS I'm also one of the
co-founders of developer Nur and also
founder of Envision QA so today we are
gonna first I'm gonna sort of give my
thoughts on a couple of we'll call them
families of communication tools and sort
of the expectations that I think are
there and these have grown up over the
years where some of these things didn't
even exist when I started out things
like um actually most of this stuff did
not exist we didn't have text
messages we didn't I mean we had email
that was about it and we had news groups
which is a whole different thing that
nobody I think even follows anymore uh
but now there's so many different ways
do it and then because they've come
along really in a very short period of
time five to 10 years from a when you
think about professions and careers and
things like that that's actually a a
portion of somebody's career or
professional development or the
existence of a company an
organization and so want to talk a
little bit about standards and if
they're not standards that are out there
it's maybe how you want to go set your
own standards or work with your
organization to do them first thing and
this is a little bit of a surprise to
Michael I was just like hey here's a
cool thing so I'm going to throw this
out to him so apologies if he stumbles
or or fumbles it's my fault not his
because I like just you know threw him a
curveball
now the reason that this popped up is
because I've had just in the recent
weeks I've had a couple of instances
where I've had somebody sent reach out
to me via various forms and I ended up
doing you know responding faster than
they expected and I ended up sort of
like disrupting my life when it really
wasn't needed it wasn't an emergency uh
which is not always a fun thing it's
like hey if you can push it back you
don't need to disrupt your life I've
also had people that I've reached out to
and I've thrown something out there and
the next thing I know they just spent
five hours working through something
when I really didn't need them to do
that it was one of those like hey if
you've got time and so there's also a a
clarification of our Communications that
I'm going to touch on now the first
thing is I want to talk about a couple
of families of communication types that
we have now and the one is the instant
and this is and there's sort of two
levels of each of these and so there for
instance let's think of uh direct
personal and then there's also
professional so for an instant personal
would be text message because it's your
phone you're probably presumably you're
carrying your phone uh unless it's a
business phone then okay it's a business
text but most people you've got your
personal number somebody gets you a send
you a personal text that's an instant
you know practically like somebody
poking you in the on the shoulder saying
hey kind of thing professional sense
would be more like our messaging tools
that we are typically logged into during
the day such as slack now those those
because we
are uh they're much less they're much
more passive and much less active then I
think there is a different level of
expectation of responses to those uh and
then we move sort of beyond that we get
into more of the uh we'll call them like
the dialogue type things which could be
a text message depending on how you do
it but more often it's going to be
something like uh mail message email is
going to be pretty common for that uh
there may also be postings that you
would put on like uh and particularly
not live not the kinds of tools people
are constantly logged into like slack
you're probably going to be logged into
all day or teams but if it's a LinkedIn
message or Facebook message or social
site message that's something that yeah
you may or may not get to that so it
probably has a a lower priority and a
lower guarantee of you being a ailable
now your mileage may vary so you may be
somebody that is always
on um Snapchat or something like that
and I know people like that that or
Facebook and nobody's on Facebook all
the time I guess but there are tools out
there that people are on it all the time
and your friends and your family maybe
and even maybe your profession depending
on what profession you're in they may
know that and they may use that tool for
that instant messaging and it's and it
they're expecting you to you know
they're going to send it and they expect
you to read it within say a minute or so
that's your instant message Style versus
some like ah you'll probably read it in
the next few hours and then there's the
longer term stuff that typically has
been email or even leaving a voicemail
which is like you'll get back to it
within one business day or something
like that now from your expectations and
this is both sides of it think about the
expectations of the immediacy of the
communication form you're sending
whether you're sending something or
receiving something so particularly if I
ask Michael if I say hey can you check
out this site if I send him a
text then I'm probably expecting him to
take a look at it like right now it's
either that or I'm you know it's one of
two things it's that and he knows this
but it's or I'm out somewhere and I just
need to do that and we'll do this
sometime I just need to like do it
before I forget and usually that's what
we will do because we want to be clear
is if if there's a text it's going to
say hey check out this site I just found
it just wanted to let you know something
along those lines if it's something that
is and it's usually going to be more
personal in that side if it's something
more professional then we'll probably
hit each other up on like a slack or
somewhere like that where that person is
probably available and it's probably
going to be viewed during working hours
and so if you're getting something
during working hours it's probably work
