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James Mitchell

Total Cost of Interaction

A.  Total Cost of Ownership

A-1  Example: Automobiles

A-2  Non-Economic Factors in TCO

A-3  Example: Office Supplies

B.  Total Cost of Interaction

C.  Costs of Interaction

D.  Examples of Costs of Interaction

D-1  Telephones

D-2  Mobile Phones

D-3  Voice Mail

D-4  Fax

D-5  E-Mail

D-6  Business Cards

D-7  Meetings and Appointments

Being Late

Inconvenient Location

Inappropriate Location

When They Live Too Far Away

D-8  Lack of Follow Through

E.   How to Reduce TCI

F.   Analyzing TCI

F-1  Explicitly Analyze the Costs

F-2  Determine if You can Reduce any of the Costs

F-3  Decide if the Benefits Outweigh the Costs

G.  How to Downscale a Relationship

H.  Sentimental Attachments

I.  When You Don’t Have a Choice

J.  What if You Don’t Have Enough Friends?

K.  Self Assessment

L.  How to Reduce Your TCI

M.  David Allen

N.  The Mindset of a High-TCI Person

O.  Can High-TCI People Change?

P.  My Parties

Q.  Should You Tolerate High-TCI Friends?

R.  How I Changed My Life

S.  The Immorality of Tolerating High-TCI People

T.  Should You Introduce High-TCI People to Others?

U.  How to Quickly Recognize High-TCI People

V.  Why Do Others Tolerate High-TCI People?

 

Business executives regularly talk about “total cost of ownership” (“TCO”), namely that one should look at the total cost of purchasing, owning and maintaining a product, rather than the initial cost. I contend that every relationship you have — business, social, romantic — imposes certain costs on you in terms of time and energy. There are some people that — due to their rudeness, their flakiness, or the fact that they are space cadets — cause you so much aggravation that maintaining a relationship with them does not make sense, that the hassles of interacting with them exceed the benefits. In this essay, I identify some of the ways that people can impose such costs upon you and how you can reduce them. I call this total cost of interaction (“TCI”).

A. Total Cost of Ownership

First, let’s look at total cost of ownership.

A-1 Example: Automobiles

When you purchase a car, that is the first of many checks you will write. The immediate ownership cost is straightforward: Purchase price – salvage value = Immediate cost. If your car costs $30,000 new, you expect to keep it for 5 years, and then you sell it for $10,000, your immediate cost is $20,000, or $4,000 per year.

Question — “Immediate cost” is not the correct term. What is the correct term?

The immediate cost is just the beginning of your experience in writing checks. Over 5 years, you’ll pay for:

  • Gas and oil
  • Parking and parking tickets
  • Excise taxes
  • Tolls
  • Insurance
  • Any repairs not covered by insurance
  • Towing (possibly)

Let’s assume all of these total another $10,000 over 5 years, or $2,000 per year. Your TCO is $30,000 ($20,000 immediate cost plus $10,000 for other costs), or $6,000 per year.

You’re willing to spend $6,000 a year only if the car produces enough value or enjoyment for you that is greater than the $6,000 a year you spend. In choosing to spend such monies, you are explicitly or implicitly calculating tradeoffs in your mind. For example :

  • You could live in Back Bay rather than the suburbs. Your rent would be higher, but you might not need a car. Would it make sense to take this $6,000 a year and simply pay $500 more per month for an apartment?
  • You might be able to rent a Zip car for $1000 a year, and put the $5,000 you save towards something else.
  • “I would rather save this $6,000 a year, do less consulting this year, and use the extra time I have to write poetry.”
  • “I would rather spend this $6,000 buying nicer clothes and going to all of James’ parties.”

The list goes on and on.

Sometimes you don’t have the option of purchasing an item. If you live in Wellesley and work in Acton, using public transportation is not a realistic option. You do have the option of car pooling or using taxis. And if you purchase a car, you can purchase an inexpensive car or an expensive car. If you purchase an inexpensive car, you can use the money you save for other purposes.

What gets interesting is if there are subtle interactions between immediate cost and TCO. Some people purchase Mercedes automobiles, arguing that even though the purchase price is high, the salvage value is also high, and thus their cost is not as great at it initially seems. (That may be true, but I still think Mercedes are a poor value.)

A-2 Non-Economic Factors in TCO

I would argue that one should not only consider the TCO variables listed above, but also factor in non-economic factors. Whenever I purchase almost anything, I place a premium on how reliable it is. I find that cars always break down when I am late for a really important appointment and all of the taxis are on strike. Thus, I look for a very reliable car.

In addition, one should consider the amount of time and energy spent needed for repair. I have a Xerox laser printer that prints genuine Postscript type faces. The output is simply nicer looking than a Hewlett-Packard, which uses clone Postscript. But the Xerox jams a lot, while HP printers rarely jam, and it gets tiring taking the printer apart, trying to find the piece of paper that caused the jam. So my beautifully-printing Xerox laser printer causes me stress and aggravation whenever it jams, which is frequent. [1]

A-3 Example: Office Supplies

Here’s another example. I use a ton of office supplies. As far as I know, Staples sells office supplies less expensively than any other merchant. So why don’t I use them? Because Staples is a total pain to deal with. I call the (800) number and wait 5 minutes, in the process pressing 18 different buttons. I then reach a clerk that has an IQ less than my dog. (My dog is really cute, but I would never claim she is particularly intelligent.) After he spends 20 minutes trying to learn his order entry system, I think the order is placed. At least I’m done, right?

Wrong. Staples screws up almost every order. I order pens and they ship pencils. I order a certain brand of notebooks and they ship another brand. I ask for punched paper and they ship un-punched. The paper clips I order never show up. I order one dozen boxes of file folders and they ship three dozen.

So I call the (800) number again, wait the obligatory 20 minutes, and reach someone less intelligent than the first person. He hasn’t been trained yet to handle returns (apparently at Staples, you need a PhD to process returns, a mere masters is not enough). So I get passed up to a supervisor, who doesn’t seem to know much more than the dolt I initially dealt with. (I asked the supervisor how long he had been with the company, and he said 3 months. Apparently that is a long-term employee, given their turnover.) So when they ship the revised order it also is wrong.

So rather than using Staples, I use Corporate Express. They are slightly more expensive than Staples and it is a rare day that they screw up an order. So I don’t have to spend time with a clerk handling returns, I don’t have to pack stuff up to return, and I can focus on what is really important in life, such as giving parties.

B. Total Cost of Interaction

So far, you’re probably thinking, what has James told me that I don’t learn in the first week of Economics 101? (Social Analysis 10 for alums of a certain university.) Answer: nothing. Here’s why you’re reading this essay.

