README

Ways of working

This is a how-to document for me, as a colleague and teammate.

If we're working together towards the same goal, I hope this page can facilitate more effective collaboration between us.

General Ways of Working #

Time and attention are our two most precious resources, upon which all others depend.

This is especially true for people with ADHD, as me, and folks like me, cope with a literal deficit of attention.

This can manifest in many ways, but the most noticeable (to most people) is my aversion to unnecessary meetings or events. It takes genuine effort to get my brain working on what it needs to, and interruptions compound the difficulty.

Avoid Email (Prefer Chat) #

I avoid email whenever possible. This may seem odd, as a worker in a business setting, but Slack (or any chat) is perfectly adequate, and it can only be used by people within the business.

What's wrong with email? #

Anyone can send me an email. Anyone in the entire world. There are 8 billion people who could send a message directly to my work email, should the mood strike. That is a disaster for somebody with ADHD. It turns the humble inbox into a supermassive blackhole of time and attention.

In fact, not only can anyone message me, there are many people with a strong financial incentive to proactively message me — to take my time and attention via coercion and obstruction.

Throughout my career, I have received sales emails and spam on a near-constant basis. Some are sent by predatory opportunists or criminals, some are bots, but many are sent by sales people also trying to do their jobs, selling a product with legitimate value. Selling by email works, and it’s legitimate marketing. It works.

It just doesn’t work on me, as a consumer or prospect.

So to even get to anything relevant, I have to engage in a paperwork organization and filtration scheme.

And that’s before I even get to whatever’s in your email.

Don’t get me wrong — email is a miracle of modern engineering and a fundamental element of our world in the information age. But it is absolutely not the best way for teammates to communicate internally. I will die on this hill.

If you need my time and attention on something, chat works best.