Stop sending emails for real time requests | Hacker News Reader

Stop sending emails for real time requests

cyrusstoller.com

48 pointsstollercyrus62 comments

I'm actually quite the opposite. I usually have my phone off or silenced when I'm in the middle of working. That being said, I'll take a break every half an hour or so to check up on my e-mail inbox and address the urgent messages.

I also absolutely despise when people text me with "call me asap", "hi", "yo", "hey", or any other meaningless variant. It's vague and I have no idea if what they need is actually important or something that I can address later, without needing to interrupt my workflow. Rather, if you must text me, I much prefer some context and information about issue in the message, i.e: "call me asap, i have a question about ______/i need _______." Really, I prefer an e-mail of a few or more sentences describing what you need.

Above all, I try to avoid the following interaction via text messages:

> Hey

< Sup?

> Nm, do you have a sec?

< Yeah, what do you need?

> I need blah blah blah blah.

Why can't people just do:

> Hey, when you have a sec, I need blah blah blah blah...

This is texting, not TCP.

> Hey, when you have a sec, I need blah blah blah blah...

Yes please. This even works well when you're working with colleagues in the same office: it's real-time but it doesn't interrupt your thought flow.

I have a coworker who does this but it usually takes them 30 minutes to respond to me, even when I respond to his "hey", even if I respond right away. It drives me insane.

I agree with your point re: pseudo TCP.

I don't like that I feel the need to compulsively check my email. It always takes me longer to respond than it should.

I don't get the part about needing to check your email as in anyway difficult? My iPhone with the gmail app has a very pleasant tone when I get an email in my priority inbox. I don't have to check anything or be compulsive on any way.

You must be better at multitasking than me. Those types of interruptions take me out of the zone.

By far, the most important thing is to understand your recipient's preference, not the technical merits of a particular medium/protocol.

I'm active in several tennis leagues locally. Between arranging team practice, scheduling flex matches, putting together pick-up practice matches, etc, I spend a lot of time communicating with a diverse group of folks about last minute planning updates. Though I generally prefer email for most things since it immediately pushes to my phone just the same as a text or IM, it's been interesting to discover the wide range of preferences that other people have.

Some people are 100% email, period, and will respond to emails from red lights, just a few minutes away from meeting you in person.

A surprising number of people in their 30s and 40s do not have Facebook accounts (not out of privacy concerns, but general disinterest), completely ruling out Facebook messages/IMs.

Some people do prefer text messages, but I haven't found that SMS guarantees any particular immediacy. Some people actually reply to their emails hours quicker than their texts.

A few people I've dealt with share a single email account with their spouse and/or only check email once or twice a day (which blows my mind on both counts...). I'm talking about people young and active enough to play competitive tennis too, not your grandparents. In one of those cases, I can get in touch with the guy in real-time almost every time by using iMessage.

A few people insist on Skype, Google Hangouts, WhatApp, or some other proprietary network. Guess what? If I want to get in touch with them ASAP, I suck it up and use their preferred network.

Maybe the weirdest one is there are a few people I can most reliably get in touch with via Twitter DMs, even though I have their phone number.

Point being, selecting an optimal set of communication protocols almost always fails when that set of rules comes in contact with the real world. If you really want to get in touch with people immediately and consistently, you have to tailor your approach to the person.

"Some people do prefer text messages, but I haven't found that SMS guarantees any particular immediacy."

Forget immediacy, SMS doesn't even have reliable delivery. According to Wikipedia:

"SMS messages are generally treated as lower-priority traffic than voice, and various studies have shown that around 1% to 5% of messages are lost entirely, even during normal operation conditions, and others may not be delivered until long after their relevance has passed. The use of SMS as an emergency notification service in particular has been starkly criticized."[1]

Compare to e-mail, which will make repeated attempts to deliver your message and notify you if your message couldn't be delivered.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Unreliability

If it's urgent, wouldn't it make sense to just call?

There's a difference between something urgent and something that's merely time sensitive, I think.

In my example of scheduling tennis practice, updates need to be timely, but they aren't urgent enough to warrant spending time on the phone with everyone involved. Firing off a few asynchronous messages actually means the last few people I would have called get the information quicker than if I had called each person individually.

Voice calls are great for a lot of things, but are slow, tedious, and unnecessarily single-threaded when it comes to plenty of time sensitive communication needs.

It definitely makes sense. But it seems people have forgotten that phones are capable of making phone "calls" and just use the text/internet features.

This is an excellent point.

Perhaps putting your preferences on your email signature, your profile on the corporate intranet, or your personal website's 'contact me' page would be helpful.

Also, it can be good to explicitly define a company culture. I've worked in some places where I'd receive "VERY URGENT" emails, and others where email was used merely as a 'cover your arse' policy but everything else was done in person.

