Essential Tangential Capture

When in conversation -- talking at length invariably touches on many subjects and... -- I frequently catch hold of a phrase of my partner's -- I delight in catching these things because it so frequently leads to discovering new depths. For instance... -- and I either can hardly wait to share my thought, or my mind is racing well past what my partner is saying.

Needless to say, this has been off-putting if not damaging to my development of friends quickly. First impressions are hard to break. And I have to admit that even I find that a fast-talking, both seemingly distant and yet interruptive conversant is not one of my favorite types with whom to spend much time.

Then add varied degrees of defensiveness or a desire to stop the other in mid-speech when they've misunderstood me, and what started out as a simple conversation, can quickly development into a heated discussion or a consequential dispute.

All this even before anything of substance has been stated.

Such can be the troubles of the owner of a semi-rapid mind like mine.


However, anyone who has dealt with me professionally and wants to gain from the skills pent up in this semi-rapid mind, knows to just let me go and occasionally check that I haven't gone too far afield. In my day job I rarely run across a problem that didn't look like another one I've already solved, so this is seldom a problem there.

There my problems can stem from others not knowing what I'm doing. When I move fast it makes some nervous even if it regains time others have lost; though I've never gone wrong [knock wood], I am reluctant to say so lest spoilsport "Murphy" be listening. I can do things that I often can't easily explain to others. Why? See above! The best thing would be for them to go away until I'm done. Sometimes they can't. So it has sometimes come down to this: they either trust me or I tell 'em to find someone else.

Usually they trust me. [knock wood]. But why should they?

Oh, I could write it out all right. But in the heat of the battle, you don't write out your tactics as you're figuring out what the next one must be even as you're deploying the last tactic. You're moving and reacting to rapid changes. And remember, I only have a semi-rapid mind. Hence, you can see why I attribute much of my success to luck.

Heh, heh. Well, if you know the nature of luck, then you know how much my success really isn't all luck.

Anyway, I have just passed along to you what its like to live with my limitations. They can and have made things difficult.

However. It is the very nature of my mind, a type that I share with to some extent with a lot of nerdy engineers, that makes our performance possible. The applying of ingenuity to solve problems quickly, safely, and profitably.

Tangential thought is key to human ingenuity. You run up an alley. Take in the view quickly. Run back to the main path. Run up the next alley. Repeat. Just suppress mentioning it all. Even if you could, hardly anyone will understand. One simply cannot speak as quickly as one can make observations, note the values revealed, and not be distracted from the task at hand. Well, at least not someone with a semi-rapid mind like myself.

And you can see, if this is possibly a wide-spread attribute of engineers, then in this is why many often seem distant to the rest of the public. Their experience tells them that conversations about their work aren't always productive. The essential product of their tangential minds -- well suited to solving problems on the fly -- is not easily captured in conversation, and even on paper. As to speaking with someone who has no experience at all, well, after a minute or two these are typically looking for an exit, any exit.

And so, here is where I get to one solution that has worked for me and which I heartily recommend to others.

I've rediscovered something that helps fill in for my limitations. The great tool to extended and useful conversation that is made possible by instant messaging -- IMs.


I have much thanks for Og, the Neanderpundit, who sought me out some time in the past years because of my comments and contributions at Eternity Road. And who recently renewed our acquaintance by replacing those brief IMs with now some rather elaborate ones that have helped me make this blog explode.

The gist of the matter as far as I am concerned is demonstrated thus.

When I am writing an entry to an IM, Og is doing whatever.

As he responds, I am writing more to elaborate.

He isn't distracted by my voice or by what I've written and continues to write his response.

I latch onto what he has written, and elaborate on some tangential thing.

He continues to write, or starts to respond to what I've taken off on.

Each time I hit enter, I go back and read what he's written while I was writing.

At no time do I miss what he's written, nor he mine.

When I did this with my Dad some five or six years ago, all those conversations we used have that deteriorated into shouting matches became history. Even in person, our ability to converse in a more gentle manner had been established (although my ability to hold on to a new thought of my own while he was speaking had only gotten a little better) He'd let me cue him while he was speaking and he'd continue and we could come back to my thought, sometimes even successfully. The most important thing of all, is that IMs led to the best moments I had with my Dad in his last days; and intellectually speaking, this was our best days.

So, for me at least, there still is nothing like the IM to let a wandering mind capture those things it generates off of another great mind. So thank you Og for helping me in many ways.

OTOH, for those of you who don't like the product of my output? You can blame Og for enabling me.