Every person you interact with — your friends, relatives, lovers, employers, teachers, merchants — offers you a bundle of benefits. The benefits are what you focus on. Your friends offer friendship, companionship, an activity partner. A lover (hopefully) offers all of that and more: emotional intimacy. Sex. (Maybe that benefit shouldn’t be listed last.) All of these people — in addition to the bundle of benefits they offer you — have a cost of dealing with them. The cost is not usually money, although sometimes that is an issue. All of them do consume your time and energy.

Question — We need a couple of other benefits here.

My thesis is that one should consider the cost of interacting with a particular individual, a concept I call “Total Cost of Interaction,” or “TCI” for short. For some people, the TCI is simply too high as compared with the benefits or enjoyment you derive from interacting with them.

C. Costs of Interaction

There are an infinite number of ways in which someone can impose TCI costs on you. Most humans crave predictability in their relationships. Sure, we all like pleasant surprises and we don’t want to hang out with people who are in a rut. But nevertheless, in most cases we do crave consistency in our relationships. David Maister, a management consultant, argues that when you show up at restaurant and there is a line, the first thing people want to know is how long they will wait. If you tell them the wait is 20 minutes and it is, they can usually live with that. (Better yet, tell them the wait is 25 minutes and then seat them in 20 — under promise and over deliver. What makes people upset is when you tell them the wait is 5 minutes and it actually is 4 times as long.

High TCI people are typically not predictable. They cause you stress and aggravation. They ___.

Question — We need something here.

D. Examples of Costs of Interaction

There are several ways in which individuals impose costs on you when you interact with them. Here are eight of them:

  • Telephones
  • Mobile phones
  • Voice mail
  • Fax
  • Business cards
  • Meetings and appointments
  • Lack of follow through

D-1 Telephones

D-1-1  There are some people that as far as I can tell, never answer their phone — you literally can never reach them, you have to wait for them to call you back. Some people do this deliberately — they screen all calls and then call people back when they feel like it. A girl I met, Amse Hammershaimb, told me that her boss instructed her never to answer her telephone, since her time was valuable than the person calling. That’s a mindset I have trouble relating to. She apparently does not consider herself to be a rude person.

D-1-2  A few people I know simply don’t give out their telephone number — “I call people, people don’t call me.” And they wonder why they have so few friends.

D-1-3  Some people are terrible about calling back. “I’ve been really busy, I haven’t had time to return your call.” If Warren Buffet is able to return all of his calls the same day, why can’t you?

D-1-4  Some people only return calls to people they know well. “I don’t know you well enough to talk on the phone, let’s communicate by e-mail.”

D-1-5  One of my favorites is “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back, I didn’t know why you were calling.” How are you going to find out if you don’t call back? And sending an e-mail saying “What’s up?” is impolite — if the other person took the trouble to call you, shouldn’t you return the courtesy of calling them back?

D-1-6  In many cases, it makes sense to have a second line in your house, and then have line 1 hunt to line 2. “Hunting” means that if line 1 is busy, line 2 will ring even if the caller dialed line 1. This obviously assumes you can afford two telephone lines. (In this case, the outside world does not need to know about line 2, since they will always be calling line 1.) I have four telephone lines in my house, but I do realize I am unusual.

D-1-7  Some people simply have too many telephone numbers. For one of my friends, I have 18 telephone numbers in my database. [2] It’s a huge chore to figure out which number to call.

D-1-8  Direct Inward Dialing (“DID”) is a great technology for medium- and large-size businesses. With DID, telephone lines are purchased separately from telephone numbers. Telephone numbers are extremely cheap (e.g., $30 a month for 100 telephone numbers, or 30 cents per number per month). All incoming calls are routed through a telephone PABX, which looks at the incoming number and then routes the call to the correct extension. The user doesn’t have to deal with an operator or (much worse) those obnoxious unattended operators, which require 16 steps to reach the person you are dialing. DID should be used by more companies and is economical for most companies with at least 25 employees.

D-2 Mobile Phones

Mobile phones are, of course, telephones, but there are some unique characteristics that differentiate them from regular telephones in terms of TCI.

D-2-1  Many people don’t have a mobile phone. If someone cannot afford one, that is understandable. Other than that, I don’t understand the “logic” of not having a mobile phone. If you’re meeting someone at a restaurant, it is tremendously beneficial to be able to call them to say you are running late, or if you are there, to find how soon they will be there.

D-2-2  At the same time, some people overuse their mobile phone in the sense that they don’t have a land line. If you’ve got perfect reception in your apartment, then fine, you don’t need a land line. But mobile phone reception is often lousy, and thus it is hugely advantageous to also have a land line for important phone calls. (I’m assuming you can afford both a land line and a mobile phone.) I myself have four land lines in my house, plus a fax line and a mobile phone.

D-2-3  Many people don’t keep their mobile phone on very much, making it useless.

D-2-4  There is a significant number of people who don’t seem to understand that if you’re meeting someone, you should have your mobile phone with you, it should be turned on, and the ringer should not be turned off. Otherwise, what is the point of having a mobile phone?

D-2-5  When you are meeting someone, once they arrive, turn your mobile phone off, unless there really is a possibility that someone needs to reach you immediately. (One can often program your phone so that it rings only if the call is coming from certain phone numbers.)

D-2-6  Some of people don’t understand the concept of charging the battery in their mobile phone — perpetual energy has not yet been invented, and even if it has, such feature has not been incorporated into your phone. Thus, you have to charge your phone on a regular basis. I’ve trained myself that whenever I come home, I plug in my mobile phone and my notebook computer into their chargers. I also carry a spare battery for my mobile phone, as well as four batteries for my notebook computer. [3]

D-2-7  Some mobile carriers are better than others. I use Verizon Wireless and when you call my number, you wait a second and then my number starts ringing. When I call people who use Nextel, I get this silly message, “Please wait while the Nextel customer you are trying to reach is located.” You can wait 60 or 90 seconds while it does its search. Nextel will hopefully die a well-deserved death, and until that happens, you should not inflict this hassle on people who call you.

D-2-8  Some people have “everywhere” numbers, which supposedly link up all of their telephone numbers — home, work and mobile. My experience is that they often don’t work, and when they do, it takes forever for the call to get through.

D-3 Voice Mail

Voice Mail Announcements

Voice mail is a tremendously useful feature, yet so many people use it poorly.

D-3-1  First, one should have voice mail. Your phone and mobile phone should be set up so that if you’re on the line, or away, anyone calling you will be transferred to voice mail.

D-3-2  Voice mail messages often increase TCI unnecessarily. The most obvious is the computer-generated message that occurs when someone has not recorded a voice mail message. “This is 617 876-9876. Please leave a message.” When I hear this, I have to check that I dialed the right number for, say, Sally Jones. If the message says, “This is Sally Jones,” then I know I’ve reached the right number.

