On average for every two phone messages I leave, one person returns the call. That number includes business matters. If work related messages are excluded, the ratio plummets to three messages per callback. Boy, what a harsh view on the state of my communication skills.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the odds are better, sometimes slightly worse, but over time those are the metrics. Looking at my own call history, I want to believe I am more responsive. I might be. But I drink from the same well. <\/p>\n
And there are reasons to not return a call. Valid, rational explanations. For instance, the caller on the message is drunk; it’s 3AM; it’s the last person in the world I want to deal with; I was gone for the weekend and the spontaneous invitation no longer applies because the date passed.<\/p>\n
Also, by their nature some messages do not require a reply, so I understand when someone does not. A friend that drives a long way home from dinner just wants to let you know they arrived safely. In that case, their message closes the loop. They need no further reassurance.<\/p>\n
Over the next week, I will be more aware of when I avoid calling people back, and why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On average for every two phone messages I leave, one person returns the call. That number includes business matters. If work related messages are excluded, the ratio plummets to three messages per callback. Boy, what a harsh view on the state of my communication skills. Sometimes the odds are better, sometimes slightly worse, but over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introspection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}