In my post from eComm I mentioned the work of Stefan Agamanolis with Distance Lab. He likened today’s mobile communication with fast food and proposed “Slow Communication” as corresponding to the current trend of Slow Food. Very rarely do we pay full attention to a phone conversation anymore. Either we are on the computer at the same time or because we are no longer tethered to a fixed phone we are easily being distracted by things around us.

I have thought a lot about this topic lately and found that there is almost no occasion when I pay full attention to the actual phone conversation. I find myself always doing something else. Even at home, I’m most of the time close to the PC. In addition, wireless phones make it possible to be where everything is happening. Using VoIP on the PC  makes this even worse since you are basically tethered to a device which offers abundant opportunities for doing other things while on the phone (Internet browsing, email, IM, games, watch movies, etc).

In my younger days this was definitely not the case. I grow up in a home with only one phone. It was of course stationary and it was placed in the entrance hall of the house. All my friends with only a few exceptions had a similar set up. The exception was that some actually had two phones, the second phone typically in the parents’ bedroom. When you were on the phone there was basically no distraction – the TV and radio were in other rooms and you could close the door to lock out annoying siblings.

After thinking about this for a while it has become clear to me that I would like to, at least for certain calls, be able to concentrate fully and “slow down” the communication. The quality of a conversation obviously improves significantly if there are no distractions and one can focus fully on the call. So, the question I ask myself is how to apply slow communication in my daily routines. The work at Distance Lab is very interesting but I am thinking about what I can do right now without the need for a complicated setup.

After experimenting with this a little bit I have found that there is a tremendous improvement in conversation quality (How is that measured? – That will have to be the topic of a later post) by just taking some simple steps. The first one is obvious; just try to find a place with no distractions. What I have also found is that the effect of turning out the light results in another significant step towards the goal. I was actually surprised how much that helps. It is just a bit dangerous if you are tired. It is also important to find a comfortable place to sit – lying down is not at all recommended. The things I have tried so far are all very obvious and simple but I feel that by taking these simple measures there has been a significant impact on the quality of those phone conversations. I will continue to experiment with this and I will get back if anything interesting results.