Read it and weep: why is replying to emails so hard?

an article by Amelia Tate published in the New Statesman

Replying to emails is not, technically, hard. You click a button marked “Reply”, press some plastic keys, give your screen a quick glance, and hit another button marked “Send”. Yet despite the fact it’s not physically challenging in any remote, back-in-my-day-we-had-to-walk-15-miles-through-the-emails way, replying to the unanswered messages festering in your inbox can feel psychologically daunting.

For me, emails are like a playground game of “hot potato”. Someone unimaginably irritating has the audacity to chuck you one, you fling it out of your hands as quickly as possible, and spend the rest of the game (the game is your life, friends!) dreading the moment it’s going to get thrown back. Yet despite the fact I feel better if I reply to emails quickly, most of my days are spent being a digital dawdler, wasting hours holding the potato (to clarify, the potato is still a metaphor).

Why do I do this? Why is replying to emails so hard?

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