rated stuff it's something that from
your professional point of view you need
to take a look into it if you're getting
something on a personal Channel like a
Tex then if it's work it's usually going
to be considered emergency like urgent
because if I get a text like I did today
I've got a customer that can reach me
via uh upwork he can reach me via email
he can reach me via teams he can reach
me via text and something came up to the
point where he had like sent something
on teams he needed he had some urgency
so he escalated it and sent me a text
and I was like oh yeah I have I've
missed that cool and so took care of
that literally right before this call
started because it was like Hey I can
take care of this
quickly and that's part of I think the
expectations if it's a text it's either
blowing up critical got to be fixed
right now or I'm expecting that this is
something that you can just like knock
out real quick and it's just going to be
sort of like a hey before we forget can
we do this real fast if it's on a slack
or some Channel like that then it's
going to be again usually um a
self-defined unit of work keep it you
don't want to you're not going to have
like big long text messages or slack
messages you might but you probably
shouldn't because people aren't going to
want to read through that whole thing
they're going to keep it like a bullet
point kind of level send that to them
they'll address it and vice versa once
you get it you can take a look at it
address your item respond to it say hey
we got it move on if you need to do
something that's longer there is this
thing called a phone so you can pick
that up and call them you can schedule a
meeting via like a zoom or something
like that you may do a jump on to one of
the varying ways that you can do a
remote call remote conference uh which
is you know whether it's a video phone
call or whether it's through one of your
tools and then you've got the the longer
thing of the more longer term larger
scope discussions which usually is going
to be email now personally that's when
you just sit down with somebody and
start talking to them if it's
professionally the nice thing about
email is it can give you a history of
the conversation and you may get this
through other tools but email is one
that everybody basically has access to
you're going to have an history of that
you're going to be able to walk through
at your leisure be able to walk through
that email and take notes think about it
do what you need to do so it should be
that the expectation when you send an
email is that they're not going to
respond immediately that you're not
going to respond immediately and that
goes both ways so if I send somebody an
email if I'm if I get an immediate
response I'm usually shocked I'm usually
surprised it's like wow I didn't expect
you to read my email right away and be
able to
respond from a professional point of
view I think there's a there's a value
in not responding immediately
the whole point is you have this
opportunity and this is actually in all
of these but particularly the longer
form things like an email you have an
opportunity to read that email read it a
second time think about your response
craft something that is not a one line
like okay I got it
unless it is what you can do with an
autoresponder that basically something
that just says hey I received your email
I'm going to take a look into it we'll
get back to you within one business day
something along those lines
now that's sort of like I know that's a
a very big umbrella that I put stuff
under but those are my thoughts and
those are just some of the things that
I've got that have you know percolated
up and developed over the years and so
now I'm going to take that big mess of
stuff and set that in your lap for a
minute Michael and what are your
thoughts on these and how do you a
little bit how do you handle these
varying things and particularly when
we're talking about personal and also
when you've got Hustle you've got like
primary job versus side hustle stuff all
of these things that mix in and how do
you see this and and handle the varying
levels of of
communications so to start out with that
one of the things you kind of didn't
touch on with the communication is also
what type of job you have uh if you have
just a standard business job and lives
aren't at stake typically you're going
to be less likely to respond immediately
to a lot of messages uh
however and Rob knows this because we
both have worked in uh Healthcare
sectors or different sectors where
life's potentially could be on the line
software has to be up for you know
Mission critical uh things in those
cases unfortunately you are a little
more wired into all Communications
because if you get an email a text or
something at 2 o'clock in the
morning typically not necessarily an
email but if you get like a text a phone
call you know they're if you get a
communication at that time of day you
typically need to roll out of bed log
into your computer and find out what's
Burning uh if you're not in a mission
critical role
and I've fallen into this trap for many
years if Rob knows this um he he's uh
the first thing that came to my mind
when you're talking about you know
receiving that email working till 1
o'clock in the morning I remember a
project we were on where it was like 2
days before New Year's and all of a
sudden our test data stopped working and
we had a presentation on July 3rd and
here I am working through new years's
trying to figure out what the H happened
and we find out the next day that oh
yeah this other
team changed the API That's why nothing
worked but you don't know that you know
you have miscommunication because the
wrong type of communication is going out
or the lack of communication is going
out
like you said and and one of the things
I think prioritizing uh with all these
