I am trying to take more advantage of Schedule Send, and you should, too.
Both Gmail and Microsoft Outlook have the option to schedule an email’s delivery, rather than sending it immediately. It has two big values for a portion of the emails we all send.
First, the smaller advantage: it lets you think about emails you’re heated about. If you delay send by just an hour or two, it can give you time to think through the response, and go back and revise it with a cooler head.
Second, the bigger advantage: it allows you to respect people’s downtime. We all experience work seepage, when we are checking email well beyond our work hours. And for truly urgent emails, it can be valuable to do that. But for most emails outside of work hours, we can probably wait to read and respond until we get back to work.
With that mindset, I just schedule-sent a non-urgent email about class scheduling to a school counselor, to be delivered Tuesday morning. There’s no reason she needs to be tempted to respond over a holiday weekend, so I am making a small considerate act by not putting it into her inbox.
Do you use the Schedule Send feature of your email? Do you appreciate it when you get less email during your breaks and home hours?