Please don’t just “hi.”
If you have something to ask, ask it. The wait between “hi” and your question is a tax someone else pays.
A bare “hi” is a knock at the door without saying who’s there or why. It opens the conversation, then leaves it open — with the other person on the hook.
Don’t do this
09:00 “hi”
[10 minutes pass. They stop what they were doing. Reply:]
09:10 “hey, what’s up?”
09:25 “are you free for lunch tomorrow?”
09:40 “yeah”
— “you there?”
— “got a sec?”
— “ping” [no question yet]
— “Hey”
[typing… typing… stops typing — while recipient stares at the indicator for two minutes]
Do this instead
09:00 “hi, are you free for lunch tomorrow?”
09:10 “yeah”
Half an hour saved — for both of you.
Why this matters
Chat is asynchronous. They read it when they read it and answer when they can.
A bare “hi” breaks that. Three things go wrong at once:
- You make them stop twice — first to say “what’s up?”, then again when the real question finally arrives
- They can’t gauge the urgency — is this a drop-everything fire, or something for the bottom of the list?
- You make them drag the question out of you — the question was yours to write, not theirs to fish for
“But I’m being polite!”
You’re being warm, which is good. The warmth isn’t the problem. The wait is.
“Hi” + the ask in one message is just as friendly — and it lets the other person look up from what they’re doing exactly once instead of twice. That’s polite.
Greet them, ask the thing, send. One message. They’ll answer when they can — and you both get on with your day in the meantime.
That’s the whole shift. Hi and the ask, in one go. Same warmth, half the wait.