The one trick to make sure your email, text and Slacks get noticed

Comment on this storyCommentThis article is a preview of The Tech Friend newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday and Friday.I’m planning a family trip

while my dad is out of the country. One night this week, I typed an email to him with my flight details, but I didn’t send it.It was the middle of the night for my dad and I

didn’t want my message to get lost under a pile of overnight emails.So I used a feature in Gmail to schedule my message to land in his inbox 12 hours later when it was the next

afternoon for him.When I’m catching up with news at 7:30 a.m. in New York, I fire off comments or ideas in Slack to my West Coast colleagues. Rather than reach them before dawn

in San Francisco, I schedule my Slacks to arrive at noon for me or 9 a.m. for my co-workers.Yes, I could send my messages at 4:30 a.m. Pacific time, and my colleagues can choose to

read them later. But I find my corny jokes are more likely to get a reaction if they hit Slack during the workday. And I don’t feel like a rude monster.Timing is everything. You

want to write that email, text or Microsoft Teams message when it’s convenient for you. But if that’s a bad time for the people on the other end, you risk being ignored or

resented. There is another way.I am addicted to the scheduling option in many popular email services, text and chat apps that hold my messages and deliver them to recipients hours,

days or months later.I want you to join me on the schedule send bandwagon and I’ll show you how. (If you ask nicely, I will also personally deliver these instructions to your

boss who sends 2 a.m. emails.)It does take more thought and a couple more clicks to have your messages delivered later. And you don’t always know the message-reading habits of

your cycling buddies or co-workers.But often, you do have a sense of when friends, family members and business associates are likely to be receptive to your messages. It is good

for you, and it’s more considerate to them.The social norms of digital communications have not caught up with the reality that messages find you at all times and places — when

you’re walking in the woods or putting your baby to bed. You can either remind yourself to deal with that text or email later, or respond immediately and pull yourself away from

what you’re doing.That’s a responsibility on you to silence your phone notifications at baby’s bedtime or remember to respond to your night-owl boss the next day. We can

shift the balance so both message senders and recipients share in building healthy digital boundaries.That’s why the schedule message feature is awesome: It’s a win for