"If I don't reply, it looks like I'm not coping"

Silence has a sound. If a message goes unanswered until morning, it says something, and what you're afraid it says is that you've dropped the ball, that you're behind, that you're not on top of things the way you used to be. The fast reply keeps that story from starting.

Look at what the fast reply actually says. It doesn't say you're competent. Competence is in the deck on Thursday. It says you're there. A reply at ten past nine tells Priya one fact, which is that at ten past nine you are reading and answering work messages. That's a fact about your availability, not about your ability, and the two get confused because availability is visible tonight and ability shows up next week.

The confusion goes deeper than one message. Melissa Mazmanian, Wanda Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates studied professionals who used mobile email devices for work, and they describe something they call the autonomy paradox. The people they studied chose to check and answer email everywhere, and saw it as freedom, as control over their own time. But each person's constant availability raised what everyone else expected, and the collective effect was a norm of continual connection that nobody had voted for and everyone was maintaining. The norm was made of individual fast replies, each of which felt like a free choice. The people who most resented being always reachable were the ones keeping the standard up.

That's what "not coping" is really about. It isn't that a slow reply would show you can't cope. It's that in a group where everyone replies fast, a slow reply stands out, and standing out feels like failing. But the group's speed isn't a law. It's a habit that the group is teaching itself, and you're one of the teachers.

The fair objection is that some managers do read silence as a problem. Chapter 22 takes the manager who genuinely expects the ten o'clock answer. For the ordinary manager, though, ask what they'd say if you asked them directly whether you're expected to answer at night. Most would say no, and mean it, and be slightly puzzled you asked. Chapter 18 is about asking.

So the practical point is this. The thing you're protecting with the fast reply is a reputation for being reachable. That reputation is worth having only if you want to be reachable, and the whole of this book is a question about whether you do.