responding to emails

Also if anyone tells me in person that I should email them I'll decide that they were just being polite and were actually thinking, "I hate being in this person's company so I hope they don't try to contact me after I've gone but I suppose I should pretend otherwise," and then the other problem kicks in too and I never do.

Right now email is the only contact I could get with anyone except coworkers (maybe this makes it worse), so it's not very helpful. Then again, when I had other options I'd avoid email, partly because I know I'll procrastinate forever and partly because I'm permanently scared of saying the wrong thing or being misunderstood, and more real-time alternatives let me um and ah and rephrase and explain and duck out of my actual opinion as soon as misunderstandings or disagreements arise.

(Hm, an overlong post and it's basically what I said on the "what do you do with a good friend who never phones or emails" thread; sorry. This is no help at all, I realise, but you're not the only one, anyway, if that's any comfort.)

most everyone gets replies. i like talking to people

phew!

only contact I could get with anyone except coworkers

D'you not have a phone, Rebecca (mobile or landline?)

I don't want to appear like a complete dribbling moron, but whenever I hit reply I type a few words and run out of things to say and I just sit there thinking, "God, what idiocy," and decide that I can't do it justice right then and should put it off until I can spend hours on it and make it sound intelligent and interesting. Of course, that time never comes.

I sympathize. I too suffer from this problem.

Also if anyone tells me in person that I should email them I'll decide that they were just being polite and were actually thinking, "I hate being in this person's company so I hope they don't try to contact me after I've gone but I suppose I should pretend otherwise,"

This I find harder to understand. Maybe I have too little imagination, but I always assume that when ppl say they'll email that they actually mean it. I would never draw the conclusion in ""s.

I'd be thrilled if someone asked me to email them.

How does emailing compare with good ol' fashioned letter writing in this regard? When I lived with my parents I would sometimes watch my mother write letters to old friends, some of whom she'd known from childhood. She'd sometimes grimace and say "Aw, I've put the wrong thing!", screw up the paper and start over, sometimes as many as five or six times. Now these were mistakes which were to do with how things were phrased, not spelling errors, illegibilty and so forth. This kind of thing can have a real effect on someone in their formative years - it teaches you to be mega-careful about what you say and instils a sense of ultra-caution that can really hold you back. My mother's argument would be that she didn't want to offend anyone, even if, to an observer, what she'd sais the first time appeared perfectly tackful and innocuous.

I don't think I've ever written someone a real letter.

I am awful with this. People I really admire have emailed me and I've never replied. People I really like have emailed me and I've never replied. I do reply to about 20% of emails but apparently at random. Really cool FT projects are stalled because of email. I'm like this with all sorts of tiny everyday tasks too, like tidying things or little chores, it really panics and upsets me sometimes. I wonder if this is some kind of recognised disorder like a reverse OCD or something (Obsessive Avoidance Syndrome???).

Yeah, I completely have this problem...
Sometimes I'll attempt to organize my room or something, and I'll end up just sitting on the floor and sobbing or spacing out instead. And of course I never get the room organized. I put off and and find nearly everything to be insurmountable. Even things I enjoy.

rebecca, i agree with markH and melissa, that is a perverse conclusion

(i had v.little sleep for some reasons last night, and when i did, i wz told off in a patronising way by a bastard in a dream)

I assume that people are just being polite when they say to email them, and I almost never initiate contact with anyone without direct encouragement, but if someone says to email them I'll send something, in a tentative way, deliberately making it easy for them to ignore if they want. Quite a few take that opportunity, but most respond.

I'm rubbish on the phone though, I kind of go through a [prepared usually] list of things I want to say and then dry up (which is why I said to Rebecca "I hate being in this person's company so I hope they don't try to contact me after I've gone but I suppose I should pretend otherwise" - well, a synonym thereof :)

Variation of OAS: I get very (unreasonably) grumpy if I have to make a special trip somewhere to do just one thing, and much prefer to co-ordinate lots of small trips into an itinerary. This is linked to my packeting device as described above (also laziness).