D-3-3  Some voice mail announcements are simply too long. Some people tell you their fax number, their e-mail address, and their life story before you hear the beep. Why not skip that information, since 99 percent of your callers either know this or don’t need to know this?

D-3-4  Every voice mail announcement should have a way to skip the rest of the message, and jump to recording a message. Number “1”on the telephone keypad should be utilized for that. In many cases, the second you hear their message, you can press “1,” leave your message, and then go back to what you were doing.

D-3-5  Some people don’t check their phone messages.

D-3-6  Others save their phone messages, and then their voice mail becomes full. Except in unusual circumstances, there’s no reason to save a phone message. Simply write down the name and phone number of the person who called and then erase the message.

Voice Mail Messages

D-3-7  Some people leave only their first name, even if they don’t know you that well. I have over 6000 people on my party invitation list, with over several Johns and Kathys. You will not believe the number of Kathys who leave just their first name.

D-3-8  Many people don’t leave their phone number in their message, even if you don’t know them that well.

D-3-9  Some people leave ridiculously long voice mail messages  I’ve received some as long as 15 minutes. This is dumb. The caller should either leave a short message and wait until I call them, or send me an e-mail. If you want to tell me your life story, great, but don’t do so in a voice mail message.

D-3-10  A particularly deadly combination is the long voice mail combined with leaving their phone number at the end of the message. With most voice mail systems, if you want to replay the message, you have to replay the entire message. This means that if you did not get the telephone number the first time, you’ll have to listen to their entire message in order to hear their phone number at the end.

D-3-11  Even worse, some people speed up their speech patterns when they leave their phone numbers. Perhaps they do this because they are so used to saying it. Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to speak more slowly than normal when leaving their number, with deliberate pauses between each segment (area code, prefix, and the last four digits)? And wouldn’t it make sense to leave your phone number twice?

D-4 Fax

D-4-1  I still use fax regularly — about 15 times a week. [4] One of my pet peeves is business people that don’t have a separate fax number. Instead, they have the same telephone number for voice and fax. My experience has been that such dual usage often creates problems when sending a fax, and then I have to call them, asking them what happened. I would rather just enter their fax number on my fax machine, scan the fax in, and know that the fax will go through.

D-4-2  Even worse, some people don’t have their fax machine turned on all the time. You have to call them, ask them to turn on their machine, and then you can fax them. One of the advantages of fax machines is that you don’t need time synching (i.e., you and can communicate at different times), and they have managed to destroy this advantage.

D-4-3  And then there are business people who don’t have a fax machine. There are so many documents that one needs to send copy of and you don’t have an electronic version of the fax. (You could scan it in as a Acrobat .pdf file and then e-mail it to them.)

D-4-4  Large companies are often using outdated approaches to faxes. If you have 100 employees and receive a meaningful number of faxes, it does not make sense to have a centralized fax center, with lots of messengers scurrying around delivering faxes. Assign everyone his own fax number (the way large companies do with telephone numbers, where every employee has a direct telephone number). Route all of these telephone numbers to a centralized fax router. This router will receive the incoming faxes, create an electronic copy of the fax, and deliver it electronically to the recipient. In addition, if that individual requested, a paper copy would automatically be printed on that individual’s printer.

D-5 E-Mail

D-5-1  Some people don’t have e-mail. “I’m really not that good with computers,” as if using an e-mail package or a Web browser requires advanced C++ programming skills. These people should be put out of their misery.

D-5-2  Every e-mail package allows you to define what the recipient sees in the “From:” section of the e-mails you send them. The From header should be edited so that it states your full name, with your e-mail address in brackets — e.g., “James Mitchell [JMitchell@KensingtonLLC.com]”. Many people don’t know how to do this, and as a result, when they receive their e-mails, they only see the other person’s e-mail, and not their name.

If their e-mail address is their name, then this really doesn’t matter — e.g., if you receive an e-mail from paula.smith@mckinsey.com, you can probably figure out it is from Paula Smith (and that she works for McKinsey). The problem is that many people have e-mail addresses that have no relation to their names. Imagine, you receive an e-mail from adkj837@aol.com. How on earth do you know who this is? To make matters worse, almost no one includes a signature in their e-mails, or they’ll only include their first name, and they have a common first name.

Because of my parties, I receive about 100 e-mails a month from people on the invitation list. Looking at most of the e-mails I receive from these guests, I have no idea who is writing to me. I do have their e-mail addresses in my database, so I have my secretary look up the e-mail address, print out their e-mail, and then handwrite their name on the e-mail. This is a total waste of time and most people, of course, don’t have a secretary. Wouldn’t it make more sense for people to edit their e-mail headers so that their full name is included?

D-5-3  In the example above, I suggested that my From header would be “James Mitchell …” Actually, that’s not the most convenient approach for the recipient. What is better is to list your last name first — e.g., “Mitchell, James.” Convention in Western societies is to alphabetize by last name rather than first, so it would make for the recipient of my e-mails to look under “M” rather than “J.”

Note — Explain how one might look for e-mails.

Some may say, why does it matter if I use my surname? As long as I am consistent, the recipient can look for my e-mails using my first name. There are two problems with this. First, there is little question about what a person’s surname is. For first name, however, a lot of people go by nicknames — e.g., should I look under “Betsy” or “Elizabeth”, “Susan” or “Susie”, “Richard” or “Dick”? With last names, there’s no possibility of confusion. Second, it makes to follow the convention our society has adopted, so I don’t have to remember, “John Smith begins his From header with his first name, while Tom Jones starts with his last name.” in our society, convention is to alphabetize by surname, not first name.

D-5-4  Everyone should have a permanent e-mail address, an address that they reasonably expect to use for the rest of their life. Some schools provide this for their students and alums — e.g., paula.smith@mba2004.hbs.edu. Through Google, Hotmail, Yahoo and others, you can obtain a permanent e-mail address (although you are tied to them as long as you use that e-mail address).

For corresponding with your friends, wouldn’t it make sense to provide this e-mail address, rather than your employer’s, since you probably won’t be working for the same company the rest of your life? (This assumes your employer permits you to access your personal e-mail address from work. Some companies don’t.)

D-5-5  Some people check their e-mail infrequently. “Sorry I haven’t responded, but I only check that account a couple of times a month.” Why not just check it once a year, say, on January 1? Please give me an address they check regularly, ideally a couple times a day.

D-5-6  For some people, when you send them an e-mail, it bounces back because they have run out of storage space. This is no longer as much of a problem as it was previously, as Web based e-mail systems (e.g., Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo) are now providing massive amounts of storage space for free. But when it happens, you then have to remember to send them the same e-mail a few days later, after they have cleared out their account. Why should I have to worry about this?