FWIW, I prefer to have a conversation in person (or over the phone) and follow this up with an email - even for very short conversations. I like to be prodded via SMS. I hate IM (short conversations turn into long conversations that I can't search later), don't use Facebook or Twitter. But only about 10% of my conversations happen in the way I want them to.

  Perhaps putting your preferences on your email signature,
  your profile on the corporate intranet,
  or your personal website's 'contact me' page
  would be helpful.

Perhaps it would, if more people paid attention to that. I tried it. Works with some but not all.

Perhaps it doesn't work that well because people don't have any software that can pay attention to that automatically.

I am an email first person. What I find funny is people who want something from me, and don't email me, and then get mad when I don't respond quickly using their preferred method.

I see what you're saying and agree that it is unfortunately unrealistic. I still feel like life would be easier if we all used the same convention.

The reason people use email for everything, including urgent matters, is because email is the only thing of the 4 channels mentioned in the article that we usually type on a full size keyboard. It's much more convenient when working than calling/texting/IM(when the phone is needed)

the proper solution is prioritizing email, and making your email client/device notify you according to the priority level

I completely agree with this- emails are cross-platform and available on the vast majority of connected devices, no phone required.

The IM option of this theory also fails to mention that the number of different IM options all fail to talk to each other, or even an overarching client (like Pidgin or imo). Remembering which of my contacts use Snapchat vs Whatsapp vs Facebook vs Hangouts seems utterly incompatible with the idea of the internet connecting people.

Yes plus a lot of these networks fail pretty hard... with Gtalk/Hangouts for example it's not rare to miss notifications because you got them on the laptop but not on your phone, or the opposite.

Also Whatsapp stupidly doesn't provide a web or desktop interface.

Skype on mobile devices uses way more power than it should.

In the end I hate Facebook for a number of reasons but it's the only reliable solution I have found so far: fast, reliable, (nearly) everyone is there.

> In the end I hate Facebook for a number of reasons but it's the only reliable solution I have found so far: fast, reliable, (nearly) everyone is there.

Doesn't this even more so apply to email? I don't know a single person who has a facebook account but not an email address. And even for those there is a build-in email bridge: https://www.facebook.com/help/224049364288051

And yet a phone call can be made, and a conversation can be had in 2 minutes, which would otherwise mean a half hour or a few hours of back and forth, distracting you from other necessary work.

I like email or messaging when I want de facto notes to refer back to, or when response isn't urgent. But, with issues urgent enough for me that I feel it's worth inconveniencing someone else's time or when I don't want that conversation in my active memory for half a day (waiting on the next response), certainly that phone call is going to be made.

a phone call is synchronous, and i personally tend to forget about the call 2 minutes after it ended. an email stays in my inbox until i deal with it. plus many things need to be written, like numbers, links, and much more...

More or less this. Also, in some places, email is the only reliable way to ensure the receiving party is held responsible for responding (sad that it is needed, I know).

Do remember that SMTP makes no guarantee of delivery - so in what way is that "the only reliable way..."?

I'm suggesting that we make prioritization part of the medium that is used to convey the message.

How do you prioritize your inbound emails?

isn't it redundant to use different mediums just for noting the importance? seems not efficient, especially when there are many types of IM. it's much better to have everything in one place

i'm not prioritizing, right now it's not possible, maybe except for this solution: http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t... i'm just saying THAT is the proper solution, i'm not saying it's possible...

I don't understand the harm in the redundancy you're talking about.

Texting and using IM is bad advice. It's such bad habits that cause us to feel anxious because we need to be reachable via N different channels all the time.

Better advice: use the phone if it's urgent and you need to talk to someone immediately, otherwise use e-mail to allow the recipient to process your request asynchronously. It's not your fault if they have issues with e-mail in general.

How is the phone any different to txt in this regard? Both use the same channel and txt has the advantage that it's less invasive.

Txt/bbm/iMessage etc are all much better options than calling someone. For me and most of my friends the phone is the last resort, I hate talking on the phone.

> How is the phone any different to txt in this regard?

The phone is immediate, you can talk to someone now if they are available at all. Texting is asynchronous and people cannot tell from the notification sound whether it's urgent or not and may choose to ignore messages for a while.

> For me and most of my friends the phone is the last resort, I hate talking on the phone.

I guess you must be texting too much. Old people like me, while hating the phone too, despise texting with its cumbersome, slow input and frequently unimportant use cases. If people would stick to text for important stuff only, it might be more useful. But they don't, so it isn't. The same goes for IM, it's just a distraction channel.

Texting and using IM is bad advice.

This is a personal preference at best and an absurdly overbroad and flatly incorrect statement at worst

Makes no difference to me, honestly. Calls, texts, IM, and of course email all go to my inbox, and all are equally accessible.

