Here I am, very late of an evening, worrying and not wanting to admit to anyone how badly I have blundered.

[Futurehappiness]

I have to work tomorrow, a prospect that fills me with dread. I am sitting up this evening to avoid tomorrow morning happening; I would rather it didn't.

I feel dread because I made a bad error. I sent a really important email to someone in the team. I did everything right: double check all the email addresses including those copied in, check there was no email trail, check every single nuance of the message to ensure there was nothing that could be reinterpreted, that names/dates/facts were correct and it all struck the right tone.

Pressed send.

Then checked the sent message that it had been sent OK (yes I am really conscientious). What do I find? That in sending it marked confidential, I had somehow inadvertently marked it as 'low importance'. It was truly an 'elephant in the room' syndrome; but how do I trust myself to do anything right? However careful I am, how do these things fall through the net?

That was totally the wrong impression to give - the message was highly important hence all my care - so I had to recall and resend (I think successfully).

But I am feeling incompetent, that I can't do anything right. Who do I think I am holding a professional job anyway? How on earth could I be so stupid? I am an incompetent masquerading as a professional.

No - you are human. All will be well 💐

Do you think you have depression/anxiety? Because this sounds like the most minor thing ever.

Hey - so the email was sent to the correct person but you incorrectly marked it low importance and then recalled and re sent it correctly? It’s normal to beat yourself up but honestly it’s a very small error. You are. Or saving lives. Remember that. Deep breaths you will be fine

It's really not that big a deal. A slip of the mouse.
No one will die.

I've always just looked at emails as they come in and decided how important I think they are. Whether a sender marks them high importance or low importance makes no difference to me.

You need to get some therapy and/or meds to help you overcome your anxiety op.

Does anyone look at if an email is marked as low or high importance? I decide for myself. What's important to the sender might not be important to me. I wouldn't worry about it.

You are massively over reacting to a really minor non event

Do people really pay that much attention to the grading of an email?

I mean, this is really quite minor?!

Let it go x

Of all the things to fuck up - the content of the message, the privacy, the recipients etc - this is THE MOST MINOR of blunders. Are you always so hard on yourself? You need to put it in perspective, is that honestly how you’d talk about anyone else who had done that? A member of your team, or one of your friends/children etc ? No, you’d say “it’s a tiny thing, it’s fine, you noticed and fixed it, don’t be so harsh on yourself”.

I never mark emails as any kind of importance! Even if your office does, this is a bizarre response to something so minor.

As others have said - you haven’t really done anything wrong. I thought you were going to say something confidential went to the wrong person. I cant imagine anyone will say a single thing about this to you. It’s a non event.

I think you're hugely making a mountain out of a molehill here. There's probably a reason behind that. Personally I would probably have followed up with a quick email saying exactly what you described - "Oops, sorry - just noticed I inadvertently selected low importance instead of high importance".

Try not to lose any sleep over it; it really isn't a bad error.

Nobody will notice and it was sorted promptly. Please get some sleep. It will be fine tomorrow.

This. And you noticed anyway and sorted it. Why are you so hard on yourself?

Oh my sweet summer child. When you've sent the wrong information in a letter to 30,000 people, then we can talk.

'how badly I have blundered'...

...would be to email the entire company, and clients, with highly confidential business information, on purpose. Or to tell them all they're wankers and you hate the lot of them, or to say that you don't give a shit about their poxy company or their poxy clients.

Can you see that your very, very very tiny mistake, was unintentional and really not worth more than ten seconds of thought?

Thank you all so much. You have really helped me put this in perspective, I am going to bed now & will sleep better than I thought.

Thanks.

Yep.

That’s the spirit.

You erred mildly. You fixed it efficiently and swiftly. Excellent work, actually.

Sleep tight.

So it wasn't a serious error and, precisely because you are so conscientious, you picked up it up straight away and rectified it. Perfect! Sleep well 😊

Recall and replace it with the correct version?

I would barely even notice if something was marked low importance. Even if I did, the context of the email itself is more important and I wouldn’t then be sat there thinking, god what idiot sent this important email with low importance!

come to think of it, I don’t really pay any attention to high importance ones either! Again it’s the content of the email that matters, and who it’s from that would get my attention!

in short - don’t worry about it.

Honestly I really am not trying to belittle you but that seems such a trivial thing to worry about.
I wouldn't give it a second thought and neither will anyone else

It really is a very minor error, worry not!