D-5-7  “I’m away” messages can be useful; that way, you know that the other person will not respond for a certain amount of time. The one mistake people make is that they don’t set it to generate only one “I’m away” message for each person that writes to them. If Sam is away for 2 weeks, and you write to him twice a day, if Sam doesn’t set this properly, you will receive 28 “I’m away” messages.

D-5-8  Finally — and this one is not obvious to most people — using AOL or Yahoo often imposes costs on people. AOL and Yahoo have this obnoxious tendency to block e-mails as spam, even if they are not spam. If the sender then tries to deal with either one of them, the technical support is the worst in the world. If I were God, I would reserve a special place in Hell for senior AOL and Yahoo executives. So if you have AOL or Yahoo, trade up to a better service. Another advantage is that you won’t be tagged as a Ludite by those who understand computers, since those who do almost uniformly look down on AOL. [5] Gmail is by far the best Web-based e-mail system, although it does not have folders.

D-6 Business Cards

Whoever invented the business card deserves the Nobel Prize. Yet many people (especially women) either don’t use business cards or use them inappropriately.

D-6-1  A lot of people simply don’t have business cards, particularly if they are students or unemployed. This just doesn’t make sense, particularly since Professional Taste Printing will print 1000 business cards for as little as $35.

D-6-2  I’m amazed at the number of people who you meet at social events who don’t have business cards with them. Instead, they write down their name, phone number and e-mail address, and sure enough, the next day, you can’t read their handwriting. I’ve become tired of people who approach me at parties, ask to be put on my invitation list, and when I ask them for their card, they don’t have one with them. Many times, I simply become exasperated and find a way to bow out gracefully.

Women are much less likely to bring their business cards to events than men are. At my parties, my guess would be about 60 percent of men and less than 30 percent of women bring their business cards. (And this is after I send a reminder e-mail several days before the party, which includes a reminder to bring business cards.) Ladies, if you want to be asked out by a guy at a party, make it easy for him — “Here’s my card. I hope you will call me.” You’ve eliminated the fear of rejection and he doesn’t need to spend any time hunting down your contact information. (One thing I’ve learned from my parties — men (and women) are much lazier than one might think.)

I’ve seen this gender difference in other events. For a hard core business networking event, most of the women have cards. For any other events that are mixed, most of the women don’t have cards. There is a monthly MBA networking event in Boston that is sponsored by the alumni groups of 12 business schools. It is partly business net¬working and partly social. These are alums of the top business schools in the country, presumably people who learned about business cards in fifth grade. All of the men have cards and are quick to hand you their card when you meet them. Most of the women don’t have cards and rarely do they offer their card to people they meet. And then the women complain that men have unfair advantages when it comes to networking.

A common explanation I hear from women is that they have several purses and they didn’t switch their cards from one purse to another. Ladies, if you’re smart enough to have graduated with honors from Princeton, if you’re smart enough to have been accepted by Harvard Business School, and if you’re smart enough to have been hired by McKinsey, you’re smart enough to either (i) keep business cards in all of your purses or (ii) transfer your cards. Einstein figured out by himself E=mc2; you’re smart enough to figure to make the business card thing happen.

D-6-3  A lot of people don’t bring a sufficient number of business cards with them. They bring three cards with them, and when the fourth person asks, they say they are out. Is there some national business card shortage that I haven’t read about? If so, I should let The New York Times know.

D-6-4  It makes a lot of sense to have a social card that is different than your work business cards. As noted above, when you meet someone socially, it’s better to give them a personal/permanent e-mail address that will not bounce when you leave your current job. It also makes sense to have a mobile phone number that you can use the rest of your life. So why not have a social card with just your name, personal/permanent e-mail address, and your mobile phone number on it? A conventional business card has your work e-mail address, which presumably is no longer good if you leave your employer.

D-6-5  Some people omit obvious information from their business card — e.g., their telephone number or e-mail address is not listed. So when they give you their business card, they have to write it on the card. What’s the point of having an e-mail address in the first place?

D-6-6  Some people have incorrect information on their card. My favorite is a girl in Providence, who handwrote her new phone number, her new e-mail address, and her married name on her card. (!) Why doesn’t she simply order new business cards?

D-6-7  I’ve often thought that business cards should have your photo on them. That way, a few years from now, as you are fishing through your business cards and trying to figure out who “James H. Quadley, IV” is, if you saw his photo, you would be more likely to remember where you met him. Realtors often do this and I think this should be expanded to other professions.

D-7 Meetings and Appointments

Being Late

D-7-1  Some people are consistently late. I don’t mind 5 minutes, but if you’re 15 minutes late to meeting on a regular basis, you should simply stop doing that — it’s disrespectful to the other person. Why is your time more valuable than theirs?

D-7-2  Some people don’t call you if they are going to be late, even if they have a mobile phone with them.

Inconvenient Location

D-7-3  Some locations are essentially impossible to find. Whenever I travel to Somerville or South Boston, I get lost, and my GPS system does not seem to work in those locations. So I never agree to meet someone there and instead propose a location that is more convenient, such as Back Bay.

D-7-4  Locations may be inconvenient in other ways. If you take the MBTA, the proposed venue may not be near a subway stop. If you drive a car, it may not have valet service and no nearby parking lot.

Inappropriate Location

D-7-5  Many venues are not good places to have in-depth conversations. They may have loud music or are too crowded. I like bars, restaurants and hotels with couches, that are not crowded, and that do not play loud music — e.g., the Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons Hotel, the Taj Hotel, Jurys, Davios, Blu at LA Sports Club, the Inn at Harvard in Harvard Square. If someone proposes an inappropriate venue — e.g., Whiskey Park, Felt — I simply counter with a more appropriate venue.

When They Live Too Far Away

D-7-6  If a new potential friend lives far away from you, you should decide if it makes sense to pursue a friendship with them, even if they are initially willing to meet you at a location near where you live or work. After all, are they always going to do that?

This happened to me when I tried on-line dating. (For about three months, until I got smart.) I would get more than a dozen e-mails a month on Match from women who are geographically undesirable. Women who live in Providence and New Hampshire, for example, often conclude that the local dating pool for them is not particularly good, so they troll for guys who live near Boston. I simply won’t consider these women. If I had a first date with a girl who lives in Providence, the worst that could possibly happen is that the date goes really well, because if it did, what would we do next?

D-8 Lack of Follow Through

D-8-1  It’s amazing how few people demonstrate any follow through whatsoever. Here’s a simple test. Pick your 25 closest friends and then mutually agree with them that they will call you in 3 months about a particularly important issue. How many of them would actually do what they committed to do? Five? Three? Zero? If it’s more than five, you have an unusual set of friends.