I never answer voice calls unless they're pre-scheduled (and even then I much prefer to call than be called). The transcribed message goes in my email. 99% of the time, the ringer on my phone is off, unless there's a specific reason to have it on. Often my phone is off.

Texts go both to my phone directly, IM, and as an email.

I much prefer people to spend the time constructing a clear request in an email than an ad hoc phone call, especially those that are out of the blue.

If you call me, you'd better follow up with an email.

If you email me and it's urgent, you'd better follow up with a phone call.

That's all there is to it.

I prefer to use email for most communications as it makes it a whole lot easier to pull up past conversations. If I'd had communication in the form of calls, texts, IM's (probably on multiple clients) as well as email, it'd probably be more difficult to pull up any information that I may need later on.

Using email alone allows me to search for specific conversations, and not have the trouble of losing or having great difficulty finding conversations.

I do occasionally use Skype and IRC, but I know which people I communicate with on these platforms, and keep on top of documenting anything I may later need to refer to.

I agree that if you need something urgently, then a call can be great. However, for general communication, I see no issue with using email.

I think it'd be a more interesting topic to discuss how to efficiently use subject headings, as I've often had important emails slip under the radar, and less important emails demand some form of urgency that isn't existent.

I agree that general communication is a different animal all together. I'm talking about when you need someone to do something.

I wish there were a way for recipients to define a message routing and format conversion protocol, incentivized by money.

e.g., you can call me at night for $5k. You can call me during "phone hour" for $100. You an call at other times for $250. If your call turns out to be worth my time, I don't bill you; if it was a waste of my time (spam, pointless, etc.), I'll charge up to 100% of that amount.

Senders would get to see a menu of costs for various technologies, and would get to see how I handle them (various guarantees). They may vary based on sender, topic, etc. e.g. I'd be willing to take YC applicant advice emails during a few weeks of the year for 10% of normal price, with a guaranteed response within 12h. I'd charge a lot less for email than for phone, etc.

Part of this would be some kind of ecash system, and the other part would be format conversion; being able to turn phone calls into text messages, read back to the user to verify.

If such a service were available, scammers would start baiting people to contact them. The victims would then be billed the full amount.

Actually, this already happens with premium rate SMS.

Yes, they would. This is an easier problem to solve than spam.

It's important to realize that everyone has a different social contract for how quickly they expect responses across different channels. The better advice is to actually have open, honest conversations with those you work with most frequently and those with whom communication is important to define and understand how people are going to perceive those different channels and contracts.

Setting up social contracts for different communication expectations doesn't have to result in everyone having the same guidelines, but does let you know that Alice is okay with texts while Bob really prefers emails to be allow 8hrs+ for replies.

For work, I'd much rather receive an email than a text.

We have smartphones, I can get your email just as easily as I get your text.

Texts are for personally urgent things that don't merit the complexity of a phone call (it fits in 160 characters)

And the Phone call priority is incorrect if you consider voicemail (which it seems that nobody does any more). If I'm in a meeting, a call is actually much lower priority to me than a text. I only escalate a phone call during a meeting if I get the call many times, or if a text indicates the urgency.

It seems like you have a different convention that works for you. I think the most important thing is that you have one that the people who are asking you to do things are aware of.

All my realtime 'pings' (phone/text/im) inevitably start with some form of the question: "Hi, how busy are you?" IMHO, this is a sneaky way to get the person to be honest about their immediate availability. By acknowledging straightaway that they might be busy, I give them a polite 'out', of sorts.

If I urgently need something done, my openings are usually of the form, "Listen, I have a(n urgent) favor to ask. How busy are you?" Almost always works for me regardless of the communication medium used.

Email, by its very nature, is supposed to be asynchronous. I wouldn't rely on email to convey anything more than delayed request/response conversation.

If you start a message that way you're likely to irk your recipient. It's very rude to start out with "listen".

And there's nothing about the nature of email that is asynchronous, gmail has blurred the lines between email and chat. An email reaches me just as quickly as iMessage et al

My guidelines are use iMessage/bbm/txt for conversational inquiries where there is a need for back and forth type interaction and email for everything else. There's no difference in their delivery time with gmail.

My daughter thinks of email as just for school stuff. Everything else is over other mediums, mainly iMessage (mainly due to the magic like "..." Indication) or Instagram. Time has changed things. Email is now as instant as instant messaging and IM is now as media rich as email, supporting photos and video etc. the lines between these have blurred mainly due to the smartphone. Once your messaging channel was coupled to the delivery vector, but now my MacBook Pro can receive iMessages and my phone can receive emails. I don't want a unified messaging interface because I can use different ones for different people and don't feel anxious about any of this. If I want to avoid the world for a while I have a mute button.

