Overwhelmed by the stress of a full email inbox and the obligation to reply?
by Pace on October 15th, 2008 @ 10:43 am in
Usual Error Project
Charlie at Productive Flourishing wrote:
Are you increasing signal or adding noise in your communication with other people?
…a good way to assess the information that we’re thinking about spreading is The Triple Filters Test. The test asks whether the information you’re spreading is true, good, and useful, and if it’s not, it’s not worth the time. That same test applies to the conversations and messages we send to people, as well.
…I became very judicious about what information I’d send her. The question I asked each time was “Is this worth my time to write and/or her time to read?” You’d really be surprised by how much of your email time can be cut down if you treat your friends’ time the same way you want your time to be treated.
Charlie makes a good point, and I want to follow up on his comment, “Is this worth my time to write and/or her time to read?” Reading and writing are very different activities, both in how much time they take and in how many good things and bad things they bring to you.
Reading an email is usually a very small time investment. Most people read at a speed of 200-250 words per minute, and most emails are short. Even if your email is noise rather than signal, you probably haven’t negatively influenced the recipient’s life in any way other than perhaps wasting 30 seconds of their time. In fact, you may have brightened their day with your idle chatter, helping create or strengthen a connection. There are three ways this could go wrong.
1. If your email is very long, you’re taking up more of the recipient’s time. If you’re writing a long email, it had better be all signal and no noise.
2. If your email is likely to upset the recipient, think about whether sending it will achieve anything useful. If you think they’re likely to react defensively and not really listen to what you’re writing, then you might as well hold back from sending it. Also think about whether email is the best medium to convey what you want to say. Touchy subjects are best handled in person, and phone is often better than email.
3. If the recipient feels obligated to reply to your email, you may have introduced additional stress into their life. If the goodness they get from reading the email is outweighed by the obligation and time of writing a reply, receiving the email has on the whole brought them more badness than goodness.
This is of course a matter of boundaries — you’re not necessarily responsible for others’ reactions to your email, or for their obligation issues that you may trigger. However, if you’re sending an email to someone you like, you probably want them to be happy to receive it. If they’re initially happy, but then your email sits in their inbox for days or weeks, stressing them out because they feel obligation to reply but don’t know what to say or don’t have the time, then you haven’t achieved your goal of having them be happy to receive it. Replying to an email takes 5 times longer than reading it, and that number can go up to 50 if you include thinking of what you say. I know a lot of people who stress about their overfull inboxes, so I’d imagine that this situation comes up a lot.
Some busy folks address this problem by email templates. They write out a few common replies, e.g.
Hi, Thanks for writing, but unfortunately I must decline your offer. My full schedule simply doesn't permit me to do all the things I would otherwise like to do. Hope you understand. Thanks, Jebediah Bloafrahaha of the Jebediah Bloafrahaha Billiard Balls
Even if you personalize each reply, working from a template can help you avoid that feeling of staring at a blank screen and not knowing where to start. Personalizing a template often takes much less time than writing a reply from scratch.
Most of us don’t feel busy or overwhelmed enough to warrant email templates, but take a look at your inbox. Do the facts square with your feeling? Do you think your friends would appreciate a reply, even if it were a personalized template? More importantly, do you think your friends would want you to stress out about having not replied to them yet? Especially the random chatty emails, not the “Hey, how about that money you owe me” emails.
SPOILER: Pace is going to advocate communication.
What if we made our expectations explicit? What if, the next time we wrote a friendly, shoot-the-breeze email to a friend, we tacked on:
No need to reply, just wanted to say hi.
If your friend is a little neurotic about email like many of us are, that little sentence might make the difference between whether your email ends up being a happy-making thing or a stress-making thing for them.
On the other hand, if we do need a reply, let’s make that explicit as well.
I need to know this by the end of the week, okay? Thanks.
In real life, if you walk up to someone, ask them a question, and they just stand there and stare at you, you’ll think they’re either incredibly rude or that there’s something wrong with them. The same goes for a phone conversation. But with email, the social conventions aren’t as well established; people disagree on the etiquette of which emails to reply to.
So let’s talk about it.
Let’s tell our friends about our little neuroses. It’s not your friends’ responsibility to compensate for your issues, but they’ll probably appreciate having more information about you. Let’s tell our friends about our expectations, too. If we’re feeling obligated to reply to a bunch of emails that our friends never expected us to reply to, then we’re putting a completely unnecessary burden on ourselves.
All it takes to relieve that burden is a little communication.
- Related posts:
- The Stress Pie
- the eleventy billionth time email has screwed up my communication
- How I got to Inbox Zero for the first time in 14 years
- We made the usual error!
- Has my website been hacked into sending spam?
