One is when I first get up in the morning. I find that I am worthless before breakfast. This morning I got up, got a bowl out of the cupboard, and started to pour a nice bowlful of dog food for myself. I realized what I was doing before I'd put much into the bowl, but it clearly illustrates the problem.
The other time is just before going to bed. By late evening I am tired and very, very grumpy. Beware ye who would ask a favor of me. "Who the hell does he think he is? What can I do about that at 11PM?" The fact that the request was sent at 2 in the afternoon escapes me. I fire off an angry response, only to regret it immediately after clicking the SEND button. Then I lie awake for hours, stewing over the stupid request, and regretting my hasty response.
There are two solutions, of course. One is to never, never, ever read email before going to bed. I can't count the number of times I have read something just before going to bed that annoyed me so that I couldn't sleep, even though I knew that the email was really of no importance.
The other solution, and more important, is to never respond to any email without letting it "sit" for a while. If it was really urgent, the person sending it would probably have called me on the telephone.
I actually have a signature in my email client that says:
Please be advised that I try very hard to read my email twice a day, at 11 AM and again about 4 PM. That's not always possible, so please realize that I'll get to your message as soon as I can. Thanks for your patience.The problem is that I forget about that simple solution.
