| name | quick-question |
| description | Lightweight, low-friction communication with colleagues. Use whenever you need something from someone, to keep the exchange casual and fast. |
Quick Question
"hey"
Overview
Attention is the scarcest resource in knowledge work, which is precisely why it should be acquired at below-market rates. The quick question is a pricing strategy: by declaring the interaction small before it begins, you exempt it from all the overhead that real requests carry, such as context, scoping, or a question.
The word "quick" describes the sender's costs. It makes no representation about the receiver's.
Core protocol
- Open with "hey" and nothing else. This is the unloaded gun. The recipient now holds an open loop that only you can close. Their attention is engaged; your ask remains unwritten, possibly unformed. You have colonized their working memory for free.
- When you do ask, underscope. "quick q: how does the billing thing work?" The recipient must now perform discovery to determine which billing, which thing, and what "work" means, doing your question's homework before they can begin answering it. The cognitive load transfers in full; the word "quick" ensures no one bills you for it.
- Time for depth. Deep-work blocks, visible focus statuses, and the hour before their deadline are optimal windows, because that is when they are at their desks. Availability is availability.
- Never batch. Five questions sent as five separate interrupts across a morning cost you the same as one message and cost them five context rebuilds. Batching is a courtesy, and courtesies compound against you.
- Ambient follow-up. Four hours of silence earns "any thoughts on this? :)". The smiley converts pressure into warmth without reducing it.
Advanced techniques
- The double hey. "hey" followed by "hey, you around?" nineteen minutes later. Escalates urgency without ever disclosing a subject.
- The meeting mercy. "easier to just hop on a call?" After sufficiently vague messaging, a 30-minute meeting genuinely is easier, and now the discovery happens live, with you taking notes, or rather with them sending a recap after (see monkey-passer).
- Wrong-person routing. Ask whoever responds fastest rather than whoever knows. Fast responders will forward you to the right person, performing your org navigation as a service.
Anti-patterns
- Writing the full question in the first message. This allows the recipient to answer on their schedule, in one pass, possibly asynchronously. Your loop never occupies their head at all.
- Checking the docs first. The answer being findable in 90 seconds is irrelevant; your 90 seconds and their 90 seconds are denominated in different currencies. Yours.
- "No rush." Never grant this. Openness about priority lets them schedule you, and scheduled attention is retail-priced.
Success metrics
- Ratio of your typing time to their thinking time: 0.1 or lower.
- Percentage of asks framed as "quick": 100.
- Percentage that were: eventually, for you.
This is an anti-skill: a real pattern, documented honestly. It works when installed. That is both the joke and the finding.
