Technical communication inhibits human communication
The need for mental agility has been changed and accelerated for all of us by the impact of Covid.
I wrote Do Agile just before the appearance of the pandemic. It was written to help people be more proactive. To be on the front foot, to be future-ready.
I can now see that it also has an urgent relevance to a new challenge. That challenge is to address a new neediness. The neediness caused by the restrictions and limitations on our lifestyle within the various versions of Covid lockdown. And the longer term need to avoid the danger of infection from the disease, possibly for an extended period.
This neediness is inhibiting. The closing down of opportunities causes a semi paralysis in our thinking. We are mentally glued into our personal mental bubble. Our minds become stuck in unwitting comfort zones.
Home working can contribute to this. It liberates time to do more things — to increase involvement with our family, to exercise more, and to learn new skills or develop areas of expertise. But because we are responsible for its structure there is a danger of us developing unhelpful habits. The overall awfulness of the situation brings the temptation to just do things we like, rather than those we find challenging or uncomfortable. Meaningful things that are worthwhile and we know will be good for our minds or our mental wellbeing, but involve application and possibly hard work.
Just as parts of our minds or bodies may not be getting the workouts they need, our social skills too are in danger of ossifying.
Zoom is wonderful in many ways. But it makes it all too easy to avoid challenging, difficult or just new, social interactions. The clunkiness of the medium means they can be easily dodged. And real communication is more difficult if you can’t put your arm round someone’s shoulder or look into their eyes. Even face to face, the frequent necessity for masks is a further inhibitor of warm human interaction.
So the skills and disciplines I advocate in the book can begin to shrivel. As a result, I’ve been revisiting it to remind myself of its contents. Fortunately I was reassured. The core principles (and chapters) of Openness, Neoteny, Continuous Learning, Honesty, Compassion, Kindness, Fairness, Future Focus and Future Readiness, are still relevant.
Revisiting them unstuck my mind. For the time being…
