Slow email replies cause serious anxiety

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161103-your-slow-email-replies-are-causing-serious-anxiety

by ohjeez • 10 years ago

82 67 10 years ago

LisaDziuba• 10 years ago

I remember a good post about Silicon Valley etiquette, which suggested startup founders to answer on emails within 24 hours. That's a good advice, but sometimes developing product is more important them answer on 101 email.

JumpCrisscross• 10 years ago

If you are overloaded with email, consider the workflows which are putting so much in your inbox.

http-teapot2• 10 years ago

I've never been as busy as the past 4 months. I don't reply to emails that requires lengthy text. If I can reply by "Yes", "No" or any of the derivatives then you'll get an answer from me.

If you have a problem, what do you think is the solution? If you need something, what exactly do you need? You want to contact me, what's your phone number and when are you available? You don't feel great, why? How can we solve the problem?

It's super important to not hurt people feelings and speak right and that takes a lot of my time (especially as a non-native English speaker.)

On the other end I commit to read every emails.

johansch4• 10 years ago

After 20 years of working I've learned: answer quickly (to the emails that you intend to reply to) even if the only thing you can say is "I have read this and will get back to you".

I used to fuzz and wait until I had the ultimate, perfect reply.. usually like 12-48 hours later. Turns out that is the wrong approach - for the reasons outlined in this article.

On the other end I commit to read every emails.

That was my defense too! I iterated it over and over to my team (my bosses would get preferential treatment...), but noone would believe me - unless I responded. People tend not to believe invisible things.

johansch4• 10 years ago

Actually, this would be a neat function in a mail client. Let's call it "Not now" - an action that:

a) pre-composes a reply with a canned response (but lets you edit it)

b) reminds you if you don't end up replying within some time (perhaps even parses that time out of what you ended up writing in that response)

robotresearcher• 10 years ago

This is a good strategy, and even better if you tell them when to expect a proper reply (and then you stick to it). That really helps the sender make plans at their end, and thus reduce their stress.

http-teapot2• 10 years ago

That makes sense, I think acknowledging with a "thank you" could go a long way. Not a big fan of committing to get back to the subject since it'd just delay the inevitable and possibly pile up onto a huge pile of todos. I guess there are sometimes no way around it.

themodelplumber• 10 years ago

If you have a problem, what do you think is the solution? If you need something, what exactly do you need? You want to contact me, what's your phone number and when are you available? You don't feel great, why? How can we solve the problem?

These are going to seem constructive criticisms for people with whom you share communications preferences. That ought to be a lot of the people who read HN. Information-driven people, in a sense.

Outside of that group, good luck if you ever have a boss or colleague who prefers rapport and empathetic communication over the more direct, rational style you prefer. You are going to continually wonder why that boss expects you to read their mind. They are going to continually wonder why you can't consider others' needs from time to time, and put yourself in their shoes.

A tough reality for those with a strong "just the facts" bias, but a commitment to read every email is laughable in this context. Without stepping outside of your comfort zone and learning to accommodate different communication styles, you are vulnerable to the sort of emotion-driven problems that come crashing down right at the most inconvenient time.

Declanomous2• 10 years ago

Good luck if you ever have a boss or a colleague who prefers rapport and empathetic communication over the more direct, rational style you prefer. You are going to continually wonder why that boss expects you to read their mind.

That hit home for me. I once got called down to HR to find my boss there. I discovered at that moment that she was frustrated with how long it was taking me to do my job. Part of my job is pulling data for mailings out of our database. We have ~1 million constituents, and regularly send mailings with tens of thousands of recipients. She had performed that role before me, and she felt that it could be done much more quickly that I was performing it.

Turns out, I could perform the task as quickly as she expected, but I had totally misunderstood a conversation we had months earlier. Word had gotten to my boss that a person had called in because of a factual error on a piece of mail we had sent them. She came by my desk and asked me about the error, as I had specifically said the file was 99.5% error free. I mentioned that the incorrect information had been put in the database by someone else, and the error rate was about what I had expected. She told me that she wanted 99.9% error free mailings from then on.

Later on, I sent her data for another mailing. She came by my desk and asked if the data was 100% correct. I said I was confident it was 99.9% correct. She said we couldn't have any errors this time, and we needed to make sure that the data was 100% correct. I told her that it was fundamentally impossible to be 100% sure the data was correct. She said that she understood, but she wanted it 99.99% correct, as we couldn't mail constituents information that was wrong. I said it would probably take 10x longer to run the data, but I could do that if she wanted it. She did, so I proceeded to make sure the data was 99.99% correct.

She was absolutely flabbergasted when I brought these conversations up. To her, she thought 100% confidence meant "pretty damn sure" and 99% confidence was somewhere around "It's probably right, maybe." From my perspective, 99.5% correct meant we'd have 5 or fewer bad rows for every 1000 rows in the data.

