Nowadays, the internet enables us to connect with people from all over the world in real time and have access to a huge amount of information. In the same time, we got more and more selective on what we spend our limited time and attention.
Since I am working on my business plan and investors "hunting", I had the chance to get in contact with lots of successful entrepreneurs and investors, from the internationally famous Guy Kawasaki to the nationally famous Marius Ghenea and to other great people that are not so much into the spotlights. You can imagine that they are very busy people, however all of them replied personally to my emails in a few hours, maximum two days - answering my questions and giving extra feedback/ advice. Now the question is: should this be considered amazing or normal? They might do it just because they respect the people who write them, or because they know among all those conversations there might be some good opportunities, and so on. For sure is a good example to follow (especially since obviously it is possible to reply quickly to all your emails) by all the beginners (students, young professionals) who declare themselves too busy to reply immediately to their emails. Actually, it seemed funny to me to hear sometimes from some people that they have a "policy" of replying to emails after a certain time period, just to show that they are busy people. And there are also some who just don't bother to reply to everybody. No comment!
It may seem a small detail, but it makes a huge difference in today's business world when speed/ promptitude is so important (for example, lately in research/ consultancy - a competitive advantage became how fast you can deliver the results to the client). And is also important since we started to work remotely more and more. So remember that delaying checking and replying emails can cause a chain of delays for others and you might lose some good opportunities or respect.
And yes, it might be difficult to manage efficiently your emails, but for this there are solutions. Some use labels and prioritizing rules - to be honest, I believe that this creates exactly some unhappy discriminations and I recommend more not to differentiate them, but to find other ways. For example, using mobile internet on your phone to use constructively waiting periods (like in traffic). As for when you are on your laptops, try to reply emails as soon as they arrive to your inbox - some quick breaks to do something else are good from time to time and it keeps you away from getting scared of a huge number of unread emails that gathered there. And by the way, one more personal advice is: do not mark as unread an email that requires an action or more time/ info to reply. Is better to add the task in your agenda and clear the email from your inbox, better on a psychological level because your inbox will not seem too big to handle easily.
What is your point of view on this topic?
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