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Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics

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Speaker 1: used by leading innovators to get so much out of

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Speaker 1: their day. I'm your host, doctor Amanda Imba. I'm an

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Speaker 1: organizational psychologist, the CEO of Inventium, and I'm obsessed with

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Speaker 1: finding ways to optimize my work day. Now. Most out

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Speaker 1: of office auto responders are a pretty good remedy for insomnia.

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Speaker 1: They read something along the lines of I'm traveling for

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Speaker 1: work until December fifteenth. During this time, I'll have limited

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Speaker 1: access to email. If you need something urgently, please contact

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Speaker 1: go through it on the administration team. I will respond

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Speaker 1: to this email upon my return. How boring and they

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Speaker 1: are all the same, I think because someone wants to

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Speaker 1: use this format. Around the time of the inception of

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Speaker 1: the auto responder, it somehow became the default and almost

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Speaker 1: no one questioned it. I came to this realization a

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Speaker 1: couple of years ago. I was sitting down to write

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Speaker 1: my own boring out of office message and thought, hang on,

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Speaker 1: literally hundreds of people are going to be reading this.

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Speaker 1: Maybe this is a great opportunity to include something interesting

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Speaker 1: and b bring a smile to people's faces, because, let's

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Speaker 1: face it, out of office messages generally do the opposite

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Speaker 1: on both counts. At around the same time, I was

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Speaker 1: experimenting with different ways of structuring my work date. I've

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Speaker 1: been very influenced by Paul Graham's post about maker versus

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Speaker 1: Manager time, and I had started trying to spend my

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Speaker 1: mornings in maker time and out of my inbox. Given

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Speaker 1: I wasn't planning on checking emails in the morning, I

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Speaker 1: thought i'd create a permanent auto responder so no one

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Speaker 1: would expect an urgent response from me. It read something like,

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Speaker 1: hi there. If you sent this email before lunchtime, I

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Speaker 1: won't have seen it. This is because I'm on a

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Speaker 1: mission to make my mornings more focused and less reactive.

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Speaker 1: I try to spend my mornings in maker time and

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Speaker 1: my afternoons in manager time. If you do need something urgently,

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Speaker 1: please contact my EA, who, unlike me, still checks her

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Speaker 1: emails all day. What was interesting is that the response

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Speaker 1: to my message was instant. Literally every day, people would

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Speaker 1: reply to my auto responders saying how much they loved

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Speaker 1: it and that it made them think about how they

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Speaker 1: structured their day. Sam even said they forwarded it onto

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Speaker 1: their team to read. And of course, the irony of

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Speaker 1: having an auto responder that was generating more emails was

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Speaker 1: not lost on me. But the biggest benefit of the

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Speaker 1: auto responder was that it immediately eliminated any guilt I

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Speaker 1: had about staying out of my inbox. Most office cultures

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Speaker 1: expect instant responses to email. The quicker the response, the

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Speaker 1: more prodactive you're seen to be, which is a little

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Speaker 1: bit crazy because those who are constantly in their inbox

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Speaker 1: are probably not able to carve out much time to

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Speaker 1: make progress on their most important projects. What my out

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Speaker 1: of office reply allowed me to feel is literally zero

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Speaker 1: guilt around taking a little while to reply to a

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Speaker 1: lot of incoming emails. The automatic email people received from

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Speaker 1: me was basically saying to them, lower your expectations of

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Speaker 1: when you'll hear back from me, and you know something.

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Speaker 1: Since making this change, I've received zero complaints about how

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Speaker 1: long I take to reply to emails. And now, in

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Speaker 1: addition to the lack of guilt, seeing the impact my

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Speaker 1: auto responder was having motivated me to constantly change it

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Speaker 1: and keep inserting new and interesting research findings or helpful tips.

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Speaker 1: I began to see my auto responder as a really

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Speaker 1: powerful communication tool that could help more people rethink the

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Speaker 1: way they designed their work date. So at the beginning

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Speaker 1: of every month, I revise my auto responder to include

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Speaker 1: something new. I'm also mindful that there are some people,

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Speaker 1: such as my team, who'll email me almost every day,

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Speaker 1: and I want to try to keep things somewhat fresh.

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Speaker 1: So the next time you go into your email settings

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Speaker 1: to schedule an auto responder, think carefully about what you're

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Speaker 1: writ see if you can include a little gem of knowledge,

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Speaker 1: or at very least try to bring a smile, not

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Speaker 1: a your to the person receiving it. And if you

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Speaker 1: are trying to spend less time on your inbox in

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, an auto responder might be just the thing

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Speaker 1: you need to reduce your guilt about being a little

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Speaker 1: slower to hit reply. That is it for today's little

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Speaker 1: mini episode. If you liked it or found it useful,

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Speaker 1: I'd love it if you could share the episode with

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Speaker 1: other people that you know who perhaps could do with

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Speaker 1: improving their auto responders. And as always, if you're enjoying

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Speaker 1: how I work, I would love it if you could

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Speaker 1: write a review. I just love reading any feedback from

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Speaker 1: people listening to this podcast and on what you think.

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Speaker 1: So that is all for today's episode, I will see

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Speaker 1: you next time.