To Be Taken Literally

I think a lot about words.

A lifetime of feeling misunderstood combined with countless examples of actually being misinterpreted, has made me very cautious about my communication.

I think about how we use words, how we misuse them, and how we can use them more effectively.

Today, I want to ask you to think about the words you use.

Asking for Help

If you were to ask me:

“Can you help me with something?”

I am very likely to reply “yes” without hesitation. I would barely even think about it because of course I can, or at the very least I can try.

If you were to ask me:

“Do you want to help me with something?”

I might find myself confused, not knowing what I actually want in that moment. I also might find myself feeling guilty. Because what I might actually want in that moment is to take a nap rather than helping you.

In a third scenario, if you ask me:

“Will you help me with something?”

I would respond “what is it you need help with?”

We’re now having the conversation about me taking an action to help.

Because of the implication

Using can, want, or will, all solicit different information. Yet because of the way language evolves, we may use them in questions interchangeably, as in the examples above.

When someone asks me any of the questions above, I know they probably mean the same thing: the person wants or needs help with something. It would be pedantic and annoying for someone to consistently call out the specific definitions in requests that would be commonly understood.

However, that does not mean that we should ignore this important conversation entirely.

When we rest on the assumption that our implied meaning is sufficient, we implicitly accept the possibility of being misunderstood.

Misunderstood

To return to where this post began, let’s think about how we use words.

In both the team building work I do and the productivity work I do, we talk a lot about collaboration. Collaboration is heavily dependent on effective communication. And when you consider that every brain on your team is a little different, you begin to see how important it is to prioritize clarity.

Clarity is a process of removing ambiguity and making implications and assumptions visible and understood. The easiest way to do this is to be more literal in our communication.

When we say what we mean, and take the time to ensure everyone understands the information and the intent, we stop the runaway trains of misunderstandings and assumptions. That’s a lot more effective than judging and punishing people for misunderstanding what wasn’t explicitly said.

This is the call to choose your words intentionally. And that call extends beyond the people we work and live with.

Writing for the Future

We will improve our relationships at work and at home, when we communicate honestly and with clear language. But there’s one last reason we need this now more than ever.

If you haven’t noticed, AI is doing more and more writing on people‘s behalf. That means that we are often handing the pen to an LLM — letting it create the outputs that train other LLMs on how we will communicate.

As with most things, each time a copy is made and passed along some of the information is lost — but the copy machine is completely unaware of that fact. So, bit by bit, prompt by prompt, we drift further and further from what we might intend.

If we relinquish our language to the machines, we risk slowly losing our collective ability to communicate with one another effectively and accurately.

So, at least once in a while, make it a point to sit down and write something where you are forced to choose your words.

Challenge yourself to be the sort of person who can be taken literally.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

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