All one has to do is to have some kind of time-based tickler system and then use it. They could make a note in their calendar system (e.g., Microsoft Outlook). Like me, they could have a little database I wrote (OK, I admit it, that’s a bit obsessive.) But they would have to have such a system and they would have to use it, because you can’t rely on your memory to remember this. How many people do this?

Since they don’t have such a system, you have to maintain a system to both (i) keep track of the commitments you have made to others and (ii) track the commitments others have made to you.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if every person you interacted with had their act together so you didn’t need to track their commitments? I’ve never lived in such a world but I would like to. For the readers who like me are interested in organizations: Imagine an organization where every employee — from the receptionist to the CEO — followed through with their commitments? Wouldn’t you like to work for such an organization, knowing that you could count on your teammates to follow through? An article I read about Goldman Sachs said all you have to do is hold up your end of the bargain and you can assume your teammates will do the same. Wouldn’t you like to be the customer or client of such an organization?

E. How to Reduce TCI

In some cases, you can reduce these costs that are imposed on you by others.

The most obvious method is simply to tell the other person what your expecta¬tions are and why. When doing this, be as non-personal as possible in your criticisms and suggestions. “John, I really enjoy our friendship. When you are late, I never know if something happened to you. Is it possible for you to be on time, and if you are going to be late, to call me?”

You can try to anticipate the person’s actions and then find ways to mitigate these. Let’s assume you have a good friend who is consistently late. You could:

  • Agree that she will meet you at your house. That way, if she is late, you’re still in your house doing whatever you would otherwise do.
  • Meet her at a place where if she is late, there’s a bar where you can talk with other people.
  • Bring reading material so you can read if she is late.
  • I often bring my notebook computer and arrive an hour early. If they are on time, I’ve had an hour on the computer, which is enough time to establish a flow state. If they are late, I just keep on working. There have been many times when I have been glad they were 30 minutes late because I was being particularly productive.

A few years ago, a group of us were planning a trip. I was worried that some of them might cancel at the last minute. I choose the travel package and instructed the travel agent to require that everyone pay for the entire trip up front. If one has paid for a trip, one is much less likely to cancel. Only one person cancelled and the travel agent used that person’s payment to upgrade the rest of us to a better hotel. So the flake ended up subsidizing the rest of us who were not flakes. Justice!

If a friend of yours proposes doing something that requires pre-payment, and there’s a possibility they will cancel, by all means try to have them purchase the tickets and then you reimburse them at the event. (At the same time, of course, if you cancel, you should reimburse her for both of the tickets.)

F. Analyzing TCI

No matter how smooth your interaction is, every person you interact with imposes certain costs of interaction on you. I believe you should :

  • explicitly analyze these costs
  • determine if you can reduce any of the costs
  • decide if the benefits outweigh the costs.

F-1 Explicitly Analyze the Costs

[To be added.]

F-2 Determine if You Can Reduce Any of These Costs

If a friend’s TCI ___.

F-3 Decide if the Benefits Outweigh the Costs

Once you’ve done the analysis, you need to decide if the benefits of having a friendship or acquaintance ship exceed the costs.

This may sound cold and calculating to some. Economics teaches us that most resources are scarce, and that scarce resources should be allocated in an intelligent way. The reality is that your time, energy and ___ are scarce resources. You’re currently allocating them — the only issue is, are you doing so deliberately or not?

Most people have a certain number of friendships they wish to cultivate. Assuming you’ve got more potential relationships than you can handle, do you want to invest your scare time and energy into developing relationships with friends that treat you well and do not cause you aggravation, or would you rather invest your time getting to know better people who are always late, don’t return telephone calls, and treat you rudely. You’re making a choice — why not make the choice deliberately and thoughtfully?

G. How to Downscale a Relationship

[To be added]

H. Sentimental Attachments

All of us have sentimental attachments to certain people — e.g., childhood friends, ex-boyfriends/girlfriends (O.K., some of them, not all of them), people who have been particularly loyal to you, and simply people for whom we have a soft part in our heart. These relationships are much more difficult to jettison, and I’m not necessarily advocating you do.

What I am advocating is that you evaluate whether such relationships are worth it, that you recognize that these high TCI people are imposing a substantial cost on you. You may conclude that it is worth continuing the relationship, or you may decide otherwise. However you decide, it should be a conscious, well thought out decision on your part, rather than simply continuing with your current situation without examining it. If you decide to continue the relationship, you may attempt to alter their behavior (see Section E).

I. When You Don’t Have a Choice

Just as in some cases you have no choice but to own a car, there are some indi¬viduals you have no choice but to interact with.

This is most true for your relatives. Your sister is your sister. Even if she is a pain, she’s your sister. But it’s also true for some other individuals. If you a PhD student in the economics department at MIT, and the department secretary is a royal pain, you probably don’t have much choice but to interact with her.

Note — We need some examples here.

In all of these cases, however, you do have some control over how much inter¬action you have. If you really dislike your departmental secretary, you’ll probably just spend the minimum amount of time necessary.

J. What if You Don’t Have Enough Friends?

Many people continue to maintain friendships with people with high TCI people because they feel they don’t have enough friends.

If you live in the greater Boston area, that one is easy — come to my parties. I give one or two large cocktail parties a month, as well as two or three smaller cocktail parties a month. I also publicize one to two other events (i.e., events not hosted by me) a week. So unless you’ve specifically asked not be invited to certain categories of parties and event, you’ll receive more than 50 invitations a year from me.

Make it a priority in your life to attend these, particularly the cocktail parties I host. Let’s assume you attend 15 parties a year. The people who attend my parties are on the whole quite friendly and outgoing and are seeking to make new friends. If you’re at all outgoing, given the caliber and quality of the people who attend my parties, you should be able to make one new friend/acquaintance at each party. In order to be conservative, let’s assume it’s one friend/acquaintance at every other party. That would be seven new friends or acquaintances each year. Within a couple of years, you’ll have far more potential friends than you can handle, and you can radically shorten this time frame by attending more parties.

In short, if you live in Boston, there’s simply no reason to put up with high-TCI people, when my parties offer such a wide variety of people to meet. This gets even more interesting because as noted in Section P, in adding guests to my invitation list I screen heavily on TCI and thus I offer a group of people with a substantially lower TCI than one would find in almost any other social group.

K. Self Assessment

I urge you to do a candid self assessment of your behavior. What is the TCI you impose on other people? How much aggravation and stress do you cause those you interact with? Are you a high TCI person, or a low TCI person?

L. How to Reduce Your TCI

If you’ve been reading this essay carefully, then this Section L pretty much writes itself. I’ll cover the eight factors listed above in Section D.

Note — eight ___ ??? I need help here. Factors?.

