What happens when you don’t reply within five minutes

Surprise: nothing explodes and people often figure things out on their own. Who would have thought?

Here’s a hot take to spice up your morning: nobody needs a reply in five minutes. Not your boss, not your client, not the colleague who pinged “you around?” and nothing else.

At a recent assignment, a client was sharing her screen during a short planning sync. During those ten minutes, I counted five email notifications and at least ten Slack messages. She quickly had to reply to one of them, and I stopped counting after that.

I think most of us are replying too fast, and it’s destroying our workdays (and focus).

The culture of fake urgency

When you define everything as urgent, the word loses its meaning.

And boy, do people love creating urgency when there is none. In some companies I’ve been at, that culture is seeping through the walls, making everyone on edge.

When I started as a consultant in my 20s, I was told it was important to have work-life balance, but also that I needed to bring my work phone everywhere and be ready to answer if a client called. (Love a good ol’ mixed signal.) My junior self thought I had to have every notification on and be ready to jump at anything coming my way. That’s how you do work, right?

At some point I noticed how my already high stress level was accompanied by anxiety. I struggled to focus, and this was when social media feeds were still chronological. I thought my phone was vibrating with emails even when it wasn’t. Every time I heard the Slack ping, my body reacted as if I heard gunshots.

Reasonable reaction when it’s your colleague asking if she could borrow your designer for five minutes.

A tiny rebellion against notifications

So I decided to do an experiment. I removed all notifications on email and Slack. I gave clients my number and asked them to text me if something was truly urgent. Pretty simple, and not really that radical.

Yet, the first days I was even more anxious. I kept hearing phantom pings left and right. I checked my phone every second to make sure nobody was upset with me for not replying fast enough.

After a little while it got easier. I didn’t need to refresh my inbox all the time. I took a couple of hours to really focus on a strategy document I had struggled with. And I noticed two things.

First, my nervous system calmed down. I had been on hyper-alert without even knowing it.

Second, it turns out that if you don’t reply in five minutes …

drumroll please …

nothing happens.

And sometimes, people even find the answer to the urgent question they had all by themselves. It’s fascinating, really.

The invisible cost of being available

Why is this such a norm in corporate culture? Even in Sweden, where I’m from. Personally, I think fear plays a part. It was the case for me at 25. I was afraid to be seen as slow, that I could be replaced by someone sharper. Being available is also one way to look, and feel, busy.

The culture is another reason. If everyone replies the instant they get a message, that becomes the norm. But where does that path lead? If I reply within minutes, do I have the mental space to think it through first? Or do I just want to give a quick reaction to show that I’m “on it”?

If that is what everyone around me does, what does that expectation of being hyper-responsive do to us in the long run?

I got very close to a burnout around this time. There was a combination of reasons, but one of them was exactly this: feeling like I had to be on, and show that I was, at all times. Learning to set healthy boundaries is one of the perks of getting older. For me, that means actively deciding not to be available and responsive at all times.

I’m convinced that makes me significantly more productive.

What are you actually being paid for

One thought I’ll wrap this up with. Every agency I’ve worked with has an escalation system for their retainer clients. If you want 24/7 instant support, that will cost you. You usually have three tiers for different questions. Minor bugs, like the wrong colour on a website link, can wait a few days to be fixed. Your lead-generating website going down? That’s a code red and should be treated accordingly.

If your boss or your clients expect you to be available as if everything is code red, you’d better charge accordingly. Or, perhaps, decide whether that’s actually the job you want.

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If you’re curious what I do beyond writing here, I’m a project and operations consultant, helping teams restore their sanity with better ways of working. More at sannastefansson.com