I replied to every single message for one summer, to see what happened
- Looking for
- quality over volume, and I now have data
- Experience
- Six years, two arrangements, one experiment nobody asked for.
- Around
- Coral Gables, Miami
Last summer I answered everything. Every greeting, every one line opener, every message that was clearly sent to fifty people. It took about forty minutes a day for three months and I did it because I was curious whether the volume was hiding anybody good. Of roughly two hundred conversations, four went past a week and one turned into a person I met. The other hundred and ninety six ended within three messages, almost always because there was nothing on the other side.
Thirty four, switch, I work in physical therapy, Coral Gables, six years in this and two arrangements behind me, both about a year.
The useful part was learning that the flood is not hiding treasure. So I am back to answering the small number of messages that contain a real sentence, and I do not feel guilty about it any more, which I did for years.
What I want is one ongoing arrangement, either direction depending on how it settles, with somebody who writes like a person. If you are the sort who sends a paragraph you thought about, you are already in the four percent. If you are about to send a greeting and nothing else, I have run the study, and I know how it ends.