Normalize scheduling communication

I can imagine that the work from home era has produced an equal number of workaholics as trackpad flickers, or at least a proportionate amount of new ones.

Being able to send work emails from the phone or on the web had already been possible previously. Now with the lines between home and work being blurred a lot more with remote working arrangements, sometimes, its easy to check an email, slack/teams channel and respond to things when you find yourself sitting with some extra time on the evenings, weekends or holidays.

Many years ago, back when I had just moved to Singapore, I didn't have many friends and didn't want to go out as I was a young and broke member of a workforce. My afterworks were spent hanging out at our companies' technical distribution lists, reading emails, asking and answering questions (this was a little bit before the social media era so I didn't really have that many places to waste my time online yet).

The organization was quite big so it was pretty normal to have high traffic emails back and forth in those lists. I eventually made some friends and when I revealed I was based in Singapore, I started becoming a little conscious of the impression I was making, being on email at awkward times in the night for that time zone. It was not all that strange though. The company had a culture of being on email all the time so I wasn't really that worried.

Still, when I realized, I made an effort to use the schedule function of Outlook. This was not just to hide the fact that I didn't have enough of a life outside of work. It had a bonus effect of giving the impression that I was an early bird, sending emails early in the morning. Or maybe that I was an organized human being that was going through and clearing mails first thing in the day.

I realized that it had other positive effects though. Usually, when I send emails at night, the people I am emailing are also always on email and they reply right away. Mobile email didn't used to have the same functionality of scheduling mail so a lot times, it ends up being a lot of back and forth, almost real time responses. This was pre slack/teams/whatsapp etc and also the time where email quotas existed so you can imagine that filled up quite quickly. I remember having to archive my emails monthly (anyone else remember having to deal with OSTs and PSTs?)

Today, we have a lot more communication channels, and people are in a lot more places other than email, doing not just work but also socializing online. The good thing is that more platforms have also added the functionality of scheduling but not everyone has discovered the benefits of using it yet. Here are a few of my reasons:

1. Higher chance of being one of the first few emails to be readInbox zero is a thing because, reasons. One of the selling points of corporate instant messaging solutions was to reduce email traffic within companies. I get so much email even though I have some sorting rules setup that I can only really go through so many when I sit and triage through it in the morning. These days, there are even tools that give you insights to when a contact actually responds the most based on past emails. Scheduling your email for these times will give you a higher chance of getting a response or at least, ending up on the top of the pile of emails they get.
2. Showing respect for your contact's work-life balanceWhen we read our emails or respond to work chats is our business but it's easy to forget what impact or impression that makes on our contact. We all just want to be effective with our time and make use of some downtime clearing emails but our contacts can interpret this differently. If you are a manager emailing the team for example, are you then expecting that the team also be on emails and responding 24/7? I am guessing not, but a lot of times, it can be interpreted as such, and we should be mindful.Because emails are on our phones and notifications for those are on by default, people get alerted the moment an email arrives. Sure, by now people have figured out how to turn off notifications at certain times but still, we should always consider the impression we are giving by sending emails outside of work hours.
3. Don't let important things disappear into the weekendFriday afternoons are usually the times when I get enough calm and clear headedness to come up with new ideas or get reminded about important things. I know I am guilty of then sending that on email or the chat channel only to find it becoming stale or flooded over with mundane stuff that comes after.Scheduling the email or chat message for when you know people are back and focused 100% will make sure that your ideas don't slip through the cracks.

Most apps these days have the ability to schedule delivery in a dropdown right beside the send button. Here's what It looks like for Gmail and Slack

Microsoft's products have theirs a bit more hidden but it's there. Outlook's seem to be hidden away when you are writing a new message:

Although, when replying to messages, you actually get a prompt to schedule the response instead which is quite nice.

As for teams, you have to right click the send button to bring up the scheduler. Seems this also only works for chats, and not channel posts. I really hope they fix that.

If I'm not mistaken, even SMS apps on phones also have the ability to schedule send message. Think: schedule that "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" message to be on the dot! There are a lot of benefits from scheduling in personal interactions as well.

I really hope this becomes a standard feature for communication platforms. What other benefits have you experienced with scheduling messages?