I make heavy use of email scheduling (and more recently Slack message scheduling) and will often schedule messages to go out in a few hours or the next day. That way, I can get my thoughts down in the moment, but not get sucked into a back-and-forth when I don't have time for it. I work with students and have found that delaying my responses tends set their expectation that they're not going to get a quick answer and train them over time to spend a bit more time trying to find an answer themselves because they can't depend on me for an immediate response.
Another useful trick I've found is to automatically delay my email responses. Rather than replying right away, I purposely let email sit for 48 hours or so. If people get an instant response, they'll send more useless emails.
Of course, this doesn't apply in every case. If I get something that I know is important, and the person isn't wasting my time, I'll respond instantly.
I think we also have to be willing to push back. Answering emails provides a nice dopamine hit (check something off + people-pleasing), so it's both cultural and internal.
One of the ways I've been most successful blocking out time for focused work is booking accountability appointments on Focusmate (https://www.focusmate.com).
That reduces the amount of space in my schedule for distractions and emails to absorb.
Here's the strategy that one of my professors uses and that he explained to me some time ago: While he reads and replies to incoming emails througout the day, he set up his mail server (or email client) to only send out his replies once a day, namely at 4.30am. That way,
1) correspondents are prevented from using email as chat, i.e. from burning a lot of his time
2) people write more result-oriented emails, knowing they will have to wait for his response for a day
3) the total volume of emails reaching him decreased because a lot of the issues people (want to) email him about often solve themselves within a day, so people don't bother emailing him about them anymore, knowing that he won't be able to help them in time.
Your problem's cause is rooted in a a basic economic principle, supply and demand. When you quickly reply to each email, you become a cheap resource for help, undermining the usefulness of the client thinking through problems themselves, or perhaps thinking through their problems a bit longer before sending another email.
The solution? Delay your responses by 1-2 hours. Decreasing the supply on your side will serve to increase the "cost" of each interaction, since they have to wait for reply. You'll find the emails stop sounding as frantic and disorganized/incomplete, and not as many are sent.
> I’ve noticed that if I respond to people’s emails quickly, they send me more emails.
That's funny: when I learnt this, I have encouraged myself to reply with a delay so that give people a chance to resolve problems on their own and generate less emails for future me to handle.
It's a little thing, but it's surprising how many people don't - if you've got a lot of work on and a someone's emailing you about something that isn't a priority at the time it's far too easy not to bother replying immediately. It's much better for your client if you just take 20 seconds to shoot back an email to manage their expectations explaining that you've seen the email and you'll aim to take a look and get them a response in the next x days/hours/etc
Responding to emails quickly may make the other person happy, but it will create a mechanism that will interrupt you regularly. Peter Drucker - an author who has written many books about management - says that you need large amounts of uninterrupted time to get work done.
Not sure, if I knew I wouldn't have such a problem with it :)
However, I do find that when I let the emails build up over a few hours, rather than answering them as they come in it takes a lot less time to answer them all at once and I can get other work done and be less distracted in between. But sometimes you need to keep checking because something could be important, and the compulsion to just respond is very strong and kills time. Maybe if I knew the deadline on responses (what was urgent) it would be easier. Priority inbox is good, but doesn't really help with this...
Heh. I gave my students a 24 hour SLO for responding to emails when I was a TA in grad school, but I told them most emails would get responded to in less than 8 hours. That seemed to work well enough for all concerned: they got their question answered reasonably quickly, and I wasn't chained to my computer 24/7.
I'm starting to implement a rough buffer of 48 hours on all my email replies. Unless you are a) a personal friend b) this is your first email to me or c) it needs addressing within 48 hrs.
It seems to be working so far - my productivity has gone up and the pace of email correspondence has slowed (so a 10 email conversation takes a couple of weeks now rather than a few hours).
Several people have commented that they enjoy talking with me for this reason; they don't feel pressured to reply "right now" and enjoy getting a response after some undetermined delay.
I sometimes wonder if the march of technology has had some downsides in terms of "right here right now" thinking.
As much as I dislike having to play the game, late-in-late-out people can benefit by saving some email replies until the tail end of their workday...it always feels gross to me to do it intentionally, but I've found it'll often placate the types of busybodies who conflate arrival time with productivity.
> when they're starting their workday they'll see it
Well… I often don’t check my email till after lunch or later. This has never been a problem since anybody who needs an answer to something in less than 24 hours uses slack or text messaging.
You're actually lucky that email's your poison. It's the most aync mode out there, especially if people adjust to not receiving an immediate response.
I have friends that have trained me not to expect an immediate response to texts so I know it's possible to use text more async for everything that's not urgent. If not responding immediately is your default, it's not a break from your normal behavior to delay. I'd like to attempt this one for text as that would remove the temptation to break focus on another activity to check my phone. If I text some people right now with a mundane little thing I know who I will hear back from in 2 minutes, 24 hours, and never. It wasn't worth responding to. That's a good friend, ignores you when you're lame.
Your emails were probably in a queue, handled by people who work on them full time. It's completely different than someone choosing to answer your email later.
I do the same. Of course, it depends on the situation. When someone is blocked, or when it's a fellow dev, I respond fast. But responding immediately often teaches people (especially non-technical ones) that you have time and focus to always reply this fast. Value your own time, and manage others' expectations. Scheduling that e-mail for 15 minutes later will save you lots of time and frustration in the long run.
I have it that way (especially Messenger, Slack). Otherwise, I would go crazy (literally, I get meltdowns from sensory overload).
The problem is that people EXPECT an answer soon-ish. Otherwise, they assume the lack of goodwill. Furthermore, nowadays less and fewer people use longer emails.
In a few workplaces, I committed to answering emails. I clarified that I might not read Slack unless for a pre-arranged meeting. Each time they considered it bizarre yet accepted (since it was a hard requirement from my side).
I hope to set a path for other neurodiverse people who lack such chutzpah.
And, in the company I run, Basecamp is the primary communicator to create an email-like asynchronous communication culture.
All my emails are on a one hour tape delay, to account for global lunch breaks in time zones around the world.
Somewhere in time and space, people are trying eat lunch right now.
Even SMS gets a tape delay for the first response. What if my phone was on vibrate in my coat pocket, hanging in the closet? After that first response, you'll know I have it in hand, so I'll make with the snappy replies, since I trusted you with my phone number to begin with.
Chats? The window was minimized. What do you want from me? Blood?
Emails may or may not enjoy 24 hour response times. I don't check all of my email addresses on a daily basis. Work emails are starkly divided from personal emails, for legal reasons regarding domain names (DNS) and bare metal server locations and territorial jurisdiction. Some animals are more equal than others.
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