
Yes I Saw Your Text, but Don’t Expect Me to Respond Instantly - rvcamo
https://blog.automateads.com/yes-i-saw-your-text-but-dont-expect-me-to-respond-instantly/
======
DarkTree
I was hoping this article was going to highlight the emotional issues with
responding instantly as opposed to the "lack of time" issue. I don't respond
to most texts instantly, not because I'm driving or busy with my life, but
because I just don't feel like responding right away. I am not sure why this
is. I am not trying to be rude, and most of the time I feel bad about it and
think that maybe I have communication issues, such as keeping in touch with
people. But I am starting to realize that we shouldn't be expected to respond
immediately "just because". We shouldn't have to be occupied to warrant not
responding. Unfortunately, it is a stigma, and people will continue to get
upset if they don't hear back within a matter of minutes. I wish someone would
touch on this issue as I've never really seen it discussed.

~~~
kafkaesque
I read the article, and it wasn't all that insightful, to be honest.

However, this is a topic I'm very interested in because my fiancee is the
first person I've ever met that _does not_ reply back soon to a text message
and hardly picks up her phone.

When we first started dating, this was a little strange. She would sometimes
reply back within minutes. Other times she would take up to two hours. I
couldn't gauge her interest in me.

It turns out due to her age and culture (non-Western), she just simply does
not use her phone that much. So she isn't looking at it a lot.

We've argued that there must be a middle ground, though, and this is where it
gets interesting.

This isn't really a technology problem. It is a philosophical one.

When we deal with people everyday, there is an unwritten and unspoken social
contract we agree on. The case for not replying immediately to a stranger or
an acquaintance is easily accepted, I believe. As the article says, you may be
driving, you may be in another phone call, busy reading or studying. A
stranger or acquaintance takes a longer time to sit higher up in your priority
list. This is a basic socialization rule. I accept these things easily, and
what's more, I act according to this concept. I basically categorise people's
importance in my world. Even if I've read the text message, seen the missed
phone call, or read the email. These categories are key, I believe.

However, when a loved one, your significant other, spouse, fiancee or fiance,
messages you or phones you or emails you, it is a totally different ball game,
in my view. Emergency purposes, communicating your whereabouts sooner makes
cohabitation much easier, especially when planning your day, unexpected plans,
people know your schedule/routine and any changes may cause grief to your
loved ones, etc.

I do feel like family whom you do not live with is considered a step down in
the priority list, but those you live with, specifically a partner, is
different. And feeling insulted when they don't respond within 30 minutes at
most generally, is pretty natural.

~~~
DanBC
I would find it infuriating if I was expected to reply to every contact within
30 minutes. Sure, if it's important I'll reply. But otherwise? It feels
control-freaky.

~~~
teaneedz
Totally agree that it's very controlling and somewhat selfish to expect quick
replies. 30 minutes is just an arbitrary line waiting for a misunderstanding
or argument. Face-to-face and phone calls are different. If it's important,
call. If it's not, I'll get to a reply when I'm free or not interrupting
someone else I'm actually communicating with IRL.

~~~
piyush_soni
But isn't expecting your spouse to answer your call immediately being "control
freak" as well? _Who do you think I am to answer your call, a Slave?_
Seriously, this s*it has gone to annoying levels. Expecting timely response to
time sensitive questions is just expecting the other person to have some basic
"mobile etiquettes", not an intent to control them. Not all questions are
life-or-death critical, some just needs quick response. "My friend is asking
whether you'd like to come to dinner at his place tonight". A simple "Yes", or
"No" would suffice. Calling for every such thing is actually much more time
consuming for both parties involved (though that's the last option).

------
melvinmt
> If someone really needs you they will pick up the phone and call you. It’s
> that simple.

I actually never feel the urge to respond quickly to a text message. I treat
it as the asynchronous platform that it is. Phone calls on the other hand are
way more intrusive than text messages and I hardly ever answer any call
because of it.

~~~
judemelancon
I always thought the asynchronicity was the main positive of SMS.

~~~
mhurron
Eventually all communication mediums will be expected to be instantaneous and
synchronous. It happened with email, it happened faster with SMS because
everyone expects you to have your phone up your ass at all hours of the day.