I get very (unreasonably) grumpy if I have to make a special trip somewhere to just do one thing....

oh yes, me too...I always try to co-ordinate everything into an itinerary. If I've got various shopping & errands to do around Oxford on a Saturday I always make a mental map as I set off towards the city centre to ensure I take the optimal route from shop to shop or wherever.

Back on topic (sorry about that digression) : I usually respond to emails the same day. It makes such a lovely change to get chatty emails rather than boring old work-related ones that I get quite excited by them. Even if I am v busy and don't have time to send a lengthy reply, I'll always at least acknowledge them with a quick one-liner and a promise of more to follow.

I like the spontaneity of emails, and the casualness of the communication. Often I will put off writing real letters to friends because I don't think I have anything interesting enough to say which would warrant a handwritten letter - but email makes it so easy to just shout out a hello to someone and let them know you were thinking about them.

I've stayed in touch with far more people because of this - in the past I was always guilty of letting friendships slide a bit (esp with friends overseas), but with email I don't neglect people nearly so much.

I find girls better at responding to emails quickly than the men are, generally speaking. Some of the lads I know can take a fortnight to reply to something, by which time I've forgotten what the question was :)

Same here -- if not immediately (depending on how bored I am) usually later that day. But I've got a couple of ones lingering that I need to get back to, including a fellow I'm doing a writing project with! D'oh!

I'm weird with responding to email. If I'm in a chatty mood, I'll fire off pages and pages and pages of response about nothing. If I'm depressed, then I don't respond at all, except for the obligatory "I hate my life and I want to die" crap and what the fuck is anyone supposed to say back to that? If other people don't respond to my mail, I assume that they hate me, and that makes me feel worse. But I don't respond to mail all the time. Part of it is wanting to do a proper job and give them a decent reply, part of it is... well, I'm more likely to respond immediately and the longer I leave, it the more chance it'll never get done.

Most of my friends must think I'm a total asshole. no, sorry, most of my friends already KNOW I'm a total asshole, they must think I'm rude and unresponsive. I don't know.

See, I still haven't even replied from that mail from My Long Lost Love from last week that I was getting drunk over. And the longer I leave it, the weirder it would be to reply. So maybe I should get off IL* and just reply to it now. Yeah, that's a good idea, that's what I'll do.

Now.

I'm very proud of myself. I finally wrote my ex back. The only thing hard about it was stopping myself from ranting all the time about how shit my life is and how shit the music industry is and how much I hate the music press. I think only half the email was that. The other half of it was me saying congratulations and saying how jealous I was of his record deal. No, really. He's lovely and he totally deserves it, so I was happy to hear that his band had got signed. It doesn't make up for all the SHITE that has come out of NYC in the past year, but I'm glad that someone WORTHY got something out of it.

Now he won't respond for another six months, so everything is all OK again. :-)

See, that's the problem with emails, you spend ages failing to reply, you agonise over every word, you spend hours staring at the blank screen, and if you finally manage to hit "send" you think you can at least feel virtuous for a week or so, but NO! they bastarding REPLY within a day and you're back where you started!

And I can't possibly talk to any of my exes because they all have wellpaid jobs and perfect relationships and I don't want to have to hear about them all and go, "Uh, well, that's lovely, your new girlfriend sounds great... oh, my life? er, I'm not doing anything, ever." I'm hoping my refusal to correspond with any of them creates the impression that I am in fact very busy with things much cooler than them and doesn't just make it obvious that I have become a sad and bitter loner. Ahem.

But with this particular ex, well, actually I still really like him and think he's groovy, so I'm happy to hear from him, and when I hear that he's happy, I don't get jealous or weird, it actually makes me happy to know that he's doing well. Which is quite weird. I guess cause I know I could never have made him happy.

He takes months to reply, so I don't have to worry. Back when I had a crap job, I used to reply immediately to everyone, so I'd be happy if someone would write back right away. Now I like them to wait about a week, cause I have internet binges now where I get online once a week for twelve hours at a stretch when my roommate is out with his girlfriend. So I have to mail everyone all at once!

and yeah, I always reply. because I assume the person wants acknowledgement that they have received it so even if it is a 'nothing' sort of email I will send it. It only takes a minute.

