The Efficiency Tax on Ambiguity
Do you ever stop to consider that the very language we believe makes us ‘professional’ is simultaneously making us profoundly stupid?
I don’t mean stupid in the IQ sense. I mean stupid in the functional, biological sense-incapable of performing the basic task of information transfer without a heavy, exhausting translation layer. We’ve built entire careers on the premise that clarity is a risk, and ambiguity is a shield.
The Nuclear Option (Insight)
“Per my last email.” – The polite lie that confirms mutual hostility.
We’ve managed to create a corporate environment where direct language is perceived as aggression, and indirect hostility is considered professionalism.
This isn’t about being polite. Politeness serves to smooth social interaction. This corporate linguistic fog is designed not to smooth, but to create psychological unsafety. It says: I will not trust you with my true feelings, because if I do, you will use them against me.
“That experience-that immediate, punitive backlash against clarity-changed how I communicated for years. It taught me the code, but it also taught me that the code doesn’t solve problems; it just moves the problem into a decoding center in my brain, creating a secondary job that requires constant vigilance.”
We’re all simultaneously writers, readers, and cryptographic analysts.
Quantifying the Cognitive Load
When people have to hire consultants just to teach them how to communicate directly without causing offense, you know the culture is fundamentally broken.
Honesty vs. Safety: The Trade-Off
Contextually deleted details vanish permanently.
Truth allows immediate, correct alternative paths.
Where Clarity is King
I’ve been tracking the time wasted on decoding-my personal, internal metric shows that roughly 14% of my administrative time is spent reading between the lines, drafting ambiguous follow-ups, and managing the fallout of subtle insinuations.
Case Study: Unwavering Trust
Think about industries where obfuscation can lead to real consequences. For example, complex fields like auto repair demand plain English. Places like Diamond Autoshop operate on the principle that the customer must understand exactly what is happening.
There’s no room for “per my last inspection report” when transportation safety is on the line.
The Real Statement: Respect
When we use corporate code, we are essentially saying: “I respect our mutual fear more than I respect your time or intelligence.”
When we are direct, we say: “I respect you enough to believe you can handle the truth, and I respect myself enough to state it.”
The Conflict of the Modern Professional
I sometimes slip up. I still write “Revisiting this thread…” when I mean “I refuse to let this die just because you ignored it.” I am part of the machine, and the psychological weight of standing out, of being the clear voice in a room of murmurs, is sometimes too heavy to bear.