Not Now, But Then #

Instant Messaging has become the de facto channel for communication nowadays, bet it for business or in our personal lives. It is great tool because it is instant, write a text, press send and the receiver is notified almost immediately. This experience makes us expect to have a response back immediately.

We should not expect an message to be treated as an alert to which the receiver has to drop E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G that they are doing and give us an answer. But, as a signal to let the other person of group of people about update or inquiry that we have and need some feedback from them in a timely manner but not now.

By treating every message as an alert to which we have to react no matter what we are currently doing, we discount the importance of our own work. So, messaging becomes more important than our assignments, projects and goals because no matter what we redirect our full attention to any incoming message as soon as that notification bubble pop ups on the screen.

As much as I would like to be able control when people send me messages and make “Focus / Do Not Disturb” schedules, it is unreasonable to expect other people to hold their thought until I’m ready to hear them because it’s not them who are responsible for my schedule but myself and it’s me who has to decide what is more important right now, to wither keep on working or stop whatever I’m doing and redirect my attention to the new requests.

What do we really expect in response to our signals? First, to be sure it was received and read and most apps solve that problem within the user interface. Second, we expect feedback, of any kind, so we know our signals was taken into consideration and the issue will be handled.

Since time is finite, if something gets in then something else has to get out which means something that you have already committed to will not get done. So what is more important, that new thing or the existing commitments? This means we have to learn about shifting priorities in order to be able to asses quickly and on the spot if the request is true emergency that makes our current work irrelevant or a things that can wait until we are done we what we are currently doing.

Also, we have to become comfortable to say no to requests that aren't emergencies and let the people know when we are available to help them and ask if it still relevant by then.

Because we are unable to know when is the right time to contact someone and the interruption is inevitable, we can put a little extra effort when writing a message to be more precise in advance about how critical the situation is what our problem is in order to make it easier for the receiver to asses the situation and decide what to do.

As senders, we can manage our expectations of the response by treating messages as a request for feedback or time and not as an order given to a machine which has to perform for us right now.