Oh yes, wait, I meant to ask you something
Just as your conversation partner walks away, you remember something else.
You also wanted to ask about last week’s project evaluation. Well, maybe just send an email then. But sometimes an email won’t do. A strict management assistant had taught her boss that he wasn’t allowed to leave until he’d said goodbye to her. She had a list of discussion points for him, and sometimes it included things that absolutely had to be discussed that day. So the boss wasn’t allowed to just walk off, ensuring nothing got missed.
May I just work undisturbed for a moment?
It’s a big little annoyance we hear often: colleagues who sigh at every incoming email, read them out loud, or immediately start asking questions. In an open-plan office, it’s easy to quickly consult others or share every interesting/funny/stupid email out loud, but it’s disruptive. There goes your concentration.
How would it be if you got more out of conversations by disturbing each other less?
If you could immediately bring up everything you still need a response to with someone you’re already speaking to, so you can move on? If you had control because you knew exactly what you still needed to discuss with whom?
Then I can get back to it
When you need to discuss something, it feels good to ask straight away. Then it’s done and dusted.
Your colleague is sitting right across from you, so it’s quick and easy to ask ‘do you still have…’ or ‘how was it again with…’. And of course, that goes for them too. Then at least you can move on with that topic. But that leads to constant interruptions and a scatterbrained feeling.
Dynamics can be nice
Sometimes it feels good to have a bit of buzz around. After all, you don’t work together in an office just to sit quietly by yourself all day. And it can help with turnaround time if you can act immediately. The question is: what does that buzz cost you and others? Even if you can quickly deal with something, you might not want to, because you’re contributing to a culture of immediacy where no one has patience anymore or makes a distinction between urgent and non-urgent. Everything has to happen now. That leaves no patience or calm for deep work.
What I need to discuss with you
For all matters that can wait a bit, it’s useful to work with discussion point lists.
- Review who you regularly consult with or which meetings you regularly attend. Your manager or team members, someone you’re onboarding, colleagues from other departments you collaborate with often, a duo colleague, your clients, the accountant or IT expert. Start with the most obvious people and add more as you get used to working with discussion point lists.
- Create a list or task for each person or meeting. If you already use GTD, add this to your Next Actions list as a separate context. Otherwise, any notebook, note-taking app or task manager will do just fine. Create a task or page per person or meeting and note everything you want to discuss with them next time.
- Add new items to your discussion point list. Every time you have something to discuss that doesn’t need to be resolved right now, add it to the list. You can update the list weekly and remove items you’ve already discussed.
- Ask your colleagues to use such a list too and agree on when and how often you’ll speak. In collaboration, it’s wise to make agreements about availability and ways to consult. Is daily useful, or at least a daily check-in ‘is there anything?’ Is weekly enough? Or just ‘next time I see you’? If it fits, use a task, calendar item or note that you can both edit. That way you’ll both always have an up-to-date discussion point list.
Who do you regularly have discussion points with?
