It might be counter-intuitive. But when it comes to email responses, slow might actually be better.
When confronted with confrontational emails, especially if the subject is one close to our heart, so to speak, it is easy to shoot from the hip. To fire off a quick email. If done in the heat of the moment, or when already tired late at night, the results could be less than helpful. The best approach is to allow some time to pass. To put some time between writing and sending. Indeed a useful Microsoft Outlook add-on is SendLater. I have trained myself to routinely send any important, but not urgent, email using the ‘send in two-hours’ functions.
Such email will be stored in a special SendLater folder and automatically sent after two hours, unless, of course, I intervene beforehand. When sending emails late at night, when I could be at my most reactive and potentially least reasonable, I sometimes decide to not send till the next morning. I save the copy to my draft folder and review them in the morning, in the fresh light of day. It generally makes no difference to the person receiving the email and can make all the difference to the outcome. In most cases, people will prefer a reasonable, well written and reviewed email that arrives first thing in the morning to a hastily written, and ill-considered one received late at night.
