Experiments in Not Speaking

I did not speak for 12 hours yesterday. Let me hasten to say that this was not a self imposed challenge or attempt to obtain enlightenment. It was on the advice of the dental staff who performed surgery on my gums. The directive for yesterday was to move my bottom lip as little as possible. Without verbal communication, I had a good deal of time to ponder my communication habits.

For starters, my job has been almost entirely verbal since January. I am acting as a quality lead and strategy consultant for a team in the UK. My boss, also as of January, is now on the East Coast. A corporate travel ban went into effect in December, so I have not seen my boss since he became my boss. Even more interestingly, I have yet to meet the team that I have been supporting for 2 months now. We communicate in writing - which is only good for pure data. The rest of our communication relies on intonation, inflection, and word choice - things that can be heard on the telephone. After spending a non-verbal day, I feel the need to get to the UK - to see and be seen by this team that I support. I suspect that it would strengthen the levels of trust between us.

I spend a lot of time discussing ideas and techniques each day - on the phone with family and friends and in person with my husband. Conversations range from running our small business (9 months old, but over 100 invoices!) to house renovation (we're ALL doing it!). Going without this made me realize how entrenched this new habit has become. On the plus side, these conversations let me plug into a network with a lot of shared folders - almost as if I were a computer myself. They allow me to access to a broad range of ideas. On the (possible) minus side, they are taking the place of working through ideas on paper, so there is no record once the conversation is done. I may need to make some modifications to the memory storage aspect of that system.

I could probably get away with silence in most face to face transactional interactions. I was able to communicate fairly well non-verbally. As long as the seller can speak, the purchaser can get away with nods and smiles. The pharmacist gave me a few odd looks, but it did work.

Despite the fact that I am extremely verbal, this worked overall. I had to take the day off, and I missed my daily conversations. But it was also quite restful and gave me time to think. It was interesting enough to consider planning for a day like this in the future.