KANYE OMG WE NEED TO WORK TOGETHER HOLLA PLZTHX BYE.

Aside: I may set up a Gmail account soon because Hotmail's filter ate some important messages I was expecting (even though I listed the addresses as "contacts" beforehand). I'm really seriously pissed off about this, but not surprised at all.

ban email

great revive

I'm a lean mean email machine at work and handle like 100+ of the fuckers in a day. In my personal life, responding to a single email within like three months is a minor triumph. I don't know what that is or if it's treatable by some sort of medication.

I am tired of emails, people send me them & I send them & it's all to get people to do things & there's a lot of doing things & maybe we would be able to do a few fewer things without email

"I get too many emails and I don't have time to respond to them" always struck me as a boomer complaint. Responding to emails is the easiest part of most jobs.

It's kinda cool how the use of email as a communicative tool has increased at roughly the same rate that reading comprehension has decreased.

I mean there are emails where you already know the answer to the question, in which case responding is very quick unless you have trouble forming sentences. Then there are emails that actually require work to respond to, but in that case it's not really "responding to email" that takes time, it's doing the aspect of your job (research or whatever) required to respond.

I get email messages from my mom infrequently and I'm horrible at responding in kind. I'll call or text before I get around to an email message.

Exception being time-sensitive things where it's basically a yes/no. I just emailed her back about a relative's birthday party to say that I'll be at a friend's wedding that day. Sorry, Aunt Esther!

I guess that's the lesson, articulating thoughts and sending a message that has some permanence makes me afraid of scrutiny. Same for sending a message of any sort to someone new where communication isn't established as ephemeral: how will they respond? will they?

Oh, tbf I have a total psychological block on timely responding to emails from my parents.

ilx posting has me worrying about that 1000x more than emails.

xp

well-posted, Evan :)

some people labor over email and wont send it until its perfect like they are composing a symphony but I fire em off in three se4conds feuckem

well-posted, Evan :)

― mh, Monday, March 19, 2018 12:34 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

phew!

LG has deciphered my ilx posting style

I'm a lean mean email machine at work and handle like 100+ of the fuckers in a day. In my personal life, responding to a single email within like three months is a minor triumph. I don't know what that is or if it's treatable by some sort of medication.

Yeah, this is me. Personal emails are such a chore, but when I first started working in an office I intuitively adopted "email triaging" - I'm surprised more people don't keep on top of their inbox with a system.

Respond order:

• Immediate - can be completed in a couple minutes
• Urgent - needs completed asap, but requires a fair amount of time
• Non-pressing - doesn’t need responded to right now
• Doesn't need or deserve a response - move to archive immediately

Colour categorise in Outlook accordingly and once responded move out of inbox. Additionally another folder called 'Awaiting Response' so you don't forget when you are waiting for a response. At most my inbox has like 8 emails in it.

Respond to sensible queries asap - especially if the individuals are legitimately trying to learn something they don't know. These tend to be the people that actually appreciate prompt responses and will respond in kind if you need assistance.

For responding to stupid or lazy queries I tend to phone the individual, or if they are nearby in the office, walk over to them. This usually saves me time rather than running up several replies, and it gives me the chance to highlight in the right tone how they could do it themselves. The individuals who habitually ask such questions tend to start asking someone else.

People who keep all their emails in their inbox scare me.

People should try moving their emails to where I keep mine...the recycle bin!! Hey, you don't have to be crazy to work here...but it helps!!! Mondays, am I right?!?!?! Zoloft, am I right!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

It’s not really the emails it’s that people ask me to do things by email and I ask them to do things by email that then require my attention & it’s a lot of doing. Answering is just “yes I will do this” not “here is some answer or argument I have” but a promise and there are too many promises

obv this is dumb & I'm just annoyed at how far behind I've fallen in email & I'm just trying to get my inbox to 0 but everything that's left unread at the moment requires some doing & I have enough to do as it is & anyway emails

I have way too many email chains that are informational where I want to save them, but I'm too lazy to create folders/categories.

yeah informational ones I just delete or save, they're easy, require no intervention

I am just complaining about responsibility, obv it's not "email" exactly

still, ban email