> Now, if he didn’t reply to you after having 4 chances to do so, that’s a pretty good indication that he doesn’t want to talk to you. But before that - it’s just you being stupid and thinking too much of yourself.
Or, you should learn to use email instead of thinking too much of yourself. Unless you are CEO of a Fortune 500 you have no excuse to have 100K unread emails
I dunno. I have learned that I truly have no sense for the amount of e-mail some people get.
When I started working at a big company, I felt like a big kid because I was getting 20ish emails a day, many of them automated.
Then I learned that my relative who runs a non-profit can get 1,000 emails from actual human beings in a single day. Her normal day is composing at least 250 individual, non-templates responses.
And now scale that up to one of the biggest/hottest startups in the country at the time.
A 10 hour workday is 600 minutes. (Who works an 8 hour workday anymore? So 2019.)
To write 250 individual non response template emails every day. It means she sits down at her desk at 8am, writes an email every 2.4 minutes for 10 hours straight, and then stops working at 6pm.
I disagree. I have the same same mailbox I’ve had for 20 years and have lots of unread emails.
I have to prioritize time and use the time that I would spend on 100k unread emails to better purposes. I think there’s probably zero important unread but tons of unimportant stuff.
I think people have very individualized email coping mechanisms and I work on not assuming that my method works for everyone or thinking that someone has “no excuse.”
If you are gainfully employed and produce good work and are professional to me, I don’t judge your email.
I read this advice as more from a perspective of the person who emails someone inbox-unorganized.
So if person A is unorganized with their emails and I need or want something from them I'd better followup (for my own sake, to get the message across no matter the org skills of person A).
I think it's a bit cultural though. My grandmother would say that if someone didn't reply to her, call her back, etc. then it is "pushy" to ping them again and it's good manners not to. I'm Polish, she was Polish. I think the level of acceptable "pushyness" raised between her and my generation and I'd be OK being more aggressive.
To me, this perspective seems to be indicative of thinking too much of yourself. What business is it of yours how another person manages their inbox? You have no right to their attention.
Or, you should learn to use email instead of thinking too much of yourself. Unless you are CEO of a Fortune 500 you have no excuse to have 100K unread emails