Your Email Does Not Constitute My Emergency - NYT

Credit...Pete Gamlen

One morning last summer, I sent a rough draft of a speech to a colleague for feedback. Even though it was a long read and she was away at a conference, she sent me her initial comments that very evening. “Sorry for the delay,” she wrote.

I hadn’t expected to hear back from her that week, let alone that day. She wasn’t late. But she felt the need to apologize anyway.

It turns out she wasn’t alone. When I searched my emails from last year, “sorry for the delay” appeared 547 times.

Apologizing for slow replies is a symptom of unrealistic demands in an always-on culture. Work is presumed to be the dominant force in our lives. Instead of making space for leisure and rest, we have to keep monitoring our communication channels, ready to drop everything at any time. Being reachable around the clock means living at the mercy of other people’s calendars. It’s a recipe for burnout. And it prizes shallow reactions over deep reflection. We wind up rushing to get things done instead of doing them well.

When it comes to email, however, most of what’s in your inbox is less urgent than it appears.

In a series of experiments, the researchers Laura Giurge and Vanessa Bohns demonstrated what they call an email urgency bias. When people received emails outside work hours, they thought senders expected faster replies than they did. The more recipients believed they needed to respond quickly, the more stressed they felt — and the more they tended to struggle with burnout and work-life balance.

The stress was mitigated when senders took a simple step: communicating their expectations. Just saying something like “This isn’t urgent, so get to it whenever you can” was enough to alleviate the perceived pressure to respond quickly. And clarifying expectations isn’t just good for our well-being: Evidence from the transition to remote work during the pandemic shows that when managers are explicit about their communication expectations — including target response times — their employees report being more productive and effective in their daily tasks.

When we place too high a priority on the speed of our email replies, we destroy our ability to focus. Interruptions derail our train of thought and wreak havoc on our progress. When you know you don’t have to reply to emails right away, you can actually find flow and dedicate your full attention where you wish.

In a Dutch financial services company, certain employees were asked to change their email notifications. Instead of replying continuously, they blocked out two or three periods a day to respond in batches. For some participants, this batching reduced burnout in the short term, especially if their inboxes were overflowing. The researchers concluded, however, “that email batching should not be regarded as panacea for enhancing well-being.”

Altering how we correspond is just one part of the challenge. Resetting the expectation that we all live on-demand lives will require a broader culture change. A first step is for everyone to stop mistaking promptness for politeness. I used to take pride in answering quickly, promising my students I’d reply to all emails within 24 hours. And when someone wrote me back promptly, I felt valued, viewing swift responses as displays of care. But the pandemic forced me to rethink that.

One of the silver linings of the Covid era is that people became more thoughtful about communicating digital boundaries — and more understanding about accepting them. We saw an explosion of email signature lines like “My work hours may not be your work hours” and “Answer at your convenience.” We can’t let that boundary-setting vanish with the pandemic. We need it to become endemic.

How quickly people answer you is rarely a sign of how much they care about you. It’s usually a reflection of how much they have on their plate. Delayed replies to emails, texts and calls are often symptoms of being overextended and overwhelmed. If the message isn’t time-sensitive, we should count delays in weeks or months, not days or hours.

Along with being clear about expectations, senders can drop some bad habits. You don’t ever have to resend a message with the note “Bumping this up in your inbox.” Thanks, but I manage my own priorities … and you just dropped further down the list.

We rarely know what’s on other people’s lists, so we shouldn’t imply that our priorities take precedence. If you’re really concerned that they haven’t gotten back to you, you can always resend your message with the note, “Just wanted to make sure this came through.” It shows respect for what might be on the receiver’s plate.

When we’re the ones taking our time to reply, we can let go of the guilt and apply some self-compassion. We’re all drowning in messages. If you didn’t commit to a deadline, you can’t be late. You’re allowed to take your sweet time! Instead of apologizing for your delay, you can express gratitude to your correspondent for being a reasonable human: “thanks for your patience.”

Rethinking what counts as late is especially important for people who are prone to beating themselves up for being unresponsive. Namely, women. Women apologize more than men, because they tend to have a lower threshold for what qualifies as offensive behavior. This isn’t in their heads — it’s in the culture around them. We still live in a world that places unfair pressure on women to drop everything for others. When a man takes a week to respond, he must be busy with something important. If a woman takes even a day to reply, it feels as if she’s failing to live up to the duty of care.

For most of human history, being responsive meant paying attention to the needs of a small group of people in your immediate vicinity: family, friends, neighbors, colleagues. Now there’s no limit to the number of people who can barge into your inbox, ping you by text, and slide into your DMs. Digital overload cries out for us to redefine what it means to be responsive. The true test of a relationship isn’t the speed of the reply. It’s the quality of attention you receive.

Every time someone apologizes for a slow reply, seize the opportunity to reset norms. When my colleague said she was sorry for not getting back to me until nighttime, I replied, “Apology rejected!” And yes, I sent that one right away.

Adam Grant, a contributing Opinion writer, is an organizational psychologist at Wharton. He is the author of “Think Again,” and the host of the TED podcast “Re:Thinking.”

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