Talk to People on the Telephone

It’s time to start calling your friends again.

Excerpt: "In the past year, I’ve been on a mission to pester as many people in my life as possible. The first victim was my editor, whom I abruptly asked one morning to stop messaging me about story ideas on our office’s chat platform, Slack.

Instead, I said, let’s talk the ideas out over the phone. I soon did the same thing to a friend who’d texted to discuss a job offer he’d just received.

A few weeks later, when another friend texted me for New York City apartment-hunting tips, I asked her my new favorite question in return:

Do you want to give me a call?"

....One of the best arguments in favor of phone calls will be obvious to anyone who’s ever gone back and forth for three days via email trying to pick a spot for Tuesday’s happy hour. Guhan Subramanian, the director of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, which teaches business- and law-school students the finer points of conflict resolution, argues that spoken conversation accomplishes far more in a shorter amount of time. In any discussion, “people are asking questions, probing, asking follow-up questions,” he says. “It’s obviously a lot easier to do when you’re over the phone or in person, compared to by email or text.”

This difference is what first pushed me back to phone calls. I wanted to hear my editor’s reactions to my story ideas and work them out in real time, not watch a “Paul is typing …” graphic linger ominously for 30 seconds before I knew the verdict. (Hi, Paul.) With friends, too, I wanted to rekindle the energy of live conversation. I wanted to crack a joke and hear someone laugh.

I wanted my thumbs to have the occasional night off."