Before I met my husband, when I heard the phone ring, I’d jump to get it. It didn’t matter if I was doing something important or we were in the middle of talking, etc. If the phone was ringing, clearly it was important and needed to be answered, right?
Wrong.
One of the gifts Jake gave me was the realization that just because the phone is ringing, it doesn’t mean that I have to get it. It just means, this is a convenient time for the other person to call. But, before I pick up, it’s also important for me to think about whether it’s a convenient time for me. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. The point here is not that I should not get the phone, it’s that I should’t automatically get it. Just because it’s ringing, it doesn’t mean it has to be answered.
Yet another example of the importance of awareness. Of taking the one extra second to stop and decide instead of reacting. So I can respond and not react.
Even though I’ve gotten much better about the phone, I’ve noticed that I now have this problem with email. If someone emails me and I take more than one or two days to respond, I automatically apologize for the delay. Where’s the rule that email should be responded to within minutes? In the older days, we were used to having to wait for the mail to be delivered and then for the response to be delivered. So things took time. While the lack of this slow-response-time can be effective sometimes, it also means that we can go at a much higher pace. And the emails can build up and can get overwhelming quickly. I pretty much can spend half my day responding to email.
But is that the most effective use of my time? Is that the most important thing I could be doing?
Clearly not.
So the question I have on my mind today is: what’s a reasonable time to respond to an email? (Excluding those emails that genuinely are urgent which are far and few in between.)
From the time I receive it, how long can I sit on it before it becomes rude? Before the other person is offended? Before I genuinely have to apologize for the delay?
As I sat and thought about that today, I decided my personal threshold is between four days and a week. Assuming the person is not out of town or responding to some emergency, I feel a week is a reasonable time to wait for a reply before it’s “too long.” So it should be good enough for my responses, too.
I understand that this threshold might be different for each of us. It’s not even the number itself that matters to me. It’s just the acknowledgement that just because it’s there and someone sent me an email, I don’t have to actually respond right away. It might “feel” urgent but it’s not actually urgent. And, often times, it’s not even important. It can wait a few days. I can do my important items and then tackle my email as a batch instead of continually interrupting what I am doing to respond to incoming mail. (Especially since we now know multitasking messes up the brain.)
So that’s what I am going to try this week. I will remember that just like the phone, email does not need to be answered right away. If the email is not super-time-sensitive, it’s going to sit in my inbox. I will reserve some time every few days to sit and go through what’s in my inbox and respond.
Let’s see how it goes.
(What’s your threshold?)
Interesting idea to consider! It’s not something I’ve ever given much thought to. If the email content is something that requires a thoughtful response, it may be a few days before I’m ready to respond, as I tend to “chew” on things in my mind for a while before knowing what I might want to say.
It took me some time to understand that not every email demands a response. Some emails are just emails with facts, or a version of a newsy letter, and while the sender might enjoy or appreciate a reply, it’s not necessary. In the past I didn’t reply to every single letter I received – but I felt that the urgency, immediacy, of email somehow made emails more deserving of my time & effort in crafting a reply. Allowing myself the choice of replying or not replying (depending on so many factors, including. but not limited to how busy or stressed I am), and knowing that someone may or may not reply to an email I send, has made checking my inbox less important but far more fun.
That said, I think a week is a fair time. Longer than that and I know that it’s not that I don’t have the time, it’s that I’ve not made the time.
Not every email requires a response. I think four days to a week is appropriate. It’s when an email requires a response and none is forthcoming because perhaps too much time has gone by that a problem arises. The sender starts to imagine all kinds of possibilities that are not realistic…due to their own expectations. That’s where email gets tricky. There is no standard.
I try to return personal emails within a day or so, however my challenge has come with emails from work/volunteer committments. I used to pride myself on returning these as fast as possible but this year especially I have felt overwhelmed and harrassed by may of these. Most times it’s not justified but I so need some down time for my mind and I have struggled to just “turn it off” and be okay with not instantaneous replies. The interesting thing is many people thank me for my “quick” reply even if it takes me a couple of days to answer them. I think I am putting the pressure on myself to reply quickly and I need to lessen the pressure on myself :)))