Blow Off Scoreboard

How often do you tell your friends and business contacts that you are too busy for them? And how often are they too busy for you? Do you value each others' opinions? Do you respond to each others' communications promptly, or do you let them linger in your inbox unattended for days? In short, who is blowing you off, and who are the people you cannot find time for? This is what the Blow-Off Scoreboard tells you.

The rows, labeled along the left side of the table, come in pairs. The first row of each pair shows how the named individual behaves towards you, while the second row in the pair shows how you behave towards that same person.

Each column, labeled across the top of the table, summarizes data about various aspects of “blow-off behavior” between you and each listed person.
  • The first column shows the number of examples of "blow-off" language Digital Mirror detected (e.g. telling the other person "I'm too busy" to deal with some kind of request).
  • The second column shows how long, on average, it took each of you to respond to the other’s email.
  • The third column shows how many message exchanges were initiated by each of you (as opposed to just being responses to a message from the other person).
  • The fourth column shows how often you sought each other’s opinion on some topic.
  • And the fifth column shows how much quality time you spent together.
Are there some people you seem too blow off more than others? Or vice versa? Or is there a big discrepancy between how much you blow off someone, compared with how much they blow you off?

Clicking on a value in the Blow Off Language, Messages Initiated, or Times Consulted column will show up to five examples of emails that were used as evidence for these results.

More detail

Blow-off language is detected by linguistic analysis.

Average email response time is measured by identifying messages and their responses, and calculating the time between them. For this, Digital Mirror also tries to determine people's normal working hours to factor them in. So a message received on Friday at 4:30pm, with a response at 9:30am on Monday might be counted as a response time of one hour (if the recipient works from 9am to 5pm and only on weekdays), not 65 hours.

Initiated messages is a simple count of messages that were sent that were not responses to a previous message.

Solicitation of opinion is detected by linguistic analysis.

Quality time spent together is based on evidence of meetings, as well as volumes and lengths of messages. The value shown (not much, some, a lot) is relative to all individuals for which Digital Mirror is able to find data in your email folders.

The individuals who are selected for display here are, primarily, the ones with whom you exchange the most "blow-off" language. If two or more people are tied by this measure, the average email response time is used as a second selection criterion. (Slower average response time "wins.")

If Digital Mirror can't find evidence of blow-off behavior with at least two individuals, it displays a "not enough data" message.
Common Questions

Q.
How does Digital Mirror pick people to feature in this visualization?
A.
Potential candidates are selected using a variety of criteria. Those who are selected for display are, primarily, the ones with whom you exchange the most 'blow-off' language. If two or more people are tied by this measure, the average email response time is used as a second selection criterion. (Slower average response time 'wins'.)
Q.
Why does this visualization include people who I don't have much contact with?
A.
The purpose of this visualization is to show people that you blow off a lot, or who blow you off. The amount of overall contact with a person is not the main factor: Even if you have very little contact in general, but much of it consists of various forms of blow-off behavior, this person may feature in this view.
Q.
There is someone I would really expect to see here. Why are they missing?
A.
Digital Mirror analyzes your email data for a variety of indicators of blow-off behavior between you and others and selects up to five people to display. The individuals who are selected for display here are, primarily, the ones with whom you exchange the most "blow-off" language.

However much you feel someone blows you off (or vice versa), it is possible that Digital Mirror's measures place five or more people ahead of him or her. This could happen, for example, because the relevant blow-off behavior generally does not get recorded in emails between the two of you.
Q.
Why does someone appear here when there is no blow-off language shown between us?
A.
Explicit blow-off language such as "I'm busy right now" is just one way people deflect others or defer dealing with them. In addition to detecting blow-off language, Digital Mirror looks for significant imbalances in the way two people communicate: Are there notable assymetries in how quickly one person answers emails from the other person? Does one person initiate many more email coversations that the other? Is consultation between them largely a one-way street?

Behaviors like these, when they constitute a clear pattern, generally indicate that one person values a relationship much less than the other – in other words, it is evidence of blow-off behavior.
Q.
Why do no more than five people appear on this visualization?
A.
The individuals who are selected for display here are, primarily, the ones with whom you exchange the most "blow-off" language. In this version of Digital Mirror, we select no more than five people for display. We expect to remove this restriction in some future versions of the software.
Q.
What is "Quality Time" and how is it different from the Quality Time visualization?
A.
The values for the Quality Time column are calculated in a similar way to the Quality Time visualization (based on evidence of meetings and exchange of long emails). But instead of showing the people with whom you spend most quality time, this visualization shows the five individuals with whom you exchange the most "blow-off" language. The amount of quality time you expend on these people is then measured against the amounts you spend with all others and assigned one of three rankings: A Lot, Some, and Not Much.
Q.
What is "Times Consulted"?
A.
Digital Mirror looks for emails in which you consult someone for their opinion or vice versa. This is done by detection of phrases such as "what do you think?" and "any thoughts appreciated." Times Consulted provides a count of the number of emails containing such requests for opinion.
Q.
Why am I seeing only a sample for this visualization, instead of real results?
A.
Digital Mirror is designed to create a reasonably wide range of visualizations, not all of which will be applicable to everyone. It is quite likely that, for any individual user, there will not be enough relevant data for every single visualization. This is normal, which is why we provide a sample for you to enjoy!


 
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