Please Don't Say Just Hello in Chat
I&#x27;ve personally found that I get <i>much</i> better results when I say hello first, as opposed to including everything in a single message.<p>My hypothesis: When you ask someone a full detailed question, the other person sees the whole thing at once, as one big daunting block of text, and they decide to ignore it for a while. Conversely, when you message someone saying &quot;hi&quot;, it builds suspense. They start to wonder what you&#x27;re going to message them about. They pause what they were doing for the few seconds while waiting for you to type out your full comment. Often times, they even reply saying something like &quot;hello&quot; or &quot;what&#x27;s up&quot;. All this increases their buy-in into the conversation, and makes them feel more invested. As a result, when they finally get your actual question 20 seconds later, they are a lot more willing to reply immediately.<p>Is it time inefficient for the other person to have to sit around for 20 seconds while you&#x27;re typing in your actual question? Yes, sorry for wasting 20 seconds of your time. But that&#x27;s a trivial tradeoff in comparison to me getting the information I need so I can be unblocked and productive.<p>If and when people start to reply promptly to messages, I&#x27;d be perfectly willing to stop using these tricks and hacks. But until then... hi.