Written Communication

People often underestimate the value of written communication.

I think it's because writing doesn't come naturally to everyone and can be a seriously tedious experience for many folks out there. I've seen this resistance first-hand in many places I've worked.

Discussing things, getting a confirmation or brainstorming over a voice call is much easier and time-saving.

But, with voice calls, we lose one crucial part of communication — recorded information.

Calls usually happen unrecorded, and it's easy to lose information shared or decisions made over a call sometime in the future.

You might discuss one thing, and five days later, your coworker comes up with a totally different assumption.

Your manager may recall an incident or decision differently and hold you responsible for misinformation when expectations don't match a month later.

All these could be solved by writing things down.

Every meeting, every decision, and every piece of information can be summarised into written notes shared over chat, email or documents.

Not only do these notes become a good reference point for anyone looking to recall what was discussed, but they also act as evidence of past discussions.

Human memory is fragile. Develop a practice of writing everything down.