I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much I dislike phone calls. I don’t mind a quick call here or there (though I prefer a text message,) but any long call that involves important decision making or conversation I dread. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, or even why I felt that way. It seems like I’m not alone as D. Keith Robinson recently discussed a similar dislike and got a resounding response in the comments. Here’s what I’ve figured out:

1. I love email and even text messaging.
2. I love talking face to face.

For a long time, I dismissed my dislike of the phone as an affectation of my shyness. Why then do I like talking to people face to face? It would seem that that would make a shy person even shyer. The more I think about it, the more I realize there are two other factors that make me hate the phone.

Turn Based Communication

I think one of the biggest issues that arise when two humans communicate is the understanding and respect of whose turn it is to talk. It’s easy to talk with someone when it’s clear when they’re done speaking and it’s my turn. Then there aren’t interruptions, and the conversation goes back and forth, like a game of pong, without error.

With email, this concept of turn based conversation is taken to the extreme. Your turn isn’t up until you’ve finished a thought and hit send. When you get an email, you know it’s your turn to respond when you’re done reading. There’s no interrupting each other. Maybe this is why I love long email chains.

In a face to face conversation, you can use body language to signify you would like to add to the conversation. This lets the other person know they should pause, that you would like it to be your turn. It’s also much easier to graciously interrupt if you have something pressing to say or the other person is getting long winded.

On the phone there’s no way to tell if you or the other person wants to take their turn. Anyone who’s been on the phone with a salesman knows this. Salesmen love the phone because they can just ramble on and on and on (see Boiler Room.) As someone who was raised not to interrupt, this adds to the stress level since I don’t want to be rude but would like to put in my two cents.

Ramble On

Many people are verbose. I’m as guilty as the next guy for often going on, and on, and on. If someone sends you a long email, you can skim through it, omitting entire sections, to get to the heart of the matter. When you’re in person it’s much easier to be interested in what someone is saying—you can make eye contact, laugh, and more easily offer witty asides and quips. On the phone, I feel trapped. If the person I’m talking to launches into a long diatribe, I’m stuck, locked into my seat until the ride is over. This feeling leads to stress and anxiety, especially if I see a call coming in for a notorious rambler.

So it seems that my dislike for the phone isn’t based in some deep-seated social phobia, but rather in my need for structure in a conversation and a love of efficiency.

FiLife.com, a personal finance site for people who don’t like personal finance, had its public launch today. It’s already being written about as its status as a partnership between Dow Jones and IAC gives it a lot of visibility.

This is where all my time has gone over the past few months. We’ve all worked very hard to get the site up and running (it’s a small staff) and I’m quite proud of what we’ve accomplished.

So go check it out, sign up and take some stackers, rate your bank and credit cards, and ask some questions. I’d love to know what everyone thinks. If you’re shy and don’t want to send feedback directly through the site, feel free to drop me a note with your thoughts and I’ll make sure it goes where it needs to.

Now that it’s launched, maybe I’ll have more time to write. There’s a couple of site features I’m quite excited about and I’d like to feature them here.

I came across this site via Tumblr. It’s created by topherchris. I love the concept—one short news byte each day—almost as much as I love the minimalism. Helvetica Neue strikes again and as always, never fails to disappoint.

I think, if the design wanted to really be a type-gangster (and don’t we all?) that he could’ve stuck with the -1px letter-spacing used on the date for the title. That would’ve tightened things up and added just a little extra sexiness.

visit and follow: http://whatthefuckdoineedtoknow.com/

I have a lot of ideas for new projects. I find that I only execute a small number of these ideas however. The past month that I haven’t blogged? It hasn’t been writer’s block. I have a lot of ideas for drafts, I just never write them.

I always think that I don’t have time to start something new. The idea of a brand new project, a clean slate, a blank canvas—it makes me think I need substantial time to dedicate to it at first. If I have a project already started, I can spend an hour on it and quit without worry. So what is it about starting something new that is so hard to get past?

I’ve found that things I thought would take a long time often resolve quite quickly. Then it’s done, out of my brain, I stop worrying, and my eye doesn’t start to twitch (a sure sign I’ve got too many ideas in limbo.)

This blog post is a perfect example. This is, in reality, a response to something ze Frank said today about self-motivation. That reminded me of the episode of The Show that I use for personal motivation. It was 6pm and I wanted to go home. “I don’t have time now,” I told myself, “I’ll write it later.” But my iPod was syncing and I thought “I’ll just start it.” Turns out I’m already done, and it didn’t take that long. One less idea in my head, waiting to be acted on.

I’m a fan of the email signature. It’s a great way to supply the people you talk to with your contact info, and once you set it you can forget it. One of my favorite things about desktop email programs (like Entourage) is the ability to have multiple signatures that you can select for the appropriate message. For example, the long signature with all your contact details isn’t necessary for inter-office mail. I even picked up the habit from my old employer to automatically add “Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns” to the signature used to interact with clients.

I use Gmail as my primary email tool and love everything about it. My favorite feature is the integration of multiple email accounts. The drawback has always been that Gmail only supports a single signature. This is a problem. My default email signature looks like this:

–
————————————————
Justin Dickinson // jmdickinson@gmail.com
visit AllMyLiesAreWishes, my personal blog:
http://allmyliesarewishes.com

That’s all well and good for the majority of my emails. But I also have the How I Met Your Mother blog and an email address associated with that. When I email those readers I don’t want to link back here to AMLAW and I want to have the correct info. The only thing to do is remember to delete the default sig before hitting send. For a long time this was how I did it. I’d occasionally forget and in general it seemed like there should be a better way.

I installed Greasemonkey this morning. When looking through the available scripts I found the Gmail HTML Signatures plugin. This script adds the exact functionality to Gmail that I’d been missing. Now when I write to friends or readers from Have You Met Ted it automatically adds the appropriate signature. It even works on replies and forwards. Awesome!

I don’t take advantage of the HTML part because I think that big, colorful, or image-ful signatures are almost always obnoxious. It is just nice that Gmail is finally smart enough to append the appropriate sig based on what account I’m emailing from. Check out the script, and for that matter Greasemonkey, today.

While we’re on the topic, any recommendations for other must-have Greasemonkey scripts?