TFL: Text For Logistics

Recently, while my 23-year-old son was staying with me, he came home and found me talking on the phone. He looked slightly surprised and asked who I was speaking to.

I’d recently become single and was talking to someone from a dating site before agreeing to meet him.

My son looked astonished.

“My God. Is that what old people do? Speak on the phone?”

It made me laugh, not least because I’m hardly someone who naturally reaches for the phone. Given the choice, I’d much prefer to avoid an uncomfortable conversation by sending a carefully constructed text.

But I’ve increasingly come to think that this is precisely the problem.

Texting is wonderfully convenient, but it is also a fairly blunt instrument. And for those of us with an avoidant streak, the mobile phone has provided the equivalent of honey to bees.

Dating is a perfect example. You can spend days, sometimes weeks, engaged in text tennis with someone you’ve never met. There is plenty of time to compose clever answers, present the best version of yourself and fill in the enormous gaps with whatever you hope the other person might be like.

A five-minute phone conversation can reveal the horrible truth rather more efficiently: you have absolutely nothing in common.

I’ve been there.

Of course, the phone call may be slightly awkward. But arguably it is considerably less awkward than weeks of messaging followed by an hour sitting opposite someone in a bar while both of you slowly realise this was never going anywhere.

We think we are avoiding discomfort when sometimes we are merely postponing it.

This isn’t just about dating.

Technology has made communication easier, but it has also made avoiding communication easier.

We can express anger without seeing the other person’s face. We can fire off an accusation without hearing their response. We can say things by text that we might temper if another human being were sitting in front of us. People conduct complicated arguments by message and sometimes even end long-term relationships without having to speak to the person whose heart they may be breaking.

There is a reason we do it.

Avoidance works, at least in the short term.

If I send a difficult message rather than have a difficult conversation, I don’t have to sit through the silence afterwards. I don’t have to hear disappointment in someone’s voice or watch their expression change. I can construct my argument exactly as I want it and I don’t have to deal, in real time, with the irritating possibility that the other person may see things differently.

It gives us control and protects us from immediate discomfort.

The problem is what it can cost us in return.

I’ve noticed the opposite pattern throughout my working life.

Some of the most successful and effective people I’ve worked with are remarkably quick to pick up the phone.

Newspaper editors are a good example. In an environment where decisions have to be made quickly, they don’t tend to spend half a day exchanging carefully worded emails about something difficult. They call, ask the awkward question, make the decision and get on with it.

I’ve come to admire that.

A conversation we spend hours avoiding, rehearsing in our heads or trying to manage through messages can sometimes be resolved in five minutes by actually speaking to the other person.

Avoidance doesn’t just cost us connection. It can cost us an extraordinary amount of time.

Real conversations require something from us that texting often doesn’t.

We have to listen. We have to tolerate pauses and misunderstandings. We have to notice tone, hesitation and emotion. We may have to explain ourselves differently when we realise the other person hasn’t understood us. Sometimes we even have to concede that they have a point.

Most importantly, we have to tolerate vulnerability.

And that is part of how relationships deepen.

A friend of mine once fell out with a work colleague over a text about a document. The colleague wrote:

“I resent it.”

My friend read this as: I resent it.

What the colleague actually meant was: I re-sent it.

One hyphen could probably have saved the entire argument.

Text strips away so much of the information we use to understand one another that misunderstanding becomes remarkably easy. We fill in tone, intention and meaning ourselves, often according to whatever mood or story we are already carrying.

I realised some of this when my children were growing up.

If one of them tried to unravel a complicated argument with me by text, or sent a long message explaining how angry or disappointed they were, I would reply with three letters:

TFL.

Text For Logistics.

Where are you? What time will you be home? Can you pick up some milk? Thinking of you. Have a great day.

All excellent uses of text.

Trying to resolve a complicated disagreement with someone you love? Not so much.

We still use TFL in our family now, and I try to stick to it myself. If something is emotionally complicated, particularly if there is room for misunderstanding, I would rather talk.

Not because I necessarily want to, but because sometimes the thing I most want to avoid is exactly the thing worth doing.

Text for logistics. Talk for complexity.

Avoidance is a clever strategy. It protects us from immediate discomfort, which is precisely why it can become so seductive.

But there can be a longer-term price.

When we repeatedly choose the safety of the screen, we miss opportunities to practise saying difficult things kindly, hearing things we may not want to hear, understanding another person’s point of view and discovering that we can survive awkwardness, disagreement and vulnerability.

We may also miss something more fundamental. Real relationships, whether personal or professional, are built partly through these slightly messy encounters. We learn to understand other people and to let ourselves be understood.

Avoidance protects us from discomfort, but it can also protect us from intimacy, clarity and growth.

So perhaps my son is right. Perhaps speaking on the phone really is what old people do.

In which case, I’m increasingly happy to be old-fashioned.

Notice one conversation you are having, or avoiding having, by text that might be better spoken.

Ask yourself what you are avoiding by keeping it on a screen. Awkwardness, vulnerability, disagreement, rejection, or simply not knowing exactly what the other person will say?

Speak instead. Pick up the phone, suggest a coffee or simply say, “I don’t think this is a conversation for text.”

You may not get the response you want. But you might get something much more useful: a real conversation.