Proverbs 29 -- Optimal Waiting Time
I know that today is March 1, but I'm enjoying going through Proverbs, and after tomorrow I'll be off the blog for a while, so I thought I'd keep going through Proverbs in order.
[20] Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? there is more hope of a fool than of him.
When someone tells you something and waits for a reply, how long should you wait? If you answer too quickly (the extreme version is to interrupt), you risk being thought glib, rehearsed, or even rude. If you answer too slowly, then you risk being thought stupid, distracted, or even rude. The various electronic opportunities available to us magnify the possibility of answering too quickly by lowering the price of responding quickly. I am all too frequently in a situation where I am counseling people not to magnify the error caused by a too-hasty pressing of the "send" button by quickly following up with another message. As with most of my observations, all too much of my learning has taken the form of experience (learning from my mistakes) rather than wisdom (learning from the mistakes of others).
This question has taken on a legal dimension in Illinois, where some professors were sanctioned for completing a required online ethics test too quickly. Their response was, essentially, "We're fast readers." This is reminiscent of a wonderful passage in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash in which a government employee must spend a closely monitored amount of time reading a memo. I often tell people that I read science fiction because it prepares me for the day's news, and here's another example.
[20] Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? there is more hope of a fool than of him.
When someone tells you something and waits for a reply, how long should you wait? If you answer too quickly (the extreme version is to interrupt), you risk being thought glib, rehearsed, or even rude. If you answer too slowly, then you risk being thought stupid, distracted, or even rude. The various electronic opportunities available to us magnify the possibility of answering too quickly by lowering the price of responding quickly. I am all too frequently in a situation where I am counseling people not to magnify the error caused by a too-hasty pressing of the "send" button by quickly following up with another message. As with most of my observations, all too much of my learning has taken the form of experience (learning from my mistakes) rather than wisdom (learning from the mistakes of others).
This question has taken on a legal dimension in Illinois, where some professors were sanctioned for completing a required online ethics test too quickly. Their response was, essentially, "We're fast readers." This is reminiscent of a wonderful passage in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash in which a government employee must spend a closely monitored amount of time reading a memo. I often tell people that I read science fiction because it prepares me for the day's news, and here's another example.
Posted by William T. Bogart on
Thursday March 1, 2007 at 8:28am