It was so weird for both of us, because we both thought we had been incredibly clear with the other person. I thought I had been very clear with my point -- I had spoken with her about how long it would take to ensure the data was 99.99% correct several times, because I was concerned about the delay. She had thought she was being emphatic, ad I was just being a pain in the ass. The thing is, that I'm generally not particularly hung up on the difference between literal meaning and figurative meaning, and she generally pretty clear when expressing what she wanted in technical conversations without hyperbole. So she hadn't even considered that I was interpreting her comments literally, and I hadn't considered that she was being hyperbolic.

It was definitely a huge learning experience for both of us. We had both been really stressed for months because we failed to communicate effectively with one another, despite both of us recognizing the same problem and trying to bring it to the other person's attention.

douche2• 10 years ago

Your emailing me bullshit that should be handled by IM is causing me anxiety.

I don't check my email more than once every 2-3 hours, assuming that I am actually working and not screwing around in a reactive pattern.

Choosing an appropriate level of communication severity and urgency should really be business 101.

tonyedgecombe• 10 years ago

I've found if I reply too quickly it often ends up creating more messages than if I just sit on things for a while. People often seem to resolve their own problems if you give them some time.

If they have a problem with that then that really is their problem, not mine.

Solinoid2• 10 years ago

This. Not sure why 'Send in x min/hours/point_in_future' isn't a more common feature of communication software.

pyre• 10 years ago

Using the Unix philosophy, you're supposed to use `mail` and `at`. ;-)

freelancezombie• 10 years ago

I use boomerang in gmail specifically for this.

underlingus• 10 years ago

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.

yawz• 10 years ago

What's wrong with a phone call? If we expect immediate feedback we should use more appropriate communication tools.

mwfunk• 10 years ago

It's all context and the work environment and the habits of the people you're dealing with. Phone calls can potentially be rude and disruptive because effectively you're telling another person that whatever you want in this instant is more important than whatever they're doing, no matter what they're doing. They have to stop everything to deal with the phone call, in the same way as if someone just barged into their office uninvited, sat down, and blindly started talking, ignoring whatever else might have been going on at the time.

In engineering environments, phone calls also tend to be ineffective ways to communicate technical information, whereas email threads (terse or not) preserve the history and context of decision making processes, which can be revisited or cited as needed.

Also, nowadays more and more people simply hate the experience of talking on the phone and would prefer that it didn't even exist in their lives as a communication device. So there's a whole personal preference angle that's independent of the pragmatic/effectiveness angles.

None of which is to say that there's anything wrong with a phone call, just that it really depends on where you work, what you do, who you work with, what they do, etc.

douche2• 10 years ago

I feel like instant messaging bridges a lot of the chasm between an email and a phone call. It is immediate, but it does not interrupt as badly as a phonecall. It is persistent (assuming you have an enterprise-grade system that has archiving). It is text, so there are no issues with dialect or pronunciation.

tene• 10 years ago

That's exactly correct. If your communication is in fact important enough to barge in disruptively and demand their full attention immediately, a phone call is appropriate. If your communication is not that important, then send an email and expect to wait, because they're doing other things. Either it's time-sensitive or it isn't. Either you need an immediate reply, or you don't. Why bother being anxious and nervous about something if it's not time-sensitive? If it's time-sensitive, then just make a call.

Where does this bizarre communication anxiety come from?

fragsworth• 10 years ago

I am completely the opposite. I get anxiety over e-mails that I've personally left unattended in my inbox, because I didn't have time to handle them yet. Damn it, another e-mail I have to "mark as unread"...

If I hit "send", and the ball is in someone else's court, then it's usually somewhat of a relief.

wfunction• 10 years ago

I'm like this too. I can't stand unread email.

codethief2• 10 years ago

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.

tgb2• 10 years ago

Or use the strategy that one of my professors used: refuse to get a school email address and all the associated computer accounts and hence be completely incapable of doing most paperwork. The important stuff they'd find a way to get him to do anyway.

Note: tenure may be required. Predating the email system helps, too.

ecdavis• 10 years ago

https://cs.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html

codethief2• 10 years ago

Well, not using email at all is pretty much impossible, considering how many committees said professor is in and how many students he's handling. It's also not his goal because he does like working with them and participating and so on. It's just that he was looking for a more time-effective method to do so.

bluedino• 10 years ago

There's a manager where I work who sets his phone to forward to voicemail 24 hours a day. He doesn't get your message until he checks his messages and it's frustrating as all hell to try to get him on the phone.

ghaff• 10 years ago

Seems reasonable. I'm frequently in situations where I can't answer a phone and others where I don't want to. I'm much more inclined to reply to texts.

emailtoss1• 10 years ago

For starters, you should be clear on when they expect a response back

If only recruiters and hiring managers took this seriously! They've been the worst communicators I've ever experienced in my professional life--as the applicant. I'm cool with ignorance of an initial application. That's normal. It's just after I interview with a company 2 or 3 times for a position and then they ignore my communication that I become quite annoyed.

