Remember when communicating with friends meant sitting down and writing a letter? You’d write your thoughts, hopes and questions, then pop them all into an envelope, lick the back of a disgusting tasting postage stamp and drop the lot into a mail box. (Now, I do understand that many readers don’t remember such times, but go with me on this one.)
A week later your friend would then find your letter amongst their bills and other mail in their letterbox. Some time within the next week or so they’d have the chance to read your ramblings and some time after that they’d start the whole process again by writing a letter back to you.
These days it’s all about email. You type your thoughts and questions and then hit send. If you haven’t got a reply within three or four minutes you start to wonder if your friend may have died without you knowing. Everything is instant and we expect immediate responses, even when we’re only sending the latest email ‘funny’.
Do you feel the need to reply to emails as soon as they hit your inbox? Emails call out to us with extraordinary urgency. We know that if we don’t attend to those messages now we’ll never get to them and we just know that the sender is sitting beside their computer, hitting refresh with one hand, operating a stopwatch with the other.
Have we allowed others to set the agenda of our lives? Would the world really fall apart if we took charge and decided to prioritise our own time? Would our friends and workmates really fall apart if they didn’t get an immediate response to their message?
Do you expect people to reply immediately to your emails? How long do you think is a reasonable time between sending an email and receiving a reply? Do you get annoyed when you don’t get an answer right away?
Are you letting other people control your time by feeling that you have to reply immediately to emails?
What are some of the other ways we let others control our time? Do you feel the urge to respond immediately to text messages? Will someone calling you on the phone take priority over someone you’re speaking with face to face?
Who’s controlling your time?
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If I’m taking time to read the email, I have time to respond. That’s how I WANT to do things. The key is not always having to read emails the second they hit your inbox. I spend 9 hours a day in front of the computer, so when I get home, I should put it down and do other things. Text messages, since I almost always know I get them, often get delayed if I’m doing another task or reading.
Oops. so true I think I’m a bit guilty there.