Ignoring vs saying No

A few years ago when I started up, one of the things that really pissed me off was people ignoring my emails and never replying. As a new entrepreneur and even as you grow bigger, at every step you need help from all sorts of people and you realise that a lot of your emails go unanswered.

While some go unanswered unintentionally(the person’s probably too busy to reply), quite a few are left unanswered intentionally by the recipient.

Over the years I’ve realised, as you get busier and as more people write in to you, you try not to treat them the way you were treated. You try to reply to every email you receive. You simply reply with a No to emails pertaining to business partnerships that you don’t want, or to someone trying to sell you crap, or to someone wanting to manage your wealth, or to someone trying to get a favor out of you. But people most often take the No as a way to get back with a more convincing reply in an attempt to convert your No into a Yes! Since you replied once, you are obliged to reply again else it would be clear that you are ignoring them and that’s even more rude than not replying in the first place.

Now, I’ve realised the best way is to ignore such emails. Not reply at all! And I think the world over this should be made into a convention. That it’s a No if you do not hear back. Sure, there are chances that your email may have landed in spam, so it should be ok for the sender to ping you two more times before they give up on you.

This would save everyone so much time! I don’t get annoyed anymore if someone does not reply. I mean, if they aren’t replying, it definitely means its a No! Why do you want to hear that from them anyways when you know the answer?

This will also save us all the time we spend on coming up with innovative ways of saying No without “hurting” the other person’s feelings.