Example 1: I am currently waiting on a response to a second in-person interview I had with a number of people at company X. I was told that I would "hear back next week" from the hiring manager. 2 weeks later, I sent an email to check in. 1 week later, still no response.

Example 2: A while back with the much more well-known company Y I was told that I would "receive feedback soon" by a recruiter after they had flown me out and had dedicated basically a half-day worth of interviews for me with their team. I followed-up 1 week later and received a message that "the team has been busy" and that they'll "get back to [me] next week." I sent another email checking in 2 weeks later. Ignored. I tried again 2 or 3 weeks later after that. Ignored again. And just because I still had the recruiter's email address, I followed-up 2 months later and finally got an email that the position had actually been removed.

charlesdm• 10 years ago

That's just how it is. Most recruiters have zero respect, and they should be avoided like the plague. The only great recruiter I've ever talked to was an inhouse guy who contacted me from Google, and you know, actually acted like a human being. But as with anything, that's one cog in a big machine. Some will be good, some will be bad. I believe he's since left to start a film company.

petre2• 10 years ago

We will get back to you = buzz off. Just don't expect a response and keep looking for other jobs. Eventually someone will respond. If they get back to you when you already found a job tell them you'll get back to them in two weeks.

epx• 10 years ago

You need to educate your peers that they should not expect immediate response. I am even delaying answers to Skype, Facebook and WhatsApp these days, otherwise people begin to ask you how is the weather in the middle of the night and keep sending ??? when you don't answer...

venomsnake• 10 years ago

Back in the day the dumb phones had an interesting function - you could use them for synchronous real time voice communication over public switching network. Unless apple removed it with the headphone jack - it is probably still somewhere in the device. We also have an Avogadro constant types and brands of chat apps.

If you use email for time sensitive communication - it is your fault.

darklajid2• 10 years ago

That seems crazy. Honestly, mail is my main communication medium exactly _because_ you cannot see when I read the message and because of the implied asynchronous exchange.

If the person on the other end is feeling anxious about that exchange I

a) have no sympathies, none at all

b) feel that they don't understand the medium they're using (as confirmed by the "I could always pick up the phone" line at the end of the article)

I'm trying hard to suppress a "Booohoooo" reply here. Persons that concerned about exchanges (and IMs make this that much harder - I see so many passive aggressive "And?"/"You read it, what do you think?" messages around me, because people assume that "Saw the message" equals "Has time and incentives to answer me right this very moment") need to see a doctor. If you can describe this as anxiety, you might need help.

tdkl• 10 years ago

That's why I love chatting with Wire, there's no "seen" status by design and can completely avoid this kind of mental BS.

petre2• 10 years ago

Also typing notification is annoying. You can turn it of in XMPP.

darklajid2• 10 years ago

That's cool, but plugging an IM service isn't the solution. People need to learn that communication (even using so-called IM services) isn't instant.

That and that they don't have a reasonable expectation to be the single most important contact of the person they're currently talking to.

Both would help. Wire might or might not be a good service, but is really unrelated here.

relyio• 10 years ago

You can use this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facesnoop/kebmejpc... to disable Facebook's "Seen" function if you want

FD: I made it

enraged_camel• 10 years ago

My team adheres to a common set of communication practices. It's part of the Employee Handbook that all new hires into my department are required to read and sign. A summary:

Email Sender:

- If you need an answer urgently ("urgent" defined as one of two things: it's an emergency, or the information you are lacking is a blocker for what you are currently working on), either pick up the phone and call the other party or send them an IM, instead of emailing them.

- Keep your emails concise and to-the-point. No essays.

- Don't mark your emails as "High Importance" or ask for a read receipt. We treat all emails as high importance, and you can feel assured that your email will be read within 4 hours max (see below).

Email Recipient:

- Read all incoming emails within 4 hours max and respond after reading if possible. If you don't have the information the sender is asking for, or are otherwise not ready for a full response, send a short one indicating that a) you read their email and b) you will respond within X hours, where X is a number that is equal to or less than 24.

- If the response is complex, summarize it as best as you can, and indicate that you will follow up in person or via phone to discuss the details. Don't write an essay back.

The purpose behind these set of rules is alignment of expectations for both parties. Ever since we implemented them, the vast portion of our "friction" with regards to team communication has disappeared. For example, it's really, really nice to never have to wonder if someone has read your email, and also really nice to know when you can expect a response (which means you can decide whether you want to wait for a response or work on something else in the meantime).

We also have a set of rules for IM (we use Slack) and phone, but those mostly say "be online and available, or mark yourself as Away or Busy as appropriate and people will respect it".

