“No Need to Respond”
The email mic drop
I tend to use Friday afternoons as catch-up-on-email time. The same is true of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But Friday is special as I usually do it while enjoying an end-of-week beer. This week, the beer is even more welcome with 90 degree heat outside and an AQI that just spiked north of 300, meaning it would be toxic to open a window. Air conditioning hasn’t been invented in San Francisco yet. Did I mention our President was just admitted to the hospital with COVID? The same week he made a mockery of our democracy while spewing toxicity in the air (literally) during a debate? What a week.
The ice cold beer is needed. The email, less so. So I’m writing this instead.
But I’m also thinking about email. As I often do. This time because I heard something earlier in the week while listening to a podcast. The Press Box is a media podcast by The Ringer’s David Shoemaker and Bryan Curtis, which I love. Last week, while talking about the passing of “swashbuckling editor” Sir Harold Evans, Curtis noted that he used to send emails with the closing line “no need to respond”.
Yes, it’s a power move. A badass one, at that. But it’s also highly practical. I would say that for about 75% of the emails I send, I actually don’t need to get a response back. Yet for almost all of those, I still get one. And it sucks because it compounds several of the things that makes email suck: the speed (read: slowness) of it, the formality of it, the whack-a-mole nature of it.
Anyway, I heard this idea of “no need to respond” and immediately wanted to try it. But I’m slightly worried it will make me seem like an asshole. And sure enough, the internet confirms that it might. So I’m writing this to help me think through the trade-off. Am I okay being viewed as a jerk if it means one less email in my inbox? I think so!
And it may not be such a jerk move if it is actually helping you save time too (which it is).
Am I okay signing off with simply “no need to reply”? In a way, it reminds me of the “Sent from my iPhone” thing, which I still use, mainly to indicate that I typed the email on my phone and so you should excuse the brevity. That was clearly the intention of that addition to the iPhone Mail client (though it was also a bit of the poor man’s “blue bubble” before iMessage — since, of course, anyone could actually put that in their email footer). And I think it worked! It shifted, even if just slightly, the mentality around email sent on the go.
Might “no need to respond” do the same of one-off emails? Probably not. My guess is that it boils down to those who play offense on email versus play defense — that is, a lot of people send off emails looking for a response, while others don’t initiate as many but respond to those that come in. I’m sure there’s some power dynamic here as well. But it’s too hot to think about email anymore right now. Back to the beer.
