I’m writing these words on a Friday, knowing that my message will be sent on Monday morning.

Scheduling emails is a part of keeping up a daily foolsletter. It makes it easier for me and you. I get the satisfaction of creating multiple posts. You get the convenience of knowing which one to read first and which to read each day.

I received a message just before writing this. It had some great news. I felt urget to reply.

So I wrote my reply to them. I wanted to have that finished. But if I replied right away, they would have had to reply to me to feel finished. In fact to resolve the discussion, it would have required at least two or three messages from each of us.

So, instead of extending the work day into the weekend for both of us, I used Gmail’s ‘schedule send’ function to delay it until later today. When they receive the message, I’ll have time to respond quickly during reasonable work hours.

In this digital age what are resonable work hours?

That, I believe is an agreement between you and the people you work with.

Me?

I appreciate mental space. When I have the next message to send, I control the velocity of my connections with others. There are times when I want to slow things down. There are times I want to focus.

And I want to ‘feel finished’.

By using the schedule send function, I get to feel finished.

And the person who sent me one last email on a Friday?

They get to feel finished too.

And that is a great gift heading into the weekend.

So, consider slowing down some of your coorespondance.

Do you ever play with the ‘schedule send’ function?

Can you resist replying right away?

Let me know in the comments.