Did you ever find a collegue tapping on your shoulder for a question, for help? Did you ever had that one person always asking you to come over for a small discussion without even sharing the topic? I don’t blame these behaviours, but we should all admit that they’re shortsighted. Rarely we do need that much sync to communicate during common day to day job. If we do, it means something about our process _depends_ on this behaviour _because_ we can’t avoid it, not because it’s a requirement of the job. Also, a small discussion without sharing a topic can rarely go into deep processes. It all needs some extra work afterwards, which is why sharing the topic beforehand and with enough time allow people to prepare and, guess what, be productive. Synchronous communication like this is easy. It makes you feel in control, while in fact you waste people time with one-on-one because you can’t have a more structured approach. Also, as shown before, it doesn’t allow you to make complex decisions since everything is _on sync_ and without preparation. Would you build a skyscraper with no prep? I hope you won’t, and the same applies to many of the complex choices we have to make daily. If we prepare, if we dive deep, we can do more, achieve more, express more. So, what to do then? Ask them to share more info, to add more context. Ask them if you can reply later so that you can reply with more context and knowledge, this way you can help them have a much better insight. Maybe they’ll still tap on your shoulders and you won’t change _their_ behaviour, but at least you changed your impact. Oh, and if you’re the one that taps shoulder frequently, then think twice. I know it sounds great, but it’s not.