------
tonyarkles
Sigh... Kind of OT but I'm reminded of an old client of mine. He would
routinely send feature requests and bug reports over SMS. At the start, I'd
interrupt whatever I was doing and log it in the appropriate place, but after
the first few weeks of this, it started to get pretty disruptive. I didn't
trust myself enough to remember to go back through my texts later and catch
everything from the messages.

So I drew a line in the sand and explained to him that those things needed to
go to email, so that I could deal with them at an appropriate time and not
worry about losing them. This seemed to work well at first, but then every
email was immediately followed by an SMS: did you get my email? The first few
times, I interpreted that as "I sent an email a few days ago and didn't hear
back" so I'd frantically go check my email and see the message: sent 2 minutes
ago.

I don't miss that client. Eventually the solution was to ignore him on SMS
entirely. Well... Eventually the solution was to fire him as a client, but
that was for other reasons.

------
markbnj
You can definitely see the effect of this within development teams too. I
remember one specific exchange where a developer sent "X is broken" to the
whole team, pretty much all of whom immediately read it and then started
wondering how "X got broken." A minute later the OP sent "Oops my bad, typo."
What is the cost of a two minute interruption for an entire team, or of the
broken concentration, which probably lasts longer than the original
interaction did?

~~~
shocks
> What is the cost of a two minute interruption for an entire team

Approximately zero.

~~~
Raphmedia
No.

We bill $120 hourly. If the client CC the whole team on a problem, the whole
team is going to take time off their current work to read the email. (5 mins *
6 workers) They are then going to reply to the message (2 mins * 6) and then
investigate (10 mins * 6). A manager is likely going to step in and manage the
team (30 mins). Finally, one developper is going to fix the issue (1 hour) and
all the other developers are going to require getting back in "the zone"
(average of 11 mins *6).

That's three hours (or $360) wasted for an email that should have been
properly sent to the product manager or to the support team. If the client do
this every week and nobody notice it and educate him, he is going to waste
thousands a month of the project's budget.

~~~
drcross
My grandma had a saying for people like you- "they know the price of
everything but the value of nothing."

~~~
tedunangst
Enlighten us. What is the value of the email about a nonexistent problem sent
to the whole team?

------
john_b
One of the best and simplest changes I ever made was to have my phone on
airplane mode by default. Originally, the change was just to maximize the life
of a dying battery, but even after I replaced the battery I discovered that I
was happier, more focused, and less stressed when I only checked my phone 3-4
times a day. Essentially, I treat it like I treat email.

Everyone who knows me knows that I do this and I have told them that I am not
going to change. For emergencies, they know the people I usually see each day
and know to call one of them.

I've discovered that when people can't expect to contact you on a whim at any
time, they think ahead and let you know what their plans are in advance. Both
parties can then arrange their availability in advance and use their time more
efficiently.

After a year of doing this it makes you realize just how absurd and artificial
the expectation of continuous availability is. My attention is a resource and
I am going to control how I allocate it, not others.

------
zeidrich
I've never had a person actually get upset with me because I've not responded
back to a text immediately.

I have some people who will always respond to my texts immediately, and some
people who I will be lucky if I hear back in an hour.

I don't hold any ill will towards the second group of people. I come to expect
that from them.

The only time I might get agitated is if someone always responds immediately
and then stops, just because it's violating my expectations.

I wonder if this person were to stop compulsively responding to texts
immediately if people would stop getting angry when he doesn't.

------
MisterBastahrd
I have a phone for a reason. It isn't to send telegraphs. I don't carry my
phone with me to work, because people who need to get in touch with me have my
work phone number and I live a few minutes away from the office. If your ego
is so fragile that you need realtime validation of your thoughts, then we
aren't going to get along. I'll keep on doing what I'm doing because it works
for me, and I hope you find people who are willing to spend all day looking at
their phone. I'd rather see everything else around me.

------
astrowilliam
As someone deeply entrenched in a mobile workspace I tend to ignore a lot of
txts because they aren't important. If they were important the person that's
texting me would go through the proper channels and write up specs, etc for me
instead of blasting a "WE NEED THIS NEW THING ASAP!" style message. Those
texts get ignored and I send the person a Hipchat message stating that they
must go through proper channels or NO work will get done.

