I was hoping this article was going to highlight the emotional issues with responding instantly as opposed to the "lack of time" issue. I don't respond to most texts instantly, not because I'm driving or busy with my life, but because I just don't feel like responding right away. I am not sure why this is. I am not trying to be rude, and most of the time I feel bad about it and think that maybe I have communication issues, such as keeping in touch with people. But I am starting to realize that we shouldn't be expected to respond immediately "just because". We shouldn't have to be occupied to warrant not responding. Unfortunately, it is a stigma, and people will continue to get upset if they don't hear back within a matter of minutes. I wish someone would touch on this issue as I've never really seen it discussed.
> If someone really needs you they will pick up the phone and call you. It’s that simple.<p>I actually never feel the urge to respond quickly to a text message. I treat it as the asynchronous platform that it is. Phone calls on the other hand are way more intrusive than text messages and I hardly ever answer any call because of it.
Sigh... Kind of OT but I'm reminded of an old client of mine. He would routinely send feature requests and bug reports over SMS. At the start, I'd interrupt whatever I was doing and log it in the appropriate place, but after the first few weeks of this, it started to get pretty disruptive. I didn't trust myself enough to remember to go back through my texts later and catch everything from the messages.<p>So I drew a line in the sand and explained to him that those things needed to go to email, so that I could deal with them at an appropriate time and not worry about losing them. This seemed to work well at first, but then every email was immediately followed by an SMS: did you get my email? The first few times, I interpreted that as "I sent an email a few days ago and didn't hear back" so I'd frantically go check my email and see the message: sent 2 minutes ago.<p>I don't miss that client. Eventually the solution was to ignore him on SMS entirely. Well... Eventually the solution was to fire him as a client, but that was for other reasons.
You can definitely see the effect of this within development teams too. I remember one specific exchange where a developer sent "X is broken" to the whole team, pretty much all of whom immediately read it and then started wondering how "X got broken." A minute later the OP sent "Oops my bad, typo." What is the cost of a two minute interruption for an entire team, or of the broken concentration, which probably lasts longer than the original interaction did?
One of the best and simplest changes I ever made was to have my phone on airplane mode by default. Originally, the change was just to maximize the life of a dying battery, but even after I replaced the battery I discovered that I was happier, more focused, and less stressed when I only checked my phone 3-4 times a day. Essentially, I treat it like I treat email.<p>Everyone who knows me knows that I do this and I have told them that I am not going to change. For emergencies, they know the people I usually see each day and know to call one of them.<p>I've discovered that when people can't expect to contact you on a whim at any time, they think ahead and let you know what their plans are in advance. Both parties can then arrange their availability in advance and use their time more efficiently.<p>After a year of doing this it makes you realize just how absurd and artificial the expectation of continuous availability is. My attention is a resource and I am going to control how I allocate it, not others.
I've never had a person actually get upset with me because I've not responded back to a text immediately.<p>I have some people who will always respond to my texts immediately, and some people who I will be lucky if I hear back in an hour.<p>I don't hold any ill will towards the second group of people. I come to expect that from them.<p>The only time I might get agitated is if someone always responds immediately and then stops, just because it's violating my expectations.<p>I wonder if this person were to stop compulsively responding to texts immediately if people would stop getting angry when he doesn't.
I have a phone for a reason. It isn't to send telegraphs. I don't carry my phone with me to work, because people who need to get in touch with me have my work phone number and I live a few minutes away from the office. If your ego is so fragile that you need realtime validation of your thoughts, then we aren't going to get along. I'll keep on doing what I'm doing because it works for me, and I hope you find people who are willing to spend all day looking at their phone. I'd rather see everything else around me.
As someone deeply entrenched in a mobile workspace I tend to ignore a lot of txts because they aren't important. If they were important the person that's texting me would go through the proper channels and write up specs, etc for me instead of blasting a "WE NEED THIS NEW THING ASAP!" style message. Those texts get ignored and I send the person a Hipchat message stating that they must go through proper channels or NO work will get done.<p>Writing the specs takes about 1-5 minutes and allows the developer to have a clear path to work from.
This is an issue of boundaries on the receiver's side. Other people's unreasonable expectations are not binding on us. Otherwise we quickly become enslaved to everyone else's whims, which is no way to live and certainly no way to succeed at anything.
This is simply a matter of training people that you interact with. If you treat your own time as valuable and don't immediately respond to everything, eventually everyone else will come to think of your time as valuable also.<p>The trick is to never respond immediately on media that you don't want it expected from. It has the random reinforcement effect attached to it, so if they get you once, they'll always expect it.
Great post. This resonates with me because too often others expect a quick reply. I have read receipts disabled due to that mentality and won't use a messaging service that uses them without an opt-out option.
An expectation of instantaneous response, combined with the pathetic verbal throughput of typing text on a glass screen. So many things that would be easy to say out loud are not worth typing on a phone screen.<p>I didn't like talking on the phone much but texting is so much worse in so many ways.
I have been arguing for contact states for years. You should be able to set conditions like the old IM status messages - "away," "in a meeting,","family time,"etc - that limit your reachability and optionally notify people that you won't be notified of their messages (until a certain time, if scheduled).<p>This was (naively) my first iOS app attempt before I realized this is something that has to be done at the OS level. Please, Apple, "Do Not Disturb" was a step in the right direction. Finish the job.
Like some of the commenters, I don't respond to text immediately and not just when driving. This behavior of mine is made worse by all these new IM apps like telegram, hangouts which provide notifications on whether I have read it. If for some reason, I try to reply immediately and change my mind midway, the IM app shows 'xx it typing..' to the other party and now it's too late to back out.
When I receive emails and texts or anything for that matter, I try to get back to the original sender quickly. I expect others to do the same. People who violate this I treat on a case by case basis. If I know your life situation (i.e. you are always checking your phone - you are unemployed) and you are unable to get back to me within a couple of days let alone 24 hours, then to me this strongly indicates flakiness, or lack of respect of my time. However, if you are a busy individual with job, family responsibilities and you are unable to get back to me within a couple of days then I will cut you some slack.<p>Ultimately, however, I find myself gradually mimicking the behavior of my contacts. If you always take your time to get back to me, then I won't see you as a priority and if we are 'friends' or 'romantic partners' then the relationship will gradually erode due to this. However, if you get back to me in a timely manner, you are always on time for appointments and you always let me know beforehand that you are not going to keep an appointment then I will put more effort than I would otherwise into trying to maintain the relationship.