communication lers these days is number
one if you get a phone call that should
be number one you need to just take that
know that that's priority someone needs
to reach you
now typically that's number one that's
like Mission critical if they call
something's up you need to answer
typically second level of IMM Media
communication that I tend to deal with a
lot is personal text message mesages so
I do respond to those but then once you
start getting into the other media types
like slack teams uh LinkedIn uh well
actually we'll put social media aside
for a moment so just like slack LinkedIn
like upwork things like that typically
you tend to watch those during business
hours whatever those may be now
unfortunately with me with side hustles
and multiple projects going on typically
a Nino F isn't my typical day typically
my day will start maybe at 6 7:00 in the
morning while I'm having coffee to make
sure I didn't miss anything critical to
maybe 8 or 9:00 at night you know I tend
to watch them a little bit more than I
should email definitely uh is the last
uh line a defense I barely checked that
maybe uh three four times a day uh
picked up a good habit from you know the
5 Hour Work Week really business emails
I check it like at lunch and like 2 3:00
in the afternoon and then work email
Isn't checked again for the remainder of
the day personal email I tend to check
that a little bit more but I am getting
a little bit better with that but then
you throw in the social media channels
like LinkedIn Facebook uh you know
Instagram if you're not dealing with the
side hustle if you're not running a
business and you're just
working typically you're going to just
uh be on those when you want to be on
those just be careful that it does not
become a crutch that that's all you're
doing that you're staring at your phone
all day and you're just missing
Lu if you're working though if you're
running social media campaigns then you
tend to run into that double standard
where it's like okay am I looking at my
phone for personal or am I looking at my
phone for work so you kind of want to
set some boundaries there uh when you're
dealing with social media that you kind
of segment the two and then lastly
before I uh throw it back to up one of
the things I've noticed over the last
few years and Apple's great at this and
Google's got it too is you can now set
like do not disturb you which can limit
what Communications come into your phone
at certain times so now during the uh
business time I have limited all my
personal contacts to just emergency
contacts during the day on my phone so
like if someone picks up the phone to
call me it's going to be work number or
a primary contact anyone else it just
goes to
voice the other cool feature that uh
Apple Institute was uh like this uh like
the screen time app or screen time
configuration and now you can actually
turn off things that you don't need to
be wasting time on like Facebook uh
LinkedIn anything you don't need to be
doing during the workday turn off
anything you don't need to be doing
after your workday you can turn that off
and have that be your personal time so
you can have business time personal time
and then there's other different things
you can do like you can set up emails
and things like that you could also even
turn on you know away uh from like slack
teams and that nature that's one other
thing to be careful of with
communication because if you have that
on and you log in at 11 o'clock at night
and your boss sees you your boss may say
oh he's working let me reach out to him
you don't necessarily want to be
available all the time but you do want
to be available and work when it is an
emergency
now I want to that's actually that's a
great area is the the
notifications um and I was just that was
just reminded me that I had uh Gmail on
my phone has got an override so even
though I shut everything off I've got
quiet time it woke me up at 3: in the
morning where it was like and it was
silent but my you know my phone lights
up the room when there was some email
that came through and I was like what
the heck is that so I just made sure I
turned off because it had a allow
critical or time critical emails to come
through anyways I'm like no there is no
such thing as a Time critical email for
me so I'm going to shut that off now the
thing about the statuses is actually I
think a an invaluable tool to use to
communicate with others
particularly because I don't know how
many people do it personally but
professionally a lot of people will sort
of keep an eye out of uh people's
statuses on whatever their tool is
whether it's like a teams or a slack or
something like that and it's really
valuable to have that but it's also one
of those things that be careful how much
you use it because if you want to go
heads down or if you're in a call you
know like you're on a meeting or
something like that where you cannot be
disturbed or do not want to be
disturbed by all means put yourself in
your busy status or whatever your
setting is but if you're just like hey I
just don't want anybody to bother me and
I could take a call but I'm not going to
if if you overuse it then basically
everybody's just going to ignore it and
just going to send you stuff all the
time anyways now that may or may not
matter but it may be something where
your device your tool your
platform batches all that stuff up so
that when you do turn your status back
on it's like f you get flooded with all
of that stuff that it was you know it
had queued up waiting for you to become
active again so check it every so often
it's just the same thing now granted is
a personal issue or whatever that I an
itch problem I have with other people
sometimes is when you've got an inbox
that's got like four million different
you know four million items in your
inbox it's like okay that's just too
