Last week I discussed a person who I greatly admire. This person responds to emails, text and voice messages only when he or she feels like it — and sometimes not at all. I mentioned that I wish I had the courage to do that.
Replying quickly to business messages is a little different, since things are so fast-paced these days. In my case, if I don’t reply quickly to a client’s message, I worry he’ll call my competition instead.
Replying quickly to business messages is a little different, since things are so fast-paced these days. In my case, if I don’t reply quickly to a client’s message, I worry he’ll call my competition instead.
This reminds me of something I read recently. I wish I could take credit, but some anonymous smart-aleck is the real author. Here it is: “Out of office reply by a European worker: ‘I’m on holiday for the month of August. Contact me in September.’ Out of office reply by an American worker: ‘I stepped out of the office for a couple of hours to have kidney surgery, but you can reach me on my cell phone anytime.’”
Anyway, after pondering this curious aspect of modern communication, I wondered why it is that so many of us have an instinctive urge to respond quickly whenever we receive a message. Even outside the business world, when we receive a personal text or voice message, quite a few of us immediately get apprehensive and cannot relax again until we’ve replied.
I finally figured it out. I blame the good ol’ Ma Bell telephone system during the early and mid 20th century. Remember those days? Each house had a phone, either on the wall in the kitchen or on a table in the foyer. You could choose whatever color you wanted for your phone, as long as it was black. There was no caller ID or answering machine, so when the phone rang (and those Ma Bell bells were loud!), you had no idea who was calling. All you knew, because you had learned this from your parents and grandparents, was that if the phone rang, it was IMPORTANT! That phone HAD to be answered.
Anyway, after pondering this curious aspect of modern communication, I wondered why it is that so many of us have an instinctive urge to respond quickly whenever we receive a message. Even outside the business world, when we receive a personal text or voice message, quite a few of us immediately get apprehensive and cannot relax again until we’ve replied.
I finally figured it out. I blame the good ol’ Ma Bell telephone system during the early and mid 20th century. Remember those days? Each house had a phone, either on the wall in the kitchen or on a table in the foyer. You could choose whatever color you wanted for your phone, as long as it was black. There was no caller ID or answering machine, so when the phone rang (and those Ma Bell bells were loud!), you had no idea who was calling. All you knew, because you had learned this from your parents and grandparents, was that if the phone rang, it was IMPORTANT! That phone HAD to be answered.
After all, since you had no idea who was calling, it could be a relative calling about an emergency. You had to answer. Or it could be the president or the pope calling with some life-changing news. Not that any of us knew anyone who had ever been called by a world leader, but we had heard stories about a guy, some time ago, in a neighboring town, or maybe a neighboring state, who got a call from someone really important, possibly the governor, or someone else in politics, and that one phone call changed the guy’s life. Since we couldn’t rule out for sure that it WASN’T the president or pope on the line, we had to answer.
Back in those days, when the phone rang, it was like the Pony Express riding into a quiet Western town in 1861. It was an event, possibly the most interesting event of the entire week. So, the phone just had to be answered.
My theory is that we all were trained by our ancestors to consider any attempt at high-tech communication to be of supreme importance. When caller ID and answering machines came along, followed by email and text messages that display who the sender is, there was no longer a need to reply quickly. But we are unable to break that habit.
Back in those days, when the phone rang, it was like the Pony Express riding into a quiet Western town in 1861. It was an event, possibly the most interesting event of the entire week. So, the phone just had to be answered.
My theory is that we all were trained by our ancestors to consider any attempt at high-tech communication to be of supreme importance. When caller ID and answering machines came along, followed by email and text messages that display who the sender is, there was no longer a need to reply quickly. But we are unable to break that habit.
Well, I say we all should act like the person I admire and reply to messages whenever we get around to it, if at all. Whatever the message is, it surely can wait a little. But if the president or the pope rides up to your house on a pony with saddle bags filled with mail, then you can get excited.
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