Thursday, October 05, 2017

T.H.I.N.K. before you speak: let's replace "inspiring" with "informative"

A common guideline on avoiding saying assholic things is:

T.H.I.N.K before you speak: Is it:

True
Helpful
Inspiring
Necessary
Kind?

I think "inspiring" is too tall an order. There are plenty of things that should be said that are nowhere near inspirational. For example, "Excuse me, ma'am, you dropped this," and "Thank you, I appreciate it," and "I put the coffee creamer in the fridge but the sugar bowl is still on the table." For these kinds of benign statements, you can make an argument for true, helpful, necessary and kind, but they are by no stretch of the imagination inspiring.  Nevertheless, they should be said.

I think the word "inspiring" is only even in the acronym in the first place because they wanted a vowel so they could make a word. So let's replace it with a better word that starts with a vowel.

I propose informative.  One of the things we should think about before we speak is whether we're providing new information that our interlocutor doesn't already have, as opposed to being one of those assholes go goes around monopolizing the conversation and people's time by stating the obvious.

T.H.I.N.K. before you speak.  Is it:

True
Helpful
Informative
Necessary
Kind?

1 comment:

laura k said...

I never heard of this THINK acronym before, but your edit is a big improvement.