A student once told me that I was the most responsive person on earth.
I thought - note to self, be less responsive.
One motive for being responsive is the fact that we don't want to be perceived as rude. But my need to respond quickly to queries is due to my desire to "get things off my list" so that I can move on. I once heard it referred to as "pre-crastination."
Unfortunately, the stream of endless emails I face every day makes it nearly impossible to ever catch up and leaves me feeling like a bit of a failure when I can't.
I've already created a junk email address to handle communications from companies trying to sell me stuff - sometimes sending me multiple emails per day.
And ghosting friends is common - 1/3 of us do it. (Dhawan, 2022)
But business is different. Ignoring messages in these "always-on" times is frowned upon.
And the colleague who sends a message at 7 pm must have an emergency that they need help with. Or do they? Research shows that most of us overestimate how fast a response our colleagues are expecting.
But at the end of the day it is up to us to set our own boundaries.
Since I work for a company based in Hong Kong, I shut my phone off at 7pm. I also don't check that junk email address very often.
What about you? Are you overwhelmed with the amount of communications that you receive? How do you deal with them? Do you ignore them and hope that they will go away? Do you set boundaries?
How about the people you work with? Are they responsive? If not, how does that make you feel?
Dhawan, E. (2022, February 21) Ignoring a Text Message of Email Isn't Always Rude. Sometimes It's Necessary. nytimes. com. Retrieved February 22, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/culture/ghosting-work-digital-overload.html
8 comments:
I am the kind of person that is heavily bothered by the notification that I have a new email so I have to deal with it so that there is no little number "1" next to the mailbox anymore. In fact, I make sure that each day I am deleting all mail in my inbox from email lists that I do not need so that they do not add up in the inbox over a period of a few days.
I do not feel overwhelmed by emails in my school email account because those are mostly important and I do not have many additional email subscriptions or similar less important emails coming into that account. There are certain times, such as times where I have midterm or final exams where I feel overwhelmed by my school inbox because I am just trying to focus on one thing at a time during those periods. However, I will still make sure I read and them reply if necessary so that it is not hanging over my head.
I find that overall, my professors and coworkers respond to emails fairly fast on-average. I think that an overall guideline of 48 hours is appropriate for an email reply since things get busy sometimes. However, it is quite frustrating when I have an important matter that needs a reply and it takes days to get one and there is no apology or sense that they took a long time to get back to me. Whether at work or at school, all of our time is valuable and I think it is most respectful to ensure to be prompt with replies or at least indicate you will be back to a person at a certain time so they have an expectation of when to hear from you.
I completely agree that we receive a significant amount of emails every day, whether it is important or not. When my life started to become busy checking hundreds of emails, I was totally overwhelmed with the amount that I had to process. I realized that I needed to skim or skip some of the emails so that I could avoid over-heating my brain. Like professor Lehrer says, I do not often check my junk emails because there are just way too many emails. I just check when I feel like checking them.
However, I face a situation where I cannot really do it: school email. I believe that the amount of NYU emails also can be overwhelming sometimes. There are so many activities that NYU introduces, and it is hard to keep up with these updates. I sometimes feel lost in thousands of information. Therefore, I usually check the headlines and first few sentences to judge whether the email is worth checking. In this way, I believe I can prevent missing important information, such as class notifications and so on.
I usually try to respond to important emails, especially the emails that wait for my response. Since I expect people to respond as soon as they check my email, I sometimes feel betrayed or annoyed. Therefore, I try to reply to them quickly so that they do not feel uncomfortable. for the people around me, I believe that it depends on their mood and situation. They sometimes reply me quickly, but they are usually late. Therefore, I stopped expecting people to respond to texts and emails soon because I am tired of it. If I do not expect them to reply, I don't have to be sad or angry. After I started doing it, my life became much easier, and I would definitely recommend it.
- I am a responsive person always when it comes to certain things. For example, if it's work-related or college-related, I reply back to email right away. However, there are boundaries when it comes to answering back to emails. I do agree with the author that ignoring text or email is necessary. I don't think ignoring a message is rude because there are more important things I have to worry about. I hate when people assume you are their number one priority. In these always-on times, ignoring notifications is disapproved. Perhaps we should let go of the antiquated, demanding necessity to engage in endless back-and-forth dialogues in these weary times because many people are swamped with family duties, pressure, loss, and worry. Inefficient information processing, disorientation, loss of control, psychological tension, as well as a rise in depressive symptoms are all possible outcomes. One of my professors in the past sent me a lengthy email about simple things. I hate the email so much because it was filled with unnecessary things, and you had to respond to the email. But I didn't want to answer because I was too busy with midterms and other exams. Some of us are forced to triage because we are inundated with messages, emails, texts, and Zoom meetings and must make continual real-time choices about which ones require an immediate response, which ones we need to think about before responding, and which ones aren't really worth our time.
I do feel overwhelmed with the amount of communications I receive, from brand deals to emails from both of the Universities I attended to just this academic year it self is frustrating enough to catch up with. The way I deal with it is that I most of the time ignore the unnecessary Netflix, Facebook and brand’s emails but do check my emails first thing in the morning to not be able to miss out important things I need to get done mostly for school. The way I categorize the necessary emails I tend to take screenshots of very important emails as a reminder for myself to not forget to respond to that email since I tend to check my camera roll more than my emails. I also write a to do list for myself everyday and add certain emails and tasks I receive to either respond or do the work on that list. If an email is urgent and irrelevant to most tasks I need to get done like setting up my social security number I try to reply immediately so that it doesn’t slip out of the way. I feel like professors at Universities most of the time are very responsive especially in their office hours. However I find that getting responses for an issue such as a return, a refund or certain things like getting my dishwasher fixed I don’t get responses as quickly as I would prefer, since I tend to miss their responses due to their late replies and end up with a huge miscommunication issue. It makes me feel extremely frustrated since sometimes when I email about a certain thing I do need a reply immediately since what I email about tends to have a due date and sometimes a late reply makes my life much harder.