10 Comments!
#2 Posted by 
Charlie on October 15th, 2008 11:53 am | link
Great insights here, Pace - especially with the “No Reply needed” bit. It works like a charm.
Perhaps I dissent a little bit on this point: “you probably haven’t negatively influenced the recipient’s life in any way other than perhaps wasting 30 seconds of their time.” The time piece is a part of the problem, but it’s not the whole problem. Given that most of us don’t know how long it’ll take to get through and process email, it has a tendency to pile up on us. The psychological funk of having 100 unread (or unprocessed) email is far greater than the summed 50 minutes it would take to do something with them (presuming the theoretical 30 second benchmark).
Maybe a better way to say this: each email added to the pile increases the funk of the pile. So while my emails may only take 10 seconds to process, it’s the fact that I’ve added to the pile that’s a part of the issue, as well. Did I need to add to the pile? is what I’ve said make up for the sum badness of adding to the pile plus the time it takes to read and process it?
I’m a huge fan of to the point and meaningful communication. It’s a shame that even those attempts to respect and spread value also come with their share of disvalue, too.
#3 Posted by 
Megan M. on October 15th, 2008 1:15 pm | link
Woo! Yay no reply needed! Or, or, you can have an “email policy” like Havi does. I put “bloggable?” checkboxes in my email signatures for awhile, way back when — maybe “response deadline: none / soon / AAAA!!” would be useful, too.
Well, if I want to attach a questionnaire to every email, maybe… :D But the gist is really good. Definitely something to remember to include!
#4 Posted by 
Tanya on October 16th, 2008 7:38 am | link
I enjoyed this a lot. I will test out the “no reply needed” thing and let you know how it works for me.
As to “I need to know this by [date],” I don’t like to lay that out there without a reason because the way I say it, it feels like I’m treating my friends like I’m their professor or their boss.
I prefer to say “if you can tell me [stuff] before [event on date], I’ll be able to [do something using the information you gave me].” It’s a way of sharing the goal with them and, if they buy into the goal, they may help out. If they don’t buy into the goal, that’s cool, too. But I’m making it explicit that this is for that goal, not just a general obligation because I’m asking them to do it.
#5 Posted by 
Oliver Danni on October 16th, 2008 10:53 am | link
One of my biggest issues with the email communication system is this: I don’t believe that it is EVER a reasonable assumption that someone has actually read your email. If the person has not responded to your email or told you that they have actually read your email, you do not know that they have read your email. So, in the example here: “I need to know this by the end of the week, okay? Thanks,” the sender has assumed that the email has been received and read AND ALREADY RESPONDED TO THE RECIPIENT’S RECEIVING THE EMAIL, just like they would in any real-time form of communication where they received some kind of confirmation that their message had been received (”…okay? Thanks.”) But not only has the recipient not actually agreed to respond by the end of the week, they have given no confirmation that they even got the message by the time the sender expected a response.
My general rule that I operate on is, when I have consistent, regular internet access, it is reasonable to expect that I will receive and have time to respond to the message if, and ONLY if, ALL of the following conditions are met
-48 hours between the time the email was sent and the time I will need to do something about it
-the message clearly states the time frame in which I am expected to respond
-the sender gets a response from me stating that I have read the email and agree to respond by the time they’ve requested.
Basically…it is not my responsibility to check my email. I don’t have a job where checking email is a requirement of my position. If someone expects me to have information, it is their responsibility to make sure I get the information. If someone sends me an email, they do not know that I have the information that they sent in the email unless I respond and tell them. Sometimes emails get lost. Sometimes people accidentally hit the wrong button and delete their emails. A zillion technological glitches can prevent an email from being received, even if I AM checking my email every five minutes.
The other day, my friend was supposed to go to a baby shower. They changed the location of the event and emailed all the guests about it at 9am, the same day as the event which was scheduled for the afternoon. My friend doesn’t have a car and had to leave her house quite early, definitely did not get the email, and wandered around a strange town for quite some time before she finally reached the hosts and found out the event had been moved. THIS HAPPENS TO PEOPLE ALL THE TIME.
This is one of my biggest peeves in the whole world. Can you tell? ;-)
-Oliver, who is on a classmate’s computer and cannot be reasonably expected to receive ANY emails in ANY kind of timely manner at this time due to not having a computer.
#6 Posted by Megan M. on October 16th, 2008 11:04 am | link
Ha! I can definitely see where all of this needs to assume that people are like us, and conduct large amounts of business through email, and therefore maintain it as a hugely important part of their process a large part of the time. (For instance, if I notice that one message didn’t get to me for some reason, I immediately assume that others may not have as well — and the other way around, if I notice that someone didn’t get a message I sent, I check back with other people who I need to make sure received something. But if I don’t use email all that often, or it’s not essential to the way I do business, etc…. this becomes way less of a sure thing.)
Interesting.
