Question: Do you prefer responding to non-critical e-mails immediately?
Today’s question is very brief, and revolves around one of the most widely used internet activities: e-mail. If you have at least one e-mail account, do you prefer responding to non-critical e-mails right away?
Following are some benefits and downsides of responding to non-critical e-mails immediately and responding to non-critical e-mails after a certain time frame. By non-critical e-mails, I am referring to personal, business and other e-mails which do not require your immediate response.
Responding to non-critical e-mails immediately vs. responding to e-mails later
Responding immediately
There can be several benefits of responding to non-critical e-mails immediately. Responding to e-mails immediately results in less tasks that you have to focus on, more free time, taking care of important tasks and communication immediately, not keeping people hanging on, etc.
Responding to non-critical e-mails immediately can also result in a few problems including you making mistakes because of composing a response too fast, forgetting to include something important, responding with something or in a manner that you may regret later because you responded too fast without thinking straight, etc.
Responding later
The benefits of responding to e-mails at a later date can be numerous also, specially when we respond too quickly and make some mistake or forget something. Responding at a later time can result in more time to think of a good response, more flexible time schedule that you can modify to your needs, less sense of panic or hurry when it comes to responding to others, not allowing incoming e-mail to dictate and take over your times, etc.
Responding later to non-critical e-mails can result in a few downsides also, including keeping someone waiting longer even when you did not have to respond immediately, communication between you and someone else going at a very slow rate, the other person losing interest in you or your response or the e-mail topic in question by the time they get your response, etc.
Do you prefer responding to non-critical e-mails right away?
So, do you prefer responding to non-critical e-mails right away?
Please let me know, thanks you. 
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( September 10th, 2007 at 1:56 am )
Bes,
Depends who’s e-mailing me. If it’s a friend, I might just call them instead. If it’s someone out of the blue contacting me, I may or may not respond depending on the type of e-mail (personal, business). For the most part, I try to respond right away.
( September 10th, 2007 at 6:42 am )
I have a bad habit of not responding to e-mails for weeks. I can remind myself of it in the day, but by the time I get around to it I always forget. I’ve been trying to make a habit of it to respond immediately so I don’t forget
( September 10th, 2007 at 6:36 pm )
Ronald, thanks for the answer.
So basically, you try to respond right away, and you do not respond to e-mails simply because they exist. Your response is based on the type of e-mail and the type of response it needs.
So in your case, if someone does not get a response from you in a day, that means they will not get a response?
Crystal, thanks for the comment and for coming here. I really appreciate it.
Because of your habit, do you have a lot of e-mails that you have probably never responded to? Responding to e-mails immediately can help, and so can marking e-mails which need responses.
Are you using any specific e-mail client to respond to e-mails? Some e-mail clients like thunderbird can allow users to mark e-mails in different colors so that later on it can be easy to see which e-mails need a response.
( September 10th, 2007 at 6:47 pm )
Bes,
Pretty much, yes. E-mails not responded to within an day are lost in the black abyss of e-mail archives.
( September 12th, 2007 at 2:58 am )
Thanks for explaining Ronald. I will keep that in mind the next time I e-mail you.
j/k
( September 12th, 2007 at 12:06 pm )
ditto Ronald’s comment. If I don’t respond to an email right away (or in the same day), it’ll get burried under other emails, and I’ll forget until I suddenly remember weeks/months later during some random unrelated moment.
( September 12th, 2007 at 7:31 pm )
Thanks for sharing Stacee. I have to keep that in mind too then.
Do you use any e-mail client to manage e-mails? I am starting to rely solely on Thunderbird a bit more now to let me know which e-mals to reply to, and not my memory. That way, I can think a bit less about that and not have to remember the number and types of responses I have to deal with all the time, and hoping all the time too that I remember things on time.
I have some e-mails that I have not responded to in about 2 months, as they require some detailed responses. I just remembered, after reading your comment, another e-mail that I probably forgot to reply to. I wonder if I can reply now, apologize and not get laughed at by that other person.
( September 12th, 2007 at 9:10 pm )
As I am an online business man, I tend to look who emailed me, and ask my self , is that mail need my professional or social requirements? . If yes I email back immediately.
