Startup tip: Skip e-mail and chat
If you’re having a spirited talk with someone, don’t do it on gchat. Also don’t do it on e-mail.
Arguments over chat end up feeling weird, b/c it’s so easy to be misinterpreted. This drags things out.
Arguments over e-mail turn into a long series of 20 paragraph essays that become impossible to analyze 2 days later.
Instead, just pick up the phone, have a 5 minute chat, then stop. If you know the person well, an actual conversation can cover 40 minutes of chat and days of e-mail in a few minutes.
March 11, 2009


Wish I could transition to this better. I just did a lot of time accounting and saw the length of my chats vs. my outputs. Not good enough most of the time, nor a necessary evil.
March 18, 2009 at 3:12 PMPhone calls would be much better in most cases, and Salata convinced me to use them more.
Two issues arise:
a. I don't have an easy record of what we did nor a way to ensure people take the next action - I still have to do my notetaking and filing step, which Gmail would otherwise handle.
b. I do a decent amount of group work (with 5-6 people involved) where I can't afford to take ten minutes with each person.
To the latter problem: I just found a wonderful solution - free conference call lines - and I hope to pull them off more, especially for Maroon stuff.