Once as a boy, right before dinner my father discovered that I had not returned a phone message left by a friend of mine earlier in the day. I explained to him that I had been “too busy” that afternoon and had hoped to get back to my friend sometime later..,
my fathers reply was to ground me for all of the following next day and then to stand there and watch me call back my friend and apologize 1) first to him and second 2) to his parents for being so rude, thoughtless and inconsiderate to their son!
As my father at a later age explained “when one doesn’t return business phone calls one pays the price of lost business and lost respect by ones clients”. “Worse yet when one doesn’t return or ignores a personal phone call one suffers a critical and almost non redeemable loss in quality of one’s character”.
He also felt it was wrong to encourage people to engage in such poor behavior by his leaving multiple messages for someone. A meteor could fall on mom and dad’s house at 2 in the morning and the roofer maybe got 2 messages left for him before he called someone else! This applied to my sisters and myself too – even if someone died!
My father tried to instill in my sisters and me a strong sense that common courtesy really counted for something! He felt that any society that lost its sense of common courtesy was as doomed to failure as one that allowed over taxation or restrictions on ones right to vote!
A simple technique that I learned from him to promptly deal with the often substantial daily number of emails and texts I get (I usually answer about 90% of my personal and business phone calls live, so I get very few voice messages – another trait instilled in me by my father ) In the same way I set aside time each day to exercise, eat, sleep or “use the facilities”.., I set aside time twice a day to return the emails, phone calls and texts that I have not returned during the day. Barring family emergencies or severe sickness I practice this discipline pretty much 7/365.
Most people of good will are committed to trying to make this world a better place. My father would suggest that a great way to start would be with the simple common courtesy..,
of a returned phone call.