much you've now made that a useless tool
to communicate with you now if that's
your junk box awesome this delete
everything but don't leave the 20,000
messages there unless you're just trying
to say look I get a bunch of spam every
day week year however long it is so yeah
I think there's there are that is a nice
thing there's a lot of tools out there
that are now and people are becoming and
organization is becoming
more cognizant about the impact of
working 247 and helping us find ways to
you know to sort of get back in SLE of
that stuff so that even though we're
remote and we could work any time that
we don't want to that we want to work
our hours and don't be afraid to and by
Don't Be Afraid definitely communicate
with your team particularly if you
have't open schedule communicate what
your hours are this is a again a
personal peeve of mine because my team
works whenever the heck they feel like
it however and they and sort of work
their way into what hours work best for
them which is fine it's just it is very
helpful for me and helpful for them
actually to know what their hours are
because if they're not on their you know
technically not in their working hours
and I send them a
request and it may be that I do it in a
way that I'm expecting them to respond
fairly quickly because I think they're
in working hours but if they're not you
know if their status is you know active
or something like that or if their
status is always away then I'm going to
send that and I don't have a any
indicator that hey they're on you know
this is their schedule but if I know
that you know hey Michael runs a you
know he usually doesn't come in till
noon and then he works till midnight
then I'll know that so if I send him
something in the morning then I'm doing
it not expecting him to talk to me until
later or if I I'm going to be hesitant
like you know to put a phone call in or
something because I'm not calling him at
his work desk at that point I'm
interrupting his personal time so don't
be afraid to put that kind of stuff in
there schedule those things use your
especially if you have a place that is
very big on calendars don't be afraid to
like block out that you know I'm going
to go to lunch for I'm gon to take a 30
minutes lunch and I'm going to be gone
you don't have to put lunch there just
put you know meeting or something or if
you need to focus on
like sometime like you know a review
process or training or something like
that block that stuff out so then other
people can see okay you're not available
then and they'll schedule around it and
if it's an emergency or higher priority
they'll say hey can you move something
and then go ahead and do that thoughts
on that actually closing thoughts on
that because we're we're going right
through this one one thing we didn't
touch on and this is something from the
AOL days that I think fortunately has
engraved itself into our um Society back
when it was really cool to get that
little uh pop up You've Got Mail has
turned into all these beeps Bops
vibrations whatever that you are
constantly anxiously you hear a noise
you think oh my God I got go took my
messages turn that crap off if you want
to have a life and be sane turn that off
or like Rob was saying schedule meetings
or if use your tools so like I said
iPhone uh allows you to block off time
so you can actually put when you go to
sleep so there's a little thing if you
actually set up the alarm or sleep time
on the phone once it hits that it turns
everything off it will only allow your
personal
uh uh like Cal or contacts to call you
directly um otherwise every else is
turned off till you actually wake up
past your wake up time or you turn that
off slack has similar features you can
actually put time on you your work hours
so it shows you available slack also
gives you the ability to uh put in like
busy time so like when I first log in in
the morning I'm online yes I'm on slack
but for the first hour all my
communications are muted now if I have
slack up and I'm watching sure I can
respond but it turns off that
notifications so I'm not constantly
being distracted I can check my email I
can try to uh recap what I was doing the
previous day so don't let communication
devices apps rule your life take the
control back look at the device look at
the tool and figure out how it allows
you to configure when you're available
when you're not available and make
sure make sure that you are clear with
your customers your friends your boss
that these are the hours I
work I will only respond during these
times if and only if it is an emergency
call
me you know
don't leave it all to text messages you
know if it is a priority One mission
control you know critical call you know
don't forget you know that's the whole
point of a phone it is to call people
not text not email that's the computer
feature a phone is a phone everything
else that they crammed into these things
these days is a computer so with that
take your life back you know get that
work life balance
back I agree and that's that's a perfect
wrap up for this I will add only on the
um the quiet time notifications you can
do it's actually that was a
life-changing thing for me to be able to
just have at night my iPhone just it at
a certain time it just shut it goes into
night mode and it doesn't wake up again
until the next morning and I have so
really the only people that get a hold
of me are close family like in a few
exceptions everything else it just sits
there so if I wake up at three in the
morning and I want to check email or
messages awesome but if I don't want
anybody to get a hold of me they don't
and the only people that I have there
are the ones that it would be you know
critical or an emergency to do so
so now it's time for you to go out there
and like start playing with all your
settings turn off all your notifications
