Documenting my discussion process

After writing this blog post, I thought to document a process that I was thinking about. This would serve to help me improve my process. [why? explain later or explain when someone asks.] [1] [text in brackets are notes to myself that I don't want to deal with right now. I may come back later and edit.]

Context:

I recently have been advising people of the following: do email when talking discussion is going badly.

[new thought: But people push against that. They say things like "we tried text, that didn't work." This is an excuse. It's not a reasoned position where you look at both sides and try to argue them both rather than the common case where each person is only arguing their own side and effectively being biased about the other side.]

[in short: let somebody finish what they say before interrupting with your criticisms.]

The process (with new brainstorming):

[new thought: if you interrupt people with your criticisms before they finish their sentences, and if you do that even when you're not emotional, what do you think is going to happen when you are emotional? you're going to do it even worse.]

the longer version: if you're having trouble discussing in person or over the phone, try this idea. each of you write down what you want to say to the other person. [don't just write bullet points. like full essay. why? because the idea is so that you can read your thoughts without being bothered by having to think about what you're going to fill in. write it so that the other people could read it themselves, without your help clarifying what vague bullet points mean]. take as much time as you want [but don't go too long. maybe a week is a good amount]. [I'm talking about problems that are ongoing.] then when you've both finished, meet again. each person reads their essay in its entirety, before either of them respond to the other person's essay. then, when it's time to respond, maybe you could continue discussing in person without having to go back to writing. but if you do that and you get the same kind of problems as before where you're emotional and not discussing well and you're not understanding each other and not making much progress on coming to mutual understanding and mutual agreement, then you should escalate again. take a break, write down what you want to say, and do the rest of the cycle again. keep repeating the cycle as many times as needed to solve the problem of coming to mutual understanding and mutual agreement [this assumes that you want (or still want) to solve that problem]. you could also both be referencing parts of each other's essays while you're calmly talking about each other's ideas.]