Has this ever happened to you?

You’re looking through your inbox, and you see one of those messages. You know, those messages where you know you need to respond, but you can’t just dash off a quick email – you’ll need to sit down and think about it. Or you want to be extra sure that what you’re writing is the right response. Every time you check your mail the email keeps bugging you, and you think, “I know I should deal with that, but not right now; I’ll get back to it later.”

 

One quick way to get the ball rolling: Write a quick two minute response as a draft, right away. Save it, don’t send it.

 

When you separate writing and sending:

• You enable yourself to write something without it having to be perfect right away.
• If you’re writing an email with strong emotional content, you get to put some distance between the emotion and the email.
• You don’t get stuck looking at the same messages as often. You can archive the message and save the draft as a reminder.
• You get a head start on writing the full response. Writing a very quick first draft will help get your thoughts flowing and make writing the actual email easier.

Extra tip: If you’re using gmail, you may already know you can stop an email you send by accident with Undo Send, but if you want extra security, try adding the day you want to send it as a recipient. Gmail won’t send the email since the name you type in isn’t a real email address. (Try it!)