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Pro tip: I spent 2 years answering every email in 5 minutes and it wrecked my career growth
I used to be proud of how fast I replied to everything. Boss emails, client questions, random requests at 9pm, all handled inside 5 minutes. Then my review in March came back with "reactive, not strategic" and my raise got cut to 1.5%. My coworker who takes a full day to respond got promoted over me. I finally figured out that fast replies just taught everyone to dump stuff on me, and none of it was the work that actually mattered. Now I batch my inbox twice a day and guess what, nobody died. Has anyone else had to train their team to stop expecting instant answers, and how did you do it without looking lazy?
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wren_thomas1620d ago
Oh man I feel this in my bones. I was the same way for years, replying to stuff at 11pm from my phone while my wife just stared at me. The worst part was people started treating me like a help desk, like I was just sitting there waiting for their next thing. I remember one guy emailed me three times in one hour about something that could've waited till Monday. What finally clicked for me was when I started putting "I check email at 9am and 3pm" in my signature, and honestly it felt rude at first but after a couple weeks everybody just... adjusted? A few people still poke at me but I let those sit and they figure it out. My actual work got way better too since I wasn't always switching tasks. Wish somebody had told me this years ago.
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