  • Telephones
  • Mobile phones
  • Voice mail
  • Fax
  • E-mail
  • Business cards
  • Meetings and appointments
  • Lack of follow through

L-1  Telephones

  • Answer your telephone.
  • Give out your telephone number; make it easy for people to call you.
  • Return your phone calls promptly — at least two or three times a day.
  • Call someone back even if you don’t recognize their name.
  • Don’t send someone an e-mail, asking them what they were calling about. If they wanted to discuss this with you via e-mail, wouldn’t they have written you an e-mail in the first place?
  • Consider having more than one phone number, if that makes sense.
  • If you have lots of telephone numbers, simply, simplify, simplify.
  • If you’re running a company, unless your business is small, get a telephone system that can handle Direct Inward Dialing.

L-2  Mobile Phones

  • If you don’t have a mobile phone, purchase one. Today.
  • If reception in your residence is not optimal, have a land line in addition to your mobile phone.
  • Keep your mobile phone on most of the time, particularly before you are meeting someone.
  • If you’re meeting someone, once they arrive, turn your mobile phone off, unless there really is a call you have to take.
  • Charge your mobile phone every night.
  • Keep an extra battery for your mobile phone. One of the many reasons not to purchase the Apple iPhone is that it does not have separate batteries.
  • Avoid carriers that cannot connect your call right away. In particular, avoid Nextel.
  • Don’t use “everywhere” numbers unless you are certain they work well.

L-3  Voice Mail

Your Voice Mail Announcement

  • Have voice mail on all of your telephone numbers.
  • Record your name in your voice mail message — “This is Sally Jones.”
  • Don’t record a long voice mail announcement. Saying, e.g., “This is Sally Jones. I’m out of town until May 12 and I won’t be checking voice mail until then” takes no more than 10 seconds.
  • Choose a voice mail system that permits the other person to skip the rest of the voice mail announcement by pressing “1.”
  • If you’ve recorded a long voice mail message, tell the other person up front that how to skip the rest of the message — “This is Sally Jones. To skip the rest of this voice mail message and to begin recording, press 1.”
  • Empty your voice mail inbox so it is never full. Don’t use your mail inbox as a storage facility.

Voice Mail Messages

  • Leave your full name, unless you know that person very well.
  • Leave your phone number unless you are absolutely certain they have your phone number. If in doubt, leave it.
  • Tell the person when they can call you back.
  • Don’t leave long voice mail messages.
  • Begin your voice mail message with your name, phone number, and when they can call you back. Then leave your message, and then repeat your phone number.
  • When you leave your phone number, speak slowly. Pause between each element — area code, prefix, and last 4 digits.

L-4  Fax

  • If you’re running a business, have a fax number.
  • Keep your fax machine turned on at all times. Someone should not have to call ahead of time just to send you a fax.
  • Your fax number should be a separate phone number. Do not combine your phone number and your fax number.
  • If you’re running a larger company, purchase a fax router so that each of your employees can have their own separate telephone number.

L-5  E-Mail

  • If you don’t have an e-mail account, get one.
  • Set up your e-mail account or package so that the “From” section displays your full name. List your surname first, followed by a comma, and then your first name — e.g., Jones, Rachel.
  • Get a permanent e-mail address that is separate from your work e-mail (unless you own your own company or you know for certain you will be there for life). If you really want to be cool, get your own domain name, which will be yours for life.
  • Check your e-mail frequently, three times a day at a minimum.
  • Don’t run out of storage. Either move to a service (such as g-mail) that pro¬vides essentially unlimited storage, or purge or download your old e-mails.
  • Use an “away” auto responder if you will be gone for more than a few days. But make certain you set it so that the other person only receives this message once.
  • Don’t use lame e-mail hosts, such as AOL and Yahoo. Gmail is the best Web-based e-mail system.

L-6  Business Cards

  • Have business cards, even if you’re a student or you are unemployed. If you don’t have cards, order some from Professional Taste Printing or another reliable printer.
  • Take your business cards with you when you go out. If you’re female and have more than one purse, keep cards in all of your purses, or be religious about switching cards when you switch purses.
  • Bring a sufficient number of business cards with you — there is no national shortage of business cards that I am aware of.
  • Consider printing social business cards, which have all of your phone numbers and your permanent e-mail address.
  • Your business card should list all relevant information — your phone numbers and e-mail address at a minimum.
  • Consider having a photo on your business card.

L-7  Meetings and Appointments

  • Don’t be late.
  • When you make an appointment, make certain you have their mobile telephone number, and send them yours.
  • If you’re going to be late, call.
  • Pick an appropriate venue to meet someone. If they propose an inappropriate venue, counter with a more appropriate venue.

L-8  Lack of Follow Through

  • Pick an appropriate venue to meet someone. If they propose an inappropriate venue, counter with a more appropriate venue.
  • Develop or purchase a time-based tickler system and use it. Record every time-based commitment you have made, and check it every day.

M. David Allen

High TCI people are often that way because their system to track commitments is poorly designed (or they have no such system at all). Sometimes someone is deliber¬ately rude and makes a conscious decision not to call you back. In many cases, however, they are not consciously deciding not to call you back; it’s that they don’t have a good system to track their commitments.

Such people should follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. ___

N. The Mindset of a High-TCI Person

The essence of being a high TCI person is selfishness, egotism, and even narcissism. An HTP is someone who is primarily or exclusively concerned with himself. They either fail to look at things from the other person’s point of view or they consciously decide they don’t care. _____.

[To be added]

O. Can High-TCI People Change?

[To be added]

P. My Parties

I started my parties in November, 2002, and since then, they’ve become the most successful “high end” social group in Boston. I started them because I was dissatisfied with most of the social groups in Boston. I was frankly appalled about how rude some of the people I met at parties were, and the stories I heard from others shocked me.

My sense was — and this turned out to be far more true than I could ever imagine — that if I screened for basic manners and lack of flakiness, that these traits where highly (and positively) correlated with numerous other desirable traits, and that much more easily than one would think, using a few “proxy” variables I could assemble a great group of people. [6]

[To be added.]

Q. Should You Tolerate High-TCI Friends?

[To be added]

R. How I Changed My Life

For approximately 18 months — all of 2004 and the first-half of 2005 — I had spent almost all of my time on the parties I host. The time I’ve spent includes writing a database to manage the invitation list, developing a Web site (which I introduced later), and in general systematizing the process. In June, 2005, I did a self-assessment of how happy I was with my life. How much time and energy did I want to invest in my parties? I concluded that I enjoyed the parties immensely but that too much time and energy was being spent on administrative matters.

As the parties became more and more successful, the time and energy I could provide to any one person became smaller and smaller. I spent an entire day scanning the tens of thousands of e-mails I had received concerning the parties. As I did, a few names stood out over and over. I found that most of these undesirable characters were highly correlated  if they were terrible about returning phone calls, the odds were much higher that that they would not pay for tickets they had ordered. It was scary how strong the correlation was.

