TMI Is A Myth

     You see a friend on the street and ask him, “How are you?” So he starts to tell you: “Well, I have a toothache, my dishwasher is broken, my car has a flat, my girlfriend left me, I lost my job….” “Whoa!”, you say, “hold on! Too much information.”

     Now I know, you were just being polite and using a socially acceptable greeting, but think about what happened. You asked someone for information. He started to give you the information you asked for, but when you got tired of listening to him, you cut him off, preventing him from telling you something that actually might have been important to you. What if his next words were going to be “… and I have some good news for you”?

     Granted, sometimes people take too long to get to the point and we get impatient. Other times, too much information—TMI— is indeed a problem. On more than one occasion I have been told that when someone asks me what time it is, I tell them how to build a watch. (I’ve met worse, though. I had a client who, before he told you how to build the watch, would first tell you every part that goes into the watch, how each part was made, and why it was essential to have that part in the watch to make it work.)

     As a general rule, we tend to be caught up in our lives, dealing with problems at work or home. We don’t have the time or interest to pay attention to matters of importance to others. It’s a good strategy for coping with the daily issues of life, but not for managing a business.

     Especially today, when it is more common to send an email to a colleague than to get up and walk down two cubicles to ask a question, when we use phones to send text messages instead of actually calling someone to speak to them, it is too easy to fall into the trap of TMI. We are more efficient in our communication, but we are also less effective. Texts and emails prevent us from maintaining and honing the essential skills of listening and engaging in conversation.

     We think that we can determine what we need to know to get our job done. If we get stuck, a quick message to someone for specific information is enough to get us moving again. We can stay in our office, our cubicle, or our home office and continue on to do our work. Without realizing it, we are oblivious to crucial information we might have gained by actually talking to someone, explaining what we are trying to do, soliciting an opinion, and actually listening to what the other person has to say.

     Technology enables us to work in solitude; we do not have to physically interact with other people. So we don’t. However, though we can work in a vacuum, we don’t actually operate in a vacuum. What other people are doing does have an impact on what you are doing—and you probably don’t know it. Emails and text messages leave out the subtle changes in vocal tone that you hear in a phone conversation, or the barely noticeable changes in body language you see only if you are talking with someone face to face.