I love to snack! Recently, a nutritionist suggested I munch on something healthy between meals to ensure my body gains the proper fuel throughout the day. It is good in theory, until I eat not-so-healthy snacks or enjoy large snacks and large meals.
More isn’t always better when it comes to eating or when it comes to communication, especially if you are enjoying snackified communication. Phil Libin, CEO of Eernote, in Harvard Business Review, describes snackified communication this way, “I think the whole way that we work has changed. Even if you take one step up from work and you just look at life, I think almost all of life, the big trend this that [sic] it’s becoming more snackified. Life is about doing things in shorter and shorter intervals, and smaller intervals.”
Just like our food-snacking habits support a healthy body, our snackified communication habits, thanks to electronics, need to support building healthy relationships. They also, just like too much snacking, can damage relationships.
Weigh-in on the following tips to make sure your conversations, whether snackified or not, are adding to your brilliance:
- Connect with emotion. We are social beings with brains to read voice and body clues. Electronic communication does not have the capacity to convey tone and emotions. Emojis help as does specifically typing, “I feel sad about this.”
- Determine which communication method is best. Often texting or email is less stressful since we have time to ponder thoughtful responses. However, some issues are best solved face-to-face or voice-to-voice.
- Just like healthy eating, check for a balance of communication methods. Are you more likely to text, send an email, pick up the phone, or have a person-to-person conversation? Texting is faster and less intrusive; however, maybe it is time to have longer, meatier conversations with important people in your life.
- Consider the communication preferences of others. Not everyone prefers electronic conversations. Additionally, your go-to, preferred method might not be the best considering the goal of your conversation.
- Read over your thoughts before you press Send. Remember that electronic devices have permanent memories. Beware of the mistakes that can be made when multi-tasking or enjoying adult beverages that can alter sound decisions while using electronics to communicate.
- Enjoy an occasional communication cleanse. Sometimes, it might be important to shut down communication with the outside world. Time of personal reflection, in solitude, helps us to come back to center and, of course, brilliance.
Here’s to healthy snacking – for your body and your relationships.