Do we really need "quick calls"?
A quick call drains your productivity, sends your focus down the drain, and rarely ever gets work done.
First things first, for all those that lost their lives, their families, people working at ground zero, and the city of Ahmedabad:
I hope you do that even for 1 minute when you have time (e.g., while drinking water), and for 5-10 minutes by digging out time. This is what the world needs right now.
We’ll now start with the usual email.
Raw and Real conversation
The world is in a silent pandemic.
Not the pandemic of physical or mental health issues.
But the pandemic of endless chatter.
At work, we are jumping from meeting to meeting in order to appear important.
If we are not working in the same premises as people we work with, we replace that with Zoom calls.
As if pre-scheduled calls were not enough, we randomly pick our phones in the middle of the work day and call anyone and everyone we are working with.
And all I want to say is just one thing:
That’s a terrible, terrible way of living and working.
Before you start pelting at me, here’s why:
People get on “quick calls” because they want to get things done.
Then they speak for at least 10, 20, 30 minutes, sometimes even upto an hour—all to chat about something that could be easily sent on an email. In less than 4.2 sentences.
However, in order to send a message on email, the sender needs to be articulate themselves. But all they have done ever since the invention of mobile phones is get on calls, and brain dump. Thinking left the chat ever since the need to “be overworking and show my boss that I deserve the next promotion” showed up.
As a result, they do not know how to sit with themselves for 5 minutes to figure what they really want to say. They might be successful in corporate terms, but no one is really successful unless they understand what is going on in their mind.
So they do what every lazy person does: Blabber endlessly in meetings, and leave the task of figuring out to their colleagues.
Not to mention, it wastes collective hours of the organisation, and to put it mildly: equivalent of one person’s one day’s salary in every meeting of one hour that lasts between 8 people. All for the trade off of not being able to articulate your 5 thoughts into an email. And we call ourselves data-driven orgs :(
Also, the more we are interrupted between our work for “important calls” the more our mind is taken away from the task we were doing.
It takes the mind at least 25 minutes to refocus on the task you were doing.
Now we are apparently working 12-hour days, are too busy, but are rarely getting work of even 10 hours done in the entire week. In reality, if we worked with focus, we can get our daily work done in 2-3 hours, and then really really chill. Huh, the ego of most busy people does not want to accept that.
Most people, if they were to interviewed every Friday night before leaving from office on what did they accomplish in the week, would have no answer. Sad but true.
That’s hard for most people to understand. Which is the unfortunate part. And exactly the part the world needs to improve upon.
Before we go into the conversation of how to fix it, let us understand why it happens in the first place. If you don’t know why your AC isn’t cooling the room, knowing how to fix it would be a tedious job. If you know which part of AC isn’t working, it only takes less than an hour to fix.
So, here is why most people love “jumping on quick calls”:
Most human beings have Daddy issues from childhood. (I’d admit I have had them for the longest time, until I purposefully worked on them.)
Thus, for a lot of them “success” is equivalent to shouting out loud that now they have become important, and others should know that loud and clear. A wrong definition of success the world lives on is “I am busy, so I am successful, you now know na I am important?”
Which is exactly the reason why younger generation keeps presenting an Insta-story life that is anything but true, and the generations bit older than them are running after the validation of “12-hour weeks, too busy, I bought a house in elite society in Gurgaon, look at my new car, and look I am so successful. Na-na-na-boo-boo.” Okay it went too overboard but I know you get the drift.
The saddest part is, this hunger leaves us nowhere. Worse, it drains us daily. One SIP of emotional drain at a time.
As a matter of fact, we are left more miserable even though we now have everything. It is because on paper we might look as free as Bunny from YJHD, however, in reality, the same people are as trapped as Ved in Tamasha.
I remember at a conference last year, a friend introduced me to one of the trainers there. “She has quit her career as a CA to become a writer,” he said proudly. And then he added, “Not a lot of people have the courage to leave that high-paying job to become a writer.” Little does he know, how much of truly high paying job being a writer has been for me. However, I chose not to tell him, because the whole and sole purpose of my success is to be successful for myself. If I correct him, that means I am living the society’s life. Let them believe what they want to.
