Hacker News Reader

Comment by Legion | Hacker News Reader

Interesting idea, but I highly dislike it.

The entire point of email is that it is the "leave a message and I'll get back to you" mode of communication for the Internet. It is not the "respond right now" mode - that is what IM and chat rooms and other real-time communications are.

I have things to do too, you know, and keeping track of someone else's schedule in order to be able to send them an email isn't on the list. The whole point of email is that I can send on my schedule, and you can read it on yours. Now you're taking that away from me and forcing me onto your schedule.

All one needs to do is put a vacation autoresponder on their email account, and then have the self-control to not read email while they're out.

View on HN

> The whole point of email is that I can send on my schedule, and you can read it on yours.

A major cause of email overload is that senders don't respect the "you can read it on yours" part of that statement. Instead, they send emails requesting info that they need to act on within a specific window of time (usually hours or days). This implicitly assigns recipients a time limit, because responding too late would be considered rude. If you're receiving 500+ emails a day that expect a prompt response, you don't stand a chance.

Communication works both ways. If you can't be bothered to take my schedule into account, then don't contact me. Complaining about this is akin to complaining about someone having a secretary.

>> This implicitly assigns recipients a time limit, because responding too late would be considered rude. If you're receiving 500+ emails a day that expect a prompt response, you don't stand a chance.

This issue is addressed with a standard "Out of Office" response.

The difference here is that Dave is making everyone who emailed him wait until some future date to re-send any non-urgent message.

It significantly reduces the workload for Dave but increases the workload for others.

I'd be curious to hear the reaction of people who emailed him and had to wait to re-send their message.

>> It significantly reduces the workload for Dave but increases the workload for others.

Yes, but that's to be expected. If you're a very popular person, people should have to compete for your time. That's marginally inconvenient for them, yes, but it makes your life livable. It's like important CEOs having a secretary.

> It's like important CEOs having a secretary.

I've never understood why busy people don't use staff to "pre-clean" the inbox. Especially if you get dozens of emails a day. After a vacation (heck, every day), I spend a lot of time deleting spam, daily reports, and threads I'm cc'd in (but get resolved by others).

I do that, and it's the greatest thing ever.

For 3 years now, I've had a full-time assistant who filters all my email, handles the FAQs, and only leaves a few per-day for me - just the ones that only I know the answer to.

Anyone interested in this, feel free to email me for details.

...and my assistant will get back to you. :-)

Tom Osborne (the legendary Nebraska football coach and now athletic director for those who don't watch college football) does this. In fact, he sends and receives his email through an assistant, at least when dealing with the public. Still personal, but I imagine it helps him stay sane.

> I've never understood why busy people don't use staff to "pre-clean" the inbox.

Most of my friends who have admin assistants do have their admin assistants do this. The admin assistant prioritizes every incoming email.

They respond to the ones they can, forward on emails better suited for other people and flag important emails for their boss

In fact

they send emails expecting an immediate response because they know you will respond immediately. i respond to emails within 24hrs. people know this, and don't expect anything faster. if somebody does expect a faster response, that's too bad. you need to reassess your understanding of rude and manage people's expectations of you. if somebody expects me to interrupt what i'm doing to answer their email, that's rude of them.

if anybody requires an urgent response from me, they can try a synchronous method of communication. in the meantime, i've got things to do.

All one needs to do is put a vacation autoresponder on their email account, and then have the self-control to not read email while they're out.

Dave's problem isn't self-control while on vacation. It's the mountain of email he'll have when he gets back. He very well might have a full-time week of just responding to email after a trip.

(A friend of mine just got back from his honeymoon, and it took him two full-time days to clean out his inbox - and he's a startup founder, not an internationally known author/speaker like Dave.)

Not only are you being forced onto his schedule, but unless you've read his blog post you won't even know what his schedule is.

If I go away on holiday, I reserve a few hours of my first work day when I get back to scanning through email and working out when I'm going to reply. It seems to work reasonably well - occasionally I'll get someone who didn't know I was away grumbling about a late reply but a quick apology usually satisfies them.

As a sysadmin who ends up getting a lot of autoresponder messages (e.g. in response to emails sent from a website, or from mailing lists) they are an unbelievably irritating 'feature' which I wish had never been invented - although most of the annoyance is down to the fact that the vast majority of autoresponders don't seem to remember whether you've already sent them a message, so they reply every time.

I think this is a copy of an auto response and it has the schedule in it?

Its actually my human right to 'force' other people to communicate on my schedule. Our own time is actually all any of us have.

You are free to decide if your gem of wisdom is important enough to actually notice if I get it, or just fling it into the ether. Your call.

And by the way, I'm not going to read any replies to this post. Just letting you know.

It's to help manage all the emails when he returns, only some of which will still be relevant at that point.

Consider the case where Dave's response causes the sender to realize, "Oh, well, I'll take care of the issue this other way then."

That's one fewer email Dave will have to deal with when he returns. The traditional out-of-office strategy would result in the initial email, and possibly even a second "Oh, don't worry about it, I already took care of it." followup email.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com