Manage the rate of communication

- What you're waiting for a response from someone and you need the information urgently, it can be really frustrating to not hear back from them. On the other side, we also fall into the trap of communicating too frequently with someone about issues that are of minor importance. How can you speed urgent communication up while slowing down less urgent communication so you have less switches in your day? There are two selections to this: expectations and frequency of response.

First, if you're going to be working on an urgent project with a team member and you're fast approaching a deadline, it might help to take just two minutes to set expectations for response rates. Something like this: We've got a deadline fast approaching on Tuesday. Because of that, I think both of us should be more responsive on email for the next few days. Let's try to check our email once every two hours at minimum and get back to each other whenever we see a message.

You can also manage expectations for urgent things by using a messaging service. I personally believe text messages and chat apps should only be used for urgent and emergency situations. You could also communicate with the other person that because you've got an urgent deadline, you can use these services more for the next little bit. Now, on the other side, if you are finding that people are sending you emails too frequently about things that really don't matter, one of the easiest ways to manage it is by slowing down your frequency of communication.

If someone sends you an email about a less important topic, and you reply to them in five minutes, you're communicating to them that you really want to talk about it. Send me more about this as quickly as you can. Past patterns of communication will indicate future likelihood of communication. So simply take longer to reply. But what if you poked your head into the email, checked it, and you saw something you want to deal with because it's top of mind? However, at the same time you don't want to reply too quickly because you want to slow down communication.

One tool that you can use to do this is scheduled or delayed sending. For instance, in Outlook there's an option that many people are not aware of which enables you to delay delivery. You can create your email response and then set the time that your email program should send it. Other email apps have this feature sometimes, usually with the help of an add-on. By managing the expectations of others and controlling your frequency of response, you can make small changes in the pattern of communication.

These changes can save you big amounts of time in the long run. One tool that you can use to do this is scheduled or delayed sending. For instance, in Outlook there's an option that many people are not well aware of which enables you to delay delivery. You can create your email response and then set the time that your email program should send it. Other email apps have this feature sometimes, usually with the help of an add-on.

By managing the expectations of others and controlling your frequency of response, you can make small changes in the pattern of communication. These changes can save you big amounts of time in the long run.