So, now comes the million dollar question:
Should we stop getting on calls altogether?
Yes. Okay, often.
But I get it is not practical for most people. Even I get on (scheduled, not quick) calls with my clients.
However, to start with, here are some step-by-step things you could do:
Start the day with writing on a piece of paper what you want to do. Not in your notes app, not in the app that your YC alum friend invented :). Just the good old pen and paper.
Decide what is going to be done at what time.
For the first two working hours, absolutely no calls, even texts (because once you text them, they call right away to “brain dump” lol), no emails, and no meetings.
I get it most people might not get that liberty, so start with the least you can
Most importantly, you start with sending emails instead of making a call. And then it need not be done in an ideal world, but send them a text to read the email you’d sent. Still much better than “let’s get on a quick call”. Charity begins at home.
Outside of work, please read books. Any genre of book. Pick something you want to read, not something that would look cool on your Insta story. Your formal education got you this job. Your informal education will get you through the job of life.
Reading helps your mind get sharper and think deeper, which helps us write emails. Not easy peezy lemon squeezy, however, if you try this for just one week, you will see results you had never expected.
Now comes the important part:
What to do when you are in calls.
First and foremost: Ask the question “what needs to happen at the end of this call for us to call this a successful one”. Your agenda is to get things done. Not to vent on why there is no metro on your route of commute.
Always have them after lunch. Use your first half for productivity. Never trade it for “nothing happens with one call”. It is equivalent to “nothing happens from just one cigarette”. A lot does, apparently.
Before you hang down, always get clarity on the next steps. For you. For everyone in the call.
But I’d still say try having no more than one meeting a day, ideally squeezing 2-3 calls together on 2 days of the week, and live like a free bird on the rest.
No one will tell this to you, because even the most successful people are busy looking busy that they have lost the definition of focus.
Let me tell you my friend, when you master your focus, there is nothing, absolutely nothing that you cannot accomplish.
To summarise:
I hope you do not neglect this email thinking I am powerless, my work demands so many calls. I’d say start with the smallest thing you can, the smallest email you could send, the one call that could be an email. It requires responsible communication, which I know you are smart enough to get done.
If you do good work, get your work done on time, and are good to people in general, they’d respect you eventually.
But no one will respect your boundaries if you don’t draw them in the first place, my friend.
Corollary: The intent of this email is not to abolish calls altogether.
You do want to get on calls with your family and friends. I’d call my family or friend any time in the middle of an important work day if they want to speak to me. I usually chat for an hour or more with the 2-3 friends I have.
The purpose of this focus exercise is to have more time to do things you want to do, not to be so pressed on time that our loved ones long to listen to our voice, while we are tirelessly nodding our heads in meetings that could be a 3-bullet text.
Work rarely gets done on calls, my friend. Work gets done in focus, undistracted environments. Even if your work requires distraction, calls and meetings compound it exponentially.
The goal of independence, working hard, and growing in your career was never to become a prisoner, was it?
2 Raw One-Liners:
Always know that when one door closes, 10,000 new open.
Before starting to work with someone, if you have a gut feeling that the answer is no, the answer is no. Period. We will explain the head later. But right now, you go ahead with the gut.
3 Real Gratitudes:
For your loved ones.
For being picked to live this life.
Just the ability to be safe and be surrounded by God’s love, even in the middle of the situation we are all in.
I hope you found today’s edition valuable.
Please don’t forget the first thing about meditation we spoke about.
I’ll see you next week.
Stay raw, stay real, and never stop reading.
Nishtha Gehija
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Instant access ebooks for your reading, and spend some time with yourself:
The Corporate Life Handbook: The book everyone working a corporate job needs :)
The Career Changing Guide: My bestseller so far :)
How to Deal with Heartbreak: Because, life happens :(
Every Writer Needs to Read this: I wish I had this one, when I was starting out as a writer
This is What You are Looking for (Paperback): Small Life Lessons for a Happier Life