I have never heard the term “pre-crastinator” before, but love the idea and would like that to be something I strive for. As a VP of Facilities in a Fortune 500 company with over 500 associates in my NY office, I am overwhelmed with emails, calls on the office line, my cell phone, text messages, Jabber on my computer and our company just rolled out Microsoft teams -a new way to communicate. People find me in the halls and stop me to request something, once I’m on site, I am accessible . The crazy part is that’s only for my work requests. I volunteer and I am on the board of the charity, and I also get bombarded with requests and emails there. I used to have 2 phones one personal and one corporate but ended up pairing down to one, as it was too much to juggle. I also only had 1 email address for everything personal and corporate- until NYU when I was forced to get a second, because I would never remember to check the other mailbox . I just chuckled to myself, the combined mailboxes have 7611 emails -I only delete junk, all others I keep, after 6 months , it transfers to the cloud.
Unfortunately I can’t ignore emails, I almost got in trouble for missing a direct request from the CEO.It was buried in my inbox and luckily my boss was also on it, so he checked with me when he saw I did not respond. In turn I now have a VIP setting on my emails for my boss and any C-suite executive, the emails come in Red and high alert so I don't miss them. I have so many levels of emails from needing to get a million dollars approved for a project, to the DOB shutting down my construction, to no AC on a floor. I have learned to prioritize time sensitive issues- in this case AC would be an easy delegation, DOB requires more back ground work than money for the next project , but is critical - so I attack that next. As I go through my inbox I leave emails for the day open until I complete the task.I have a note pad and at the start of the day I empty my head with all that needs to get done from the emails I read, as things come in throughout the day I add them, and as it’s done I cross it off. I feel accomplished seeing all that I did at the end of the day , unfortunately if I didn’t get all done, it rolls over to the next day. I receive lots of email after I leave the office at 6, I realize they all are not emergencies, but they are either from people that know I respond all hours of the night or those trying to be the first I read the next day. I have tried boundaries by leaving my phone at home when I go to volunteer or go to the stores, but I have come back to a crisis a few times so I have since stopped . I guess my best boundary right now would be only responding to urgent emails overnight, for my sanity.
The fashion industry is very fast paced, we are always on to the next project, my team and the people we work with are all very responsive, they have to be to survive. A slow response results in an escalation, or can turn into a problem. Where I did find slow response was from my advisor at NYU. I sent several emails in December then early January and then panicked emails because I needed him to clear me to pick my classes. I know I was applying the same expectations I have from work ,however it was time sensitive and knowing it was open enrollment I really expected better. When he finally replied it was just a simple - ok you’re cleared to pick your class. I was very angry, because I was stressed out for almost a month unnecessarily.
Although I get very overwhelmed receiving emails or messages one after another and would prefer for it all to not be visible, I am someone who finds it highly draining to try and respond to most things and even take a look at them. Sometimes I will really resent myself for this because it can be seen as “virtually standoffish”, and I will leave emails, calls, and messages building up. However, for me, it is largely about my need to respond on my own time for the sake of self-care. I am also huge on details and might even say I can be a perfectionist so I will take my time to respond to messages because I want to make sure I give the other party all of my thoughts at once rather than sending one or two small sentences back and not giving the other party’s correspondence enough thought, or at least, that is my concern.
There are a variety of reasons as to why I may hold off on responding to people until a certain point, but I believe a lot of that might have to do with the anxiety to be “perfectly prepared” and utterly polished in my responses. I also will set boundaries, however, and will not respond to emails, for instance, after 6 PM most days and will be slow to respond on weekends or respond on Monday entirely.
When I see others being incredibly responsive, it also makes me feel inadequate and like I could and should be doing much, much more. It makes me feel as though I am in the wrong for having boundaries, but this is something I think our society today needs to work on to deconstruct, especially as a part of our American “always-on” culture. It can become debilitating and harmful for the mental health of people to feel like we must always be switched on and attending to others. My dynamic of responding is a means of protecting and shielding myself from getting carried away in that “always-on” mode.
- Nomi Q.
It is ironic how you mentioned that researchers have proven that most individuals overestimate how fast response colleges are expecting. Personally, when I send an email to someone, I typically get impatient and expect a response no longer than 24 hours after (9-5 on weekdays to be specific). Even though I expect a swift response after sending an email, I often find it hard to respond to emails as it can get overwhelming sometimes. Going through emails and responding feels like a chore that I force myself to complete daily.
One thing that has helped is checking/replying to all my emails every morning and at the end of the day. Doing this feels less overwhelming and feels more like a routine before I begin my day rather than a chore.
Additionally, I can agree that it does get overwhelming by the amount of communication I receive daily. Not only do I receive about 50 emails a day from 4 different domains, but social media and texting friends constantly throughout the day also gets very tiring. Over the years I have noticed how I have noticed a shift in how I enjoy phone conversations/FaceTime calls more than I enjoy texting someone all day. Although this is something I feel guilty about, I sometimes ghost all my friends and don’t respond to anyone even after reading the message until I have the energy and mental capability to entertain a long conversation.
I do tend to feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of communication I am bombarded with on a daily basis. The way I deal with it is I just try to get to as much of it as possible, but things do slip through the cracks and sometimes it's okay to not respond to everything. There are periods of time when I just don't look at my emails, texts, and messages from countless other apps fighting for my attention. It's important to unplug sometimes.
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