The window

Everything up to here has been reasoning. From here it's method, and the method has three parts, the window, the line and the phone. This chapter is the first.

The window is the hours in which you answer work messages. Not the hours you work, which may be longer or differently shaped, but the hours in which a message sent to you gets a reply. It needs to be one set of hours, the same every working day, and it needs an edge. "Roughly office hours" isn't a window. "Eight to six" is.

A shop has opening hours on the door, and nobody stands outside at nine at night feeling let down. They read the sign and come back in the morning. The sign is what makes the closed door polite rather than rude.

Choosing the hours is the easy part, and I'd start with the ones you'd defend to anyone. If you're in an office from nine to half five, the window is nine to half five, or eight to six if you like a margin. If you work flexibly, the window is still fixed even though the work isn't, because the window is a promise to other people and a promise has to be the same each time to be one. If you moved an hour to the evening as chapter 10 suggested, that hour can be in the window, on the days it happens, if you say so. What can't be in the window is "whenever I'm awake".

The window has two edges and both matter, but the evening one is the one this book is about. The evening edge is the time after which the buzz gets no reply until the morning edge. Not a nod. Not a look. Nothing. Chapter 19 is about how to make that physically true rather than a matter of restraint.

Then there's the weekend, which is simpler. The window is closed. A message that arrives on Saturday is answered on Monday morning, and the sender who wrote "no rush" gets exactly what they asked for.

The fair objection is that this feels rigid, and you're not a rigid person. But the rigidity is what does the work. A window that bends whenever a message looks important is the habit you already have. A window that doesn't bend teaches the class something they can rely on, and the class relies on it within a few weeks. Chapter 22 covers the jobs where the edge has to have a gate in it, on call, time zones, real emergencies, and the gate is the other door, not a softer edge.

The practical step is to write the window down, two times, and put it where you'll see it in the evening. That's all this chapter asks. The next one is about telling people.