I put this on my own website as a fun fact. It is not a fun fact. It is a rule I built on purpose, and it changed how I run two businesses.
Here is the version most people believe about phone calls: they are faster, more personal, and the proper way to handle anything important. I believed that too, for a while. Then I started managing properties across four different areas around Kavala, running a video production company on the side, and trying to keep a music project alive in whatever hours were left. Somewhere in there, the phone call stopped being efficient and started being a tax I paid on every single day.
What a phone call actually costs
A call demands that two people are free at the exact same moment. That sounds simple until you are standing on a rooftop adjusting a drone shot for a client, or walking a guest through a checkin, or sitting with Anni going through numbers for the month. The call does not wait for a good moment. It interrupts whatever moment you are already in, and it asks the other person to do the same.
Then there is the part nobody mentions: a call leaves nothing behind. No record of what was agreed, no timestamp, no way to check later who said what. I manage over fifty properties. If a guest tells me something on a call and I forget half of it, that is on me, and there is no way to go back and check. A text thread does not have that problem. Everything is there, in order, whenever I need it.
What changed for me
The shift happened gradually, not on one specific day. I noticed that every time my phone rang, I felt a small spike of dread before I even looked at the screen, because a ringing phone has no context. It could be a guest with a real emergency or someone trying to sell me something, and I would not know until I picked up and lost five minutes finding out. A message tells me everything up front. I can see what it is about, decide how urgent it actually is, and respond when I am actually able to give it real attention instead of a rushed, distracted version of myself.
I started routing almost everything through WhatsApp and text. Guests, property owners, clients for Microfilming, even some of my closest friends. At first it felt like I was being difficult. Now it feels like the only way I could possibly run three different things at once without dropping one of them.
What this is not
This is not a stance against being reachable. I am extremely reachable, probably more than most people would want. It is a stance against the assumption that the fastest way to reach someone is automatically the right way. There is a difference between availability and interruption, and a phone call collapses that difference completely. A message respects the fact that the other person has a life happening before yours showed up in it.
There are exceptions, and I keep them narrow on purpose. A real emergency gets a call, always. Anni and I still talk through the harder decisions out loud, because some things need a voice and a back and forth that text cannot replicate. But that is a short list. Everything else can wait the ninety seconds it takes me to read a message and respond properly.
The actual rule
If it is urgent and simple, text me. If it is urgent and complicated, text me first so I know what I am walking into. If it is not urgent, it can wait until I have the space to give it a real answer instead of a hurried one.
People sometimes take this personally, like I am avoiding them. I am not avoiding people. I am avoiding the version of myself that exists when I am juggling a ringing phone, a guest’s problem, and a half finished edit on a deadline, all at the exact same moment a call decided to demand my attention. That version of me is not useful to anyone, including the person calling.
Text me instead. I will actually be there when I answer.