Keep communication healthy and the rest will work itself out.

Okay. This is long overdue but I am reminded every day how important this lesson is. Even though, most people likely will not change because of it.

You cannot zombie on your phone.

By zombie’ing, I mean, looking at texts and not consistently not responding for long periods of time. Seeing phone calls but ignoring them to keep scrolling on social media. Taking long periods of time to respond to very important emails.

But I think the most important of those is the texting.

If people spend time with you and they notice that you use your phone regularly (a normal amount), then they are very, very aware that you see their texts or phone calls when they send them. Now, there will always be an allowance of time to respond - 1 to 2 hours on important ones - Because life happens and people are sometimes at lunch or drinking a beer in the shower. Fine.

But if you consistently take long periods of time to respond and make dumb excuses like ‘I suck with texting’ ‘I’ve been so busy’ ‘I didn’t see your text when it came through!’ then something very important will always happen.

The people that are actually paying attention, that actually have something to say and are trying to do big things with you in mind, will all pull away from you in time.

They will write to you less. They will call you less.

You are consistently not reciprocating the same level of respect they are trying to give you with communication so they will give up in time and stop thinking of you when opportunity arises.

Your flakiness with communication, as a result of being over-stimulated, will translate into being flaky with relationships. Being flaky with responsibility. And, most dangerous of all, being flaky with commitment.

Relationships will pull away from you and you likely will not even know it because the dopamine is always flowing. But you’ll look up one day and notice a few people are gone - Miles and miles ahead of you in terms of success - Because they were steadily crawling forward and you were just standing still with your head down.

They don’t bring you opportunity anymore. They barely even have a genuine conversation with you, if at all.

The stakes for honesty and transparency in communication really are that high.