
The morning mail is my enemy - gruseom
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/the-morning-mail-is-my-enemy.html
======
vm
Herein lies a problem with communication. Someone takes the time to write you.
Social conventions obligate you to respond (though you'd be better off if you
didn't respond to most). Even if you choose to "put it off for later," it
weighs in the back of your mind.

Now fast forward to modern day, and the cost/time required to send an email is
trivial. More emails get sent. Busy people get more inbound. Social
conventions obligate you to respond, especially if it's someone you know.

We'd all be better off if the expectations of response were lower. That's why
I like Twitter. There is little expectation or obligation to respond.

~~~
jonmc12
Einstein and Darwin were studied for correspondence patterns and replied to
25%, 32% of letters, respectively:
[http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2005/oct/26/what-
do...](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2005/oct/26/what-do-einstein-
darwin-and-emails-have-in-common)

~~~
lmm
Notably that article doesn't claim this is anything specific to Einstein and
Darwin, but rather a general pattern.

------
domador
Writing thoughtful, complete responses to Hacker News posts takes me a long
time, time I could use instead to write my own essays or code. HN is my enemy
(or frenemy). So I mostly just lurk.

(Sometimes I fail to resist the urge to respond, as you can see.)

~~~
nikic
I like this attitude. It is better to lurk than to reply with low-quality
posts :)

------
Swizec
I think @FAKEGRIMLOCK has the best idea here. As others have suggested,
writing long well thought-out responses takes time. A lot of time.

But writing like a dinosaur, with _short_ well thought-out responses. Now that
doesn't take that long. And you can see this in how prolific @FAKEGRIMLOCK is.

To put it another way: LONG RESPONSE TAKE TIME. TO THE POINT. QUICK.

~~~
mturmon
Or, as I once read somewhere,

"Omit needless words."

~~~
mhartl
I see what you did here. The _Little Book_ FTW!

------
jgrahamc
It was 9 years before his next children's book came out, although he did have
time to write Strunk and White between the two.

------
pervycreeper
In both cases, one should note, he nonetheless provided a personal and honest
response, following the demands of politeness and social obligation that occur
in small communities.

The trend in our ability to address those outside of our immediate social
networks seems to be that it will only get easier as time passes. Either our
idea of what constitutes polite social reciprocity will have to change, or new
ways of mediating these communications will have to be found (automated
prioritizing, etc).

~~~
ctdonath
Polite social reciprocity has changed. Many contacts are ignored outright
(hanging up on telemarketers, not acknowledging job applications, not
returning voicemails, etc.). Delayed responses are the norm with emails,
texting and voicemails. Greetings and closings are rare unto suspicious in
emails. Spam filters black/white-list what gets through. Long replies are
rare. ...and little of these are ever considered "rude", as we all understand
the staggering volume of messaging faced and managed, if with occasional
notable failures.

Today, E.B.White would just set up an auto-reply and get on with his next
book.

ETA: Right, he wouldn't as indicated. Though something would give, and some
technology would be leveraged, making replies take much less than hand-typed-
on-paper.

~~~
gruseom
_Today, E.B.White would just set up an auto-reply_

I disagree. In fact, White himself disagrees in the letter. He could have set
up an auto-reply by letting his publisher handle his mail, but found that
"evasive and unsatisfying".

------
ghaff
One thing that really annoys me is when I get an email asking for advice about
pursuing a career in my type of work or something along those lines, I write a
reasonably thorough response, and... Nothing. Not even a "Hey, thanks for
taking the time to respond." Apparently what I received was just a form letter
asking for a job. This sort of event, which I assume is not unique to me,
really discourages taking the time to respond to queries.

~~~
staleydavid
I agree, this has happens to me regularly. Someone reaches out on email asking
for advice, I take the time to write a significant response, and get none in
return. I've also found it discouraging as this kind of response is the most
common I get. It's rare for me to see so much as a "thanks for the reply!" and
rarer still to see an in kind response. I'm not very motivated to reply when
I've been trained that they usually won't return the courtesy.

~~~
markokocic
I can comprehend this sentiment, but, on the other hand, I rarely find "thank
you" emails add anything to the conversation. It's just sitting there, wasting
few seconds of my time to read it, distracts me when searching for information
in old conversations with zero information added.

What's worse, "thank you" emails also socially force me to add mere "be nice
boilerplate" to mu future emails to that person, instead being short and to
the point. It's funny how technical, business, or fact based conversation can
become unnecessary long and loose the focus with all that boilerplate.

On the other hand, being nice and polite is good in real life, on the face to
face (or voice to voice) conversation, but, IMHO, just waste everyone time in
email.

~~~
icebraining
It'd be nice if we could send emails with a flag to skip the inbox. It'd still
appear as a reply to the thread, but not add to the firehose.

------
eps
Translated to the start-up terms it reads:

    
    
      Support email is my enemy.
    

Especially in application to a single-founder situations. You can't ignore
support emails, you can't even lag answering them, because they are essential
to establishing and growing the evangelist core, but they can easily eat ALL
of your time.

------
jal278
There's a complicated trade-off between cultivating or supporting interest in
what you've done and creating new things. For an academic like me, it's the
trade-off between updating the CV and promoting your academic papers versus
the necessary time needed to just do good new work

------
andygcook
I'm sure 5 letters a day in 1961 was just as daunting as 50 emails a day is in
2012.

------
nopinsight
That is why I do not reply to (or even check) emails in the morning. It
detracts you from important works and decisions. When I check them later in
the day, I also try to set a quota of time to process them. When the quota is
gone, less important emails must wait. Some may wait a long, long time, but I
have not seen negative repercussions yet.

I have read about successful people who do the same.

------
mikebracco
I know this is not really the point of the post but on a practical level I'd
recommend Text Expander (if on a Mac) to anyone sending repetitive canned
responses. Huge time saver.

------
dools
Peace and love: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAU0l7325w0>

------
mynameishere
He must have been sufficiently flattered to respond to them. I would have put
them in the fireplace after the 10th or so.

------
poundy
What if you sent a read notice? That would let the sender know that you have
seen the email.

------
circa
Damned if you respond. Damned if you don't.