#7 Posted by Tanya on October 16th, 2008 11:10 am | link
Great point, Oliver!
If I send an email and I really REALLY need the information, I tend to also call if I don’t get an immediate response. In general, though, I don’t really REALLY need the information. I just kinda want it, so email works for that.
At my last job, everyone had a crackberry strapped to them at all times, even in meetings, which drove me crazy. Hello? We’re having a 15 minute meeting; you can check your email when you get back to your desk!
And now we’ve found one of MY pet peeves. :)
#8 Posted by 
Pace on October 16th, 2008 11:14 am | link
@Green: I have similar issues. I’d rather make no plans at all than make a plan I later have to break. However, I eventually learned that this was incredibly annoying to my friends. They perceived me as far flakier when I never made plans than when I made best-guess plans and occasionally broke them. The way I was able to make that shift was to be clear about my level of certainty. People generally interpret “I’ll definitely be there” as “I’ll definitely be there unless some unexpected emergency happens.” People generally interpret “I’ll try to stop by” as simply that — you’ll try. If you tried, but weren’t able to succeed because of lack of transportation, then you did what you said you would do. Even clearer might be “I’d like to stop by tomorrow, and I will as long as I have transportation. There’s about a 50/50 chance of that.” And I know that I would appreciate a quick “I’m not sure how available I’ll be; my plans are still up in the air right now but I’ll let you know as soon as things firm up” email more than no reply at all. At least that way I have a definite maybe instead of wondering if you read my email at all.
@Charlie: You’re exactly right. I was focusing on the psychological funk of a perceived obligation to reply, but the psychological funk of a big pile of unread email is a factor to consider as well. Thanks for your comment! *gets her psychological funk on*
@Megan: Yeah!
@Tanya: Thanks! You’re right about treating your friends like coworkers. That’s definitely something I don’t want to do or advocate. Your phrasing is much better, thanks!
@Oliver: You’re right! I totally made the usual error! It’s important to keep in mind that others’ email practices and email-checking frequency can be very different than your own.
#9 Posted by Oliver Danni on October 17th, 2008 12:00 pm | link
I wonder how prevalent the usual error was before the advent of the internet. I feel like it certainly existed, but that it probably wasn’t anywhere NEAR as destructive as it is now. I also have no evidence for this, since I was ten when the internet got cool.
It’s been fucking UNBELIEVABLE to me how many people (including my own MOTHER, who hardly even knows HOW to use the internet!) have responded to my “I don’t have a computer anymore, please CALL me, don’t email!” messages BY EMAILING ME. Also, a lot of people tell me they just “don’t call” people…well, what happened before email? Smoke signals? Messenger owls?
I think we’ve collectively forgotten how to interact with other humans and I DON’T LIKE IT.
#10 Posted by Megan M. on October 17th, 2008 12:16 pm | link
I think I understand where Oliver is coming from, but at the same time, I feel the overwhelming need to add: What happened before phone? We sent written messages, and it took long periods of time to get a response — and sometimes there was no response. So as an alternative, we engaged in face-to-face communication with the people in our proximity, or we traveled to be close to those we wanted badly enough to have face-to-face communication with.
I think these days we still travel to be close to those we want badly enough to have face-to-face communication with, but we’ve gotten lazier because it doesn’t seem as necessary anymore. But I find the parallels between super slow, fairly unreliable written messages traveling by land and super fast but also not so reliable email traveling by bandwidth pretty amusing.
Maybe the point here is that post, email, and phone are not substitutes for personal interaction and we need to remember not to treat them as such.
#1 Posted by
Green on October 15th, 2008 11:36 am | link
OMG this so speaks to my crazies. :)
I feel like I’m being rude by not responding to every e-mail, ever livejournal comment, every text message. But I also feel bad if my information is wrong. For example: “I’ll try to stop by tomorrow” but what if I don’t have the car tomorrow? What if I say I’ll call if I can’t make it but I leave my phone at home? What if I say I’m going to come and in the stress of getting from class to class and picking up my grandmother and dropping off my brothers I just totally forget? And how can I say “I’m not sure how available I’ll be?” Doesn’t that sound like I’m putting them low on my priority list?!
At any given time half the non-advertizment/forum alert messages in my in-box have a red “Draft” next to them, indicating that I have started a reply but not sent it or finished writing it. Usually, I’ll try to reply within 48 hours, even if a reply is giving me freak outs. Freakouts fort me come especially often in cases of plans being made, because I tend to get really flaky about transportation since I usually can’t provide it for myself.
It’s also worth noting that I do tend to keep a reply to my e-mails streaming through my head over the course of the day. It’s not until bed-time that I can finally calm down and finalize a draft I’ve been working on since 8am. I’m pretty sure I fall into the category of people who stress way too much over replying to stuff. :)