Writing the specs takes about 1-5 minutes and allows the developer to have a
clear path to work from.

------
insensible
This is an issue of boundaries on the receiver's side. Other people's
unreasonable expectations are not binding on us. Otherwise we quickly become
enslaved to everyone else's whims, which is no way to live and certainly no
way to succeed at anything.

------
MadManE
This is simply a matter of training people that you interact with. If you
treat your own time as valuable and don't immediately respond to everything,
eventually everyone else will come to think of your time as valuable also.

The trick is to never respond immediately on media that you don't want it
expected from. It has the random reinforcement effect attached to it, so if
they get you once, they'll always expect it.

------
teaneedz
Great post. This resonates with me because too often others expect a quick
reply. I have read receipts disabled due to that mentality and won't use a
messaging service that uses them without an opt-out option.

~~~
dasboth
I hate read receipts and disable them where possible too. A pet peeve of mine
is people who demand read receipts in Outlook. There is no way I'll ever send
that person a read receipt.

~~~
teaneedz
Yep. I do the same with mail. Read receipts are just a privacy intrusion as
well.

------
serve_yay
An expectation of instantaneous response, combined with the pathetic verbal
throughput of typing text on a glass screen. So many things that would be easy
to say out loud are not worth typing on a phone screen.

I didn't like talking on the phone much but texting is so much worse in so
many ways.

~~~
danneu

        > So many things that would be easy to say out loud are
        > not worth typing on a phone screen.
    

Yet even less worthy of a phone call.

~~~
tomswartz07
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to
say something.”

------
rm_-rf_slash
I have been arguing for contact states for years. You should be able to set
conditions like the old IM status messages - "away," "in a meeting,","family
time,"etc - that limit your reachability and optionally notify people that you
won't be notified of their messages (until a certain time, if scheduled).

This was (naively) my first iOS app attempt before I realized this is
something that has to be done at the OS level. Please, Apple, "Do Not Disturb"
was a step in the right direction. Finish the job.

------
general_failure
Like some of the commenters, I don't respond to text immediately and not just
when driving. This behavior of mine is made worse by all these new IM apps
like telegram, hangouts which provide notifications on whether I have read it.
If for some reason, I try to reply immediately and change my mind midway, the
IM app shows 'xx it typing..' to the other party and now it's too late to back
out.

------
stuxnet79
When I receive emails and texts or anything for that matter, I try to get back
to the original sender quickly. I expect others to do the same. People who
violate this I treat on a case by case basis. If I know your life situation
(i.e. you are always checking your phone - you are unemployed) and you are
unable to get back to me within a couple of days let alone 24 hours, then to
me this strongly indicates flakiness, or lack of respect of my time. However,
if you are a busy individual with job, family responsibilities and you are
unable to get back to me within a couple of days then I will cut you some
slack.

Ultimately, however, I find myself gradually mimicking the behavior of my
contacts. If you always take your time to get back to me, then I won't see you
as a priority and if we are 'friends' or 'romantic partners' then the
relationship will gradually erode due to this. However, if you get back to me
in a timely manner, you are always on time for appointments and you always let
me know beforehand that you are not going to keep an appointment then I will
put more effort than I would otherwise into trying to maintain the
relationship.

------
noobie
But, why would you _see_ the text or _read_ it if you're not going to respond?

~~~
jjbiotech
I can think of a few situations. You're in a meeting and your phone buzzes.
You can quickly read the message without being rude, where typing a response
would be considered rude (at least in my office). I'll often do this to make
sure it isn't something important that needs immediate attention.

This also applies to driving. It would be unsafe to type a response, but
reading a message in my opinion is fine. Similar to glacing at a GPS.

~~~
angersock
_It would be unsafe to type a response, but reading a message in my opinion is
fine. Similar to glacing at a GPS._

As a cyclist and a former driver, neither is acceptable.

------
justinlardinois
tl;dr version: "You kids today and your loud music! Get off my lawn!"

