INBOX ESCAPE VELOCITY
It’s Monday. Someone emails you. It’s not one of those emails where you can get away with a one-sentence response. It’s going to take more like 6 sentences. And for whatever reason, you just can’t muster 6 stupid sentences right now. So you’ll deal with it next timeyou are dispatching your email.
And now it’s Thursday, 3 days later. It’s really time to respond. But you can’t just respond with 6 simple sentences anymore. No no no, that time has come and gone. You need to be extra thoughtful in your response to compensate for the three-day delay. Indeed, a typical 6 sentence response would be insulting to the sender. This is a post-Tuesday world folks. Monday’s 6 sentences will no longer do. But here’s the rub: Being extra thoughtful takes more mindshare, and you are tired and there are other easier emails waiting to be answered, so you decide to come back to it later.
Oh shit. It’s 3 weeks later and you are in a real pickle. You are going to need an extra large gesture to make up for the unacceptable delay in response. It’s simply a personal affront to the sender you haven’t answered yet. This goes beyond simple thoughtful email response. You need to do something extra for the person to show them you care. Buy them a gift? Photoshop their face into something funny? Invite them somewhere? You rack your brain. What could that be? You try to think of ideas, but nothing is coming to mind now. I’ sure you’ll think of something soon.
And there it is, 3 months later, that original email. Sitting in your inbox like an unflushed turd in a public toilet. How did it reach this point? I’ll tell you how…
… that innocuous Monday morning email reached INBOX ESCAPE VELOCITY.
Little did we know that by delaying that original response, the rate at which you need extra time and care to compensate for the delay exceeds the motivational guilt you are feeling by not responding.
I know what you are thinking
Could you formalize this “Inbox Escape Velocity” mathematically?
Sure!
Let G(t) be the effort adequate to compensate for your guilt of non-response
Let M(t) be the effort you are able to muster over time.
Let tMax be the time at which you are able to muster maximum effort (e.g. good sleep, no meetings)
Conditions for Inbox Escape Velocity:
1) dG/ dt > 0
2) G(t) > M(t) for all t <= tMax
This medium article serves as a passive aggressive apology to all the people wronged by my inability to face my inbox. Love you all. Call me instead please.
