How do I make sure someone responds to my Friday afternoon request?

“You don’t have to respond to this until Monday, but...”

Happy Friday. I'm about to save a whole bunch of weekends...

By the end of today, many of you will commit a crime that you didn’t even know was illegal.

Okay, maybe not "illegal," but very discurteous.

You’ll start an email or Slack with, “This can wait until Monday...” 

Your message is doomed in one of the following ways:

1️⃣ You’re sending the recipient to purgatory. 

They'll spend the whole weekend in an avoidance loop, thinking about your email and dreading the mental calories it will take to reply. 

They’ll be headed out on a date with their spouse, turn on their phone to call an Uber, and there will be the notification for YOUR EMAIL, just waiting. Watching.

They’ll be making their Sunday morning coffee and ‘bloop’ up will pop an intrusive thought about YOUR EMAIL, needling them with the Sunday scaries.

They’ll be in the shower on Monday morning, thinking about YOUR EMAIL and how they need to respond before the week catches up to them. That tiny little pea under the 20 mattresses of everything else they have to do this week will feel insurmountable, and they’ll ask the shower head whether they can even go on.

OR

2️⃣ The message will be buried deeper than a grave.

By Monday, your little request is buried under 70 calendar notifications, newsletters, and one-time offers. They clear out the fluff and prioritize the urgent messages. 

By the time they have the bandwidth to deal with your thing, it’s no longer on the first screen of their inbox. Like it never happened.

They get a cup of coffee. They go to a meeting. Life goes on. 

Tuesday afternoon, they think “didn’t so-and-so send me something on Friday?” But then they get another notification and forget.

---

If it can wait until Monday, for the love of humanity, scheduled-send it for Monday at 10:43am.

☝️ These are the ONLY situations where it’s okay to send the “this can wait till Monday” email:

1. You know that this person well enough to know that their Sunday afternoon inbox clean-out is when they’re most productive.

2. You're their boss, and they had better deal with this first thing on Monday or it’s straight to the sh*t list with them.

3. It’s 1997 and scheduled send hasn’t been invented yet. 

All other reasons are invalid. 

You’re welcome.

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