

The challenge: Don't speak in future tense - adityakothadiya
http://sivers.org/futuretense

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davidw
Two out of his first three quotes are not actually in some form of future
tense. "We are", and "I am getting ready" are both present tense, albeit of
differing forms. Of course, he's correct that they're talking about things
that will materialize in the future.

~~~
lmkg
Tense is surprisingly difficult to nail down in English. By some definitions,
it doesn't have a future tense at all, it has a handful of future 'aspects,'
the difference being that a tense uses verb inflection and an aspect uses
auxiliary verbs. The examples show how the distinction between an auxiliary
and lexical verb can blur around the edges, which is actually how auxiliary
verbs formed in the first place.

Sorry for the nitpicking, and you are correct that there's a mismatch between
the title and the content (an increasingly severe problem). I was hoping for a
linguistics discussion.

~~~
pmiller2
>Tense is surprisingly difficult to nail down in English.

I'm blaming it on whoever misplaced most of our inflections and our case
system like 800 years ago. Old English was a cool language.

~~~
eru
Spoken German has even fewer tenses. You have the present tense, which you use
for talking about present and future events, and the perfect, used for talking
about the past. That covers at least 95% of all uses.

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ojbyrne
I have worked remotely a lot and I've always tried to reduce the overhead of
communication by actually doing stuff rather than saying I'll do it, etc. I.e.
rather than

I'll look at it

....

Looking at it

....

Working on it

....

Done.

I try as much as possible to do

<longer delay>

Done.

Mostly because of "The Mythical Man-Month." Some people don't deal well with
it, though.

~~~
litewulf
I find that this means there is an ambiguity between "I have not read this
email" and "I am working on this"

Also, certain things that need to be done can be done by multiple people, so a
"I am working on it" email is a good locking mechanism.

(I usually say "I'll look at it", _delay_ , "Done" to remove some ambiguity.)

~~~
benmathes
I think both you and the parent poster make valid points. The key thing is to
send something vague-enough in the first email. For example, don't say _"I
think that's a problem with X and I'm looking into it"_ , just say _"I'm
looking at it"_. In other words, only communicate the lock you're acquiring on
the task and save the rest for the "done" email.

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matt1
Another interesting thing to pay attention to is how often people talk about
what's wrong and that it needs to be fixed, but fail to provide a road
forward.

Example:

"This web page is horrendous"

(everyone nods)

"We need to find a way to make it better"

(everyone nods)

"Now moving on to the next topic, we're moving too slowly..."

It's rare to find a person that suggests solutions to problems rather than
just pointing out that they exist...

~~~
oscardelben
I think it can be summarized in one word: meeting. Do you agree?

~~~
praptak
> Do you agree?

I think we should discuss it to make sure we're on the same page. I booked 313
for the afternoon.

~~~
oscardelben
Sure, every time I see a classic meeting, the meeting is about how everything
sucks or how we could do if only (put anything here)

Instead, when we (developers) have our mourning scrum meeting, we just need 5
minutes to discuss what to do for the day.

Shit can happen, and sometimes a meeting is really necessary, but from my
experience it doesn't justify the real cost of it in most cases (number of
people multiplied for their hourly rates)

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lurkinggrue
This also plagues local sci-fi fandom. I always hear about the cool new idea
that person is never going to finish or even start.

The thing is the person got the some attention and endorphine rush from said
attention.

Why go though the actual work?

~~~
10ren
In Bob Shaw's book on science fiction writing, he said that when he has told
the gist of a story to someone, it releases some of the need to tell the
story, and so it's less likely to get written. Therefore, when he's bouncing
ideas off someone, and he gets a really good idea, he won't say anything about
it, in order to conserve its energy, so it can be channeled into the actual
writing.

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NathanKP
He claims that "announcing your plans makes them less likely to happen" yet
many people, including me, hold the exact opposite opinion, that announcing
your plans makes you more likely to work toward them.

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oscardelben
"Remember that announcing your plans makes them less likely to happen."

I partially disagree with this. When I publicly commit that I'll do x thing,
no matter what, I'm more likely to do it because otherwise people would think
that I'm only a charlatan.

I think talking in public about your idea is very important _especially_ if
you have to do some kind of report at the end.

~~~
selven
It's not an absolute truth, but overhyping something is dangerous. Even if you
do get it done, you'll be compared to much higher expectations, and your
result will look worse in comparison.

~~~
bmcleod
Saying, "I will do X", is pretty important for general efficiencies sake
though. It gives other people who have done X a chance to give advice and
people who were thinking of doing X a chance to avoid doing it or pitch in.

Informing people when and where you'll give a talk is also pretty critical to
actually having people show up.

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maw
This is easy if you're speaking in English: [http://english-
jack.blogspot.com/2007/09/if-they-will-only-l...](http://english-
jack.blogspot.com/2007/09/if-they-will-only-listen.html).

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tjpick
sounds like he actually meant that people are full of shit.

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dbz
I'm going to regret how many down votes I get on this comment.

=/