I analyzed who on my invitation list was consuming a lot of time on administra¬tive time. All of know the 80-20 rule, which in this case would state that 20 percent of the people will provide 80 percent of the aggravation. Instead, it was the 95-5 rule — 5 percent of the people were consuming 95 percent of my administrative time. Their e-mails kept bouncing. They RSVPed for events where the tickets had to be purchased in advance and yet they didn’t order the tickets. They refused to write a description. They didn’t return telephone calls. They didn’t create an Evite account and they would ask me to resend invitations they had deleted (rather than creating an Evite account and then logging into it to see the Evites they had received). They were a pain in the ass.

So I decided to eliminate the bottom 10 percent — the 5 percent that were the most troublesome, and another 5 percent that were borderline at best in terms of aggravation. Almost overnight, the amount of time I devoted to administrative matters plummeted. Not only did this free up my time, I no longer felt drained by the ridiculous demands being made by these 10 percent. I started to enjoy the parties much more.

For example, one girl who used to be on the invitation list doesn’t have a computer. Rather, she has a TV hooked up to the Internet. She can apparently send e-mails and type messages, but she can’t RSVP through the Evite system. So for every invitation I sent her, she would write back, asking me to enclose the details in my reply e-mail. After I telephoned her to find out what was going on, I envisioned a lifetime of receiving e-mails from her, asking me to send her details in a separate e-mail just for her. Rather, I choose Plan B and eliminated her from the invitation list, and asked her to write to me when she got a real computer.

Another girl regularly came underdressed to our large cocktail parties. After a few e-mails reminding her of our dress code, I called her up. She initially pointed out that someone else at the party was underdressed. (Yes, but I already called that person and she apologized and said she would not do that again.) Then she claimed that my parties were public events, and that I didn’t have the legal right to exclude people. (Sorry, dear, they are popular, but not that popular.) Finally, she argued that her professional reputation would suffer if she got dressed up for a party on a Monday or Tuesday evening. To this day, she has no clue why she is no longer being invited to my parties.

Simply put, I’ve decided I want less aggravation and hassle in my life. By con¬sciously deciding to eliminate most of the high TCI people I was interacting with, I am a happier person.

S. The Immorality of Tolerating High-TCI People

Not only do I believe that in most cases, it makes no sense for you to tolerate high-TCI people, I would actually argue it is immoral to do so.

“Immoral” is a strong term, but here me out. Let’s assume you know someone and then you find out with absolute certainty that he is a child molester. Would you continue your friendship with them? Probably not. What if they were a bank robber? Again, probably not. In fact, I would argue that the sign of a civilized society is when most of its citizens have standards concerning morality and they refuse to associate with people they consider to be immoral.

The reader no doubt agrees that molesting children is wrong. Almost all of you would also agree that tolerating child molesters is also wrong — i.e., even if you are not a child molester, it is wrong to socially tolerate child molesters. Putting aside whatever legal punishments are meted out to a child molester, most of us would agree that to not shun such a person socially is wrong. It is wrong to introduce such a person to your friends. It is also wrong not to let the child molester know that you do not approve of his actions.

I certainly don’t argue that constantly being late to meetings or not returning telephone calls is at the level of molesting children. But high-TCI people do impose a significant cost on our society. Each incident imparts a slight toll on our collective psyche. Let’s assume the United States has 50 million high-TCI people (that’s actually a conservative estimate). Let’s assume that, on average, each of these flakes has 10 incidents a day of not returning phones, being late, etc. That’s half a billion incidents a day, or 182.5 billion incidents a year. If you valued the cost of each incident at $1.25 each, that is a total cost of $228 billion a year, far greater than the cost of drunk drivers or cigarette smokers. There is an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving (“MADD”) and there are dozens of organizations committed to fighting evil cigarette manufacturers. Why isn’t there at least one organization seeking to deal with high-TCI people? In the words of Bob Dole, “Where is the outrage?”

Until there is, I would argue that you should at least do your part — simply put, in most cases, you should not tolerate high-TCI people. Ideally you would let them know that you find their behavior unacceptable. If you refuse to ___, your quality of life will be enhanced, as the aggravation you used to experience is no longer a factor in your lives.

In addition, some of them will get the message. If you say to your friend, “Look, I like spending time with you, but I don’t like waiting 30 minutes because you are late, so I am not going to see you any more, until I am assured you will no longer be late in the future,” there’s a chance he might get the message and change his ways. If nothing else, he might change his ways when he meets you. By making such a statement, you indicate that you are a high quality person who deserves to be treated with respect.

Ernst Mach talked about gedankenexperiment (German for thought experi¬ment) — an imagined scenario that helps us understand the world as it really is. So let’s do a gedankenexperiment. Imagine a total flake named Rachel, a very high-TCI individual. Imagine that she has 50 friends and acquaintances. Imagine that all 50 sent her an e-mail:

Dear Rachel,

In many ways I really like you a person, but there are many things you do that totally aggravate me. A summary of these are attached. I’ve just read James Mitchell’s essay on “Total Cost of Interaction” (www.jmitchell.me/essays/total-cost-of-interaction), and I’ve decided to improve my life by not spending scarce time and energy dealing with high-TCI people. Unfortunately, I think it is clear you are a very high-TCI person. The aggravation of dealing with them is simply not worth the benefits, and I’ve decided going forward to spend almost all of time with low-TCI people.

I’m enclosing a copy of his essay, which I hope you will take to heart. If you ever get your act together and become a low-TCI person, I would LOVE to spend time with you. In the meantime, I simply don’t have the time and energy. I DO wish you the best and hope you will change. As soon as you do, I would love to get together with you.

Peter

After the initial shock wore off, and after Rachel realized that none of her 50 friends and acquaintances was willing to have anything to do with her until she changed, Rachel would be faced with a choice — either get her act together or lose all of her friends and acquaintances.

Let’s assume there is a 50-50 chance that Rachel decides to change and actually does change. The quality of life of her 50 friends and acquaintances will increase, because they can still hang out with Rachel without dealing with her aggravating habits. Rachel will be a better person and won’t alienate new people she meets, and thus her quality of life will be enhanced. And having received such a shocking e-mail, Rachel might write a letter to her high-TCI friends, who might change their ways, and who might then write such an e-mail to their high-TCI friends, and so on.

I would argue that you would be doing Rachel a favor. If she is causing you stress and aggravation, no doubt she is doing this to other people. Others are shunning her, even if they do not consciously realize it and even if they have not read this essay. If you cause Rachel to change her ways, you’ve made the world a better place and you’ve done Rachel a huge favor. So together, let’s make the world a better place. Pick your 10 highest TCI friends and write them such an e-mail.