And if it is not that important, I check them in the evening when I am totally free every day.
( September 20th, 2007 at 3:58 am )
i prefer to answer immediately, otherwise they just pile up. i use eprompter so if i am at the computer i can answer them immediately.
( October 8th, 2007 at 3:24 pm )
i always try to response immediately; otherwise i may forget to reply
( October 11th, 2007 at 10:38 pm )
As the golden rule goes..I try to reply to all the emails I get asap. It pisses me off when I don’t get replies from people for weeks on end.
( October 12th, 2007 at 5:27 pm )
I respond as soon as I see the email more often than not, else I forget about it later. As well, I have this natural hatred of putting things off for later and letting my backlog of things to do pile up.
( October 15th, 2007 at 6:26 am )
It has be ASIST (As soon as I see it)
Not that I do that myself! - Although I do believe I’m getting better having spent too many entire days cleaning up inboxes that have become cluttered with non-urgent messages. By biggest issue is decisiveness…. as David Allen says “What is the next step/action with this?” - as soon as that next step/action looks a little unclear (or rather requires me to get clear in my head) - I leave the email and think “I’ll get back to this later”.
Decide now: Respond - Delete - Action!
( October 26th, 2007 at 2:50 am )
It depends on a person who has written a letter to me. If I consider it important to answer the letter I will do it immediately.
( October 29th, 2007 at 6:15 am )
If possible, I will reply my emails right away because I believe that it is one of the ways that I can “get things done”. I’ve read about how we should take action immediately to avoid “processing” the same email twice (which is a waste of time).
If an email require some lengthy explanation or a difficult discussion, I will not reply straight away, but let my responses incubate at the back of my mind (I have a habit of thinking about things and forming sentences whenever I am driving or in the shower) before replying it.
If an email requires a detailed response, I would star it, but I will make sure that I “unstar” it before it is pushed into the second page (otherwise I will forget about it!).
( October 29th, 2007 at 12:32 pm )
Sorry for the late response everyone. I hope you are all doing good since your first comment.
Adrian, thank you for the comment.
So for you, time is of importance and certain e-mails can wait before you respond to them. Does this mean you respond to all business emails immediately?
The subconscious mind, thanks for sharing too.
I have not used eprompter yet I think. What do you do if you are at a computer away from home or a computer without that software?
company information, thanks for the comment. A question: is there some other more specific username I can call you with please?
Forgetting to reply is one of the results of not responding immediately, and I have to think about that all the time. So, you respond to both personal and non-personal emails right away?
Siddha, thanks for the comment and sharing too.
True, sometimes not getting a response for a long time can upset people. Like this comment of mine, for example; I apologize if responding late to this has upset anyone including you.
Jack Page, thanks for sharing. The backlog does indeed become problematic in several cases later on.
For example, I am now replying to about 63 comments that I waited solely because of wanting to think more about many comments before responding. Now I am hoping to finish it all.
Mark - London, thanks for the comment, and for sharing that term.
Leaving decisions for later in many cases does seem like a bad idea, specially if things keep piling up as Jack Page [above mentions].
Maybe we need a good way of managing pile ups in an effective and timely manner also?
Karen, thanks for coming and commenting.
Do you mean the importance of the sender of the e-mail, or the nature of the e-mail itself? For example, what if it is an important e-mail from someone who is not close to you, or an unimportant email from someone who is close to you?
Pelf, thank you also for coming and commenting.
I like that way of looking at it; viewing “the same email twice.” I also sometimes let a lot of my responses and replies develop in my head before responding. Of course, that results in a huge backlog of warranted responses in many cases also.
When you say “pushed into the second page“, do you mean the page of completed actions metaphorically, or something literal in a program like Thunderbird or Outlook?
Thanks again! I really appreciate it, and I am learning a lot too about managing e-mails and responses and similar correspondence.
( October 29th, 2007 at 7:14 pm )
@Bes: I use GMail, and I set the main page to display only 25 emails. What I was trying to say was that I always try to avoid my starred email to get buried in the second page (where I don’t get to see it, and will subsequently forget about it). I always try to complete/reply to emails that are starred before they get buried
( August 15th, 2008 at 12:43 am )
no, i prefer to not doing a response..