Everywhere we look in our digital world we increasingly see options to choose digital shorthand over a handcrafted, personal response. Gmail’s Smart Reply and Smart Compose features for responding to emails, and LinkedIn’s convenient Quick Replies will save us time today, but what might they cost us in the long run? Who do we become when we allow ourselves to communicate on auto-pilot instead of thoughtfully, with humanity?

Emoji are convenient and getting to inbox zero feels good. But if we don’t take time to find the words to say what we mean what do we sacrifice?

There is not shorthand for caring. No substitute for deep connection. There is no shortcut either.
We have to do the work of being the kind of people who make the effort to build the relationships we want if we are to create the future we want to see. What if we saw communicating longhand as an opportunity?

Image by Garry Knight