What If We Just Stopped Being So Available?

Even if being responsive at all hours has no bearing on an employee’s actual productivity, many bosses lazily use it as a proxy for gauging workers’ value.

A delayed response can cause genuine problems too. If your partner texts you “I love you,” responding two days later is not a good idea. In personal communications, a lack of a speedy response risks signalling a lack of care. After all, your phone was right there.

The most common way for people to resolve the tension between the pressure of speediness and the reality of busyness is to start messages with four words: Sorry for my delay. It is an innocuous, polite gesture. 

But, having multiple obligations and priorities means that we are, all of us, in a perpetual state of delay on something, and apologizing for that fact feels like having to apologize for your standard mode of being.

Even if “Sorry for my delay” is a social nicety, performing remorse can have real effects. Repeating it can make us feel like we’re perpetually behind, and worse, it models an unreasonable standard of responsiveness for the person we’re (allegedly) slow in writing back to.

Instead of 'Sorry for the Delay' or 'Thank you for your patience', there is another alternative.

If a message will take you a while to respond to, you could first reply with a quick note saying when you plan to respond fully. This can reduce uncertainty and stress on the part of the sender, but the downside is that … well, you’d still have to respond relatively quickly to tell them you’ll respond more thoroughly later.

More than a graceful email response, is a more humane culture of work and communication. Technology, for instance, could be designed to that end.

Apple’s latest mobile operating system is a start: When people turn on “Focus” mode, others can see in the Messages app that they aren’t receiving notifications. The law can help too. In France, a legal “right to disconnect” cuts down on after-hours work emails.