I like to joke that I send a text, then throw my phone across the Atlantic Ocean, because I likely won’t reply to its reply until the end of the night or when I see it a few days later. I’m awful at replying to messages, so I decided to change that for a week!
First, I had to set some ground-rules. I’m notorious for checking my phone when I’m not supposed to, ignoring them because I can’t reply right away, then forgetting to reply at all. So, my rules were simple. Any time that I checked my phone for anything other than just the time, I had to reply to whatever texts or various notifications I had.
Day One – Wednesday
Wednesday is my busiest class day. Responding to my messages right away was somewhat hard, but it was also helpful because a last minute thing came up at work. Overall, I’d say that this day was a success.
Day Two -Thursday
Day two was when things started to get a little difficult. I have 8:30am classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and, frankly, I just don’t want to reply to all the messages I got overnight right away, so I ignored them until after class. I was starting to slip a little in replying to messages I was dreading replying to, but there was actually a time where I got a little heated responding to a message right away, because I didn’t stop to give myself time to think about what was actually going on. Even then, the problem was solved fairly quickly because I was responding fast.
Day Three – Friday
I started to get sick on Friday, so I was sleeping a lot. The messages weren’t so bad this day, but I was not motivated to fix everyone’s mistakes, which sometimes my messages tend to be. I replied as quickly as I could, but it wasn’t the best day, for sure.
Day Four – Saturday
I was still sick on Saturday, and this was the worst of it. My throat was so clogged I could barely talk, and the last thing I wanted to do was reply to messages. I ended up doing the opposite of the challenge I set for myself — I took a self-care day where I disconnected almost entirely. So, technically speaking, I didn’t break my rules because I didn’t check my phone. It was actually really refreshing to break away for a while. However, with the texts that I did send, I was starting to get frustrated when people weren’t replying to me right away. Now I know how y’all feel — sorry!
Day Five – Sunday
By Sunday, I had really slipped. I ignored messages from hours earlier and I was purposely not checking apps like Snapchat so I didn’t have to reply. When I did, I noticed that there were plans made in one of my Snapchat groups the night before that I missed because I was purposely not opening messages. I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway, but it was still kind of disappointing knowing that I would have been invited if I had just checked.
Day Six – Monday
My busiest work days are always Monday and Tuesday, so that’s why I left these days for last. They were going to be the biggest challenges to reply to, and I wasn’t wrong. I did genuinely try, but I was so swamped with everything going on that I just let some of them slide.
However, there were two notable instances for me. Firstly, there were some messages that I did not agree with and did not want to engage in, so I made the conscious choice not to reply. That was liberating in itself because I didn’t have to engage in a conversation that I did not know how to reply to — and I didn’t have to.
Secondly, I realized that I am the literal worst at taking compliments. I know that one of my habits is to send a nice message to someone and then not open the reply because I won’t know how to reply to any nice messages that they send back. This time, I got a message out of the blue and ignored it until Tuesday because I knew I was going to be awkward about it.
Day Seven – Tuesday
With this being the last day, I really wanted to try hard for the perfect reply streak. However, with my 8:30am class, it got off to a rocky start. To summarize, I gave up about half-way through the day. Sorry friends, I have stuff to do!
What I learned:
Essentially, replying to messages is harder than I thought it would be. However, taking the time to think about my messages and the implications of them is also super important. In the future, I’ll look at messages and try to reply eventually — if not always immediately.