Nine o'clock, the buzz, and the four-minute reply

It's ten past nine. You're on the sofa with the second half of something on, and the phone on the arm of the chair lights up. Not a ring. A buzz, and the top of a message. It's from Priya, about the slide deck for Thursday, and it says "Quick one, do we have the updated numbers for slide 8 or should I use the old ones?" You could leave it. You look at it for a second and you know you could leave it. Then you pick the phone up, because you know the answer and it will take a minute, and you type "Use the new ones, they're in the shared folder, file ending v3", and you put the phone down, and it's fourteen minutes past nine. The programme has moved on without you and you're not quite sure what happened in it.

Or it's Sunday afternoon, and the message says "No rush, but when you get a sec could you look at the draft?" and there's an attachment. No rush. You open it anyway, because you're holding the phone and the attachment is right there. You read it. You send three comments. It's Sunday and you've been at work for twenty minutes, and the message said no rush, and the person who sent it is at a garden centre.

Or it's the one in bed, which is the one you'd least like to describe. You're lying there, the light's off, and the phone is face up on the bedside table, and it lights the ceiling. You could turn it over. You look, because if it's something you'd rather know now than at seven. It's a calendar change. You've seen it now, and you're awake in a slightly different way than you were.

These are invented, but I'd guess yours are close. Some words. The buzz is the message arriving outside working hours, whatever noise it makes. The four-minute reply is the fast answer you send to it, whether it takes four minutes or forty seconds. The lesson is what each four-minute reply teaches the person who sent the message about when to expect you, and chapter 13 is about it. The class is everyone you've taught that way over the years, colleagues, boss, clients, and yourself. The nod is the reply that only says you've seen it, "got this, will look tomorrow". The wonder is the urge to know what's in the inbox. The window is the hours in which you reply, which chapter 17 is about. The line is the one message that tells people what the window is. And the other door is the route you leave open for a real emergency, so that closing the ordinary one is safe.

Before you go on, do one thing. For a week, every time you answer a work message outside your working hours, note the time, who it was from, what it was, and whether it needed an answer before morning. Be honest about the last one. You'll want the list in chapter 5, and I think it'll surprise you.