You Don't Owe Everyone an Immediate Response

A message arriving is not the same as a message being urgent.

Your phone buzzes while you are cooking. You glance at it, which means you have now read it, which means the sender might know you have read it, which means you should probably answer. The onions burn a little.

Multiply that by a work inbox, three group chats, a school app, and a family thread, and you have a day spent on call for everyone you know. Nobody asked you to live this way, exactly. It just became the default.

The good news is that much of the pressure is manufactured, and a fair share of it is manufactured by you. The research on this is unusually reassuring.

The urgency is mostly in your head

Researchers Laura Giurge and Vanessa Bohns ran eight studies on a simple question: when someone sends a non-urgent work email outside normal hours, how fast do they expect a reply, and how fast does the receiver think they expect one?

The two answers did not match. Receivers consistently assumed senders wanted a quicker response than senders actually did. The researchers call this the email urgency bias, and it was strongest for exactly the messages that cause the most dread: the ones that arrive in the evening or on a weekend.

Think about what that means. The person who emailed you at 9 p.m. on Saturday was most likely clearing her own list at a time that suited her. She was not picturing you dropping everything. You supplied that part.

The fix the researchers tested was small. When senders added a brief note saying a reply was not needed right away, the bias eased. A sentence was enough.

What constant checking costs

The American Psychological Association's Stress in America survey gave the habit a name: the constant checker. In its 2017 report, 43 percent of Americans said they constantly check their email, texts, or social media.

On a 10-point stress scale, constant checkers averaged 5.3. Everyone else averaged 4.4. Employed people who constantly checked work email on their days off reported the highest level of all, 6.0.

A survey like this cannot prove that checking causes the stress. Stressed people may simply check more. But an experiment from the University of British Columbia tested the direction directly. Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth Dunn had 124 adults spend one week limiting email to three checks a day and another week checking as often as they liked. People felt less stressed during the limited week. They also found the limit hard to stick to, which tells you something about how sticky the habit is.

And there is one more piece. A study led by William Becker of Virginia Tech looked at what happens when an employer expects people to monitor email after hours. The finding was that the expectation alone was enough to raise strain, for employees and for their partners, even when no actual work got done in that time. Being on call can wear on you whether or not the call comes.

Sort your messages into three speeds

"Reply to everything immediately" is not a system. Neither is "ignore everything." What you need is a quick way to decide how fast something deserves an answer.

• Speed: Now

  • What belongs here: Safety, a child or dependent who needs you, a same-day logistics question with a real deadline

  • When you answer: As soon as you see it

• Speed: Today

  • What belongs here: Direct questions from people who are waiting on you to move forward

  • When you answer: At your next check-in window

• Speed: This week

  • What belongs here: Group chats, FYIs, social invitations, newsletters, "thoughts?"

  • When you answer: In a batch, when you choose

Most people who try this are surprised by how little lands in the first row. A typical day might contain one or two true "now" messages. Everything else has been borrowing their urgency.

A useful test when you are unsure: if this had arrived by mail, would it matter that it took two days?

Set windows instead of standing guard

Borrow the structure of the UBC experiment. Pick the times you will look at messages and leave them closed in between.

A starter schedule:

• Email: three times a day. Mid-morning, after lunch, late afternoon.

• Texts and chats: when you are between tasks, not during them.

• Evenings: one short check if you need it, then done.

Then make it easier on yourself by changing the settings instead of relying on willpower.

1. Turn off notifications for everything that is not a person. Apps, promotions, news, social media. They can wait until you open them.

2. Mute group chats. You will still see them. You just will not be summoned by them.

3. Create a short list of people who can always reach you. Most phones let certain contacts ring through a do-not-disturb setting. Your kids' school, a parent you care for, your partner.

4. Turn off read receipts where you can. They add pressure for you and information for nobody.

5. Move work email off your home screen, or off your phone, on days off.

The always-reach-me list in step 3 is what makes the rest feel safe. Knowing the real emergencies will get through makes it much easier to let everything else sit.

Tell people what to expect

The email urgency research suggests the whole problem is a mismatch in expectations, and that stating them out loud fixes most of it. So state them.

An email signature line. "I check email a few times a day. If something is urgent, please call."

When you send a message at an odd hour yourself. "Sending this now because it suits my schedule. No need to reply until you're back at work."

For a friend who expects instant replies. "I'm slow on texts during the week. It's never personal. If you need me quickly, call."

For the family group chat. "I've muted this so I can focus during the day. I catch up in the evenings. Call me if it's time-sensitive."

For a manager, if after-hours messages are common. "When you message in the evening, do you need an answer that night, or is first thing in the morning fine? I'd like to make sure I'm matching what you need."

That last one is worth asking. Many managers have never thought about it, and the honest answer is usually "morning is fine." Now you know, and you can stop guessing.

Replying late without the apology spiral

When you do answer a day or three later, skip the paragraph of remorse. A long apology suggests you did something wrong, and it invites the other person to agree.

Instead of: "I'm SO sorry, this week has been absolutely insane, I'm the worst."

Try:

• "Thanks for your patience. Here's my answer."

• "Just getting to this now. Yes, Saturday works."

• "Catching up on messages. Great news about the job."

Thank them, answer, move on. Most people will not have noticed the delay nearly as much as you did.

What about the people who do expect instant answers

A few will. Usually they are not being unreasonable; they have simply been trained by your past speed. If you have always replied in four minutes, forty feels like a snub.

The retraining is gradual and mostly wordless. Reply a little slower, reliably. Give a time when you can: "I'll get back to you on this by tomorrow afternoon." Within a few weeks, the new pace becomes what they expect from you.

If the constant-contact pressure in your life comes with real anxiety, trouble sleeping, or a sense of dread you cannot shake, that is worth mentioning to a doctor or a licensed mental health professional. A notification setting can only do so much.

Try this today

1. Count your true "now" messages. For the rest of today, tally how many messages genuinely needed an answer within the hour. Write the number down.

2. Change two settings. Mute one group chat and turn off notifications for one app.

3. Add one expectation line to your email signature or send it to the person whose messages stress you most.

Being reachable is something you offer. It is not something you owe around the clock.

Sources

• Cornell Chronicle, "Set expectations to reduce email stress" (Giurge & Bohns, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes)

• American Psychological Association, "Stress in America 2017: Technology and Social Media"

• University of British Columbia Department of Psychology, "Checking your email less can help reduce stress" (Kushlev & Dunn, Computers in Human Behavior)

• Workplace Insight, "The mere expectation that we check emails outside working hours harms our wellbeing" (Becker, Belkin, Conroy & Tuskey)