And if you’re not brave enough to send such an e-mail, how about something more subtle  — Send them this essay and ask for their reaction.

Dear John,

I found this fascinating essay on the Web. What do you think? Feel free to forward it to others.

Peter

Will the high-TCI person recognize themselves in this essay? If not, you at least know how clueless they are, and that the chances of changing their ways are about equal to winning the lottery. You can then decide if you want to downscale or terminate the relationship, knowing that you tried.

T. Should You Introduce High-TCI People to Others?

In general, no, you should not. There is a good chance that the HTP will embarrass you. If he has been a jerk to you, not only is he likely to be a jerk to someone else, he might be even more of a jerk to your friend. Why subject your friend to this?

Some would say that it’s acceptable to introduce an HTP to a friend as long as you warn the friend. In general, I disagree. In unusual cases an introduction might be warranted. In almost all cases, the HTP will be a jerk and your friend will not remember the warning you provided before you made the introduction.

U. How to Quickly Recognize High-TCI People

Note — I need to speak with Carly Twoomey about this.

How can you quickly recognize high TCI people so that you can invest your scarce time and energy developing friendship with more suitable people? When I meet someone, I look for signs that they are rude or flaky. These people usually demonstrate their flakiness soon after you meet them — it’s rare you meet someone who is polite and non-flaky for the first 9 months you know them and all of a sudden, they become high TCI. In almost all cases, high TCI people manifest this as soon as you meet them. Observe the signals and you’ll save yourself a lot of aggravation.

Note — Give some examples here.

I have found that one of the dimensions of the Myers-Briggs personality profile (“MBTI”), namely the Judger vs. Perceiver scale, can often be useful in quickly assessing the likelihood that someone is high-TCI. This dimension defines how a person imple¬ments the information he has processed. Judging means that a person organizes all his life events and acts strictly according to his plans, while Perceiving means that he is inclined to improvise and seek alternatives.

Judging characteristics include :

  • Plan many of the details in advance before moving into action
  • Focus on task-related action. Complete meaningful segments before moving on.
  • Work best and avoid stress when they keep ahead of deadlines
  • Naturally use targets, dates and standard routines to manage life.

Perceiving characteristics include:

  • Comfortable moving into action without a plan. Plan on the go.
  • Like to multitask, have variety, mix work and play
  • Naturally tolerant of time pressure. Work best close to deadline
  • Instinctively avoid commitments which interfere with flexibility, freedom and variety

My experience has been that those who are strong Ps are more likely to have high TCI in that they will be more likely than strong Js to be reluctant to commit to plans before the last minute, to change plans often, and to not feel as compelled to stick to their commitments. This is not always the case, but is true more than 80 percent of the strong Ps that I have met. So if you meet someone and you start to discuss the MBTI and they tell you they are a strong P — or if you’re able to access that they are a strong P — you might look for signs of their being high TCI. Strong J’s, of course, find it more difficult to toler¬ate than P’s to tolerate other P’s.

Note that I’m talking about strong Ps, not weak Ps. If they are borderline J vs. P, then their P score is irrelevant. (One of the ways that people misuse MBTI is that they only find out their score on the four dimensions, and don’t ask how strong they were.)

If someone is a J, particularly a strong J, they are much less likely to be an HTP. If they are, it’s usually because they have made a conscious decision to engage in high-TCI behavior.

V. Why Do Others Tolerate High-TCI People?

So why do others tolerate high-TCI people? Sometimes it might be sentimental attachment (see Section H). There’s nothing wrong with such a decision, as long as it is made consciously. Sometimes it is because the person — consciously or unconsciously — feels they don’t have enough friends. As noted in Section P, if they live in Boston, that one is easy — Come to my parties and within a year, you’ll have more friends than you can handle. In many cases, it is due to low self esteem. In those cases, someone should say to them, “You’re a good person. You deserve better than this.”

W. Things to Add

Here are some things I need to add to this essay :

  • Have your contacts list stored on your phone, and then synch up with your PC.
  • Endless numbers. Voice mail does not answer.
  • Add identical categories to How to Reduce Your TCI
  • When you start to get to know someone, look for signs of high-TCI
  • The choices I have in making new friends
  • Dial 1 to skip voice mail.
  • Ask your friends if you are high-TCI
  • Don’t introduce high-TCI people to your friends, even if you’ve decided to maintain a friendship with them. Why should your friends be inflicted with this nonsense just because you’ve decided to tolerate such behavior?
  • Low self-esteem — You don’t think highly of yourself, so you subject yourself to abuse. Don’t have enough friends

 

Footnotes

1.  This statement was made about the Xerox 5400 printer. After two years of a couple of service calls a month, I informed Xerox that if they did not replace my 5400 with a better printer, I was going to start a Web site called www.XeroxSucks.com as a collection point for complaints about their defective laser printers. They wisely decided to replace the 5400 with a 5500, which so far has not worked very well. I would not recommend purchasing a Xerox laser printer. I have had good luck with their fax machines and copiers.

2.  This is not a typo. He has a house in Cambridge, one in New Hampshire, and one in Martha’s Vineyard, each with two telephone lines. (They don’t hunt, so one needs to know both phone lines.) He has three numbers at his office. [more to add]

3.  I use a Palm Treo 700p. It has a great separate-purchased attractive cradle into which you can place the Treo when you are home. The cradles charge the phone and by pressing one button, you can synchronize your contacts database with your PC contacts database. The cradle can be used to charge a separate battery at the same time. The cradle is really cool.

4.  Almost every intermediary requires that you sign a confidentiality agreement before seeing a deal. They typically e-mail it to you, although a few fax it. But it has to be signed and sent back to the investment banker. In theory, you could scan it in as a .pdf file and then e-mail, but it is easier to just fax it to them.

5.  If I were to use a Web-based e-mail service, I would choose Gmail, if for no other reason than I like Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil.” My sense is Google is much less likely to abuse their customers than the other major sites — AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Excite._

6.  A proxy is a characteristic that is easy to ascertain that is highly correlated with another characteristic that is much more difficult to ascertain. Let’s assume that almost everyone who wears red hair is a good scuba diver, and that few scuba divers have anything but red hair. It’s very easy to ascertain the color of someone’s hair — all you have to do is look at them — while it is much harder to figure out if they are a good scuba diver. Under these circumstances, you could safely assume that if someone had red hair, they were a good scuba diver, and if they did not have red hair, they were not. You wouldn’t always be correct — you would sometimes incorrectly identify someone as a good scuba diver when they are not (this is a Type I error, a false positive) and would also sometimes incorrectly identify someone as not being a good scuba diver when in fact they were (a Type II error, a false negative) — but on the whole with very little information you would be correct almost all of the time. In social science, accuracy rates are rarely 100 percent and in this case, you would be correct almost all of the time.