get all your stuff set up like these
these really are key things to making
the tools work for us instead of us work
you know the we slaves to the tools
there is a book actually I can find it
right now um go take you can go take a
look it's called the it's either I think
it's called the 40-day digital fast or
it's just called the digital fast and it
is about it comes out of fasting and not
eating and doing other stuff but the
idea of like getting away from devices
and it's not a throw all your devices
out kind of thing it's really especially
the prep part of it the first part of
the book where it's like okay if you're
going to prepare yourself because we do
need digital devices professionally we
use them all the time but it it tells
you about it's a lot of really cool
little things that I didn't know about
for example last one and then I'll wrap
up I let you guys go is you can put your
iPhone into a black and white mode so
that it is all of the colors and
everything like that disappear it really
changes it's like you don't like looking
at your iPhone as much anymore because
it's not as pretty however you cannot
play Wordle because it all of those like
yellow green red butt squares that you
get they're all black and white now so
if you have something that you do even
though you don't want you you want to
have your digital fast you might have to
be careful
that being said be careful out there go
out there have a good time enjoy
shutting off some of your notifications
and we will come back and check out in
with you next time around with whatever
our latest little Biv advice pet peeve
or soapbox moment is as always go out
there and have yourself a great day a
great week and we will talk to you next
time oh that was fun those are good yeah
I think that's especially as you started
talking to it I was like I think it's
like this was a good episode to have
it's just one of those that I think
periodically especially because we we so
often talk
about um side hustles and EXT like
squeezing every minute out of your day
and I do that I mean I'm like I'm that
person I get like almost lectured people
are like why how do you do that why do
you do that I'm like well when I get
done there will not be on My Grave he
was a you know he wasted a lot of time I
may have played a lot of games at some
point but no time wasting in there yeah
time in fact I was talking to Dave today
because of the uh 400 assessment I'm
working on and he's like dude how do you
find the time to do all this it's like
given the fact that I don't like
medications I don't like being medicated
I've had insomnia since I was
16 so you just learn to manage life and
fill your time with important things
or not necessarily important thing but
things that you like to do versus like
taking pills and just being in a haze I
it's I you just got to make sure that
you balance that stress and relaxation
and as you've known for years you know I
it it waines and flows and
yeah yeah I mean that's just you gota
you've got to find that balance and it's
and some
you your body adjusts to whatever you
make it so you also have to sort of keep
an eye out from a long-term Health Point
of View and and things like that but
there are a lot of ways to kill two bird
three birds 18 birds with one stone and
so it does come down to a little bit
working smarter instead of harder and
being productive instead of busy if you
can take busy out of your life and just
focus on the productive it makes is
amazing the the difference that makes
and it's it's something I'm reminded
about every time when I go from like a
season of a lot of meetings where you're
just constantly scrambling and doing
stuff and not able to to focus to season
or even sometimes within a day where I
can just be like okay I'm going to go
put on my focus music I'm going to put
headphones on I'm going to listen to
some noise and I'm going to just start
cranking and then next thing no I've
cranked out a lot of stuff because I was
able to really focus on it so that will
wrap up this one well yeah yeah thought
to that it it kind of boils down a
little bit to like the the Netflix
culture the whole Digital streaming
culture where we've gone from from small
bite-sized pieces that we can adjust
over time to here let's dump 20 hours
worth of a TV show and now you lose 20
hours of your life and now you're
stressing to try
moderation moderation people you know it
even like with what we just talked about
with the cell phones
communication you know just moderate
what you consume can help deess your
life yeah unless you're watching the
latest Fallout season then just go ahead
and just like binge the whole thing um
yeah that's like it's a that's a whole
different level of stress is adding on
the stuff of like God this is a great
Cliffhanger I want to watch the next
epode in the next episode and I gosh I'm
trying to remember there was one trying
to think of who did oh I think it was
stranger things is one of them they did
a brilliant job of changing the episode
length and always doing it on something
like on a on some sort of ending where
you're like oh I got to watch the next
episode and so you just like get into it
and then you look at you think like oh
they're always about 45 minutes you
realize oh I just did an hour and 20
minute episode or something like that
where they like change around it's
that's the fun things you they can do
with those kinds and I think I think
Marvel did that with one or two of their
latest ones like like when they did the
trying to remember maybe it was
Daredevil or one of those they did even
early on there's some of those that'll
play with that stuff and it's a whole
different artistic license you have
doing that sort of like podcasts
sometimes you can be short and sometimes
you can go long
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