Agreed. A lot of the past conflict in my life boils down to this as well.
Conversely, I'm now in the habit of asking big "obvious" or "dumb" questions; questions that will highlight assumptions being made by each party. I'll often go slow at first to establish that these large unspoken thoughts are aligned and then work my way down to lower levels of detail until we hit an actual disagreement, rather than a mere misunderstanding.
It drives me crazy to spend 30 minutes arguing with someone only to find that "Wait, you're talking about THAT? I thought we were talking about THIS."
It's too common for people to find themselves arguing in the direction of the same general concept, but differences in their understanding/interpretation will diverge more and more the farther you get into the discussion. It's so helpful to lay out terms at the start when possible.
Conversely, I'm now in the habit of asking big "obvious" or "dumb" questions; questions that will highlight assumptions being made by each party. I'll often go slow at first to establish that these large unspoken thoughts are aligned and then work my way down to lower levels of detail until we hit an actual disagreement, rather than a mere misunderstanding.
It drives me crazy to spend 30 minutes arguing with someone only to find that "Wait, you're talking about THAT? I thought we were talking about THIS."
It's too common for people to find themselves arguing in the direction of the same general concept, but differences in their understanding/interpretation will diverge more and more the farther you get into the discussion. It's so helpful to lay out terms at the start when possible.