BeetleB2• 10 years ago

If you need an answer urgently ("urgent" defined as one of two things: it's an emergency, or the information you are lacking is a blocker for what you are currently working on), either pick up the phone and call the other party or send them an IM, instead of emailing them.

I have a rule for my coworkers: I'm not available on IM. Either email me (if not urgent) or call (if urgent). IM is the worst of both worlds, where people can contact you instantly, expect instant responses, and not feel bad about not responding to your response.

With a phone call, they cannot call me, and then stop talking in the middle of a conversation. With IM, they can.

(Of course, I still use IM to communicate stuff like URLs, etc when on the phone).

We treat all emails as high importance, and you can feel assured that your email will be read within 4 hours max (see below).

If they need me to respond within 4 hours, they should call me.

ajdecon• 10 years ago

Read all incoming emails within 4 hours max and respond after reading if possible.

Oh God. I hope this is "within business hours"? Because I sleep for more than 4 hours at a stretch, thanks.

(Also: occasionally a comprehensive reply requires an essay, or the equivalent. What do you do in this case?)

adrianratnapala• 10 years ago

As a partial response to this people have invented a new plage: out of office emails for when I email outside of 9-5 weekdays.

I already know that people don't work 24/7, I even understand timezones. If I fire off an email, I'm totally cool if they pick pick it up in the morning. But then I get prematurely excited by an "immediate" response which turns out to be just a bot telling me what I already know.

hackuser2• 10 years ago

I ran a support organization. Maybe the most effective policy we implemented for user satisfaction was that a human, not a machine, responded immediately to every email, even if only to say 'we've received your message and we'll get back to you at time X'.

Until you respond, the sender doesn't know if you received it or not (maybe there was a server or network problem on one end or the other; maybe it went into your spam folder), if you noticed it or not (maybe it was overlooked?), if you read it or not (too busy? blowing me off? mad at me? I'm not important enough?), and when you'll get around to doing something (should I count on it happening today? tomorrow? next week or month? ever?). They wonder if they should send another message (too pushy? but if the recipient didn't see it for one of the above reasons, sooner is better than later). They are operating in the dark unknown, and imagine all sorts of things. Effectively, you've set no expectations for them.

I know that, because I noticed how I felt and thought when I was on the other end. Our customers seemed much happier, even if response times (an actual response to their problem, not just a confirmation of receipt) and service completion times didn't change.

insickness• 10 years ago

Interesting. I do IT infrastructure support. I generally respond after I've completed the task but this makes me think that I should reply to their email immediately with something like, "I'm looking into this."

jason_pomerleau• 10 years ago

I managed an IT team for awhile. While you may be working diligently on the task, the 'client' (whoever that is) has no idea that any sort of action has even started, which can induce a lot of anxiety, depending on the situation. You'll have much happier customers if you keep them in the loop early.

It doesn't have to be arduous. The four words you wrote above are enough. Or, "Hi Bob, I'm on another task at the moment, but I should be able to look into this in a couple of hours. Will be in touch." has a significant calming effect, and will often buy you extra time.

Of course, Bob might just say "this can't wait a couple of hours" but that's a separate chapter in human relations. :)

hackuser2• 10 years ago

I would only add: Set some expectation for when they'll next hear from you, or they will eventually feel they are in the dark again.

josh_carterPDX• 10 years ago

It could just be me and the way I handle email, but by using something like Yesware you could easily mitigate the anxiety around slow responses. Plus, if I see someone open my email a few days later it's usually a good indication my message is still front of mind and sending a follow up email will usually trigger a faster response.

samstokes• 10 years ago

This appears to be a human interest story masquerading as a social psychology report:

Your slow email replies are causing serious anxiety

citing one anecdote, then four paragraphs later:

there are no statistics or research on just how anxious people get when e-mails go unanswered

Someone2• 10 years ago

I can see that happening with love letters, certainly when sent over snail mail, but with business mail? That “marketing operations manager” needs help; I don’t see why the world would have to accommodate to suit him.

Also: I found that it helps to have a rule in your email client that says “if I am not in the To: field, move this to the folder called CC”.

That is a folder you can safely (1) ignore.

Similarly, one _could_ add a rule “if there are over 3 people in the To: field, move this to the Read Later folder”, but that is quite risky.

(1) not quite, as long threads may evolve to contain questions for you without people adjusting the list of addressees, but that’s the fault of the senders.

ansgri• 10 years ago

Good suggestions, might use myself. Also, my favorite rule is 'discard emails with empty subject'. I'm teaching an university class, and the younger generation seems to not understand the ethics of email.

GrinningFool• 10 years ago

Or we in the older generation seem to not understand how the ethics of email are evolving :)

Slow email replies cause serious anxiety

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