Written communication is remote work super power

There's a lot of history here, going back centuries. The military has put much effort into designing written communication. There's the classic 5-paragraph operations order format. There's the "bottom line up front" style, which for information rather than orders. The military makes a very strong distinction between info documents and orders.

Diplomats have some traditional formats, too.[1] Most correspondence is formal. Sometimes there's an "appreciation of the situation" attached to correspondence from a mission to its state department. That's an informally written summary of what the writer has observed and what they think is going to happen.

An amusing read is "How to Live though an Executive", which is nominally by L. Ron Hubbard, the Scientology guy, but was really written by Richard DeMille. This is from 1953. It's someone trying to invent Slack, before computers. It's done with wallboards, clips, carbon paper forms, tear-off tickets, and people called "communicators" doing the paperwork. It was never used. Too complicated pre-computer. The basic concept is a trouble ticket, with an organized system to insure that handing off the problem to someone doesn't mean it gets lost to follow-up.

[1] https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hks-communications-pro...

I find a practice like this is also helpful for following up after a meeting. For meetings that warrant my taking notes, I like to type them up immediately afterwards, send them out to the other attendees, and solicit corrections or confirmations while the meeting is still fresh on everyone's mind.

It was a bit scary when I first started doing that since I'd fear that I might have misunderstood something and would be revealing my ignorance. But to the contrary, I've found that it tends to encourage others to share their notes for comparison and elicit further discussion. (If there's something I've misunderstood from a meeting, usually someone else was confused too.)

I like to think of myself as an effective writer. Nonetheless, it is incredibly difficult to express nuanced emotions through writing. This is particularly true in “professional” contexts, where an informal message may be perceived as rude. In many situations, I suspect that the same message, delivered verbally, would not even warrant a second thought.

The reality is that few people are taught to write in a manner that allows them to actually express their feelings. The fact that we even need to learn this indicates to me that speech is a far more effective way of getting our thoughts across

I need to find a way to tactfully say I prefer text...

Drawing also resolves language barriers which some people in my side of the world face.