The contacts on my realtime communication media are all close people - the kind that won't hesitate to ignore my interruption if they are really truly busy. Also, I use the Hindi word "Sunn..." which means the same as (but is not as intrusive-sounding as) "Listen" but it doesn't translate very well in English.

For me, email is more of a documenting system rather than conversation. Also, in my mind, I still consider email to be a medium for formal exchange inspite of the fact that smartphones have made them almost instantaneous, as you very well put it.

Still, to each their own, I guess. Thanks for the insight! :)

> "Hi, how busy are you?"

I usually respond to that with a "why do you ask?"

This might be because I'm not too busy to give you a couple of quick verbal answers about some figures that I've just given you, but I am too busy to revise them because you've just received new information.

Yup. That's the response, I usually get.

This is where I would normally lay out the gist of my problem, e.g. "If you aren't too busy, I need help with zipping files on the client side, is there a JS library (or anything) that will allow me to do that? I need it by <insert urgency of request here>"

I make two implicit assumptions here: One, (and this is highly subjective but it seems to apply to my personal network) if you are very busy/'in the zone', you won't respond to my first ping. If you do respond to my first ping, you might not yet be 'in the zone' and I'm not (yet) wasting valuable productivity time. Furthermore, I immediately lay out the gist of the conversation but there is no obligation on you to answer. Win-win, even if I say so myself?

Of course, although this holds true about me and my personal network, it may not apply anywhere else. :)

When someone start a request in a near-realtime medium with stuff like that, I instantly get annoyed as it is immediately wasting time for me in having to respond and way for their actual request.

I much prefer you make the request right away without waiting, and just tacks on whatever pleasantries you feel necessary. Then I don't need to roundtrip with you to figure out whether or not what you are requesting is actually more important than what I am doing right now.

I see what you mean, but, personally, I'd much rather have the recipient ignore me than get yanked out of 'the zone' with my query that may or may not be up their alley. It is not so much pleasantries as a super-short 'SYN-ACK' and then straight to the point.

Also, as I was mentioning in another comment, people on my realtime communication media contact list are quite close - the kind who would definitely respond to a SYN-req with stoic silence. I guess, it is a communication quirk that has evolved around my network and may not be true about the rest of the world. Apologies if I made it sound like that.

As I said in another comment, to each their own. Shall we agree to differ on this one? :)

I like your "Hi, how busy are you?" approach.

Thanks. I realized a few years ago that that was the question I would have asked myself, if I were to interrupt myself when I was in the middle of doing something important. It has served me well ever since... :)

You actually forgot that many people still send physical letters -> 1 week or more?

Good point ... I probably should add fax as well :P

I do quite a bit of work in Japan, and you would not believe the amount of time I spend faxing documents back and forth. I once had a service provider — who I know personally — hang up and refuse to speak to me on the phone until I had faxed in a form designating myself as a contact.

IM and Phone call feel the exact same to me, except IM enables you to show your availability status to the people you're connected to.

< 30 minutes : IM if I'm available, if else call

2 hours : IM if away/busy, if else text

...

If someone appears as available and online and takes a day to answer my question, I'm not sure how I'd take it but it would piss me off.

On a sidenote, I think email is best suited for "when you're done with whatever you're doing' kind of timeframes due to the "mark as unread" which would prevent me from forgetting to reply if I decide to read what I received, realized I can't/don't want to answer right now.

I see what you're saying. Unfortunately, I'm not good about making sure my away status is up to date. I'll often go a whole day, saying I'm away, even though I'm available.

It's important to note that email is often the only contact info you'll have for a person. In fact I would highly prefer not to share my other social contact points(cell # etc). Email wins big in this regard. Really big.

I get requests through every medium described here, as well as coming into the office to ask me. Email is nice in that you can have a relatively long description that will be searchable later on. It can have formatting and attachments (you don't get the same level of formatting IM, and afterwards it isn't as easy to search).

Also its kind of nice to not respond immediately when I am in "in the zone".

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That might work for you, but having to constantly check email interrupts my ability to work efficiently. Technically any of these channels can deliver the message. I'm just hoping that my contacts can assign different priorities to each.

But that's not the point. The point is to have easy to understand cues for the receiver on how important the message is, with the sole goal not to disturb them for messages that do not require immediate attention.

A phone call can always be followed by a confirmation e-mail explaining it again for archiving purposes, but it is incredibly selfish of a sender to assume that the receiver will immediately read and act on the e-mail he receives. Most of us just get too many e-mails to assume every e-mail is important -- it's usually the complete opposite anyway.

An important consideration, for me, is having an easily searchable record of conversations. Because of this, for work-related issues, I definitely prefer email or gchat, which affords almost the same search-ability. What I hate most are medium-switches when conversation threads are spread across emails, gchats, and texts.

I agree having a searchable record is useful. I try to send a follow up email to confirm what was said during phone calls.

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