Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Is a thought expressed a complete, accurate, well considered thought or merely thinking out loud?

Lots of folks express thoughts in social media these days. I define “social media” as anything that is published in any form without exhaustive peer review. Lots of folks are massacred because of some of these thoughts (pardon the extreme term “massacred”).

Most social media thoughts are incomplete or partial thoughts. Something just came to me, so I jotted it down on fill-in-the-blank-with-your-most-despised-place. Of course you can find many faults with my incomplete thought. So can I.

Pardon me, but did the writer, i.e., the person who jotted down a thought, ask you for your critique of the thought and your extension to the thought? Some of us know the “jotter” well enough that we know there is an implicit request for extra thoughts from some persons. Hence, I jot my thoughts on their jotted thoughts.

Perhaps the prior paragraph is a not-so-subtle way of writing, “Keep your thoughts on my thoughts to yourself.”

About five years ago, I wrote a post about, “To write is to be misunderstood.” That thought, which was more than a jot or incomplete thought, still holds. When I write, others will not know 100% of what was in my mind when I typed the words. I did not know 100% of what was in my mind when I typed the words.

And then there is the topic of the person jotting thoughts, their official position, and the social media forum of their jots. If you are the CEO and are speaking to shareholders, that is not the forum to state incomplete thoughts unless I preface them with, “Don’t take this next comment as official. It is an offhand thought. I am ‘thinking out loud’ or ‘jotting a thought.'”

Shareholders consider what a CEO says as official, well-thought policy.

I should understand the context of my thoughts. I should explain the context of my thoughts. And I should understand the reactions to my thoughts.