Just don’t
Not saying it&#x27;s not good to learn about how &quot;just&quot; might be perceived or avoided but I am surprised this article is getting so much support. I feel like in the environment I&#x27;m in &quot;just&quot; never implied anything negative (e.g. lack of understanding on the receiver&#x27;s part, making it seem like they <i>should</i> have considered ... but didn&#x27;t, etc.), rather:<p>- <i>I</i> don&#x27;t yet understand why steps x, y, z are necessary. To me it would seem simply&#x2F;naively doing ... might work but I&#x27;m probably missing something.<p>- Would an (objectively) simpler (though possibly not perfect) solution (which I&#x27;m just putting on the table here) suffice here?<p>- I think we can do ... here and it&#x27;ll be fine. Should we &#x2F; let&#x27;s see if that works, and revisit ? &#x2F; .<p>Sure, &quot;just do it&quot; would often be bad, indicating a variety of things like &quot;stop dwelling on this or arguing, do what I say&quot;. Or &quot;can you just quickly do this (thing I find trivial but don&#x27;t understand at all) for me&quot;, but in the end it&#x27;s the context that matters.<p>Like, I can turn this around as well. The word &quot;don&#x27;t&quot; is negative and should be avoided at all cost. Better: &quot;could we try ... instead of ...&quot; (see submission title).<p>Then conclude &quot;don&#x27;t worry about it&quot; should not be said.
Which to be fair is also true in some contexts but again, context!<p>EDIT: To be clear it <i>is</i> valuable for me to learn that usage of &quot;just&quot; could be problematic. That&#x27;s important when not knowing the other party but among coworkers I also happen to have more of a relationship with than just one-off comments, these kind of word choices are not what make or break things. Especially in a diverse environment I assume everyone is acting in good faith and I would only let word choices affect me if the sum of my interactions with a coworker has been negative already and I &quot;know&quot; they are trying to incite an argument.