My day is feeling like a giant twitter.  In fact, I might be more effective if that was the only way I communicated.  This morning when I woke up, I discovered that my mouth was full of ulcers.  Besides being really gross, it is also annoying because it hurts to talk and eat.  I also couldn’t kiss my husband goodbye when he left for work this morning which just makes me sad.

When I got to work this morning, my very hungry self had to try to communicate this with HR.  Seeing as I can’t really talk, this consisted of me writing notes to HR and the HR manager looking confused.  Since my little meeting this morning, an email has been circulated to the staff that I can’t talk and I have a sign on my desk explaining the situation to anyone who opted out of reading the email.

Strangely enough, I’m having a really good day.

My day of silence is really freeing me up to get things done.

Its forcing me to really think about the words I choose.  When someone comes over to my desk to ask a question, I have to write a response.  Since most people don’t really want to stand around while I write them a book, I’m trying to keep my responses around the size of a tweet.  Any response that would require more than that gets shown my post-it that says “Send me an email”.

I have pre-made responses.  Next to me are four post-it notes.  One says yes.  One says no.  One says send me an email.  And another says “Thanks”.  Guess which post-it I’m using the most – Thanks!  And since everyone loves hearing “thanks”, most people are leaving my desk happy when they read it.

Email is my best friend today.  Email allows me to give each person a thoughtful response.  Not talking means there is a little more time allowed to think.

By changing the way I communicate within my workplace, I change the way I work.  For at least today, I am freed my perceived need to multitask.  Focusing on one task at a time really lets me clear those nagging items off of my to do list and produce a higher quality of work.

This certainly isn’t something I would want to do everyday but once in a while, it’s important to be silent to focus on what your priorities are.