garfieldI have an email job, which I know is a huge privilege, and I'm grateful. But it doesn't get much easier with practice. I'm always making typos and misjudging my tone and stuff. I'm sure I'm overthinking it but also it's like my freaking job you know. That said, I'm quite proud of my email skills, even if it takes me a good amount of effort to sustain them. There are some people I work with who answer every email within 5 minutes and I often think about how impressive that is to me and try to hold it up to myself as an ideal to which I aspire. I think what's nice about the 5-minute email reply isn't the "efficiency" of it or the impression it gives that you work hard, rather it's the impression it creates that the person replying genuinely care about conversing with you. The temporality of email is an underrated aspect of its colour -- together with length and content, the time you take to reply is often what marks the difference between engaging in an earnest and enthusiastic conversation, ticking tasks off your to-do list, and writing something akin to a polished and considered letter.
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Couldn't agree more with this. Sending a really nice, well thought-out email that you're borderline proud of feels nice. I wish people used them commonly outside of work contexts also
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