When You Can’t Save Yourself from Responding
Following up from my recent post “You Don’t Need to Respond”.
Sometimes, you get an email or something happens and it triggers an avalanche of feelings. You want to snap back with some serious, cutting words (or worse). You may have been insulted, offended, or infringed upon in some other way.
Reflexively, you begin pounding out an email or text, or head towards their place of employment. This is when I start talking to myself (technically, I’m talking to them). Beth sees me mouthing out choice words for the guilty party and asks, “who are you mad at?”
I’m not going to concede that these emotions are all bad in the first place. It’s in times of tension a unique solution to a problem emerges from the depths. Or, that little injection of rage is exactly what was needed to provide viable willpower, to finally cut the cord on a toxic personal or business relationship.
I’ll take advantage of both waiting and responding in the moment. I draft an email, and then won’t send it for a day or two, or ever. If I feel pretty confident about my response, I set it to send automatically in two days using the Scheduler for Gmail Chrome extension, and set a SkeddyBot reminder to check it before it goes.
There are three big benefits I’ve realized by doing this:
- That surge of emotional energy isn’t wasted.
- Once the email is drafted, I no longer ruminate on the issue. I can move on and get about my day.
- I still have plenty of time to change my mind, edit the message, or even decide a response isn’t required from me after all.
With Scheduler for Email, you can edit the draft on your phone, or delete, after you’ve chosen a time to send.
