Something strange happens to us during working hours. I don’t mean the wild ideas and jittery hands (that’s excess caffeine, my friend) or the compulsion to snack on granola-based products—no, what I’m referring to is the words we use, the phrases and sentences we utter that are so anomalous to our usual ways of speaking that they seem disembodied from reality.
I used to think this had something to do with the office environment itself. Was some mysterious garble-gas being pumped through the A/C that kicked our Wernicke’s area out of whack? (Btw, if you didn’t know, Wernicke’s area is the part of our brain responsible for the comprehension of written and spoken language). Did the limescale build-up in the kettle make us intermittently ridiculous? Or was the dye in our office chairs seeping into our butt pores and causing temporary insanity?
But no, I’ve noticed that even in the WFH/hybrid working era (tbh ‘WFH’ is become an annoying expression too), the weird speech patterns still persist virtually. I’ve thus concluded that there is simply no reason/excuse for this hapless hokum to continue.
Photo by Parabol on Unsplash
So, here are 20 phrases we all need to stop saying at work. Like, immediately.
1. Blue-sky thinking
2. Ping me an email
3. Let’s get our thinking caps on
4. Low-hanging fruit
5. Holistic approach
6. Move the goalposts
7. Get the ball rolling
8. Let’s touch base
9. My hands are tied
10. Hit the ground running
11. Think outside the box
12. Let’s get our ducks in a row
13. It’s on my radar
14. If you could have that to me by close of play today
15. Keep me in the loop
16. It’s in the pipeline
17. As per my last email
18. The new normal
19. Circle back with ideas
20. Stay ahead of the curve
Okay, I think that’s enough for now.