Along similar lines as my email usage post, I’ve returned to the way I previously used IM. That is, explicitly turn it on when I need to have a conversation. I used to always tell people, don’t rely on my IM status as an indicator of whether I’m ‘online’ and my usage reinforced that.

Unfortunately, my usage of the past year or more has been the opposite, which means over the short term people will assume I’m not ‘online’ much.

Does this make me less available? In my opinion no as my phone is still here on my desk and I’m still answering it. It does, however, place more burden on callers to triage. Not having IM open all the time places that same burden on me. Where I often wouldn’t hesitate to IM someone about a topic, I’ll now hold off, solve it myself, or pick up the phone and have a quick conversation.

In the end I’m not phoning people as much as I used to IM them. That means I’m doing a better job of triaging on my side and therefore interrupting people less. I’m being interrupted less, I’m interrupting others less, and when those interruptions happen they tend to come to resolutions faster as we’re on the phone talking instead of hacking away in IM. The main reason I use IM, even when on the phone, is to send http links to people I’m talking with. IM is better at that than the phone.

Of course I’m sure some of the people I phone all day long may state otherwise.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 8:54 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.