8 etiquette tips for WhatsApp

WhatsApp It will be more overwhelming than ever. Its new features will invoke unexpected conversations, relationships and notifications to intersperse our private lives and our work lives in one place. It seems to me more necessary than ever to share 8 etiquette tips to use WhatsApp without annoying your interlocutors.

A bit of context. The instant messaging service WhatsApp launched the Communities function to organize conversation groups and create work or thematic spaces (such as school or neighborhood groups). It also allows you to post surveys in chats, make video calls with 32 people, and create groups with a maximum of 1,024 users. Gulp!

WhatsApp it is the confirmation that our private life has been invaded by work, the confirmation that business —in Latin, what is not leisure— prevails over our free time. It has been for years, but now, with its features inspired by messaging apps for work like SlackWhatsApp makes it clear that in the digital economy we are never free to be productive or available for anything.

The machine should give us “leisure and freedom”, Lafargue suggested, instead of turning us into slaves to alerts and notifications, “which kill all the beautiful faculties so as to leave nothing standing, lustful, more than the furious madness of work ” (I apologize Lafargue for constructing this quote so freely).

Here are 8 etiquette tips for WhatsApp.

1. Separate your personal life from work. Convince your colleagues to separate WhatsApp from business matters. There are options: Slack, Telegram, Signal. Build a healthy relationship where everyone knows that a message outside of WhatsApp means work. Let it WhatsApp be the exclusive channel of communication for family and friends.

If this is impossible, apply the following 7 tips.

2. Get to the point, be clear and direct. Do not beat around the bush or unnecessary greetings. Think before you write. Respect for other people’s time is peace.

3. One message is better than many messages. Don’t be like the person who wrote to me yesterday: Message 1: “Hello, José”. Message 2: “How are you?” Message 3: “I have good news for you.” So easy that it was saying everything in one message. The worst: I never received the good news: he left me on sight when I replied “Everything is fine. Tell me”.

4. Think of the other person before yourself. Each message is an alert, a vibration or a phone ring. Respect the tranquility of others.

5. Vistosea when your intention is to ignore. Leave in seen (with a double tick) when you want to “tell” your interlocutor that you are not interested in what he has to say.

6. Do not send voice messages: text. You don’t know what the other person is doing: perhaps she is at the movies, at black mass, listening to music on her cell phone or in an important meeting. Shake off your laziness and write: to the point, clear and direct.

Don’t dial the phone either, unless you’re the CEO or the boss. Using the phone is for scammers, extortionists, and annoying marketing and advertising services. Don’t be like them: text.

If you are anxious to hear your voice, record yourself for your own satisfaction.

7. Write at sensible times. Reflect if your message is truly urgent, if it is not, send it at another time.

8. delete your conversations. You never know when your account will be hacked or your phone stolen. But it is also digital hygiene.

If you can’t separate WhatsApp of your working life, the best thing is to have healthy and effective communications. Defend your right to be at peace.