Do you find yourself feeling frustrated when you collaborate with certain people? Do you feel like they respond to your written communication in fits and spurts? Sometimes the conversation flows but other times they act like a communication black hole, killing the exchange in the process.
I think there's a certain kind of collaborator whose primary characteristic is that, when it comes to written communication especially, they think deeply and seriously before responding. These people are pensive and I think I am one.
I find it very difficult to participate in online forums, mailing lists and even, to some extent, email conversations. I'm not overly private but I'm coming to understand I'm pensive. Written communication comes to me after deliberation.
I read a thing and I think, "Oh, I have an opinion about that." I'll explore the opinion enough to give it a mental title, a headline maybe. But then it needs to sit. There's a part of my brain that fleshes out opinions and makes connections while I'm doing, well, pretty much anything else. The anything else could be paid work like consulting or programming. It could be exercise or taking my wife on a date or a hike with my son. I may come back, do a little research to fill in gaps in my understanding, then put the conversation back on the shelf. At some point the processing is done. I have an opinion and am ready to elucidate that opinion. I'm faced with a dilemma. Do I actually engage in the conversation? Is my pensively-formed opinion still relevant?
Face-to-face I don't have the same problem. It makes me wonder why writing is such a different kind of process.
If you come across someone who seems to respond in fits and spurts to your emails or tweets you might ask yourself if they are pensive collaborators.
