Pencil me in

At work, I've been forced to switch from UNIX mail to Exchange. They didn't force me to switch mail clients, but to be a good corporate citizen I made the switch to Outlook. This allowed me to engage in shared calendaring with my far flung co-workers.

It didn't take long for me to notice that if you accept a meeting as "Tentative" people act a little funny. People call and ask why am I "tentative", and ask if a different time slot would be better. One time someone even called me to figure out why someone else had accepted a meeting tentatively.

So what's wrong with tentative? I work in a knowledge based profession, where the difference between super productive and not productive is greater than 10x. As I've mentioned before, context switches aren't free for programmers. If I'm in the groove, I'm better off finishing the bits I am working on than going to most meetings. People should guard their time jealously if we are to get our mountain of tasks accomplished. ( See also Tyranny of Email )

The reason people don't like the response "Tentative" is they are afraid they aren't really so important. You might just drop their meeting for a more interesting or more important meeting. It's like being penciled in to someone's appointment book. They aren't really serious enough to use a pen, because well something better might come up. I admit I wouldn't like it if everyone responded as "tentative" when I send a meeting notice. When I host a meeting I do try and make sure I don't invite people who don't need to attend and I try and ensure my meetings contain both content and a little humor. I usually I don't get any tentative responses.

So I have decided, unless I am an "optional attendee" for a meeting, I'll just say yes or no to the meeting request. However, if I'm "Optional" you are very likely to get a "Tentative" in response unless there are cookies being served. If you've marked me as "Optional" it probably means you won't take it personally if I'm "Tentative."

So what does this tedious discussion of Exchange and Outlook have to do with life, the universe, and everything?

In mulling over the human dynamics of my computer mediated exchanges, I realized that to my close friends and family I don't want to use pencil when I mark you in my book and I don't want you to mark me in with pencil. I want you to know whatever is important to you is being written down in indelible ink. If I have to change something for some reason later, I'll make a mess of my metaphorical appointment book trying to scratch out our previous appointment. The mess in my book will remind me of how important you are.

Do the same for me will you?