For those of you saying “it takes a second to delete”, out of interest roughly how many emails per day do you receive? And can you explain what industry you work in (without outing)?
For my sins I work in the corporate world where I’m afraid time is money because I record and bill clients in 6 minute units, and so every “thank you” email I receive is quite literally a waste of time and money. Yes it takes a second to delete, but that’s after you’ve become distracted from your work by the pop-up, gone back to your inbox and potentially lost your train of thought. In the meantime I have a timer running for the work I’m actually meant to be doing, which I probably won’t switch off while i’m returning to my inbox, deleting an email, getting irritated and trying to return to what I was doing. Yes perhaps that’s only 20 seconds of time lost per “thankyou” email, but if you’re the client paying approx £10 per minute for what I’m working on, you probably would prefer those seconds not to add up!
I’ve ended up turning email notifications off so I don’t get distracted by emails, particularly the unnecessary ones, and just check my inbox regularly when I reach a place I can pause.
As for what emails I send, it’s about striking a balance of course - if someone has done a substantive piece of work for me, I’ll respond to thank them, but that will usually be included within an email giving comments / progressing the work further. If I’ve asked someone something small (ping me a document I can’t find, for example) I’ll probably say “many thanks in advance” in the initial request - not rude but means no need for another email either.
And for those ready to crow “can’t be that busy if you’re posting on MN”, I’m on mat leave and baby isn’t here yet!