For the past two years, I’ve been focusing on being more conscious of the words that I use and how those words reflect my own integrity. I originally wrote most of this blog post in April of 2006 and never published it. After reading personal productivity consultant Matthew Cornell’s post on Three indecisiveness phrases, and when (not) to use them, I was reminded of this post and decided to resurrect it and post it as a response. I believe my original intention was to post it after I had more experience with attempting to limit my use of indecisive phrases.
I usually endeavor to choose my words very carefully and mean exactly what I say—nothing more and nothing less. If I congratulate a coworker on a promotion and tell them they deserve it then they know that I really think they deserve it. If I criticize an idea then I’m criticizing the idea, not the person that presented the idea. I’m not perfect with this, but I think that I generally do a good job with it.
Along with this, I realized that I use some words and phrases because they convey something other than what I really think and feel inside. I wanted to remove these phrases from my vocabulary:
I’ll Try to: This is perhaps one of the most meaningless phrases in the English language. I like the way Yoda said it in Return of the Jedi, “Do, or do not. There is no try.” Often, someone will ask us to attend an activity that we don’t want to attend so we say, “I’ll try to make it.” We say, “I’m trying to lose weight.” We say, “I’m trying to do better.” Usually, the truth is that we aren’t really trying–at least, we aren’t trying to succeed in the areas we say we are trying, but rather we are trying to fail. If we were to be honest, we would more often say, “I’ll fail to make it”,”I’m failing to lose weight”, and “I’m failing to do better.”
Jesus taught us to, “Let your Yay be Yay and your nay be nay.” But because we are afraid of commitment we use loose and indecisive phrase like, “I’ll try”. At best, we should instead say, “I might” which gives no impression of commitment at all. If we don’t intend to do the activity at all, even “I might” is an outright lie and should be avoided. In the Bible Belt we often say, “Lord willing” as our cop out. Just because we don’t do something that we said we would do doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the Lord’s will–we shouldn’t blame our lack of integrity on Him.
We usually use this phrase to avoid making someone else feel bad, but ultimately we damage our own integrity in that other person’s eyes. We don’t want to fail in their eyes. We’re afraid to fail because we don’t understand what failure is or what failure means. We learn from failure. It’s a positive thing. Somewhere along the line failure has developed a negative connotation and we’ve become afraid of it. We fear what people will think if we say we are going to do something and then don’t reach our goal, so we use “try” as a wishy washy way to get out of it.
I’m Busy: What does this mean? Isn’t every one I know “busy”? The drunk on the bar stool is “busy” getting drunk; a housewife says she is “busy” watching television. Why do I think that anyone else cares that I’ve been busy. If someone asks me how I’ve been, wouldn’t it be better to say, “I’ve been doing …”? If someone asks me to do something and my initial response would be to say, “I’m too busy”, wouldn’t it be better to let the other person know what is more important to me than their request? This leads me to my next phrase.
I Don’t Have Time: Comedian Steven Wright used to say that “Everything is walking distance if you’ve got the time.” Saying that we don’t have time is just a socially acceptable way of telling people that their needs are not a priority for us. If someone asks me to fix their computer it’s a lie for me to tell them that I don’t have time. I have 168 hours a week that I could devote entirely to fixing their computer. The truth is that fixing their computer just isn’t a priority for me.
I have worked especially hard on eliminating this phrase over the past two years, and to my amazement, people seem to greatly appreciate it. When I was asked to serve as an officer in my Toastmasters chapter, I told them that other things in my life were a higher priority right now, and therefore I couldn’t give the position the focus and attention it deserved. When people ask me to fix their computer I explain that while I may handle my own computer issues, it’s not my area of expertise. Then I refer them to someone else who can do a better job in less time. If they are just trying to get a “freebie” this also lets them know that I realize they feel their money is more valuable than my time.
Tomorrow: I tend to think that our minds don’t really know what we mean when we say tomorrow. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Tomorrow never comes.” I think that when we tell ourselves, “I will get start the xyz project tomorrow” that our brains take that literally. When the next day comes, our brain still thinks, “I will start the xyz project tomorrow.” It is much better for us to say a definite day or even day and time when we postpone an action; for example, “I will start the xyz project first thing Wednesday morning.” Friday evening we may say, “I’ll clean out the garage Saturday morning.” When Saturday morning comes, we may consciously choose to renegotiate this agreement with ourselves, however, if we say, “Tomorrow I’ll clean out the garage, we can always tell ourselves, “I said tomorrow, not today.”
Spend Time: Time isn’t spent. it can be shared. It can be wasted. It is always invested. We don’t spend time watching television, we invest time watching television or waste time watching television. When I talk about doing things with my wife I always say “I’m sharing time with my wife”–to say that I’m “spending” time with her implies to me that I’m giving something away that I can’t get back. All investments provide a return—either positive or negative. What kind of return am I getting on the investment of my time, right now, as I write this article? What kind of return have you received on the time you’ve invested reading it?